Fender Guitar Factory Tour – 1959

Posted on January 22nd, 2011

I always like watching those shows on TV that show how ubiquitous products are manufactured.  I get a kick out of seeing the process of taking raw materials and ending up with a baseball bat, or a radio.

I saw this video posted on The Woodtalk Online forum.  Both similar to and contrasting the modern shows that show robots and computers making the stuff we use every day, this video shows workers in the Fullerton, CA factory of Fender Guitars in 1959.  I find it amazing for so many reasons – there’s a ton of woodworking going on, the free-hand craftsmanship of these artists is inspiring, and the background music is a beautiful relaxed blues jam.

This is a great vid for anyone who appreciates guitars, woodworking, manufacturing, or blues music.

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Chaotic Neutral

Posted on January 21st, 2011

I headed down to the woodworking store and picked up a link belt for my table saw the other day. Almost every review I’ve seen of these belts indicate that they significantly reduce vibration on belt-driven shop equipment like table saws, band saws, drill presses, etc.   After I installed the belt (which did noticeably reduce vibration, but seemed to result in a loss of power transfer) I was paying particularly close attention to the performance of my saw.  I noticed that I was having to fight the saw to feed stock while using the fence.

I immediately put the old rubber belt back on and found the same behavior.  It seemed like my fence was angling toward the back of the blade and I twice had the sensation that I was dangerously close to creating a kickback while I was testing.

At first I checked the alignment of the table to the blade and found a very minor difference when measuring the same tooth at the front and the back of it’s range.  I loosened the trunnion bolts and knocked it around with a mallet until it fit the way I wanted it to.

Next I checked on the alignment of the blade to the fence and found something scary:

I know that this difference is magnified toward the front of the fence as compared to the offset over the course of the blade, but that’s way off.  No wonder the motor was having to work so hard to make it through 3/4″ pine.

I loosened the 4 self-alignment bolts at the front of the fence handle, flushed up the fence to the square, and carefully tightened the bolts.  The fence is now parallel to the blade and cuts are much smoother – and safer – than they were previously.  I suspect that what I percieved as a loss of power transfer with the link belt was really just the saw bogging down as the fence pinched the wood into the blade.

I guess I’ll go try my cuts with the new belt again.

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Fencing for Dummies

Posted on January 14th, 2011

I don’t envy the folks in the North.  I’ve spent my life in the Dallas area where it rarely drops below 30 degrees, and when it does it only happens for a day or two at a time.  This week was different.  This week, we were impacted, much like the rest of the nation, by what has been dubbed Snowmageddon 2011.  My North Texas sensibilities don’t know what to do with 14 degree mornings and 25 degree afternoons.  My little single-burner propane heater is no match for 14 degrees.  If I lived somewhere where this was weather common, I’d certainly have one of those 200,000 BTU heaters to keep the shop habitable.

Unsurprisingly, this has kept me out of the shop for most of the week.

I’ve been thinking lately about adding  a drill-press fence.  I’ve kind of put it off because I haven’t had much of a chance to figure out what kind of tracks, jigs, and fixtures I’d need, or which pre-made table to buy.

Then I saw a post over on Woodworking for Mere Mortals that showed me just how much I was over-complicating the whole thing.  One piece of scrap plywood, some 4/4 oak, and 30 minutes later I had a simple, functional fence on my drill press.  Sometimes we try to make it too hard.

Build an easy Drill Press Guide

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Drunken Tool Geeks Rejoice!

Posted on January 5th, 2011

Demonstrating once again that tool designers will add a motor or a laser to almost anything, Bosch has introduced the IXO Vino – a 4-volt Lithium-Ion cordless screwdriver.. with a corkscrew attachment.

Now I’m a self-professed tool geek, and I’ve at times found myself daydreaming about unorthodox uses for a cordless screwdriver (Like the SpeedStart line of lawn equipment from Craftsman), but I can’t say that I’ve ever thought while opening a bottle of wine, “Man, if only I could attach a drill to this corkscrew.”

This is apparently only available in Europe at the moment, and it sells on amazon.co.uk for the equivalent of about $60, which is a steal compared to the crystal-encrusted version that sells for about $450.

Bosch IXO Corkscrew Teaser Ad via YouTube

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Shop-made Track Saw Jig

Posted on January 2nd, 2011

In my previous post, I touched on the subject of woodworking tool economics.  One of the places where prices (at least relative to my budget) are shockingly high are track saws.

They provide a huge benefit when it comes to cleanly ripping or cross-cutting sheets of plywood, but for $500-$650, I’d rather just fuss with straight-edge clamping and cleaning up the slop on the table saw.

A couple of days ago, however, I found a handy work-around.  I built a track sled for my circular saw that allows me to make zero-clearance cuts with no measuring offsets and minimal fuss.

This simple contraption consists of some scrap 1×12 pine and a 5 1/2″ wide strip of scrap BC plywood, both just a hair over 4′.  I glued and screwed the plywood flush with one side of the 1×12 and then after doing some light sanding to clean up burrs on the “track” and waxing the base of my saw, I ripped the protruding sliver off of the 1×12 to match the blade offset from the base.

I then measured the overhang of the motor and scribed a line down the length of the plywood to show me where it was safe to clamp.

Now I just measure and mark my cross-cuts, align the lower edge up with my marks, clamp it down on each side, check for square, and cut.  The resulting cuts are much easier to set up and much cleaner than any previous method I’ve used.  Does it work as well as a $650 track saw?  No, but it is a vast improvement for me – especially for a zero-dollar, 10 minute kludge.

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Economies of Scale

Posted on January 1st, 2011

I’m what you’d call a hobbyist woodworker.  That’s not to say that I’m not serious about the craft, but rather I find my shop time limited severely by this thing called my “day job.”

Likewise I find that the funds that I’m able to dedicate to tools and supplies limited – largely because it’s difficult to justify spending large amounts on something that produces no monetary return on investment.

I’ve often fancifully daydreamed about the idea of turning my hobby into a business.  I have quite a few ideas on this subject that will likely be the subject of future missives, but one in particular has me thinking:

Is there any real money to be made doing this?

I’ve got a great career in IT – I have a job that generates a nice stable income that I absolutely rely on to support my family.  At times, I still enjoy the work I do, but the soul-crushing nature of corporate life often leaves me yearning for time in the shop.

There are several other things I think I might enjoy doing for a living, but few of them are remotely as lucrative as my current employ.  Custom furniture-making is a bit of an enigma in this regard.  I’ve seen plenty of pros discussing how their pricing models work on a piece-by-piece basis, but I’ve got no clue what kind of yearly earnings are reasonably expectable.

While flipping through the Powermatic catalog yesterday I came to a startling conclusion — If there are enough people out there willing and able to buy enough $3,500 table saws to keep this company in business, then somebody is making some serious cash doing this.   I don’t doubt the quality of the top-of-the-line cabinet saw, but I have a hard time believing that it is 3.5x better than the $1000 Jet table saw.  I expect some amount of diminishing return on value as one approaches the top-end, but 3.5x is huge, and from my perspective it is extremely difficult to justify the upgrade.

Either way, somebody is buying them for the uplift in functionality or merely as a luxury status symbol.  Assuming that most of these people are professionals, it seems that there’s a pot of gold out there somewhere.

Now to figure out where it lies….

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Shop Safety

Posted on January 1st, 2011

They say you should always wear safety glasses when using the table saw – but I don’t want to walk across the shop to get them, so I do the next best thing: I make all of my cuts with my eyes shut tight.

Safety 1st, you know.

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