Is 5-thou on a 10" TS blade OK or too high

Sure...

John in New Mexico

As good as possible is desirable, and with many machines these ends are attainable. The question to me has always been balancing the cost (in time and parts, mostly my lost time doing the work) with the benefit of better efficiency by reducing production steps that correct inaccuracies. The benefit of pleasant work is significant but not as much as the efficiency question.

I usually come down on the side of efficient production rather than attempting to tune machinery beyond basic function. I am almost always behind on production because my business is a hobby more than anything else - it pays for itself plus some nice tooling and materials for personal projects. As such my time is at a premium. I could not afford the shop capabilities I've slowly built over years of working this way if I did not sell the bulk of what I make.

Re: A note on materials.....

Mark Hennebury

Its all good, no point getting anyone getting upset, we all joke around and take pokes at each other from time to time, maybe make a post when we have had a drink, or are in a bad mood, but generally we are having discussions and spreading knowledge, broaden our horizons, getting pushed and prodded to question our sometimes stubborn closed minded point of view, so maybe some common good is achieved if it gets some people to look at things differently, or at least be open to the possibility of something different than they have known.

Metal and granite move for various reasons, they twist and distort form heat and pressure, and that needs to be understood to get results.

You have to understand the nature of the materials and the job to be able to work with them.

Case in point I recently made a new bronze bushing for a shaft, I machined the bore to what i thought was a perfect fit for the shaft. Then I pressed the bushing into the casting and the bore was then too small for the shaft to fit. I had to hone the bore to get back to the fit. I had not taken into account the change in dimension that would be caused by pressing the bushing into the casting. All things move, and you have to work with that fact. different materials and processes affect different materials different ways.

Wood moves in predictable ways and when understood, can be worked to high tolerances. You can control the environment and timing for critical work if necessary.

30 years ago I made thousands of these credit card boxes, I still have the same one that i have used myself all these years and it still fits just the same as the day it was made. There is not a lot of margin for error on this project, more than a thou or two out on each operation would accumulate to make these useless. Every operation had to be tight. The lids fit or they don't, a couple of thou makes a big difference in the mortise to tenon fit of the lid. So machines need to be tuned up and held to tight tolerances, tooling needs to be the correct geometry, and kept razor-sharp, jigs, set-ups, process and quality control, concentration and discipline is required to get this to work.

Now although the wood grain is all in the same direction the atmosphere still changes the feel of the lid, sometimes the lid is easier to pull off and sometimes its harder. The lid make a pop from the suction caused buy pulling it off.

While we are talking about pet peeves;

you can see why I have a hard time with people that say you can't achieve high precision with wood or that machine work is somehow a lower form of woodwork, and that the machines do all the work for you, And that you are only a real craftsman if you hack a mortise out with a pig-sticker.

Or...

Mark Nowicki

.... someone put some "medicinal" marihuana in the bran muffin mix.

Agree on the welds...

David Weaver

..at that point, obviously a bad weld exacerbates the problem even worse, so there weren't many blades in my shop that didn't have the weld ground flush.

I just never gave the thing the attention that I should have, and at this point (I literally put a dial off the top of the saw case to the wheel to show the buyer that "it's probably just the tire").

"oh...it's not the tire!"

With tools like that, most people will be like I was early on -they'll have few ideas on how to fix the saw and probably be told its in tolerance. Once I got swift with hand tools, it became the case that the saw marks were far less deep off of my saw than they were off of the bandsaw - this is where you know you've made it to the small time!!

I like the dimensioning part by hand - I get it that most don't. I like it with metal, too. If I had to do the work without being mentally checked in, then I might not like it so much. So losing the saws wasn't a great loss.

My choice was up or out with the machines (at least it seemed to me - either commit to getting good ones and give up the space that I like now as free space- and get organized). I don't remember how close I was back then to getting a euro combo machine, but it was a lot closer then than now. I figured a combo machine and a good bandsaw and I'd be set, but also realized that the things that I like to build don't take a lot of dimensioning or organization.

