Uncle Mel's Woodshop

Radial Arm Saw

Lets talk about radial arm saws and what can be done with them. The radial arm saw gets a lot of bad press about how dangerous they are, and they can be. But anything that turns on and spins a cutting blade is dangerous. I don’t know for sure but I would bet that there are just as many fingers laying on table saw tables as on radial arm saw tables. 

So what is a radial arm saw, it is a saw motor that is mounted on a rail above the saw table. This motor can be moved along this rail or arm, thus giving it very good cross cutting ability. The arm can be swung right or left 45 degrees making it very easy to make miter cuts no matter how long your board is. Think about it, you have a 2×6 board 12 feet long and you have to cut a 45 degree miter and all you have is a table saw it ain’t going to happen. 

OK so now you want to cut shelf slots in that new book case your making, no problem. Just mount your dado blade on your radial arm saw, lower the arm until you have the depth you want and saw as many slots as you want. Once again, you only have a table saw. You have a 1×12 by 6 foot long board and you need to cut six shelf slots, what do you think is going to happen, nothing good. With a radial arm saw you cut these slots in five minutes no problem. 

These radial arm saw techniques allow you to do all of these cuts with ease. Let us look at a few other cuts you can make with ease. OK you are building a new deck and you need to cut 4 inch by 6 inch beams, just lay your beam on the table, line up your mark and saw. Guess what, your 10 inch saw did not cut all the way through, no problem, just roll your beam over, line up your mark and pull your saw through, thats it, nice clean cut. Same thing with 4x4s or any other beam you need to cut. 

I bet you think by now that I hate table saws, not true, I love a good table saw, I have a very good one in my shop. Table saws are great for ripping narrow boards from wider boards, everything else that you want to do is hard and very time consuming and down right dangerous. We use our radial arm saw five to one over our table saw, every day its faster and safer. Say you need to cut 100 2×6 bird blocking, you clamp a stop block to your fence, lay your 10 foot board on the table, slide it to the stop and cut time after time until you have your 100 blocks cut fast and easy. 

Lets look at safety, when you’re making repetitive cuts don’t let speed get the best of your judgment, don’t lay your thumbs over the back edge of your board because you can end up one thumb short. 

I hope you like these radial arm saw techniques. In closing, if you are just starting wood working and don’t have pockets full of cash and wondering what to buy, take a long hard look at the radial arm saw, it can do it all. Thanks for reading and I have much more on this topic and will do another article latter thank you. Uncle Mel

drill press jig

  Well I have talked about hand held electric drills in past articles, they are great but not if you want to drill accurate holes in your woodworking projects. You need a drill press, but what kind you ask, lets see if I can answer that question for you.

There are a lot of different things that you need to look for in choosing your drill press. First off there are bench models, floor models, single speed, and multiple speed drill presses.

So lets start with the bench models, as the name would imply, they are mounted on your work bench or a stand alone bench. These bench models have a limited drilling depth because of there height. Also if your work bench looks like mine half the time, you have to move stuff before you can drill your longer woodworking project. You are also limited by the length of your bench. Not a problem if your drill press is mounted on a stand alone bench. The bench drill presses are about half the price of floor mount drill presses but they are more limited in there use.

 Let us go to the floor models as the name says, these drill presses mount to the floor so you can drill from the chuck all the way to the floor. This is important when you have to drill holes into work that is 12 inches or more in height. You will find that floor models have more power than bench models, very important when using large forstnter bits or large hole saws. You want to make sure that you have variable speed, most of the time this is done by moving belts to different pulleys so that you can use slower speeds for metal, hardwood and plexiglass. You need faster speeds for soft woods.

 Make sure your quill feed has three levers so that you always have a handle to feed your bit into your work. You want a table that you can tilt to 45 degrees. I have an adjustable machinist vise bolted to my table, I then have a 1/2 inch plywood table with a 2×2 inch board on the bottom that I can put in my vise to drill my woodworking stuff on. Remove the wood table and use your vice for drilling metal, this works great for me.

 Lets talk safety woodworking beginners don’t understand how dangerous the drill press can be. A drill press will grab hold of anything that is loose. So guys, don’t have your shirt tail hanging out preferably wear short sleeves. Make sure that you have proper hold downs for your work because once that bit sticks in the work it starts spinning and you can’t get your hand out of the way fast enough. I have the scares to prove it. In my younger days I was not as smart as I am now.

