tpobrien

tchisel, congratulations on the Emmy nomination and the Bronze Telly too.
I watch wood-shows regularly, and Tommy Mac teaches me something useful every time!

SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) suggests that Roy's demo gives a good reason why you don't want a street-facing window on your shop (for the distracting purty gal to appear in).

I would like to know how to expand my shop from a 2-car garage to a 3-car garage, put both cars in, and still be able to move around. The shop expansion is not going to happen, because of real estate setback limitations.

Barring that expansion, I am willing to leave one car out of the garage, so I need suggestions on making good use of my one-car-garage equivalent space. Because of the hillside placement of the house, the architect made the garage ceiling 15 feet high. So there is some hope.

Anyhow, this book might help.

Besides the usual bench functions (dogs, vises, supports, etc.), I would like to see a panel or block that provides access to AC power (two 15-amp outlets), pressurized, filtered air, vacuum (2 inch). While you're at it, add an ethernet port (Category 5, unshielded twisted pair).
The individual ports should be fairly close together to avoid a spiderweb of cables and tubes. Each outlet should have a dust cover or blast gate.

My suspicion is that the manufacturers played the odds that only one of them would be sued, and it would be somebody else. Do some math here: Divide the judgement amount ($1.5 million) by the number of table saw manufacturers (maybe a hundred), and you get a number like $150,000. Divide that by the average number of saws each manufacturer has in the field (I can't even guess that one), and you get maybe $150. How does that stack up against the cost of the SawStop license for one saw?
I'm not a professional risk-assessor, but I think that's how it would play out. I am, however, a professional engineer, and my guess is that the SawStop technology would very quickly become cheaper as it is installed on tens of thousands of table saws. In the meantime, some new products like the Festool track saw and others are in serious competition for the tool budget, because they are (imho) inherently safer than either table saw or portable circular saw, for jobsite tasks.

1. A really good 10 inch cabinet saw
2. Grizzly slow-speed grinder
3. General Dovetailer
4. Nova Cole Jaw Set for midi-size lathe & SuperNova chuck
5. Bigger drill press
6. Porter Cable palm sander
7. Better router table and dedicated motor with top lift

I think that the dovetail joint - and its variants - represent a high level of craftsmanship. I was in Egypt a couple of years ago, and I don't remember seeing any dovetails (maybe the drawers were closed), but I do remember seeing scarf joints on the Pharaoh's funeral boat - held together with rope and pitch. I also remember seeing something that looked a lot like pocket hole joinery - probably without metal fasteners. Fundamentally, though, it is nice for a piece of furniture to meet its functional requirements and also look beautiful with doors and drawers open and closed.

That said, I would like to be able to do a good dovetail joint. It's on my list of needed skills. I envy those who can do really good joinery, dovetail or not.

I have a couple of other comprehensive books on cabinetmaking. It would be interesting to compare this one with those books.

My daughter and I are building a dining table from red oak. Each time we get a joint to fit right, we slap it and say, "Perfect!", in homage to Norm Abram, who stands tall among the several mentors we've had over the years.

The real question here is whether to wear eye protection when striking anything with a hammer. The answer is YES. My father practiced ophthalmology for 40+ years in southern Texas, and he had a nasty little rogues' gallery of metal fragments he had removed from the eyes of patients. He was adamant about eye protection, having treated several patients who eventually lost part or all of their sight due to foreign-body injury. Dad was proud to have initiated a policy at one of the local plants, requiring all personnel to wear safety glasses while on the plant grounds.