I guess my original thought is if someone was going to be a serious power tooler, they'd end up like the guy who got me into woodworking. He solves all of those accuracy issues at the power tool level. I tolerated them because they don't really make a difference to me. the lack of ability to get good stable resaw was a problem, but my side sanding bandsaw was OK for everything else - it resawed fine until you got into something that was both very tall and had tension to relieve itself and initiate wander. If I still had it, I'd probably figure otu a way to engineer it into a metal cutting bandsaw (after shimming or having the wheels fixed).

The two sides of this....

David Weaver

I have a friend from england who has spiral headed stuff, a PM 66 (no slider, but as good of a cabinet saw as I've seen) that literally doesn't move the needle dial and he groans over a couple of thousandths of fall off on the table top).

His planer is a 20" delta DC series planer with a digital readout on it and a spiral head. You put the wood in it, you dial it up, it comes out the way you want.

It bores me to tears.

My response to derek was probably a bit flippant, but I spent a little while deciding if I was going to reorganize my garage to make space for a combo machine and take everything else out. Well, I eventually took almost everything else out (but now have more wood and tool storage and a whole gaggle of grinding bits, and the center floor has an anvil and other stuff on it).

I could never convince myself that I wouldn't be just as bored with my own equipment that worked right as my friend is. I get it that if you're going to make money, you have to give in to this and make it as interesting as possible. It's just not at all interesting to me.

I could use a mill productively, but the same issue is there - I haven't really got any interest in it. It doesn't feel like being in the work to me, getting all of the sensory bits that are available in it. I'm not wired the same as the average person.

what you want out of your time in the shop

David Weaver

"I guess that you have never cut hundreds of mortises on an automatic mortising machine, that have to be within a couple of thou tolerance, and set-up and cut hundreds of tenons that have to fit, and be perfectly placed with a thou or two. It requires a lot of knowledge, a lot of planning, development of a process and system for error checking, it requires complete commitment and discipline, It is nerve-racking and exhilarating, and I feel sorry for you not even realizing that that exists. There is a huge world of woodworking that you are blind to."

I think you might get exhilaration out of this. Doing hundreds of the same thing like that sounds boring to me, and quite often (this is the kind of stuff the guy who got me into woodworking likes - contemplating on a linear bearing horizontal router setup, how many thousandths tolerance there should be for glue, etc)....at any rate, I've seen it on a smaller scale. It's totally unstimulating to me, not for lack of exposure. Some of the things that I do are unstimulating to other people. But it's not for lack of exposure for them, it's lack of desire or lack of satisfaction.

Sometimes people around us aren't interested in things that we are, but it's not for lack of getting them to try it. It's lack of interest in the process and the results at the same time. There isn't much tight work made mostly by machines that I care for the look of, maybe that's the problem.

Doing something like making a violin entirely by hand and voicing it by hand and eye is far more interesting, but if it were for most people, there would be more people in plain shops building violins than there are people talking about dust collection and tenon tolerance.

And in that case, if you asked me to pick between a nearly perfectly made archtop guitar made by hand and one made by someone who figured out how to do the same thing in volume in novel ways on machines, I'd have zero interest in the second. I want to see the things the maker chose, what he adjusted by hand, how it sounds, what I can learn from it. It's the variation and discretion that's interesting.

how many of those...

David Weaver

..have you stored in the first year with the lid and bottom part completely apart, through humidity changes?

They look to me like they're relatively thin walled, and one would expect if they're stored together, they wouldn't distort much as long as they're sawn from lumber that's straight and was sawed with pith on center.

But being stored together probably has a lot to do with why they all still fit.

Not at all...

John in New Mexico

Just trying to illustrate something I said in a totally different reply about how language is used.

Sometimes we say things that sound good but are meaningless. "Dead nuts" with your average dial caliper is likely +/-0.0005" or a total repeatability of one one thousandth. If you work to the nearest 1/32" with the average tape measure, that would be quite good enough for your purposes. Probably the 0.005" mentioned in the OP is good enough for your purposes as well. For the vast majority of woodworkers the worry is that its not perfect rather than that they are actually seeing a real problem that needs to be solved. Using terms like dead nuts in place of communicating an understanding of measurement is part of that problem.