 Now for all you lady’s out there, wear a ball cap and please tie your hair back and do the same as the men do with their clothing. Oh yea, this goes for all you long haired guys also. Well thats all for now, but there is so much more about the drill press, we will go into jigs and more latter so bye for now, Uncle Mel

Drilling Holes

We are going to talk about the pros and cons of electric hand drills.  The main ones we will talk about today are single speed, variable speed, reversible and battery powered, that’s enough for now so let’s get started.

First off there is the 1/4 inch single speed non reversible. A 1/4 inch bit is the biggest size you can use. There are not many of these on the market anymore.  However if you are drilling holes in wood sparingly around the house, the 1/4 inch might be right for you.  You don’t want to be drilling metal with these drills they just run to fast and burn your bits up.   You can buy these units dirt cheap, and you get what you pay for, they work all right but they are just so limited in  performance.

Now we come to the 3/8 inch , again the size of the drill chuck.  These are probably the most sold and used units around.  You get these in variable speed and reversible.  This means that you can run them slower for drilling holes in metal thus saving you from burning up your bits.  Now we come to the reversible part as your bit gets stuck, you just flip the lever to reverse and presto your bit backs right out.  But the best part of the reversible drill is taking screws back out when you screw up. I know that you would never do that but I have.  Now a days every thing is put together with screws.  Driving and taking screws out is probably what the 3/8 inch  is used for the most.  Most variable speed units have a knob on the trigger that screws in or out and this controls the speed that it will run.  Handy for driving screws or drilling holes in metal.  So dollar for dollar, if you are only going to have one unit, I would get the 3/8 inch.

Now we come to the 1/2 inch, they have the same features as the 3/8 inch.  They just have more power.  If you are going to be drilling holes 2 inch or bigger, then you need a 1/2.  As for driving long screws 2 inches long or more, use this drill, but you have to turn your speed down or you will just break your screw heads off.

We now come to the cordless or battery powered units.  They have all the features of the above.  What I have against these is the battery’s, they are fine for small jobs.  Other than that the guys that make them tell you all the great things you can do with them and you can for about 20 minutes so if you are lucky enough to have another battery on the charger then you have 40 minutes.  So there answer to all of this is bigger  battery’s. So you buy that 18 volt unit, you now have a drill that’s bigger than a 1/2 inch one with a cord. The battery alone weighs more than most 1/2 inch drills.  You can buy another battery but they cost more than a 1/2 one with a cord.  Guess what, you may get 2 hours tops out of your battery’s.  The drill with the cord hanging from it will work 24 hours every day.  We have both kinds in our shop they all have a place.  So if you can get a corded one and cordless one you will be drilling holes to your heart’s content. Thanks for reading, there will be more from me soon Uncle Mel

wood drilling bits

I want to talk to you about how you should go about drilling wood. First off we need to talk about the many types of drill bits there are for you to choose from. There are regular old metal twist bits, paddle bits, forstnter bits, counter sink bits and hole saw bits. Thats enough kind of drills for this blog.

Lets start off with the good old twist drills. They are primarily for drilling metal, but they are probably used as much, or more, for drilling wood as they do metal. You should have a set of twist drills from 1/16 inch to 1/2 inch. In metal you run these bits at slow speed, but when drilling wood they should be run at a faster speed. Twist bits tend to tear out wood on there exit, but they are great for drilling small holes to feed your scroll saw blades through for internal cuts.

Paddle bits as the name implies, are flat across there face. They have a center point to keep the bit going straight. There is a point on the outside of the paddle, these are the filed cutting edges. The flat part of the paddle are also filed sharp thus taking out large shavings similar to what you get from a wood lathe. For drilling wood the paddle bit is fast but to crude for good finish work.

Forstnter bits are the best for drilling flat bottom holes that don’t go all the way thru the wood. ” For instance, chair legs that you don’t want to come through the seat”. These bits have a pilot to guide the bit, it has a fluke around the outside that cuts a nice clean edge as the chips are cut out. These bits cost more than twist or paddle bits but they are the best for good finish work.

Counter sink bits are for making your wood screws flush with the surface of your work. When you drill your pilot hole for your screw without counter sinking, that will leave your screw head above the surface. Alot of guys just torque it on down which crumples the wood “OK for your deck, not so good for that shelf you just built for your wife”. A counter sink bit is shaped to match the taper of your wood screw, you simply ream the top of your pilot hole and your screw head goes in flush and neat.

Hole saws are as the name says, they are round with saw teeth that saw as they advance into the wood. Hole saws have a twist drill bit in the center that drills the pilot hole as the saw teeth do not pull the bit into the wood. When you are done drilling wood you will have a round plug inside the drill bit that you have to take out before you can drill another hole. These bits are only good for 2 inches thick or less.

