CharleyL

Look for a plastics supply near you. We have Piedmont Plastics. https://www.piedmontplastics.com/locations/charlotte Charley

I was there on Friday and brought along a friend who is somewhat new to woodworking. For most of the day I turned him loose to go his way and I did the same. We both had a great time and I got to talk to many friends while there. If I missed any of you, sorry. I was mostly just taking photos this year, as I had no need to buy any woodworking tools or supplies, but did end up buying some Flame Boxwood from Richard's Craft Woods. I had bought some a couple of years ago from him with the plan to make panel inserts in a jewelry box out of it for my grand daughter, but then realized that I hadn't bought quite enough of it. With this purchase, I now have more than enough of it, and I can proceed with my plans to build it now. Flame boxwood is quite rare. Although boxwood is plentiful, the red flame grain is caused by a certain bug infestation that leaves parts of the grain a very bright red on the otherwise plain nearly white background. Charley

It can be done, but you are going to need to insert bridges to keep the small complete circles from falling out. I'm a man, so I don't see a frog either. I think I would rather cut out zebras than that. Charley

I'll be at the Klingspore Extravaganza on Friday, but I won't be working in the NCWoodworkers booth. Scott (NC Scroller) will likely know where I am, if you want to meet up with me, or look for the fat old guy with the tan hat that says "I make Things" on the front. I would like to meet every one of you. Charley

Melanie, and others, I made it through the surgery, and I'm now at home. I'm now fully bionic, because they installed a bi-lateral pacemaker (3 lead) in my right shoulder just below my collar bone. It's an advanced design that collects data about my heart and "phones home" every night to pass this data to my doctors. I have a kind-of cell phone sitting on my night stand that wirelessly connects to my pacemaker when I'm in bed, collects the data from it, and then sends it on to the doctors (phones home). I think they can even make slight changes, if necessary, through this if something needs to be adjusted. I'm hurting. I feel like I've been shot in the shoulder, but I have pain meds to take when I can't deal with it. The pacemaker is about the size of a thin pocket watch and about the diameter of an original silver dollar. If you stacked 2 silver dollars together, it would be about the same thickness as the pacemaker.. It is just under the skin, so there is a visible bulge there. Right now the whole area is purple, from the bruising, and there is about a 1 1/4" long incision where they opened me to insert the pacemaker. The wires from the pacemaker to my heart were fed through existing veins into my heart and attached to the heart muscle in the required locations. I also gained another stent, so I have 7 now. I had been building up a lot of fluids and my feet and legs were swelling before this surgery. Wednesday, after the surgery, I made many trips to the bathroom and by morning my feet weren't swollen any more, but I got very little sleep that night. Today, the pain in my shoulder is a little worse. I'm going to cut this short and go find my pain meds, but I'm still alive. Charley

Melanie, and all, I'm glad to see that you have succeeded, but be careful. Making reindeer is a sickness that I never recovered from. This will be my 15th year of making them, and I have made over 5,000 total reindeer in 4 sizes down to the little guys at 1" tall in all those years. I've made and given them away every Christmas since 2003, but this year my health may keep me from making any more. Normally I start at roughly the beginning of September, but I haven't even been in my shop, except to get a tool every now and then, since January of this year. In the first few months I was converting a large spare bedroom (17 X 26') in my home into a photo/video studio (a bucket list item - I have been a photographer since high school, but never had a studio until now), but health problems have brought that to almost a complete stand still, and no significant woodworking or photo studio progress has been made by me at all in the last 3 months. On this coming Wednesday October 9 I'll be having heart surgery. I was told that it will be 4-5 hours long. This isn't my first heart surgery. It will be my 7th, and I died on the table during the 5th, but they brought me back. I'm considering myself to be kind of bionic now, because I keep getting new replacement parts (not just heart parts) every year or two, and most of these parts have been made of metal or plastic. When going through the airport scanner for my last flight, I warned the scanner operator that I had quite a bit of metal in me. He smiled and waived me on. Then, as I went through, he yelled loud "Man, you twinkle like a Christmas tree". I have metal knees too and also survived cancer twice. So if all goes well on Wednesday, you will all have to put up with me for a little longer, and I will have another few pieces of metal in me. I'm hoping to be able to make a few hundred more reindeer again this year, but if you don't hear from me in a week or so, at least you will know why. Please keep my reindeer making and giving tradition going for me. It's a very worthy cause. I've made a lot of people very happy by giving them away during the Christmas Season (Thanksgiving to New Years). People who are stressed out light up with joy when they receive one. I have never sold them, just give them away to anyone who helps me in some way during Christmas. Anyone, a cashier, sales clerk, waitress, doctor, nurse, preacher, etc. can get one if they help me in some way. Most men don't appreciate them, so the women are the ones that I usually give them to. I usually hold out my hand palm down, but holding a reindeer in my palm, and I wish them a Merry Christmas. When they reach out toward me, I drop the little reindeer into their hand. I've had stressed out sales girls stop everything for a few minutes and tell me that "I made their day". I've been hugged, and even kissed on the cheek many times during this, and for a 77 year old man to get this kind of attention, I consider it significant, and it has helped me get further into enjoying Christmas each year. Charley

