GregoryPaolini

docparm - The mortises certainly could be cut before the profile. A good wide table on a large chisel mortiser would make it a real breeze as well - Great observation!

flagship - I try to avoid any cross grain mortise & tennon joints that are wider than about 4 inches. I break them up into two smaller tennons. it all comes down to the fact that wood expands and contracts, and we can never, ever, stop that from hapening - Good insight!

Woodcheese - My grizzly band saw is an older 14" saw with a riser block. It has all the factory blade supports - No upgrades other than the top work surface. When I resaw, I install a 3/4" Woodslicer blade. My resawing generally consists of turning a 3/4" thick board in to two 1/4" book matched panels. I usually don't ask much more of the saw than that. At one point, I did cut some 1/16" veneer with the saw. It did take patience, and the set up had to be spot on - So the saw is capable. But if you looking to do a lot of thin resawing on wide boards on a regular basis, I may lean twords one of the well know european band saws. FWW did a great bandsaw comparison a few years back, and I would hold that the results of that article are still valid.


Almartin - The lumber rack is nothing more than 2x4 construction lumber. The support arms are half lapped into the uprights, then held with glue and screws. The back of the uprights are notched out to receive the 3 horizontal supports, which are nothing more than 10' long 2x4's. The notched joint is reinforced with glue and lag screws from behind. Then the whole assembly is place on the wall, and lag screwed into the wall studs. I'm pretty happy with the whole set up - it provides me with storage for about 200 bd/ft of lumber. And it was pretty cheap and easy to make. There's not too much of a downside to it (considering the ammount of room I had to work with). One thing I am designing to compliment the lumber rack is a roll around storage unit to organize my wood shorts and cut offs. My plan is to sort them by length, so finding them is a breeze, and they won't take up room on my lumber rack. In a pro setting, you can't afford to spend too much time looking for that perfect cut off or scrap to integrate into a project - Efficency is the name of the game

Fshanno: For a bit of a disclaimer, I do most of my miters at the tablesaw, but the real reason why is because I usually have a good quality blade in the table saw and a construction blade in the chop saw (which I use mostly for rough cutting pieces oversize).

With regards to square, the Dewalt saw is up to the task, and for bigger frames or consistent long length pieces, I will swap out that construction blade for a high quality cross cut blade, and use the Dewalt for fine furniture. My saw was good right out of the box, but another may take a little tuning to get it up to snuff.

Actually, I have an pressing need to upgrade to a 12" sliding miter saw, and one of the ones I'm looking at is the Dewalt - Hope this helps

Matt,

That was kind of fun - I scored 22 of 25, getting the "Traditional wood for Arts & Crafts" Wrong - Just kidding

Eagle - Finish depends on the job, and ranges from simple oil/wax all the way up to spraying catylized urethanes. The dedicated finishing room is sealed off from the shop, so dust doesn't really make it's way into there. If I'm working on a large project that can't fit in my finishing room, I'll clean the shop, let the dust settle, then employ a finish that allows me to work around the dust - Somthing like a wipe on varnish, which I can wet sand and rub out to remove any unwanted dust. Eventually the whole shop will be plumbed with a nice cyclone system

MFournier - I'm glad you liked the comment. People who really know me, know that I have a dry sense of humour - Somthing similar to what you would get if Steven Wright were appearing on The Office. Truth be told, I'm looking at the saw stop saws, just because of the whole guard issue.

DanM - That saw does tend to throw dust pretty good, and the bag that comes with it fills up pretty fast. In my last shap, I had a big shop made hood that was positioned behind the chop saw, and connected to the central dust collection system. I suspect that somthing similar will evolve in this shop as well - But for now, I just watch the dust fly!

Whitna - I'm glad you like it - It's still evolving, and things get moved around from time to time. Funny thing is how often I'll walk over to use a tool that's no longer there.

RevKev - My finishing room is 8x8x8 - That hanldes 95% of everything I do. There's a single baseboard heater in it, and the walls and ceiling of it are insulated as well. To keep that room at a steady 75' in the dead of winter costs me an extra $20 in the electricity bill, but the convienience is priceless! I'll have to take some photos of the finishing room to post on the blog - There's a real neat set up of cleats and 2x4's along the east wall of the finishing room that can be set up or taken down to accomodate various size or quantity of finishing.

Halling51 - Dust there is. I sometimes thing I make more sawdust than furniture! There's 400 gallons worth sitting outside my roll up door right now, waiting for local horse owners to come pick up.

InnovativeCabinets - That's up twords Johnson City, isn't it? Iron Duff is on the outskirts of Waynesville, about 30miles west of Asheville. Not unlike you, any further west, and my shop would be in Tennesee!

