jweisgram

My opinion is that the quality of content in FWW has gone downhill somewhat over the last 20 years, while certain other publications have improved, to the point that FWW is a close second in terms of what is available as a woodworking magazine.

Either way for my needs it remains an excellent value.

With regard to the dust collection article I'd hardly consider it state of the art. Not bad overall, but missing some useful info and concepts. For example, rather than stating nobody makes an aftermarket canister for dust collectors that has submicron filtration, you might have mentioned Wynn Environmental's 35A.

And while you may not subscribe to Bill Pentz' opinion that dust collection must remove a high percentage of submicron dust at the source I believe the argument deserves mention in a "state of the art" article. Not just repeating information that the larger manufacturers want us to hear.

I believe that it is reasonable to require safety features to be added to table saws. The logic of requiring riving knives to be included in all new table saws seems no different, to me, and I think it was a good move.

As for the argument that adding safety features will only make us all complacent while using various power tools may be valid, but I am not so sure. I for one would want to avoid using up a $60 cartridge and ruining my $100 blade by being too casual. Plenty of safety features have been mandated over the years, but would anyone suggest they are all bad for us? So there is something particular about this safety feature that people are responding to. But I don't see that it is any different in principle than splitters, riving knives, blade guards, pawls, or whatever.

What I don't like about Gass is that he is asking for 8% licensing/royalties on the wholesale price of each saw sold. IMO that is way unreasonable for a mere safety feature (even this safety feature), and very likely a major reason why no other manufacturers have come on board. I suppose Gass can ask for 8% since he has a monopoly right now. I imagine that 8% is just for licensing the technology, and does not consider the cost of a saw redesigned to use it nor the cost of including the technology itself.

An earlier posted mentioned some new "saw stop" type technology demonstrated at http://www.whirlwindtool.com/. (NOTE: the poster's URL has an extra "S" in it, and doesn't work). I liked what I saw. An overhead blade guard with a saw stop type feature (albeit a slower shutdown than SawStop's), kickback protection, and dust collection. This system requires you to always have the blade guard in place to have the advantage of protection. There's nothing for sale yet, however.

"Why is gas produced when the shellac/alcohol contact the metal?"

Shellac is acidic. My guess is the acid reacts with the metal, corroding the metal and releasing hydrogen gas.

Zinnser shellac is treated to extend the shelf life to "3 years". Your shellac was pretty old even if the stuff hadn't exploded. It might look OK but the ability to resist water damage and resist scratching would likely be subpar.

If I was using shellac on a real project, I'd test the stuff first, or more likely just mix some fresh from flakes so I knew what I had. It dissolves pretty quickly if you grind it up in a coffee grinder first (I wouldn't do that with the "rawer" type of flakes, though; I wouldn't know if I ever got all the bug parts out).

I want cookies!

I visted the shellacfinishes.biz website; it has some basic dewaxed shellac offerings at *very* good prices.