Miller Dowels Replacing Screws

The workbench we build in the “Workbench in a Weekend” class is made up of five assemblies that are glued together, with #8 screws holding the parts together as the glue dries.

The screws in the leg assemblies might seem unsightly to some. (They do to me!) And the screws inside the top and side assemblies might be

Pivoting Joint for Folding Furniture: A Quick Prototype

After work today I tested a concept I thought of recently. It possibly solves a problem posed by Sally Schneider on her website, The Improvised Life.* Sally wrote a post about the folding mechanism of chairs and tables by Roger Tallon.

She went looking for the hardware and couldn't find it, so has been seeking a viable substitute. 

It might be possible to do the job with a plain old butt hinge, but doing that gracefully and attractively is fairly difficult. So I mulled it over in my daydreaming time, and came up with

How to Sharpen a Veneer Tape Trimmer

I don’t use veneer tape very often. When I build frameless cabinets, I usually face the exposed edges with solid edgebanding cut from leftover wood, so my edges will match the drawers and doors. Once in a while, though, it makes sense to take advantage of

My Day Job

Here's a quick job I knocked together for one of our instructors. This sort of work is fun for me. Instructors at the science center often need or want to do something in the classroom or lab requiring parts that aren't available off the shelf. Being able to understand what they want, then translate it into something that  A) can be made, and B) will work, is key to this job. This one was easy, because as I talked with the instructor about what was needed, we were able to pretty much design it and sketch it on the spot.

So if you need a way to fasten an old pin-style poster holder to vertically mounted unistrut without having access to the end of the strut, here you go!

Next up: a portable outdoor summer cage for our tortoise & box turtles that will keep the chelonians in and the kids out!

1-2-3 Blocks

Here's a quick post in praise of 1-2-3 blocks. They come in pairs, they're quite affordable, and I think you should at least know about them. Most woodworkers haven't heard of them, most woodworkers don't have them. They come from the machine shop, but why should those guys have all the cool precision stuff to themselves? Other items that woodworkers have lifted from the machine shop include the combination square, the engineer's square, the dial indicator (for setting up table saws and planers), the dial caliper (for measuring thickness) and the precision straightedge (used both to check machine tables and the straightness of wood workpieces). This is another machine shop item we should be thinking about borrowing.

Mounting Euro Hinges: a no-dollar drill press jig

Cup hinges, 35mm hinges, Euro hinges, concealed hinges, whatever you call them they sure make door installation easier. Compared to anything else, getting all the doors to line up parallel with each other is far easier with a cup hinge!

Here's a quick tip on how to bore the holes consistently, door to door, so that when you go to install you can slap on the baseplate, drive the screws, and pop on the door.

You'll notice I use a drill press. Perhaps a drill press wasn't in your $1,000 budget? I think it should be something you consider having when you start out, and if you find that woodworking is for you and you'll do it forever, definitely get a drill press. Even a benchtop model, if it's half decent, will be useful to you in many, many ways.

If you don't have a drill press, you could just as easily make yourself a similar jig for spacing the hinges in from the end of the door, and bore the hole with a handheld drill (or better yet, the router with a pattern bit!).

The first thing to determine is the distance from the edge of the door to the edge of your hole. Varying this will vary the amount of overlay your doors have when you're done. Please, as always, at least glance at the spec sheet for your hinges, and then test out the idea on scraps before you commit to hole placement on those doors you've lavished with so much hard work!

On this drill press table, the flip-stops on the fence are meant to be the same distance from the center of the bit, so that the holes at the ends of the doors are symmetrically placed. If you have more than 2 hinges per door, vertical placement of the other holes is not critical and doesn't need to be consistent, as long as you don't put a hinge right where a shelf has to be. During installation, just install the two end hinges, then clip the baseplate to the other hinges, close the hinges, and screw the baseplates to the face frame wherever they fall. Automatic fit.

I'm going to let the pictures do the talking for the rest of this entry.