There is a clear sticky backed mylar sheet available through hobby and stationery stores called "Applique Film". It comes in 8 1/2 X 11 and can go through a laser printer or copier. The top surface is kind of frosted or semi gloss in texture. It may work with inkjet if the printer has a setting for it, since so little needs to be applied as it does not soak in. I use it mostly for power carving, printing my image on it with a computer laser printer. I carve the outlines through it, then peel it off. Then I go back and carve shape and relief into it with different shaped bits. I use an air powered carver with 1/16" shank bits, the same as used by dentists. Gun stock relief carving is similar to what I do, but I do it on cabinet doors, jewelry boxes, etc. Some years back I cut out a cross with vines and leaves, then went to work shaping the vines and leaves, cutting them back lower than the face of the cross as I shaped them. I added veining to the leaves and bark texture to the vines too. I've made 16 of these crosses. The wood used was mahogany, except for one that was white oak. The white oak took forever to look nice. It didn't carve well at all The mahogany carves really well. The cross is all one piece of wood and has a router made key hole slot in the back for hanging. It is 14" tall. Charley

Try slowing the blade speed. An overheated blade will break easily. I also use a piece of paraffin wax rubbed against the sides of a moving blade for lubricant and to keep it cooler. Small blades require a little less tension too, but still break easily and dull quickly. Look closely at the sides of your broken blade to see if it has changed color in the cutting area when compared to the end color. If it's changing color you are overheating the blade. The increased temperature will cause the metal to become brittle and it will break much more easily as it becomes brittle. Charley

Only when I need to clear out very small areas, will I use the spiral blades. Everything else gets flat blades. Charley

My guard is also my vac hose support. I zip tied the vac hose to it. Charley

You should all try two lights, which ever type of light that you decide to buy. Those sewing machine lights are cheaper and weren't available back when I was adding LED lights to my saws. Good luck with them. Two LED lights, one on each side of the blade, and positioned "just right" will just about eliminate the blade shadows and flicker, and make following the line with the blade so much easier. I keep my light heads 4-5" above the saw table, and angled down toward the cutting point at about a 45 degree angle. When positioned slightly toward you and ahead of the cutting point seems to work best for me. If placed down lower I am forever hitting the lights with my hands. Before the LED lights that I now use, I had two halogen drafting board lights mounted on my scroll saw. The bright white color and amount of light was great, but I kept burning my forehead on the lights, and my hands were getting Sunburned whenever I cut for long hours. The LED lights are smaller, just as bright, bright white, and they don't get hot. I haven't been woodworking much since the first of this year, because I'm building myself a photo/video studio in a 17' X 26' spare 2nd master bedroom located on the 2nd floor of my house and outfitting it with backdrops, lights, cameras, new computers, etc. I've been in and out of photography and photo retouching since high school and I had owned a photo retouching business in the late 1990's through 2008, but I never had a complete studio of my own where I could also do portraits and advertising work. Completion of my new studio is now just around the corner, and I'll be getting back to doing some woodworking again, just in time to take some great photos of my Christmas woodworking projects and do some quality portrait work. I'll also be helping my son and his wife with making some advertising and training videos for their business. This won't be a full time photo business as I'm now 77 and fully retired with no interest at all in working full time again (I actually retired 5 different times). It's just another serious hobby and "Bucket List" item, something that I've always wanted, and now have. Charley

That "starting fluid" is either. Don't inhale much of it, or you may find yourself sleeping instead of working. Use it in a well ventilated area. Charley

