Woodworking Magazine Weblog

The last time I completely lost my composure, a piece of office equipment almost died.

This was in 1995, when I was running a start-up newspaper in Frankfort, Ky., and was sleeping under my desk some nights. Our company was broke, I had just spent an hour cleaning the bathrooms and our automatic paper-folding machine decided to clog because the humidity was a couple points too high.

After the machine ruined hundreds of valuable pieces of mail, I freaked. I grabbed a broken table leg (why we had a broken table leg in the newsroom is a mystery to me) and beat the machine senseless in front of the entire staff. Then I took a walk.

Last night, I was looking around my workshop for another spare table leg.

Let me back up for a moment. I'm building a fairly large shelving unit for a local couple and am now sanding all the components before finishing and final assembly (the photos here are of the finishing sample boards I'm preparing).

Against my better judgment, I bought some Far East red oak plywood from the home center for the shelves. It looked OK in the store, but it has been a nightmare. The surface veneer is woefully thin. Typically, I can dress plywood with a handplane and make four or five passes before I'm in danger of cutting through the veneer. But not this stuff. The veneer seems as thin as notebook paper. And so I decided to sand it to be safe.

I started sanding with #150-grit – typically a good place to start with quality plywood. But not this stuff. The machining marks on the surface veneers are so pronounced that I had to start with #120-grit. That's a mite aggressive for thin veneer, so I hunched over the work while sanding so I could keep a sharp eye on the veneer in case I started to cut through it.

That's when I noticed the veneer lifting in a few places, like a blister about to pop. Either this is a new development, or I didn't notice it (I'm guessing the former). So I couldn't power sand these blisters.

So after four hours of power sanding and hand-sanding, I'm now about halfway done with the project. But I am completely done with cheap plywood.

Believe me, I don't blame Far East manufacturing for this (so please don't bash an entire nation or culture if you leave a comment). Someone in our country ordered the plywood be made like this. Someone at the home center agreed to stock it. And I was stupid enough to buy it. I blame myself and no one else.

But it's just a good thing that all my table legs are still attached to tables, or I'd be sanding out quite a few big dents in these shelves.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sometimes I wonder if morticians can tell a lot about a person’s character by the body left on the slab. Do fine lines around the mouth indicate an easygoing person who always smiled perhaps?

I ask this because woodworkers – myself included – know a lot more about trees when they are dead, dried and cut to ribbons than they know about trees when they are living. We can tell the difference between soft maple and hard maple the instant we put it to the tools. But most woodworkers are hard-pressed to identify a species in the wild.

We know little about how the species grow. Or where they grow. Or what their leaves or fruit looks like.

I’ve always wanted to be able to identify species around the neighborhood, and I used to carry around a book that showed each species' canopy, leaves and fruit. I can pick out the obvious ones (silver maples, sycamores, willows and the like). But on others I am hopeless.

Today my friend John Hoffman and I were loading up several hundred pounds of concrete pavers for my mom (and 20 bags of mulch). As we were snaking the pickup truck down a steep hill in the yard, Hoffman looked up and said, “White oak. Round like the white man’s bullets.”

Huh?

“And there. Pointed like the red man’s arrows,” he said. “Red oak.” I stopped the truck mid-hill and asked what he was jabbering about. It turns out that Hoffman’s wife, Sharon, has been taking classes on naturalism given by the state of Indiana and was taught that little trick about differentiating the oaks. The white oaks have rounded lobes on the leaves, like a bullet. The red oaks have pointed lobes, like an arrowhead. Brilliant.

So this afternoon I took a walk into a forest preserve next to my mother’s property. This stretch of untouched land was always off-limits to us as kids, but recently it was opened to the public with a hiking trail. There’s an imposing sign on the property next to the preserve that reads: Lord Lanto. Plus a bunch of signs about trespassing and security cameras. I’ve always wondered about Lord Lanto and thought I might be able to catch a glimpse of his land (or perhaps the lord) at long last by taking a walk through the preserve.

No luck. No Lord Lanto. But I did find some nice white oak and red oak leaves. But still I struggled with the other species. I think I saw some walnut. If I could get a saw and kill the sucker I could tell you for sure.

— Christopher Schwarz

Question: When is your book on workbenches coming out? I read the    excerpts in your magazine this weekend and decided to purchase it before I attempt a bench of my own, I can’t wait. I have acquired some Southern Yellow Pine that I intend to use on my bench (it's fire-rated 2 x 12 x 8’). It has been in my climate-controlled garage for about three months. The last time I used construction grade (non-rated) SYP she moved all over the place once cut. What do you recommend?
 
— Andy Scott

Answer: Southern Yellow Pine moves a lot as it dries, but once it’s dry, it is quite stable. How stable? Download the pdf below that explains how to figure wood movement for a variety of species.