That is it for now but there is so much more about drill bits. So I will talk about some more in another blog thank you so much for taking time to read my stuff hope to talk to everyone soon Uncle Mel

Lets talk about scroll saw blades there are hundreds of blades on the market today.

So how does a guy know which  blades he should buy and use. There are thick, thin, spiral, reverse, skip tooth blades, ect, ect. So lets get down to it, first off  reverse tooth scroll saw blades are the most used today. Most of the older scroll saw blades cut on the down stroke, this will cause the wood to tear out on the bottom side of your work.

 Reverse tooth blades have teeth at the bottom of the blade that cut on the up stroke as well. This makes the scroll saw  blade cut on the top and the bottom side so you get a splinter free top and bottom. This means that if you use the right speed and feed rate you will have almost no sanding to do.

 Thick and thin scroll saw blades are numbered using numbers from #0 to #12 the smaller the number the finer the blade. TPI stands for the number of teeth per inch. The higher the number the thicker and wider the scroll saw blade thus making tight turns much harder to do, so that is why you should always round the backs of the thicker scroll saw blades with a wet stone or sandpaper on a block of wood to help them turn better.

 The smaller blades can burn your work when turning tight corners.  If you are running at to high of a speed, don’t worry because you won’t do it for long before your thin scroll saw blade will get to much heat and break.

 Moral of the story, slow that speed down and let that nice thin blade keep on keeping on. Numbers #9 to #12 blades should be run at faster speeds, you will get sand free cuts and heat is not a real factor with these bigger blades.

Now we get to the spiral scroll saw blades.  Everyone I know including me have a love hate relationship with these little critters. The spiral blade is as its name infers are round with teeth on both sides.  If you are cutting small odd shaped patterns in thin wood then there is no better blade to use. Some guys will tell you that you can do just as well with fine reverse tooth scroll saw blades, don’t belive it, with a spiral blade you can go in any direction without turning your work around. But if you have long straight lines to saw, then you are not going to like these guys, so use them where they belong and you will love them.

 There are pin end and plain end scroll saw blades. The plain end blade are pretty much the blade of choice of most wood workers today because you don’t have to drill large holes for the plain end blade when cutting internal cuts. The pin end blade has a cross pin on each end and most of the new scroll saws don’t except pin end. scroll saw blades. Well that is part of the story, there is so much more and I will talk more about scroll saws in coming articles because the more you know the more fun you will have. So from all us at Uncle Mel’s wood shop thank you for reading and hope to talk to you again…Uncle Mel

butterfly

If you have just recently taken up woodworking then it is recommended that you start off with smaller simpler projects. But first, you should get yourself some plans. For woodworking, plans are very important. You should choose to either go for pre-designed woodworking plans. You can also find free plans but they may not be complete and when you are just starting out you need all of the help you can get I recommend that you get plans that have full size patterns. Whichever you choose they will assist you in perfecting the skills which you have learned.

If you choose to use free plans rather than buying woodworking plans, then you must consider a few things in advance. Here are the things that you should consider:

1. Search for plans which not only provide you with drawings which show every construction stage of an item, but will also provide you pictures of what the item should look like upon the completion of the project. This will help you to know where exactly you should be at every stage. This is why I like to buy plans because the person is making a living selling plans he wants you to be happy so he puts a lot more into his plans. As the saying goes there is no such thing as a free lunch.

2. Do not pick plans where the instructions given read something like a mystery novel. Make sure that you get full size patterns not just measurement because you will not have enough information, these types of woodworking plans will only make the entire step by step method of constructing something easy become so much more tricky. Also you do not want plans which read just like the worst book you have ever read.

3. Avoid choosing incomplete plans. For your woodworking projects, you need to have plans which provide you with the relevant tools list that you will require throughout your entire project. You should also avoid plans which do not specify what materials you need for your woodworking project. You should get plans that you like. Because you might want to start selling your work in these hard times every little bit helps. This is why I stress full size plans. You can trace these full size patterns on to 1/8 inch plywood cut them out and then make as many as you want to and will always have your pattern to use any time you want. You should be able to construct your item without having to stop woodworking simply because you found some particular items are missing. Plans for woodworking projects are by far the best tool to get started on anything you want accomplished. It is so much easier when you have instructions right in front of you so you are not trying to figure it out on your own.