Right now I can buy a full sheet of 1/4" Baltic Birch for about $23. You would get about 25 sq ft of plywood that way. Even if it cost 2X more where you live, you will be saving significantly by buying full sheets and cutting it up yourself. Find a local source for the full sheets. With metal knees and heart problems, I can no longer use a foam sheet to support my work or work at floor level when breaking sheets down. I made a cutting table for breaking down sheet stock outside my small shop. It's just a 23" X 70" frame (exact size not critical) made from 1 X 4 pine with 5 short lengths of 2 X 4 laid flat and flush with the top surface of the 1 X 4 frame, one of these across the center and then two more at each end where the banquet table legs (from Harbor Freight) needed to attach. All of the joints were made with biscuits and glue, so the only metal in the wood are the short screws that attach the banquet table legs. These legs fold up into the lower side of the table, so the folded size is only 3 1/2" thick. It stores easily against my sheet stock and comes out first when I need to break a sheet down. I use long aluminum straight edge clamps for guides. One is 50" long and the other is 102". These are available from Peachtree Woodworking www.ptreeusa.com , but you can use any straight edge that you already have, like a board and clamps. I have made a zero clearance kind of shoe for my circular saw. It's a piece of clear Lexan the size of my saw's shoe with a clearance hole large enough for the blade guard to operate through it, AT the front of this hole is a thin slit for the area of the saw blade teeth to rise up through it. This is the actual zero clearance function, and it keeps the wood splinters from lifting as the blade teeth rise up through it. I've been doing it this way since before track saws became available, so never felt that I could justify buying a track saw. In use, I set the saw blade depth to cut about 1/4" deeper than the material that I will be cutting, and I position the sheet stock so the cut line is roughly above the center of the cutting table. You can make a complete cut and the table will hold both pieces well enough that the blade can complete the cut without either piece falling and breaking near the end of the cut. I don't worry about the resulting kerf in the table since it is very shallow and no where deep enough for the saw blade to hit metal. If I ever make so many cuts in the table surface that it becomes difficult to use, I'll make a new table and transfer the legs to it. If I need very accurate sizes of the pieces that I cut from the sheet, I cut them about 1/4" over size and then trim them to final size inside my shop on my Unisaw. This table is light enough to easily carry and set up, and I have almost completely given up my use of saw horses since building it. When doing work away from my shop I always take it with me. When I use my miter saw I place a piece of plywood large enough for the saw on the center of the front edge of the table and attach it with two screws to the center 2 X 4. The the saw gets placed on this piece of plywood. I then have areas on either side of and behind the saw to hold my trim pieces while cutting them. Charley

Stopping the air flow between the two areas will make a huge difference. It doesn't need to be of thick insulation if you won't be conditioning the space in use 24/7. Of course, insulation is the best way, but you can manage to heat a tent in the Winter time. It just takes a relatively good seal to separate the heated and unheated from each other. It isn't very efficient, but if only being used a few hours at a time it isn't that wasteful either. But It will just loose the heat quickly when you turn off the heat source. I once rebuilt my car motor by building a sheet plastic tent over and around the engine compartment of my car with enough work space all around for me to move around. I had removed the front fenders, grill, and hood before enclosing it. A 2 X 4 frame was built and then it was covered with the plastic. It had a flap door that I could hold shut with a weight on the bottom, and sand bags and rope to hold the plastic to the car body, with more sand bags and old blankets stuffed under the car to seal between the car body and the ground. It wasn't a tight seal, but adequate enough to let me work with just an electric space heater in there with me, and the outside temperatures were at or below freezing most of the time that I was working on the engine. The inside temperatures were usually around 60 degrees and I was able to completely rebuild that engine in the coldest New York State January that we had had in years. I would turn the heater on when I got home from work. Then I would go into the house and eat dinner, and then go to work on the engine from about an hour later until usually about 11 pm when I would quit for the night. Many of those nights it was in the teens and 20's outside that tent. It even snowed a couple of times while the tent was in place. Two weeks later my motor was fully reassembled, the fenders, hood, and grill were back on and I was a 2 car family again. If you won't be working in your shop for extended periods I think you will do fine by just separating the heated and unheated areas with a plastic sheet or tarp wall. True, it won't be the most economical way, but it will work. You might consider doing this and then adding your full sheets of foam board against the plastic for more insulation and better heating efficiency, without the need to cut or modify your foam panels. The more of the surface that you can cover, the better, but the air circulation between the two areas will be stopped by the plastic sheet. Charley