Now its much easier to dismiss this with some snark than to admit the point or even just let it pass. I understand that because it is often my first reaction too, so I don't take it personally. But I also recognize that it is counterproductive when the discussion is a technical one, and while I find it excusable when practiced by non-technical people, I have come across kids in a work environment who do the same thing and are professionally worse off for indulging in the habit.

You are you and I am I

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

David, you like novelty, and hate repetition ... unless it is crunching numbers. The reason you have no interest in building furniture is as clear as the nose on your face ... it takes too long and requires more than one mortice or more than one dovetail. The tedium of tuning machines puts you off owning and using them. Handplanes are different - there's not much to them and they take no longer than 10 minutes to sharpen and tune.

You build chisels and blades and electric guitars, all of which give you a quick fix. Generally the pieces I have built take between 6 - 18 months. Have you considered building an acoustic guitar?

You seek shortcuts constantly and boast that this is born out of laziness, as if it was a virtue. The problem with this is that you seem to need to tell everyone this, and constantly. This is insulting to a lot of people who are willing to take the time to do something thoroughly, with patience and dedication by belittling their methods, tools, or attitude.

You have demonstrated that you have a good, inventive mind and taught us how to use the chipbreaker and, more recently, a sharpening technique. Thank you. Now take the time to listen to others and what they have to offer.

Regards from Perth

Derek

a basic guitar....

David Weaver

made mostly by hand takes about 40 hours to make. It's not much of a quick fix, but it can be if someone is willing to buy the parts partially made and then just finish them.

I don't do that, though.

It depends on what the repetition is. A couple of years (almost, maybe 1 1/2 now), I built this:

https://i.imgur.com/eJniVZ9.jpg

well, that eventually became a case. I liked knocking the dovetails out. I liked dimensioning the wood, but once every couple of years for furniture is enough - why? I don't have any interest in the furniture, I guess. I have interest in making it, but the house is full. I have less interest in trying to find people who will want furniture that I make. This is a little bit of a problem with guitars (though I could find buyers for them pretty easily, they are not trade dress free - which is OK making your own, but not so great if you're going to sell something you made).

If I can retire early, I will build furniture, but it won't have exposed joints (just as all of those dovetails are buried). It's just a matter of preference, not a matter of history (there are plenty of old pieces with exposed joints).

So, repetition is fine, it just depends on what it is. I don't find a lot of joy in furniture unless it's got carving or really interesting mouldings, etc.

No, i haven't built an acoustic guitar yet, but I will build a few soon (if I can get past this chisel fascination - it's really strong at this point). I have about 5 more electric guitars in process. Acoustic guitars aren't complicated - the reason I haven't built one is simple - I don't play them much and they move over time. I had some excellent boutique acoustics and sold them due to that.

I do like building efficiency in hand skill, but it's less about how many hours of this or that and more a matter of how it feels and how the gained skill feels working on something else. I can make a guitar neck in a couple of hours without power tools. Add a couple of more for the fingerboard resawn, profiled and slotted without any jigs, just marking. IT feels good and the necks feel fantastic (there's nothing "??" about them when you put your hands on them). I think the repetition that it takes to be able to mark or visualize something and make it, especially if it's more nuanced and not just working to a line is stimulating.

https://i.imgur.com/mrhZ1AQ.jpg

The interest is in the doing, but most of the small makers I see are roughing most of the neck out using a three dimensional router jig or something of the like along with a core box bit (they're imitating a milling machine).

If this neck is looked at *very* closely, it's possible to see that it's made by hand, and that part is a thrill for me, too. The life. The fitting to exactly what feels human is a lot with my fascination in making tools a sensory draw working by hand. I don't think most people share the same obsession with that that I have (but I think this is a personal thing - food and texture is a lot alike - there are things that I'm not fond of that most folks like).

