V4.8 - Introducing: The Jointer

Here’s a new one for you. There is this woodworking machine that is one of the ‘Top Five’ in any serious woodshop. It makes wavy boards flat, and squares up the fat side with the skinny side and lets you make dimensioned lumber out of goofy wood. What machine is this? The Jointer.

At its most basic, a jointer is two flat tables, with a rotating cutterhead between them. The cutterhead has 3 or 4 very sharp knives in it and they do an excellent job of cutting/shaving whatever is passed over them…hardwood, softwood, plastics, flesh- whatEVER. Those blades will not stop for anything.

That is one way of saying- BE CAREFUL when using your jointer.

Jointers come in a wide variety of sizes. I have seen everything from a 4-inch up to 16-inch. The size is related to the maximum width of wood that can be surfaced on the machine. (“Surfaced” simply means laying the board flat on the table and passing it over the cutterhead as many times as it takes to make that wide side smooth and flat.) Many 4-inch, and some 6-inch, jointers are called “motorized jointers” or table-top jointers. This is because they are very small and their motor has brushes inside it. Once the size gets to an 8-inch, the motor is an induction motor, which is better suited for heavy-duty use.

Jointers are essential for performing most of the operations that are required to ‘square-up’ a piece of wood. Here’s what I mean: Let’s say that you have an old piece of wood and you now want to use it in a project. For our example, let’s say it’s a 2 by 4. Doesn’t matter how long. Step 1 is to lay the board with the 4” side on the infeed table of the jointer and proceed to pass the board over the cutterhead as many times as it takes to make that side flat and smooth. Step 2 is to place that ‘surfaced face’ against the jointer’s fence, over the infeed table, and pass it over the cutterhead as many times as it takes to make one edge of the board flat and smooth. Once these two operations have been done, the board will have a flat ‘face’ (the wide side) and a flat edge…AND they will be ‘square’ (90 degrees) to each other.

A that point, the board can be sent thru the planer and planed to the desired thickness, ripped on the table saw to the proper width and then crosscut sawn to the correct length. All because the jointer was available to give it a flat surface and a squared-up edge.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.

V4.7 - Small Gas Engines hate Ethanol

This week’s column came to life back in 2009. I had been dealing with some lawnmower repairs and came to be friends with the gang at Riley’s Small Engine repair. While in his shop I kept seeing warnings against using gas/Ethanol in small gas engines. So, one day I asked what was his reasoning? He said it ‘builds too much heat in the engines and burns then up’.

Now, I’ve had some experience in running Methanol in my race car engines and they are both based on alcohol. But the one thing that alcohol does is make an engine run cooler- not hotter. At times, after a race, the intake would be iced over because of the coldness. So I asked myself “Self- how can something that makes an engine run cooler be ‘burning them up” ESPECIALLY when people run a gas/Ethanol blend in their car engines without any problems?

So, after much thought- here we go. First off, contrary to my first thought- cars DO have problems using blended (the technical name for a gasoline/Ethanol mix) fuel. Think not? Here’s a test. Find some straight gasoline and run it for two tankfulls and track the mileage. Then run some blended fuel for two tankfulls and track the mileage. You will not get the same mileage. The blended fuel gets worse mileage… and that is at the heart of the matter. Ethanol only delivers 62% of the equivalent Gasoline energy - therefore more ethanol (more as in quantity, not a higher percentage of the blend); must be used to deliver the same amount of energy.

In other words, when Gasoline delivers 100% energy, Ethanol can only deliver 62% of that, so more ethanol must be added to the engine.

In Automobiles, electronic fuel injection systems can make on-the-fly adjustments to the air/fuel ratio because of a closed loop in the computer that constantly takes a measure of the oxygen levels in the exhaust gas and if there is oxygen then knows the system is running lean and increases the fuel amount injected. Small gas engines have no such system, therefore, the engine runs ‘lean’ all the time.

THAT is the root cause of the small engines running too hot. Believe it or not, fuel also cools your engine, but if the air/fuel ratio is too heavy on the air part, the engine will run ‘lean’ and get waaay hotter than it should.

So, the bottom line is that you need to run straight gas in your weedeaters, lawnmowers, yard tractors or leaf blowers. Gasahol is somewhat OK for cars, but your small engines don’t have the electronic systems that are a must if your gas engine is to survive it. HINT, if you have an old car without the latest computers – don’t use blended fuel in it either.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you

V4.6 - Tracking your Bandsaw blade

Let’s talk a little more about the bandsaw this week.

Bandsaws can do things that table saws can only dream of, which makes them pretty much a necessity in a shop; however, they need to be set up properly and to do that one needs to keep a few things in mind.

Just to start with a proper definition, bandsaw “wheels” are the spoked or solid items/wheels that are mounted on the axles. Bandsaw “tires” are the rubber, or urethane, coatings on the rim of the wheels, on which the blade actually rides on. Typically, the tires can be removed from the wheels.