You could add a Dust Deputy ahead of that vacuum. It will collect 99% of the sawdust, your Vacuum and vacuum filter will never need cleaning, and you will have full suction no matter how much saw dust you collect (at least until the container under the Dust Deputy fills up). Mine sits on top of a 20 gallon metal barrel and I can go about 2 years before I need to dump the barrel. My vacuum container and filter never get more than a micro thin dust layer on them. Vent the outlet of the vacuum to the outdoors and you won't ever be breathing even the finest of sawdust. I was at a woodworking show last Fall where a band saw was being demonstrated, and the guy had a vacuum like your's collecting the sawdust, but he had a Dust Deputy in the hose running to the vacuum. The collection container under his Dust Deputy was a 1 gallon clear plastic kitchen canister with metal clamps that tightly sealed the lid on. He said that he could do a 3 day show without dumping the sawdust from it, and he had full suction the whole time. When I noticed it, the container was about 1/3 full and it was late afternoon on the second day of the show. Charley

A true hockey puck is smooth on both sides, and has a cross hatch pattern on the edges. Other than being round, your photo doesn't look much like a "real hockey puck", but I think it will work well for spreading the load out on that lifting problem. Charley

I once worked for a company that printed team logos on hockey pucks for fan shops to sell at the hockey games. It was a small operation that was eventually discontinued. I'm not a hockey fan either, but I found that hockey pucks made great hard rubber feet for the heavy machinery that somewhat isolated the machine vibrations from the concrete floors. A countersunk center hole needed to be drilled in them for the attaching bolt. I had plenty to use, because there were two semi trailers full of hockey pucks backed up to the loading docks. I think they later were sent to the dump, after the project was discontinued. Charley

Some glues designed for scroll sawing come off easily, sometimes before you have even finished sawing. Other glues can hold too good. Can you tell us exactly what glue that you used? If you can't peel it off and it's on flat work, have you tried just sanding it off? Maybe a paint thinner, applied to the pattern, would dissolve the glue bond. I mostly do 3D scroll sawing and use regular stationary store rubber cement to attach my patterns. For most of what I make, the pattern comes off with the scrap wood, so I never have a problem removing it, but paint solvents do dissolve rubber cement. Charley

Just a question. When you first did this, did you just pull the sock off? I'm asking, because it looks like you pulled the skin off too. I was an EMT II and almost a paramedic when in the fire service including being safety and fire marshal for a 3.8 million sq ft manufacturing facility, so I'm more curious about injuries than most. It would have been better if you had made an attempt to soften the glue to get the sock off without tearing the skin, or go to the emergency room to have the sock removed by someone with experience with CA glue injuries. Lots of CA glue was used at this facility and I saw many injuries from using it, but nothing like you have experienced. Charley

You're doing fine. That type of pattern doesn't require extremely high accuracy. Anything close will look OK. Nobody is going to see where you weren't right on the line after you peel off the pattern, and likely won't even see it if they even see it with the pattern still attached. Relax, and don't get so tensed up that you need to take a break so often. It's supposed to be fun! That is a rather involved project for a beginner, but if you keep at it you will be very pleased with the end result. The more cutting that you do, the easier it will be to follow the lines closer. You might try some smaller blade sizes too. Smaller sizes let you make tighter turns and leave smoother edges. If you get any burning of the wood you are either running the saw too fast or the blade is getting dull. A scroll saw blade will usually let you cut about 50' of line before getting dull, but blade variations, even within the same blade size, manufacture brand, and even the type of material that you are cutting will all affect this. Experiment, and try different blades and speeds to learn what works the best for what you are cutting. Again, relax and enjoy what you are doing. It's the journey, not the destination that you should be enjoying. Of course, the eventual destination is great too when you can show off your project, but this isn't a speed race. Charley