You probably know what the sensory obsession implies, and that may be the case.

But, no, it's not the time making furniture that I have an issue with. I'd have no problem building an archtop guitar over the course of a year (and that will probably come to reality soon), because I'd be building a guitar whereas when I'm building anything of furniture, I start to resent it because it's keeping me from building things I'd rather build.

Re: how many of those... *LINK*

Mark Hennebury

The grain direction is the same for the top and bottom, they are cut from one piece of wood. The tenon that goes inside is a different piece of the same wood. So there is not much reason for any big changes to take place, whether they are stored together or apart.

This is one that i use all the time, have used it for the past 30 years, it sits on the side table, in my pocket, gets left in the car in the scorching heat or bitter cold, gets dropped on the floor in the house, the concrete floor in the workshop and the road. Goes through constant heat and humidity changes, and the fit does vary slightly, but it always comes back around the baseline, sometimes it may be a bit tighter, sometimes a bit looser, that is a cyclical thing. It is not like it has gradually loosened up over the years due to some change caused by the atmosphere, and there certainly doesn't seem to be any wear from opening and closing it. It appears to remain reasonable stable around the baseline original fit.

It still fits just fine.

When I forget it in the hot car, it is quite hard to pull apart, but after cooling down it goes back to normal. So the fit does change, it cycles from a bit tighter to a bit looser. Click on the "Card box video" link to watch the short video that i just took to see how it fits.




Card box video

That's not a knife.....this is a KNIFE.....

Re: how many of those...

David Weaver

my thoughts were just a guess about leaving things apart laying around here, even when from good wood. I think being stored together and also being used is probably good for those...

the action of them looks very nice, though, and the "fthup" sound when you opened it is very satisfying. Right down my alley with trying to make things satisfying from a sensory perspective.

I think the essence of making things or doing things that are needed or valuable something that's also satisfying to do or pleasing is one of the gifts of life. I shave with a straight razor. I thought initially it would be something interesting to master, and slow (based on what you see with a barber), but what I learned was that it's just better. It's slightly slower than going as fast as possible with a disposable razor, but it takes me between 3 and 4 minutes (including stropping) to shave and it's a very satisfying thing to do instead of an obligation .

something is going on in the last year or two..

David Weaver

..derek, where you've asserted things that aren't accurate.

* you referred to me as a re-enactor (which is just a good way to dismiss something someone does as role-playing). It's also enormously inaccurate

* you asserted that I"m showing my bias here (simply because I said a hand tooler would generally squeeze the last bit of accuracy out at the bench and someone more interest in working with power tools would fidget with their power tools to tune them (or buy up)

* several times, I"ve said that someone will generally build different things or the same things with different elements if they work entirely by hand by asserting that I"m implying that identical pieces have some intrinsic value if they're made entirely by hand

The bias thing sort of tripped my trigger by implying something that's just not there with the comment about getting a first generalized guess about someone (mark may be one of the few exceptions here, but he isn't a hobbyist and thus going "way deep" with both).

If someone isn't interested in the way I work, then they don't have anything to learn from me. If I am off in left field screwing around with steel and belt grinders and forge welding, then there's not a great deal for me to learn from someone who is insistent on people doing rough work a certain way (in wood).

I don't know what it is that's going on, and why you've taken to asserting what I do or why or what it is that I will do or won't do ("oh, have you built an acoustic yet?" no, only due to competing interests, not because I think they'll take too long to build).

whatever it is causing you to state things in my behalf, it'd be just great if it stopped.

The Term

Mark Mandell - Gone Round in New Jersey

refers to plumb, square, and level with measurements on a steel tape conforming to the plan. Building a telescope? Not even close to being good enough. Building a home? Count yourself very satisfied. Try to build a house to tolerances of three decimal places and you won't get anything done.

Re: how many of those...