Here’s what I do when I use yellow pine in any project:

1. Crosscut and rip everything to close size. Moisture migrates through the end grain, so cutting it close to size will make it dry faster.

2. Use a moisture meter to check your progress. Some SYP comes nearly dry (9 percent moisture content (MC)). I’ve seen some boards at 17 percent MC. It usually takes a few months for things to equalize with big projects such as this. Patience pays.

3. Only surface the wood for one assembly at a time. Work rapidly. When you glue up the top, clear the day. Surface and rip all the stock and glue it that day. When you glue up the legs, use the same strategy. It takes more time, but it really pays off.

4. When you glue it up, let it sit in the clamps at least five hours. The resins in the wood prevent the water in yellow glue from pentrating as quickly – this tip is from the chemists at Titebond.

On a final note: With Southern Yellow Pine that has been in my shop for a year or so, I can deal with it just like I deal with hardwoods. So it really is about managing the moisture because waiting a year is not a reasonable solution for most woodworkers.

I'm sure there are other good tips that I'm forgetting. If you have one, please leave it in the Comments section below (click on Comments and you'll see how this works).

The book comes out Oct. 10. You can read more about it here.

— Christopher Schwarz

WoodMovement.pdf (272.5 KB)

Amerock's customer service department promptly responded to my question about its new Chinese-made hinges (to the company's credit, they didn't know the query was from a magazine editor and still responded within a few hours). There's good news and bad.

The bad news is that the company is indeed replacing its USA hinges with Chinese-made ones, shown above. And the company acknowledged that there have been some quality-control issues with the early batches. The good news is that Amerock is working on it and want to get it right. So it's still a good idea to check the hardware before you check out – look for tight barrel tolerances and smooth action. If the hinge feels wiggly, you might want to keep looking.

The other good news/bad news item: After seeing the photo, Amerock officials say my hinge is defective and should be returned to Rockler. Of course, the bad news is the hinge is kinda screwed to something already....

— Christopher Schwarz

In the first issue of Woodworking Magazine I wrote a half-page article titled "A Better Hinge" that sang the praises of the Amerock non-mortise hinges, which I have used for many years with great success. But today I'm considering withdrawing that recommendation.

During the summer I bought four of these hinges from my local Rockler for the cover project slated for issue 5. All the hinges were labeled the same, had the same price and were in the same bin at the store. When I unpacked them I noticed that two of them looked a little different. They were branded as Amerock but were labeled as "Made in China." The other two were labeled "Made in USA." Hmmmm.

After some debate, I decided to install both sets and see if there was any difference. It would be a fair test – same cabinet, same-size door, same wood, same installer.

I was not impressed with the Chinese-made hinges. The pin and barrel were unacceptably sloppy – one of them had almost an 1/8" gap between the barrel and the top of the hinge pin. The Chinese hinge wiggled on its pin. The tight tolerances that I loved on the USA Amerocks was gone. The door even has a cheesier feel when you open and shut it.

I've asked Amerock if the company is going to offer both lines of hinges or if it is going to discontinue the USA hinges. When I receive a response, I'll post it here. Until then, you might want to check your hinges before you pay for them and check the tolerances if they read "Made in China."

— Christopher Schwarz

LAS VEGAS – This week I’m in Las Vegas for one of our annual trade show pilgrimages. This show is called AWFS. Mostly, these shows seek to deafen you. One whole floor of this show is devoted to enormous industrial machines (some as big as a school bus but without the yellow paint or screaming children) that can turn wood into product. Plywood goes in one side; a chair comes out the other. That's not an exaggeration; I've seen it.

But if you keep your wits about you here, sometimes you unearth something extremely interesting. Yesterday we were tipped off to a booth that was stranger than anything I've come across at a show.

Tom Frink of Colorado has developed a process of coloring the wood of almost any tree while the tree is still growing in the forest. Using a secret process known to only three people, he adds color to an entire tree (all the way out to the twigs) while it is still alive. It seems crazy, but the samples he and his son showed us were amazing. The wood was colored (any color) all the way through. The only part that didn’t get colored was occasionally the pith in the dead center of the tree.

Frink colored his first Aspen grove in 1964 and has been coloring trees ever since for his own use in his woodworking business. Recently he developed an allergy to wood dust and so he’s trying to find out if there are any commercial opportunities for his process. Hence, his booth at AWFS. The booth showed off some really wild samples. Imagine a maple board that looks spalted, but the spalting is purple. Or it’s green. Think about turned bowls with a bold stripe of red running through the middle. They even had some twigs that they broke open to reveal the colored middle.

Wood turners seem pretty excited about the process in particular. Apparently it’s a non-toxic procedure ("You could drink the stuff," Frink says of the dye) and Frink promotes the fact that you can then use a lot more of the tree if it has this wild coloring throughout. He made and sold jewelry from colored branches, for example. And there’s got to be a use for the sawdust. It looks like colored confetti.

— Christopher Schwarz