I thought we were talking about accurate miter cuts for picture frame corners. I have a jig that I built for my large router that's actually a sliding bridge. When planing the surface of firewood or large slabs that won't go through my DeWalt 735 planer, I place it on my bench and attach a board to each side of the bench with the top edges level with each other and just slightly above the piece of wood that will be planed. My big router goes in the bridge with a planning bit in it, and I slide this bridge back and forth, removing layer after layer of the slab until it is completely flat. Back in the 1950's I watch a guy doing this to flatten a butcher block for the neighborhood butcher store. We have much better and more powerful routers today, and even better bits to do this, but the method is the same. It impressed me when I saw him doing it, and many years later I put this lesson to use in my own shop. It works very well, when what you are trying to flatten is way too big for your planer. For flat pieces that are just too wide for my planer, I usually just rip them into one or more pieces, joint the edges and plane the surfaces, then glue them back together, being as careful as possible to keep the surfaces flat. A little sanding is usually necessary, but it's faster than the butcher block method. Charley

I got my HP Laserjet 4 at a tag sale about 12 years ago. It was used, but seemed to be all there and for $10 I decided that it was worth the gamble. I think I've gone through about 20 toner cartridges since getting it. I buy the recycled cartridges 2 at a time when I need more from whatever source offers the best price through Amazon. It doesn't do color, but the 600 dpi capability makes nice fine black lines for scroll sawing. If I need color I use one of my Epson or HP inkjet photo printers. Copier and Laser printers use toner that is actually fine pieces of hard black wax. It melts when heated and that is how it is applied to the paper. I have used this feature to iron my pattern onto the wood by printing a mirror image of the pattern on the laser printer (if mirroring is necessary) and then I attach the image face down to my wood, using a strip of tape to act as a hinge along one edge. I then use a hot clothes iron on the back (unprinted) side of the paper to melt the toner and transfer the image onto the wood. The hinge capability of the taped edge gives you the ability to inspect the transfer without losing the position. It helps to set the laser printer for the darkest line. Charley

I have both of them. They are built with the quality of aerospace hardware and each comes in it's own blow molded case. I can get perfect miters in 1/2 degree increments with the one jig and perfect segment cuts for making segmented circles or arcs with the other. When used with a miter gauge that fits the 3/4 X 3/8 miter slot accurately, and using a length stop on the miter gauge for exact length cuts, the results that can be achieved are incredible. My Delta miter saw with lasers isn't as repeatable as I can get when using a MiterSet jig to calibrate my old OEM Delta miter gauge to make the same cuts on my Unisaw. I'm a very happy customer of the MiterSet gauges. For the segment gauge, all you have to do is place two steel pins in the holes numbered for the number of segments that you want to make in a circle. Then place your miter gauge in the slot in the MiterSet segments gauge, and against the two pins. Then lock the setting by tightening the miter gauge knob. For the angle setting MiterSet gauge you do a similar placement of two pins in holes, but then place a stepped bar against them, positioned to get the fine adjustment of the desired angle. Then you place your miter gauge bar in the slot of the gauge and the head of the miter gauge against the stepped bar. Then tighten the knob on your miter gauge and it is set to the needed angle. Amazon sells the MiterSet gauges https://miterset.myshopify.com/products/miterset-package-set Charley

Ouch! I've been using CA glue since Eastman first began offering it, (when first offered it was known as Eastman 910) and learned early on to be well protected when using it. My worst injury has only been gluing my fingers together or to what I've been gluing. Warm water applied quickly helps and Acetone does work too, but neither does a good job and some skin is usually lost in the process. One of the things that I learned early on is to keep the bottle pressed tightly into a hole in a thick piece of foam plastic about 6" square when being used. This makes it almost impossible to knock over. I also use the cone shaped lid with the small hole to only let a few drops out of the bottle at a time. The only time that I have the bottle fully open is when exchanging the flat lid with the cone lid and this is always done with the bottle pressed into the foam plastic to keep it upright. Can you give us some more details describing how you actually did this? It might help to keep someone else from experiencing the same accident. Charley

Look for the numbers on the sides of the original bearings. You will likely need a magnifying glass. The bearing manufacturer and part number should be there. Then do a Google search on that number. There are bearing supply stores in many larger cities and those numbers should get you the replacements much cheaper than buying them from DeWalt. You should also be able to find them online through Google. Fastenall, Grainger, Johnston Supply, and other industrial supply houses are also good sources for bearings. DeWalt and other tool manufacturers don't make bearings. They buy them from one of the bearing manufacturers. If you buy from DeWalt, you will likely pay double what you can buy them elsewhere for. Charley