Barry Irby

Turners turn "boxes" with friction fit lids. I have turned maybe twenty and my son turned another twenty. Generally, if you make them out of a single piece of wood you can cut a suction fit that will "pop" when you pull the lid off. And because they are from the same piece of wood they move in concert with changes in moisture and temperature. Interestingly, It's a turner's "trick" to make these. It's easier than it appears. Another interesting thing is that as fascinating as the fit is for turners, it can be hateful in that when you put them on display, people pick them up by the lid it lifts the bottom until it falls off. If you make the fit a little looser the bottom stays on the table instead of falling off. But where's the fun in that?

Heheh...

John in New Mexico

That is the point now, isn't it?

I've built houses. Tolerance is about +/-1/8". I maintain telescopes. Tolerance is usually about +/-0.0005", depending on what we're doing.

I've never used the term dead nuts. Does that tell you something?

David, I will reply to you privately.

Re: Accuracy!

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Regardless of the reasons to measure accurately (like setup and calibration of equipment), most people do NOT have a setup that allows them to measure repeatedly beyond +/- .001 or .002".

When measuring gages in my job, if the tolerances were greater than the dimensions above, it required special measures to be accurate! This included

(1) a temperature controlled lab held at 68 °F (20 °C) accurate to +/- 1 degree F.

(2) A granite surface plate regularly calibrated by a vendor using a laser, and traceable to the NIST.

(3) Either a laser device or Dial/digital indicators accurate to .00001" (Calibrated and certified to meet NIST requirements).

(4) Said gages were placed on the Granite surface plate overnight and allowed to stabilize temperature.

(5) Either the inspector used insulated gloves or other means to insure their body temperature did not warm up the gage being measured!

After the gage was approved the part being measured using the gage also had to be measured in the lab using the same form of temperature stability etc.

Due to my lack of woodworking skills in being able to accurately correct issues caused by machine setup errors, I am anal about correcting any measurable error in setup of my Unisaw, joiner, and planer. Therefore my saw cuts leave no mark a 220 grit sander will not remove in a few seconds.

I do have the equipment to measure accurately to +/-.0005. Although it does take time it normally only has to be done during initial setup or at worst checked once a year or so!

Some practical advise

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I build about as much stuff as anyone here and I can not answer your question. Why? Because I have never made the measurement and studied the effect of alignment vs some measure of sawing success.

In spite of the fact I use a Delta Unisaw nearly daily (except when bridge building) it never crossed my mind to make the measurement. I think I did once with a ruler when reinstalling the saw top.

I do not enjoy messing with machines, so I don't unless driven to. I have the same philosophy with hand tools. I don't screw with them till they quit cutting. This philosophy seems adequate to get stuff made.

Now you may be a machine person and enjoy getting the saw as perfect as your patience allows. Of you may need a place to store your socks and fretting over whether you saw is good enough keeps you socks in a shoe box. If in the latter situation start building and see if the saw is good enough.

I don't think there is a practical middle ground to this situation. Either diddle with the machine until you give up trying to make it better, or say the hell with Internet advice and go build something. Let the saw tell you it it is god enough. I can't.

Re: Some practical advise

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Can't really disagree with you Bill, however my working with metal/equipment is far more familiar to me as I worked as an Engineer in manufacturing and Quality for almost 40 years. I also have all the gages and a very accurate OLD surface grinder. Therefore it is a minor exercise for me to true up the equipment.

I certainly would not argue with you - however your woodworking skill level far surpasses mine so I feel that getting the most out of my equipment helps me some!

Derek, no great need to..

Re: something is going on... Identical objects.

TomD

"implying that identical pieces have some intrinsic value if they're made entirely by hand"

That is obviously true, as it happens. About the only place I often draw the line is when people associate that idea with bad work, rough work, obvious tool marks, etc... But that is a different issue.

There are a lot of different ideas packed into that. There have been copies of paintings that at least at a given time, could not be realized to be copies, I guess today the technology we can throw at that eliminates that romantic deception. But people clearly value the artist's actual hand. The original, though in many cases they can't tell the copies apart. Today we can print copies by machine that would fool most people outside of the ropes.

