Using a Router Freehand - Beginners #11

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Most people who purchase wood routers, start off by purchasing just the router unit - no router table. A router by itself is a great tool, and is enhanced by matching it with a router table. Although the standalone router has somewhat limited use, for some, it is all they need and does a perfect, quick, easy to replicate job for them.
In this video and associated article we talk about using a standalone or freehand router unit, how to use it safely, how to set it up and what you can hope to achieve with it. In our case we will be using a Plunge Router, but a Fixed Base Router would have similar set up, with the exception of the depth setting. If you are looking for more Router Information you can also purchase Colin's One Hour Popular Woodworking Course "Router Basics" ... click here to check it out.

In order to make this quick and easy to understand we are going to try on put everything in point form so it is easier and quicker to read through. We would appreciate your feedback on how this works for you ....

Pallet Furniture - Make a Bookshelf

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Every woodworker loves to receive FREE WOOD, such as pallet wood. But like most things that are free, there is a catch and that catch is the free wood can dull or even ruin some of your good woodworking blades so special precautions are needed. Even after you have dis-assembled a pallet, and you think you have removed all the screws and nails, there could still be some left that only a woodworking metal detector will find (click read more to see links) ... OR, even worse, there are almost always little rocks and dirt that are ground into the wood that will dull or ruing a blade instantly.

I love to use pallet wood for certain projects, it gives a great look with little work, but most often when I am using pallet wood I will only use my circular saw, my jig saw and my reciprocating saw. Blades for these units are reasonably prices and easy to get. I NEVER run pallet wood through my jointer, planer or bandsaw, and only occasionally with a throw-away blade will I use my table saw.

To me, the trick with making pallet furniture is to make it look elegant, despite being made from pallet wood. In the case of making this bookshelf, in order to make the bookshelf look less clunky, we decided to change up the end pieces ....

Cold Bluing a Rifle Barrel

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Cold Bluing a rifle barrel is not strictly a woodworking project, but since it relates to the whole aspect of gun restoration, and because we actually did cold blue the barrel, we are covering it here. Bluing is a process to help prevent rusting of exposed steel and is sometimes used on some woodworking tools as well.

We are of the belief that hot bluing is the best, at least in my experience, but it is also somewhat complicated and needs special equipment to do, OR you need to find someone who does this and again in my experience, it is not cheap.
The other thing that needs to be noted up front, is that I have seen some pretty crappy hot blued barrels and receiver plates, not because the bluing was all that bad, but because the preparation of the metal was poor. If the metal is not polished and cleaned properly it doesn't matter what kind of bluing you put on, the finished product will not look good.

To that end, we made sure that the barrel was extremely well sanded and prepared before we ever started the bluing process.  In our case we were using Outers Gun Blue Kit, a product we had never used before, so were quite interested to see how it performed, and we were ....

Re-Finishing a Gun Stock

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Owners of rifles know that taking firearms back and forth to the target range and just general handling can be hard on guns, particularly wooden stocks. If the gun is old, it could have been finished with varnish, which over years can crackle and chip depending on conditions. In this article we will discuss the different aspects of refinishing a wooden rifle stock to restore the firearm to something close to it's original beauty.
Before you refinish or even handle any firearm, it is up to you to ensure you are working safely for yourself and for those around you.

The first thing to consider when refinishing a rifle stock is - should this rifle even be refinished? Some rifles can dramatically lose their value when the original finish is removed and replaced. If you are planning to go ahead with the refinishing, you will need to remove all the hardware from the rifle.

Once the hardware is removed, the first step is to remove the existing finish. This can be done with sandpaper, but is best started off with some sort of a remover if possible. A good paint and varnish remover should get the stock down to either the natural wood, or at least to a stained wood. At this point you will likely have removed most of the nasty marks on the stock with exception of those that are deep into the wood. The next step is ....