WT115 – Pee On Your Projects

Special thanks to our show sponsors: Arbortech and MicroJig!

On today’s show, we’re talking about trouble with honing guides, troubleshooting a water-based finishing problem, and wood shop attire.

What’s on the bench?

Shannon is doing a creepy install in a creepy church and also finished up a quick serving tray thing. Matt had a visit from Andy Chidwick as part of his Sawdust Tour 2013. Marc tried using white vinegar to clean up epoxy with great success. He also had some issues gluing up a very long bevel.

Around the Web

Motorized Wooden Marionettes. Thanks for the link Joel.
The Portable, Full-Size, Safari-Ready Roubo
Sindelar is Culling His Tool Collection at Auction

Voicemails

Alex is looking to purchase a bandsaw and a jointer and needs some advice.

Email

Jason wants to know how to get a Robert Larson honing guide to work with tapered chisels. Shannon recommends he watch this Lie-Nielsen video. Marc highly recommends the Veritas MKII.

Matt wants to know how to fix his streaky water-based finish.

Daniel wants our recommendations on shop attire.

iTunes Reviews

Special thanks to woodmang3, steelers510, nate331, Derek from GA, Keemum, and RJsumthn! Want to have your review read on the show? Leave us a kick-butt review in the iTunes Store!

6 replies on “WT115 – Pee On Your Projects”

I own two Grizzly tools, one of them being an edge sander and the other being a small combo 1″ belt and disc sander. The combo sander had really unforgivable issues, mainly in the way the table mounted. Picture a nice little cast iron table that is supposed to be attached via a trunnion. Except the table side of the trunnion isn’t machined, it’s just painted rough cast iron. And you are supposed to lock this with something like a #6 wing nut. When I complained to them they were happy to send me new parts that were identical to the parts I already had. With the edge sander it’s kind of the same deal, the support of the table is just not very rigid. So I don’t think what’s missing from Grizzly is just customer service or a higher amount of defects. They seem to try to offer all the bells and whistles when what I really wish they would do if they want to be the bargain brand is to get rid of those things. If you can’t make a tilting table at the price point you want to hit then don’t make the table tilt rather than make a tilting table that is completely unusable.

The biggest thing I dislike about Grizzly is that they list their stuff on Amazon where it can get reviewed, but anything that gets negative reviews they usually just pull the product from Amazon. You won’t find that combo sander on Amazon now thanks to my review of it. So if you are looking at a Grizzly product and you don’t see it on Amazon, you might want to investigate that product very carefully. With that said, you tend to see things like the jointers, band saws, and table saws with pretty good reviews.

The BC video becomes much more spew your lunch funny if you are familiar with the annual (bi-?) Apple presentations. Jonathan (?) Ivie you know who you are. Well done, BC folks.

And good show WTO folk.

I have a Grizzly 18 (nominal of course) inch band saw and has been pleased, it gives me good bang for the buck. Unit arrived with two cracked cast components. A quick email had replacements on the way along with some installation suggestions in the return email. So I give value and customer service good marks. I mostly have PowerMatic for big tools and it seems the Grizzly just doesn’t have the same fit n finish, but functionally it is fine. I do appreciate the larger unit for its more powerful motor when doing resawing on wide boards. Also handy to have the larger throat on some occasions.

Re: the 6 vs 8 inch jointer
I go along in general with the “buy what you really will need” rather than replace, or at least make your second purchase hit the mark. Sometimes not mentioned in this 6 vs 8 discussion is that 8 inch units have larger footprints and require (I’d guess) 220 electrical service. For some folks those are not a trivial matters to consider. Or at minimum it adds to the cost of going 8-inch.

I have 6-inch PM jointer (appreciate the combined 48 inch beds). Would appreciate an 8-inch unit, but due to space and wiring (which really is also a space issue as I have table saw and band saw on 220 service) an upgrade is probably a long way off.

I’ll never cut a wide board to fit jointer unless final size dictates. So I’ll use hand planes (#7 in my case) to get a good and stable reference surface (don’t worry about it being totally clean), then go to planer or drum sander to finish milling.

Thanks for the show. I had seen the LN video on improving simple honing guides, but had not applied or remembered the tips. I have LV Mark II but am not a fan of setup time and need to REALLY clamp down on the suckers (especially narrow chisels) to keep them perpendicular. So gotta run to re-watch the LN video (and take notes this time).

Ciao

I’m with Matt/Shannon… I have a separate stash of work shirts vs other shirts for wearing in public. I do the same with shorts, jeans, even shoes. So far I’ve managed to keep the clothes separate and my wife knows to look for stains/glue marks if/when she does the laundry.

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