People clearly value the idea that something can be done by hand from live music, to extremely exacting activities like gun making where a part is fitted like a bank vault. In many cases, there are tricks that do not really involve all that much skill, but in other cases there really are skilled hands at work. And people value this stuff even when it is proven that people can't actually tell a Strad from a 69 dollar violin, or the machine part from a hand part.

Commercially not to mention on woodworking forums, it is Amazing what gets referred to as "hand made" when you know all the hand work amounted to switching on a machine. And I say that as a big believer in machine work and how it it requires as much or more hand skill than so called hand work, but still that is not what is happening when people talk about "hand made" products that were actually 100% jigged. They have figured out how to make stuff like guitars with virtually no ability to work wood at all. Pretty cool really. But the desire to refer to things as hand made, the stolen valor part of it, is pretty amazing.

Of course, the idea that identical objects are actually identical is usually false. In woodworking in particular, very minor differences often make the difference between that perfect reproduction Windsor chair that falls apart immediately, and the one that last generations. And that doesn't need to be a hand vs machine tool thing, but it often is. For many people, hand tools have been relegated to tasks that power won't do, so you are unlikely to get parts that are identical. Hand tools come out to do exactly what power tools won't do. Which is most stuff really, except that we limit our domain to stuff that is mostly executable with power tools.

That is the funny bit. Power tools mostly make stuff that started out as hand tool work, like household furnishings. So power tools are at a disadvantage because they are trying to do stuff that was hand tool based, and largely don't have their own vocabulary.

But on the hand tool side, the funny bit is how most work is limited to stuff that power tools can come close to making. You don't see a lot of interest in carvings, as one example. But a hand cut dovetail is awesome.

Re: how many of those littel things ruined razors

TomD

If you put it on the same tech basis, and just used straight razors with replaceable blades, time wise it is no contest. A straight razor is vastly faster. You can shave a whole side of the face with a few strokes, and you don't need to clean off any swarf, as it piles up out of the way. Obviously it shaves closer; it shaves with less pain; and I get less cuts. However the straight razor does have relatively unlimited geometry, you can choose to slit your throat.

Part of this comes down to how much wet razor technology is BS. Popular Mechanics carried an article decades ago explaining how all the steps in Gillete's then razor development actually were not about the technology in the razor heads, like double blades, or pivots, soap strips, I forget what was going on at the time, but were just things they used to monetize improvements in blade edge technology. So they would invent a means of mass producing a finer edge at their target cost, but they figured out that they would do better financially if they released that edge as a breakthrough of 3 blades, or whatever it was at the time, rather than saying, "newer sharper blade". First off, people expect you to make sharp blades if you sell razor blades; mostly do not know there are all kinds of different degrees of "razor sharp"; and may be scared at the idea of "sharper". A lot of the tech was either bad (clogged too easily, but, hey install a new blade), or not the key development.

So at this stage of the game, straight razors are not only way better intrinsically, but they are playing against companies determined to make wet razors mostly worse.

However, on the straight razor side they managed to make it look like the kind of activity that appeals to people with hairless cats, who still live at home. I remember watching an early YT video on a guy shaving with a Feather razor. It took him nine minutes. It was a sacrament to fill that little hole in his life. It's a razor! Scrape the hair off your face, and go to work.

Re: I feel that you talk of what you don't know.

TomD

I once counted my stationary machines in my largely hand tool shop, and there were something like 27 of them. Does not could welders, or sewing machines, 3d printing, or my hot press. However, both Mark ( as a guy in the cool end of the biz, not even I have an SS), and Derek, with a reasonable tool budget from the look of it, are going to be typical tool users. You can make a very good plane for the cost of a pack of deck screws. Cost of Reinhart table saw, may surprise you. My table saw that I have settled on is an INCA, which is cool, but still 70s technology. Hard to find perfect. Plus it helps to have a milling machine to machine the saw blades to size.

Also, I think David's shop may be in his basement. Having had two basement shops, I am never doing the power tool end of that again. I would limit myself to what I could do by hand, see about a bandsaw in the garden...