BeerBrewer

Oh...I agree beware.....there are so many scammers out there it is very sad.

Scrappile...I'm inclined to agree with you. My father always said....if something seems to good to be true, then it probably isn't. I just don't know $246 for a Dewalt DW734 Thickness Planes just seems WAY...WAY too cheap when Home Depot has it for $399. If it was used, reconditioned or a second, I'd be more inclined to believe the price. I've been looking at the WEN 6522T ($323) and the WEN 6550T ($288, but I don't know anything about WEN tools. Has anyone used this brand? I've never owned a bench planer, but I think I'd could use one. I started scrolling bowls and vases out of wide cuts of wood. Then I started making even wider boards by gluing strips of different kinds of wood together and making bowl out of it. I've gotten some interesting patterns and bowls. It seems that a lot of the interesting wood comes in random thicknesses, so I need a planer to even it all out. Are there must have features for a Thickness planer? Is a 3 blade planer that much better than a 2 blade planer? I definitely want it to have a method for dust dust capture, so the Porta Cable unit is out since it doesn't have one. Thanks!

I'm interested in getting a thickness planer and I found what appears to be a deal to good to be true on http://www.buytoolshome.com/. I googled the name and I can't tell if it a scam site or not. So I thought I'd ask you folks to see if anyone has any experience with this site. Thanks!

I live on Long Island and I can't seem to find any suitable wood for my Intarsia projects. I've bought some wood over the internet, but that gets pricey quick and you can't really see the wood that you are buying. Its not only hard to find different kinds of wood, but it's next to impossible to find thicker (5 quarter or thicker) lumber. Locally about all I can find is oak, pine, poplar and maple. Does anyone one of a lumber yard on Long Island that carries a wide variety of lumber? That said I did find a place in East Northport that carries exotic lumber for making bowls, pens and such. He has almost no 1/2", 3/4" or 1" board stock. I'd even consider driving for a couple hours, but I just don't know where to go.

I was using my new 2016 Christmas Present, a Dewalt 788 Scroll Saw, a couple weeks ago when it started to act strange. I was cutting 3/4" oak at about medium to high speed, when all of the sudden the saw slowed down to a crawl all by its self, barely going up and down at all. No matter what I did I could not raise the speed back up. I turned the speed adjusting knob up and down, lightly tapped on it with my finger, gently pressed in it, basically nothing helped. Turning it off and on didn't help either. Also I was only cutting for 5 to 10 minutes at the time, so I so don't think it was over heated. As I sitting there looking at the saw working all by itself in ultra slow motion, I'm thinking to my self "Oh no, now I have to deal with Dewalt's repair center". All of the sudden the saw just started working again and did so for a few hours. This happened a bunch of times too and each time the saw seemed to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it would act up immediately, other times after an hour of so and sometimes it ran perfect all day. Thankfully, I was able to finish the scroll work on my current project and now that I'm between projects, I think I should address the issue. I'm no scroll saw expert, but this appears to be some sort of an electrical problem. Before I go to Grizzly Tool (where I purchased it) and Dewalt about this issue, I thought that it would best to consult you folks first. Has anyone experienced this issue with a Dewalt 788? If so what did you do about it? Does anyone have any ideas on how I figure out whats wrong? As always, your help is appreciated. Bob

Wow.....very interesting! I'm impressed!

Now don't start picking on my Coors can! It's a mirage that I could even find a beer can in my house. Don't get me wrong now, because I love beer as much as anyone (maybe more actually). You see I just brew my own beer and have for over 25 years. I started brewing right after Jimmy Carter made it legal!. Had I put glass of home brew in the pic you wouldn't have any frame of reference! As for MGDs, I do agree, they are a tasty brew. A few folks suggested using oil, what about using Watco Danish Oil, it comes in variety of colors or would that too soak into the end grain? Thoughts?

I'm almost finished making the wedding card box for my son's wedding this July and I thought you folks might like to see my progress. I used a pattern that was sent to me from Birchbark (thanks so much!). I printed out the pattern and took it into FedEx Office and had it enlarged on the copy machine because my son wanted it a tad larger. The original size would have been fine for wedding cards but my future daughter has other plans for it after and wanted it a tad larger. Who am I to argue with a future bride?? The box in about 14" square at the base and 13" high (I put a Coors can in one of the pics so you could judge the scale). I built the box sides using 1x12 red oak. The box is joined using a box joint that jig that I made for my cheapo router table. The top is made from 1x4 oak boards splined together, that was a first for me. I used my biscuit cutter to keep the boards aligned. All I need to do now is to stain and finish the box. I was planning to stain it darker using Min-wax Jacobean stain, but now I'm having second thoughts. When I started this project I made a test panel, so this morning I stained it and I wasn't happy how the scroll work took the stain. The scroll work seemed darker than flat surfaces and I'm sure that its all of the ins and outs make it almost impossible to wipe off the excess stain, so it appears darker. Does anyone know of an easy method of staining the piece or am I nuts for even trying to stain it?