Most good bandsaws use a wheel/tire combination that is ‘crowned’. In other words, where the blade rides, the surface has a distinct ‘hump’ in it. This hump/crown allows the blade to be tracked (definition: - centered on the tire) with much more precision than if the tire/wheel were simply flat. On the Delta 14” bandsaws that I am most familiar with, the wheel itself had the crown machined into it and the rubber tire was just flat rubber. When the tire was installed, it conformed to the crown of the wheel.

There are some ‘bandsaw guys’ that say the crown gives the operator the ability to adjust the blade to compensate for blade drift (our last week’s discussion), but in over 25 years, I never saw that as a workable option.

Setting up the blade tracking is not really a difficult thing, but like most adjustable items, one can wind up chasing their tail if they aren’t careful.

Tracking the blade first requires that you center the blade on the bottom tire and the top tire. Once you have the blade centered, blade tension should be applied. I like to start out with only ½ to ¾ of full tension, until the tracking gets fully set. Ok, the blade is on, the tension is set at ½ and the blade is centered on the tires. At this point, roll the wheels and see if the blade stays centered on the tires. If it does, go ahead and apply full tension and roll the wheels again. If the blade stays on and centered, you are probably good to go.

If the initial testing shows the blade trying to creep towards the edge of the wheel, you will need to use the saw’s tracking adjustment to coax the blade back towards the center of the tire. When the blade stays close to the center of the tires, the saw should do its job just fine.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.

V4.5 - Teach your bandsaw to cut straight

Let’s go back and visit our old friend the bandsaw, this week. One of the most common problems with a bandsaw is getting it to cut straight. You start out with a nice straight line and start the cut and before you know it, the blade has decided that it wants to shoot off at an angle and destroy the part you did not want cut. Some of the ‘old pros’ call this ‘blade drift’- I call it ‘don’t cut straight’.

Most often, here is what happens. Looking directly at the blade teeth, one notices that each tooth on the blade is bent out at a precise distance. This is called the ‘set’ of the blade. Having the teeth set outward provides clearance for the back of the blade to move through the work. It also provides some clearance for the blade to cut around a curve. However, if (for example) the teeth that are bent to the right stick out further than the teeth that are bent to the left, the blade will cut towards the right. The best solution to this problem is to purchase a high-quality blade, but I have even seen those drift sideways - right out of the box.

Another solution is to make the ‘set’ more equal - more balanced, if you will.

One way to do that would be to increase the bend of the teeth that are not sticking out as far; however, that is a very difficult thing to do if you don’t have the machinery or skill to do so. The more practical solution would be to slightly file the tips of the teeth that are sticking out too far- actually you would be ‘dulling’ them ever so little.

A method I have used is to hold a whetstone against the running blade and let the blade teeth lightly skim across the surface of the stone. A fine touch is a must, but with some practice, it isn’t hard to manage. Take your time and test the blade often by taking a test cut, so that you don’t dull them down too far.

Another thing that causes blade drift is when the number of blade teeth per inch is too high and the wood chips cannot escape from in between them. This typically shows up when doing resawing – sawing very thick wood – because the blade spends a lot of time inside the wood and can actually heat up and bow inside the wood, thereby causing a warped cut. The solution is simple: Use a blade with fewer teeth per inch.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.

_______________________________________________________________

V4.4 - Does it shake your teeth?

Not the Boogie-Woogie…or firecrackers, I’m talking about wheel vibration in your stationary Bandsaw. Sometimes they get a little goofy and start rockin ‘n rollin worse than Elvis used to. Usually they are a 12”, 14”, or 16” size. For the purpose of this column, I’m talking about those Bandsaws that have a drive belt from the motor to the bottom wheel.

So, let’s say that you have one of those Bandsaws and you’ve always noticed that it seems to vibrate rather bad while you’re using it. You’ve taken the blade off and run it with just the bottom wheel in action and it still ‘shakes, rattles and rolls’. Or maybe you took the blade off and just running the bottom wheel shows that it runs as smooth as a Hunter ceiling fan. What to do?

First off, isolate the vibration – chase it down. If your saw is vibrating, take the blade off and run just the motor and the bottom wheel. If that smoothes it out, your problem is in the upper wheel. If you run the bottom wheel only and it still vibrates, the problem is in the bottom wheel or the drive system. Take the drive belt off and run just the motor. If it still vibrates with only the motor running, check the tightness of the motor pulley. If the pulley’s tight and yet it still has excessive vibration with only the motor running, I’d suspect you have a bad motor.

From this point, let’s say it smoothed out after you took the blade off. You’ve got the wheel guard open, so you can get to the top wheel. Give the wheel a good spin - enough so that it can rotate for at least 10 revolutions. When it finally stops, make a witness mark at the bottom of the wheel so that you can see it. Give it another good spin and let it stop again. Check where your witness mark is. If the mark is close to the same spot at the bottom, do the spin test again and see where the mark ends up. Do this 5 times and if the mark ends up stopping in the same area at the bottom of the wheel 3 times out of 5 tests, your top wheel is off-balance and needs to be replaced.