KiddervilleAcres - Great observation on the planes! Actually, the toes of the planes are raised up about 1/16th" by some small shims. This cabinet is just temporary - Temporary seems to be the status quo of my shop! My dream tool chest is still on the drawing boards, and I've been debating between hanging the planes by their totes, or placing them in a gallery in the middle of a floor to ceiling cabinet. One thing's for sure, the final cabinet will be on wheels!

Floater - That paddle has saved my butt a few times - I'm so glad I added it. My saw has a magnetic switch, so it just takes a bump to turn it off - With that in mind, I just added a spacer block above the switch, which I mounted a piece of 1/4" baltic birch plywood to. The spacer block is sized to locate the plywood a hair away from the off switch. A notch in the plywood gives me access to the on switch. To finish it off, I wanted to paint it red, but since I didn't have any in the shop, some antique cherry stain had to do!

Jim Davis - I didn't heat it this past winter, and it figures we had a real cold one! Heat is planned for next winter, right after the ceiling insulation goes in, and I plan to use an electric ceiling mounted heater. Since I have a heated finishing room, I only plan to keep the shop temp in the 50's durring the winter.
As far as light goes, it's actually much brighter in there than the photos show, and that's mostly a camera issue - To get really good pictures, in even the brightest shop, you need to set up flash units, or mount the camera on a tripod and use a long exposure - I did neither for these pictures, and the result is gloomy lightly.

Baja - Yes, the compressor is on a small shop made mobile cabinet. This allows me some storage space under the cabinet, where I keep nail guns, air hoses, fittings, etc.
That corner of the shop is the best fit for my compressor, but it interferes a bit with my miter saw. I can crosscut a 74" long piece with the compressor tucked into the corner. Roll the compressor out, and I can cut up to 97". And while the mobile shop cabinet is supported by 5 casters, I added a safety chain which teathers the compressor to the trusses, and would essentially keep it hanging in place, if one of the casters were to fail.
In a small shop, it's all about efficency; keeping things mobile; and turning every inch of wasted space into storage space.

Bowmkr,

Thanks! It is kind of a diamond in the rough - There's still a lot of little things that need to get done, but my woodworking has to wait until my client's woodworking is done.
As far as my area of specialty- I do a fair ammount of cabinetry, furniture, and some architectural woodwork.
I do have a 2hp dust collector which generally stays near the planer and jointer. I have three hoses coming off of it with gates - They go to the jointer, planer, and the third hose gets used for what ever tool I roll over that way (Shaper, router table, etc) Otherwise I roll the dust collector around the shop for now - But once the ceiling is done, then I plan to upgrade to a cyclone system. The floor of the shop is just a concrete slab - I may epoxy paint it in the future, if I can coordinate that around some down time. And I will post pictures as things get squared away in there! Thanks

The 55 is a bit older than I am, I think they arrived on the scene in the 1920's. If memory serves me right, it was supposed to be Stanley's "All in one" answer to the shelves, and shelves, and shelves of molding planes that woodworkers owned and used. In that respect, it shouldn't be too difficult to actually use, although adjusting it may require an advanced degree from an engineering college.

I'll just stick to my routers, thank you very much, and let you have the last laugh when my power goes out.

Gregory Paolini

We'll never be able to change the age old cliche of "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". One man's trash will always be another's art.

But there is a definate frustration from the "artistic" side of woodworking, in the fact that there is no FWW for their type of work. What I mean is, I can pick up FWW today, and build a classic Bow Front Table. But if I want to build a studio piece with all sorts of curves, laminations, and design aspects that seem to defy not only gravity, but many laws of physics and reason, I have no easy reference to turn to. Many of these artistic pieces really push the limits and break the rules of the medium, and while I long for articles that teach me how to make these pieces, the reality is, I must rely on my culmination of skill, knowledge, and artistic vision to see them come to being. These is no single article that will make me the next Picasso.

With that said, Fine Woodworking hasn't turned their back on the Artistic community - It's just the opposite. All you need to do is pick up any of their Design Book series to see proof of that. Also, Articles such as Micheal Fortune's, and similar ones I've seen published in past issues, help to give me the knowledge to make these artistic pieces.

In closing, I'm a self taught woodworker, and while I'm most known for traditional Arts & Crafts inspired projects, there is another side of me that builds very contemporary, functional studio furniture. I literally live in both of these worlds, where "FWW" and the "Artist" often Butt heads. Sometimes my studio furniture bends, or even breaks the rules. But I had to learn those rules first, and being self taught, I learned a lot of those "rules" from Fine Woodworking Magazine, and I for one know that ALL of my furniture is markedly better because of Fine Woodworking Magazine.

Gregory Paolini