Russell....my son and future daughter in-law loved your pattern! How many cards will it hold as is?

This is only my opinion, but odds are the poor design was not willingly caused by engineers. I'd be willing to bet Marketing and sales had a big hand in it. I'm sure the engineers and designers could have (I'll bet they did) come up with a better lower blade clamp design, but it raised the price of the cost to build the saw up 65 cents. After Marketing and sales got through adding all their margins and markups to it, they they raised the price of the saw up $35 or more! Then I'm sure marketing and sales deemed that too expensive to sell and forced the cheaper design. I personally worked as an engineer for over 34 and this scenario happened often. My son, a Mechanical Engineer had the same experience. He worked for a Bio-Medical company designing surgical instruments and stuff. He got so upset with the folks in Marketing and Sales forcing stupid design changes that he went back to college and left the profession all together. He is now a high school Physics teacher. I don't mean to throw stones and Marketing and sales folks, I'm just explaining how the design process works. Everything has a cost and trade offs have to be made. If you want to keep the costs for the saw low, you could watch craigslist for a decent used one. They do come up from time to time.

Wow...Timothy....that is very nice work. I will show them your pics. Russell....great question! Finding wood is becoming a real issue for me. Unfortunately Home Depot and Lowes have forced most of the local lumber yards out of business. The ones that remain have gotten lean and mean and don't seem carry a very wide array wood. Most don't carry any solid wood in 1/2", its 3/4" or more. That said, the Lowes by me carries 1/2' maple, pine and some oak, but nothing too wide and its hard to find a flat piece. So odds are if I use solid wood, it will be at least 3/4" thick. I see sellers on line that offer 1/2" and even 1/4", but the prices aren't cheap. Has anyone used them?

Zen Scroller....I agree that using hardwood would be more decorative, but I'm concerned about it being to fragile. I was thinking of something like the pic below, but if you have another idea I'd love to hear it. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

I'm planning to build a fretwork box for my son's upcoming wedding, but I can't seem to find any plans. So I'm going to design it myself but I have a few questions before I do. The box will be used to hold their wedding cards during the reception, so I'm thinking it should be about 16" x 8" x 8". Does that seem about right? I'm thinking that I should use birch baltic plywood...does that make sense? Is there something better to use? I'm not sure if I will paint it or finish it. As for the fretwork pattern, I was planning upon having my daughter (an artist) sketch something out that incorporates their names into the fretwork. Thanks

My son is being married this summer and they have asked if I could make them a box that they could use to store their wedding cards. Rather than just make a simple box, I'd like to make them something more decorative, possibly using fretwork, but I can't seem to find any patterns or plans. I have seen a few pictures on the web of what I'd like to build, but not details. Does anyone know where I can find one? Your help is appreciated.

I'm still learning how to use my new Dewalt Scroll saw and I've got a few questions for you folks. First let me begin by stating I'm not all that new using a scroll saw, but this saw is far better than anything I've owned of used in the past. Most of my scrolling was done for Intarsia, wood carving or misc. projects. My older saws all used pinned blades that were a real PITA to change, so I did not do any real detailed fretwork. Now that I have my 788, I started playing around with some fretwork and enjoy, but I've got questions. I made a few real simple pieces, then I made a butterfly following a pattern a scroll saw book that I bought. I came across really interesting patterns of trees cut into a circle that looked like fun projects. I even started with one that I found in pattern library on this site, but it was way to delicate and broke while I was cutting it. I tried cutting it twice, first using a 3/4" pine and then 3/4" poplar, but both broke. Frustrated I looked to the web for a different pattern, one sturdier for old fumble fingers (me). I found one that I thought would work but it was actually made with metal and not wood, so it needed some changes. I copied and pasted the pic into power point, scaled it to the size I wanted (about 11-1/4"), printed it out, pasted it on a piece of 3/4" poplar and then went about cutting it out. Hopefully I attached a picture of it below. Overall I'm happy with the piece, but it too is very fragile. I even broke off a tiny branch (left middle of the tree....you can see the odd gap in the branches) as I making the very last cut!! I think I can glue in the missing branch. There are few other branches that are in danger of breaking as well, due to the wood grain. I was thinking of gluing the entire piece to thin piece of plywood or possibly maybe even a picture, like a sunset, to shore it up. What is the best way to reinforce the piece? Should I have used plywood instead? If so what type? Where would I find it? Thanks