So I hope that this helps with your woodworking because it is so much fun and can be very profitable if you so choose to sell your work. We here at Uncle Mel’s woodshop have been doing just that for the last 40 years. So get yourself a pine board and a good plan and start making saw dust. Thank you for letting me talk about woodworking I hope this has been of help to you. Uncle Mel

So you like scroll sawing or you would like to start scroll sawing. Lets talk about It. Some people think that the scroll saw is fairly new. But it might be a surprise to you that it has been around for hundreds of years. They were called fret saws and they were foot powered. Old world craftsman used these foot powered fret saws to do the beautiful scroll sawing that can still be seen in the old world churches and government buildings. But thats not the whole story. The original scroll sawing was done with the coping saw. that is the u shaped wonder that we used as kids. It was so great because we could cut curves and that opened a whole new woodworking world to us just as it did all those many hundreds of years ago. Some where in the 1500 hundreds a German guy developed fine narrow blades. People started building machines that these blades could be mounted in tush started the scroll saw as we know it today. These machines were peddle, treadle, hand cranked and so on.

On the market today there are two types  the first one we will talk about is the C-arm it has only one pivot point. This makes the blade move in a slight arc as it moves up and down. This causes it to under cut the edges. This is not to bad in thin material but not so good in thicker material. It takes grater skill to get good scroll sawing from this type machine so I would not recommend this type to a beginner.

The other one is called a parallel arm saw. It has two parallel arms with a pivot point in the middle of each arm. They travel in tandem with each other. The two arms are hooked together by a connecting bar at the back of the arms. This lets the blade move up and down in a near perfect vertical cut. I like this type  because we do a lot of scroll sawing in thick stuff. The size is determined by the throat size from the back of the  arm to the blade. So if the distance is 16 inches from blade to back of arm you have a16 inch meachine simple right. You should know that when you go to buy one you don’t need one of those $1500.00 beauties I have used all of them in my 60 years of scroll sawing and guess what the blade goes up down the same on a $200.00 Delta that I run every day for the last 15 years. Don’t get me wrong the expensive saws are great but they don’t make you an expert scroll sawing guy only you can do that practice, practice, practice and you will be a great at it.

Well that is my my article on scroll sawing and how to pick the one that is right for you try as many as you can. Pick one thats right for you. Here at uncle mel’s wood shop we build wooden coin banks and we are scroll sawing every day we have expensive meachines and a good cheap one so it comes down to what you like and can afford. In my next article we will talk about how to start scroll sawing and about how to keep your things working well. Thank you for reading happy scrolling Uncle Mel

Beautiful woodwork with your scroll saw

So now that you are getting better with your scroll saw skills. It’s time for you to start making beautiful woodwork with your saw. To turn out beautiful work you need to have great patterns. So many times the first thing people think about is getting on line and looking at free patterns. While there are some free patterns that you can get grate woodwork from be careful.

 Because if these are not full sized patterns and they only give you measurements that’s fine if you are making a square something. But doing beautiful woodwork on your scroll saw isn’t for squares. So as I have said in past blogs about free plans there is no such thing as a free lunch. First off most free plan sites do not show the best stuff they have. You have to buy that. So if you are not getting a free lunch you might as well go out and pay for prime rib.

 So for beautiful woodwork get the best full size plan you can. The guy selling you good plans and patterns is doing so to make money and he wants you to come back for more, it is called capitalism. But more than that, these patterns have been created by the guy selling them, he’s proud of them and has used them to do beautiful woodwork that he produces and sells. So what he is selling you is his knowledge and experience. If you are like me you need all the knowledge and experience you can get.

 To get beautiful work it is so important to get started right. All right we now have a full size pattern what we do first is look around the shop and see if you have some old 1/8 inch paneling if not go down to your budget lumber yard and buy the cheapest peace you can get. Glue your paper patterns onto the paneling then cut them out with your scroll saw. You now have a pattern that you can use over and over. You may think that you will only make one from your paper pattern but someone will see your beautiful project and want one and in these hard times thats cash money for doing something you love doing you might as well get paid for it.

 Some tricks for you to turn out beautiful woodwork. After you trace your pattern and start sawing always try to saw out your pencil lines because these lines are very hard to sand out and as they say time is money. To have beautiful woodwork you need to sand your project right. Start with 80 grit sand paper then go to 100 grit and finish with 220 grit this will make your work shine. Finish with a clear oil finish or paint and your work will make you proud. Thank you for reading my blog and I will be talking to you soon together we will do some beautiful woodwork. Uncle Mel