The test for bottom wheel balance is the same, but you will need to remove the drive belt before the test. The idea is to spin just the bottom wheel, not the motor and drive belt, too.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.

V4.3 - Drill Press Hints

 Ok, after a few weeks in never-never land, back to tools. I thought that for this week, I would just go over some of the little tidbits of information that I like to call ‘Tips & Techniques’, since we were discussing Drill Presses.

One of the areas that folks need some assistance with is that of choosing the correct bit speed for their particular project. The main rule of thumb is: ‘The harder the material, the slower the bit needs to turn.’ Right behind that comes this: ‘The bigger the bit, the slower it needs to turn’. How that plays out is like this. If you’re drilling the same size hole in wood and metal, the speed will need to be slowed down for drilling into metal because it is a harder material. By the same token, if you’re drilling into pine wood and making a ¼” hole and a 2-1/4” hole, slow it down for the 2-1/4” hole. It may be that not much speed change is needed between these two, but the idea is that you don’t usually want a 2-1/4” cutter turning as fast as a small ¼” bit.

Now, let’s talk safety. First and foremost, dress appropriately when using a Drill Press. Wear your safety glasses, roll up your long sleeves and pull your hair back out of the way (IF your hair is that long). I once saw a training film that showed what happened when a lady got her long hair tangled in the Drill Press she was operating. It was not a pretty sight. She reminded me of what Custer’s men must have looked like after being scalped.

After you have all those bases covered, here’s another ‘first and foremost’- ALWAYS clamp your work. I cannot over-emphasize this. Yes, it’s a pain and not always convenient but it IS necessary. I have a nice 2” long scar on my left wrist that is a constant reminder of the need to clamp your work. The very afternoon that I was going to drive my dirt track racecar for the first time, I was making an accelerator bracket and need to drill a hole in it. The bracket was just 8” long, ¾” flat stock, with one end bent at a 45 and that was where I needed the hole. So I go to my DP and hold the long part and place the bent area on the table under the bit. I started drilling the hole and OOPS…it grabbed and swung around 360 degrees and in the blink of an eye it made a few revolutions before I could get it shut off. Unfortunately, on that first swing, the top end of the stock sliced my wrist open and I wear that reminder to this day. It looks like I tried to commit suicide. So, I tell everyone - clamp your stock.

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you

V3.51 - Christmas, yes it is - and stuff

This week I may bounce around all over the place. I wanted to just write about Christmas but some mentally deranged EVIL person decided it would be a good thing to murder some innocent people in Connecticut. Even sadder, some of those were children. As a nation, we display our shock and outrage that 20 children were brutally murdered, yet Each and Every day, around THREE THOUSAND-SEVEN HUNDRED (3,700) innocent children are killed by abortion. Where is the outrage and shock over that?

We hear politicians blow their horns about how it is time to ‘stop the murdering of our children’ and I could not agree more. It IS time to stop it…not by ‘banning guns’ as the grandstanders are yelling about, but maybe we need to start by banning the scalpels and the vacuum cleaners that are used to cut up and dismember the unborn.

What allowed this murder in CT was not a lack of ‘gun laws’. As I understand it, CT already has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the USA. Yet, it still did not stop this creature from STEALING some guns and using them.

Perhaps CT needs to rethink this. Instead of having signs that say “Gun free zone” outside the school, maybe they need to change to: “Armed and trained staff on site - enter at your own risk”. It only makes common sense. How many times have we heard of someone going into a Police Station and shooting the place up? Never…not even when they do have a death wish.

Anyway, back to what I really wanted to write about- Christmas.

Not “Happy Holidays”…um...which “Holiday” would that be? Christmas!

As the Go Fish Guys say: “It’s called Christmas, with a capital C.” (that’s really a kool video- check it out on Youtube). Some people will say ‘how can this be? Jesus wasn’t born in winter’ First thing, were you there? None of us were…and maybe He wasn’t. So we select this one day, December 25th, to celebrate the anniversary of his birth. A birth, without which, mankind would have no hope of eternal life. Some will say that the original Dec 25th celebration was a pagan ritual and the Christian Church took it over. IF that is true, I say, it’s about time that the Christians took something from the pagans. Lord knows the pagans have stolen many things from the Christians. Even today, it’s still going on. Every time some judge bans a nativity scene, it’s really theft. And while I am ‘tangenting’- did you hear about the judge who says a North Carolina “Choose Life” license plate is “unconstitutional” because the opposite view does not have their own plate? How absurd. But, hey, this is America. So here’s what to do, have the Choose Life plate show a baby and make the “Choose Death” plate show parts of a baby. Let’s see how many they sell.

Christmas will be here in a few days, and it is a joyous time, so I say celebrate to the utmost! Don’t tell me ‘happy holidays’ because I will tell you- Merry Christmas!

Send your questions or comments to:
Toolsmartz@bellsouth.net and we’ll see what we can do to help you.