Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Re: Wrong machine memory
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Boy, sure got that story wrong, my apologies to everyone. Or maybe Hap told two stories? Probably due to translation problems? But I'll take your advice and keep my old foot powered Barnes mortiser rather than "upgrade" to a dual blade motorized version. :)
Pam
Re: you've convinced me
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Hope this goes well for you. Due to concerns about liability and student safety, the machines I used at ACC were very good and in good operating condition. I still hated them, perhaps because there were so many inexperienced woodworkers walking behind my back. :) However, I soon took to taking my hand tools to the classes, and I still finished everything first. The only slow things involved clamping on square benches without vises, dog holes, or anything else conducive to hand planing; so I built some L shaped jigs and clamped the jigs to the benches, had to be very careful when approaching those metal clamps with my planes.
And anyone who tells me that cope and stick router bits on a router table is faster for raising panels than a panel raising plane, or even the LN 140, is just plain nuts. Burned wood, multiple passes with those huge bits with great care (talk about finger losing opportunities), fence settings, bit height settings on the router table, big, giant, Yuck. To say nothing of the extra expensive router you have to buy.
Pam
Re: Right machine memory
thomd coralseacat@yahoo.au
>Wow, by all means! I would love one of those. I have 2 hollow chisel mortisers, but my dad remembers the foot powered chisel mortiser as being the cool tool in my grandfather's shop, so I have always wanted one!
Re: Right machine memory *LINK*
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
>Yeah, when I started making A&C style stuff, facing 150 mortises per some pieces, I gagged on doing them by hand, especially the 3/8" and 1/2" square ones; so I bought a Jet mortiser, tiny. The next day, fortunately before I'd had a chance to even open the Jet box, the Barnes was offered in Dallas (it had been for sale for quite a while, but at a price I wouldn't pay) for a very reasonable price. So I returned the Jet to Woodcraft, rented a truck, and got my butt to Dallas, found a pile of chisels on ebay. It's a good machine, lots of exercise, really cool how the platform moves automatically.
I included a link to some Barnes info. I've got a Type 4.
Re: Right machine memory
thomd coralseacat@yahoo.au
>Beautiful!!
Re: you've convinced me
MIles
>Coming from Pam, those comments about routers are pretty authoritative! Must say it surprised me, I'd expected the opposite (but I don't know Pam except from posts on WC!).
As someone who is very moved by the idea of taking a raw bit of tree and making it into something just using my own efforts, i.e. by hand, it is nice to read posts by others taking a similar approach. I feel I'll learn more about the wood by feeling how it behaves - then I'll know better when to allow the electrons to help!
I'm just off to saw up some 'holm oak' (evergreen oak) that had been destined for the fireplace in my parent's home - hard and rather knarly, but with the potential for lovely figure if I can work out how best to cut up the limited stock I have. I'm not exactly looking forward to ripping it, as it's so hard, but if I succeed in making some flat stock I'll be very happy :-) My brother is heading off to the Gulf for a few months and 'needs' some nice little speaker boxes in his cabin - if they are made with wood from home, that could not be more appropriate or gratifying (to me, at least!) I'm sure some of you would agree....
PS does anyone use Holm Oak ever - it seems very uncommon, but the figure is rather exciting. I'll post a pic later, just for fun.
Miles
Japanese punch press
Paul M. in San Diego
>I went on a tour of Japan a few years ago through a trip sponsored by Hida tools. One of the stops was to visit a scissor factory. We got to see the scissor pieces cut out of sheet stock, and then they went to a punch press operator who did the following procedure on one piece every 3 seconds or so:
o Manually placed the scissor piece into the die (fingers deep into the punch-press)
o Foot activated the punch press to round over the loops of the handle
o The machine popped the finished piece out the back of the machine into a hopper.
There were no handcuff type guards on this pre-war punch press that he was using. I had to leave the room. I couldn't believe that there are still people in western civilization in this millenium that are still hand feeding small stock into a punch-press without any guards.
The guy was old and had obviously been doing this for a long time. He still could count to 10 with his shoes on, so he must have an absolutely perfect sense of timing. But it sure gave me shudders to watch.