Paul Dalcanale and Colin Knecht, creators of woodworkweb.
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“A Newbie’s Guide to Woodworking” answers common woodworking questions and more! It delivers solid information that woodworking beginners can use and benefit from. We have researched the leading websites and expert information and compiled it all in this convenient book!
There is all kinds of information available today that can help get you into woodworking as a hobby. Why should you spend your time and money investing in books and clubs when you can get everything you need RIGHT HERE!
As a beginner you can be confused by the immense scope of aspects to the wonderful craft of woodworking. To many, this can be frustrating and lead them to give up. However, woodworking can not only be a means of making a living, but for many, it is a fun and rewarding hobby.
A lathe is a machine tool which spins the workpiece to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation (Wikipedia ). Lathes perform the machining operation known as "turning." While turning, material is removed from a workpiece by rotating it against a tool. Turning is a central production operation in the manufacture of many metal, plastic and wood parts. Lathes can be either manually operated or computer controlled (CNC). Lathes can have many differences, unique features and accessories to facilitate a wide range of jobs. Wood Lathes The simplest lathe type is the wood lathe. As the name suggests, it is designed for turning wood. Wood lathes are small machines consisting of a bed, headstock, tailstock and tool rest. Unlike with what is found on a metal-working machine, there are no precision ways since the cutting tools are moved by hand and not by machine power. A steady hand and good skill is needed to control the cutting tool to accurately turn smooth curves and complex contours on the work piece. The spindle is driven by a belt connected to a motor, and speed differentiations are made by manually moving the belt to one of many pulleys mounted to the back of the spindle. Lathe tools are held by hand against the work, with the support of the tool rest. The tool rest is adjustable and is clamped to the bed at a position that best suites the operation at hand.
Wood finishing can be tricky and after spending hours on building your project you want to be sure that you get the best outcome possible.
In The Complete Guide To Wood Finishing you will learn how to get beautiful, professional results no matter what your project is, even if you have never tried your hand at wood finishing before.
You will learn about every step in the wood finishing process from a professional wood finisher with years of experience. Here are just a few of the chapters you will find inside.
“Measure twice cut once” I always hated this saying, and despite the fact that I forced myself to adhere to it, it STILL cut boards to the wrong length. It used to aggravate me that no one made a tape measure for right-handed woodworkers. Imagine this for a minute, you have a board that is 30 inches long and you need to cut 15-5/16” off it. You pick up your pencil with your right hand and your measuring tape with the left and lay it out on the wood. All the numbers are up-side down.
Oh sure, we can all read numbers up-side down, unfortunately we often read them wrong don't we, that's why we measure twice and cut once, and hope that our brains and eyes were coordinated in seeing the numbers correctly. Well there is HOPE, finally some tape measure companies have realized that seeing the numbers the right way up might be of help to us woodworkers. Infact, some have even made tapes that are for both left and right hand people because they have numbers you can read EACH WAY.
I love these new tapes, I am making less mistakes and am far less frustrated reading numbers. It's not the whole numbers that go me, it's the fractions and sadly, that's where most of the mistakes happen.
Now if someone could do the same for protractors … oooOO they did, click MORE to see what they did.
Many of you have requested information on how to make the picture frame clamping device so we have finally decided to publish our own information on this device. Before we get into the building of the device a word of safety. This clamping device uses a few small pieces which can be somewhat challenging to cut on some power tool equipment. We recommend making the smaller components on a band saw. If you do not own a band saw or are not familiar with it's use we recommend cutting them by hand with a hand saw using a bench vice to hold the work.
For the list of materials and the methodology, please see the following section.
Woodworking encompasses a great number of diverse activities, including turning, woodcarving, marquetry, cabinetmaking and joinery, however, every specialist craftsman or craftswoman has at some time mastered the fundamentals of measuring and marking, dimensioning, assembling and finishing – considered the basics of woodworking skills that are the core of any woodworking calling.
Woodworking 101 will help you get started as a woodcrafter.
Making cabinet doors is easy, fun and cost effective. With wood you can purchase at any hardware or lumber store, anyone can make beautiful and functional doors in no time. The only tool you need is a decent quality router and router table, and router bits. The wood we used for these demos is just 3/4” pine that was cut to 2” widths. It is important that thickness and width of the door components is constant, otherwise you will find uneven edges on you doors that will require sanding to make even again.
After you have cut your raw wood, that is the wood for the rails and styles you will need to cut those pieces to their proper length. The length for the stiles is easy, that is simply the length of the door that you will be making. This is because the stiles are ALWAYS the full vertical length of the doors.
Cutting the rails, (the horizontal components of the door) can be a bit trickier, that is why we like to use 2” for the width of stiles and rails (plus it just looks good). The rails when they are finished will need to have tongues cut into each end to fit into the groves of the stiles and this is where knowing woodworking math is a help.
Many people consider routers "scary tools", this is probably because they can spin at such a high rate of speed, but truthfully, routers are among the safer tools in the workshop. Not that they should be taken for granted, ANY tool can do serious harm even a router. The thing that I like most about routers is they can be used to make entire projects. If the only tool you have is a router, you can make many projects with only a router.If you are new to routing, you will soon discover that the most of the things that you can do with a router involve using a router table. Routers with tables are useful too, but having a router table opens a whole new world of projects and woodworking elements.
If you are about to invest in a router, make sure you choose a good brand name like Porter Cable, Freud, Milwaukee, DeWalt or similar. If you are also investing in a router table do NOT purchase an inexpensive table based on price. You will soon find out that your money was wasted and now you still need to go out and purchase decent table. Most bench top tables are not worth bringing home, although there are exceptions, even some of the floor standing models are sketchy, so take your time and buy a decent table.
For some of the basics on using a router table, please see our video, then read on ....
