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One of the downsides of working with wood is that it has the ability to absorb and release moisture, which means the wood can expand and contract. This can, and does, create major problems with some woodworking projects ... but there are ways to help reduce some of the challenges. The first thing we need to do is work with wood where we know what the moisture content of the wood is to begin with.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/lGPzYe0Ub7A
For many woodworking projects, a general rule of thumb is to only use wood with a moisture content around 9 %. This can vary depending on climatic conditions, but it's at least a good starting point. It is not unusual for freshly cut trees to have a moisture content in excess of 35%, so there is a LOT of water in the trees that need to be evaporated out, which in turn makes the wood we work with much more stable. It will still absorb and release moisture, but by the time it gets down to 9% these changes should be much more subtle.
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Inlaying wood is a great way of adding a special detail to a wood project. In the past, and to a certain extent even today, inlay work is done by hand by cutting shapes and strips of wood along with the pockets they will be fit into and eventually glued into, but there are are other ways of allowing machinery to help us with some of these tasks.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/1a9nx1YzaSw
Of course, one way of making inlays is through CNC cutters or even through laser etching, but for this episode, we are using the good old wood router that has been around for decades and never seems to run out of things it can do ...
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A short time ago set up a finger joint bit on my wood router table to see how it worked, having never used it before. A number of people asked how it compared to other, less expensive finger joint bits, to which I had no experience, so I ordered one from Gearbest.com and here are the results of that setup and testing.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/IIdhe5PLjF0
This bit is quite a bit bigger and heavier than the last bit I tested and has much coarser teeth. In the world of finger joint bits, there are a variety of sizes and one size is not better than another, but different sizes would be selected for different kinds of work that need to be done. This coarser tooth would obliviously be used for larger pieces of wood in joint them together.
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There are many things that wood routers can do and even more when you start adding the many accessories to them and one of these is something called router "bushing". In quick simple terms, what these bushings do is attach to the base of the router and allow the router bit to protrude through them which in turn makes them useful as a templating tool.
Watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/ce4oqPSlHC8
The templates are the real secret to using router bushings ...