Davevand

Why not just have the board cut at 1/2" instead of 1 inch to start with? I would resaw on a bandsaw first then run the boards thru my planer. A lot less waste and faster.

This is a Steve Good pattern he sent out a few weeks back. I thought it would make a cool ornament so I scaled it down to a 4" diameter circle and cropped the bottom off to make it round. I stack cut four of them and they all were claimed before I could keep one for myself, so in the process of making more.

This pattern is cropped out of a Steve Good pattern. I enlarged it and made it into a segmentation piece. Ten pieces total, made a bunch of them. I made ornaments with cedar, cherry, alder, walnut, some kind of mystery wood. I made a new ornament every yeat so I date them using a wood burniner.

For thicker than 1" material I like the Pegas Super Skip blades. I just finished cutting 48 vases out of 1.5" pine using a #9 super skip blade.

I figured out that I like to cut patters going counter-clockwise, I can see the difference in the cut quality of a circle I cut counter-clockwise vs clockwise. I also look where I want to cut, not so much where I am cutting. If I am looking where the blade is cutting I wind up make lots of little minor corrections instead of a long sweeping smooth cut.

I always wait until I figure out what I am going to make with the board before I do more than a skim plane to see what the grain looks like. No reason to make the entire board narrower or thinner for just a small defect.

This was the first step in making my shop quieter. The second item I replaced was my Shop Vac that I used with my scroll saw. It worked fine but was screaming load. I found a older Fein at an estate sale and use that now. Much more comfortable scrolling now. The last tool I replaced was my Ryobi OSS, it worked fine, just screaming loud. I purchased the Jet OSS5 to replace it, all of the rubber spindles have warped so it it kind of a pain to use, but it is very quiet to use. The Ryobi would just wear me out if I used it any length of time. For me, it is amazing how extended loud noise will wear me out. I do wear hearing protection, some times double protection.

I upgraded my DW735 a while back with a Shelix head that I purchased from Grizzly. The head I have must be the smaller diameter head because I didn't have to remove all the inserts to install it. The install was straight forward and fairly easy, at the time there was a YT video showing all the steps, can't find the video now. The first thing you will notice is that it is much quieter then the straight knives, so quit I had to remove my hearing protection to verify the planer was running. The finish is about as good as a set of slightly used straight knives, the difference is that the finish has always been that way since I installed the head several years ago, I have yet to turn the inserts. I would have gone trough several sets of OEM knives during this same period. There is a lot of internet chatter about the "fact" that an insert head uses more power than straight knives, but nobody have ever offered any test results. I tested mine before and after and I found the insert head used the same or in some case slightly less power. I think it is the fact that the inserts a so much quieter that you can hear the motor bogging down and people think it is using more power, when in reality the straight knives are also bogging down the motor you just can't hear it because they are so loud.

Spiral blades can be useful, I use them when I do animal/bird or nature patterns. Anything that has a bunch of non straight cuts and a clean edge doesn't matter. I have never had good luck cutting plywood with spiral blades. I cut solid wood and the only thing I need to watch is the grain, the spiral blades will follow the grain if you are not careful.

Try to collect as much dust at the source as possible, don't let the dust get airborne. I setup a two stage system with a small cyclone (Amazon cheap one) in front of my vacuum. It work surprisingly well. I have yet to have to clean the air filter in the vacuum (4 years) and I have emptied the dust bucket several times. I also have a hose on top of my table that is hooked to the vacuum to collect from above the project. There is a surprising amount of dust on top of the table.

Epoxy does not expand as it cures, all the epoxy I have used tends to shrink ever so slightly as it cures. The biggest problem you will have is getting the bottom sealed up so the epoxy doesn't leak out, I would suggest gluing a backer board and be sure it is well sealed around the edges. As for the epoxy bleeding into the wood, it might if the wood is porous or has cracks or any kind of voids, ie. red oak, ash, ect. Here are a couple of examples I did, about 3/4 inch thick and 1/4 inch of colored epoxy poured into them.

Should have added a pic ~6" diameter from point to point at top, 9 layers (10 counting the bottom piece) stack cut from the same piece of stock that was resawn. Short basket has rings that are ~5/16 thick and is about 3-1/4" tall Tall basket has rings that are 7/16" thick and is ~4-1/2 inches tall

I use Steve Good patterns for baskets a lot. I will shrink or blow up the pattern depending in the size of the stock I am using. I also very the thickness of the stock to get a different look. I recently made a SG basket that I stack cut two layers, one layer was thinner than the other, the two resulting baskets look completely different. One is taller and has a narrow look, the other is short and squatty.

I have a old rough sawn 2x8 that has 27 growth rings per inch, the new 2x4 has 4 per inch.

I started using this a while ago and really like it, tacks up fast and really holds TITEBOND QUICK & THICK MULTI-SURFACE GLUE