There are always pros and cons to making things yourself in your own workshop because sometimes they are better than what you can purchase commercially and other times they are not, and often it depends on the materials being used. Commercially we don't have access to some of the material for building things, like stronger plastics and resins. All we can rely on in most cases is wood and sometimes with some sorts of metal accessories or parts.
These shop made Push Blocks are no different in terms of challenges, but in this case, although the materials may not seem as heavy duty, the end result is that they actually work much better than the commercial ones I have ...
If you are following along with these tests and have looked at the melamine tests I did a few weeks back using masking tape and Frog tape to see if either one of them will reduce or eliminate tear out, the results are quite clear, the tape did nothing to reduce tear out, in fact, it could be argued the Frog tape made the cuts slightly worse. Since most people are using natural wood, it only follows that I should be testing natural wood as well to give some conclusive results to these tests.
I had many people provide many suggestions in the comments section of the last test offering their knowledge on how to better cut melamine, but the test was not how to cut melamine, the test was to see if tape could actually make a difference in the cuts, and in that case, it did not ... check out the results of what it did on natural woods here ...
A short time ago, I made a video to see if using a Zero Clearance Insert in a table saw would give cleaner cuts with less tear out than a non-zero clearance insert. The results that I came up with using double sided melamine doing this test, was clear that making and using zero clearance inserts made no difference to the quality of the cuts. That test used double sided melamine as the cutting medium and many people wondered if there would be a difference if I ran the same test, but this time using natural wood or even plywood. I was not sure if the results would be different, but I suspected they would be very similar to the melamine tests, but that was a guess and the only real way of knowing is to run the test.
I decided to use three different kinds of wood for this test, Oak, Pine and a good, cabinet quality 3/4" plywood. I would to both a ripping and a cross-cutting test on all these wood with both zero clearance and non-zero clearance throat plates then compare the differences ...
Thanks to the nice people and ISOTunes, I got a chance to try out and review a couple of their wireless safety earbuds in my own workshop for a few weeks. Until they had contacted me, I was unaware that there these units were available and since I have been struggling for years to find ear protection that works for me, I was quite anxious to try these out. In the past I have tried the little foam inserts and they work ok, but taking them in and out constantly, is time consuming and fiddly, and they are only good for a very few insertions before they no longer work properly. I have a few different sets of over-the-ear earmuff style ear protectors, and they work ok but the biggest challenge I have with these is that because I am constantly listening for ambient noise in the workshop because of the video taping I am doing, I can't wear hearing protection all the time or I miss outside noises that can affect the audio recording. The fact that I am always wearing eye protection on a cord around my neck, and constantly taking of and putting on my glasses, most ear muffs are bothersome to wear.
I spend a lot of time in my workshop, not just recording videos, but also doing prep work in advance of making videos which can consist of preparing wood, making mock-up items, testing designs and even making prototypes. During this time that I am not recording, I enjoy listening to music, sometimes it's my own purchased music, other times I will tune into a radio station on my mobile phone and stream that music to my small portable Bluetooth speaker. During this time I also putting on and taking off earmuff safety protectors and of course my safety glasses. >>>> Link to Woodworkweb Amazon Affiliate Store - https://www.amazon.com/shop/woodworkweb <<<<
