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WT341 – The Best $41 You Ever Spent

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On today’s show, we’re talking about shop sub-floors, files for restoring saws, basement woodworking, purpleheart resin, acute angles, and making big projects in small spaces.

What’s On the Bench

  • Marc has gotten his lights in the shop installed and is getting ready to build an arcade cabinet
  • Matt is…wait for it…making a bandsaw mill.
  • Shannon is finishing up his Christmas turning

What’s New

  • Making It hit their 100th episode and had a great event in Boston, congrats Bob, Dave, and Jimmy
  • Fine Woodworking Live registration is now open. The event will be held in Southbridge, MA on April 21-23, 2017

Kickback

  • Larry cautioned Marc about getting more estimates on a mini split
  • Lex is a professional industrial hygienist and had some good feedback on air filters and dust masks

Voicemail

  • Joe is looking for finish recommendations and heat for basement shop
  • AJ has a big project in small space problem
  • Jason is getting Purpleheart resin surfacing on his cutting board
  • Steve wants to know why riftsawn lumber is beter to hide a glue line than quartersawn?
  • Michael wants to know how to cut acute angles on his tablesaw

Email

  • Dane is moving into a new shop and is wondering about flooring and subflooring and the ability to support heavy tools
  • Wilson is getting started on restoring saws and wonders which files to use.

How You Can Support Us

Use the links in the left column and sign up for a recurring donation, or you can be cool too and support the show through our Patreon campaign at kick it up a notch and wear a Wood Talk T-Shirt, or leave us an iTunes Review

12 replies on “WT341 – The Best $41 You Ever Spent”

Marc: I wouldn’t worry too much about the your mini-split install price being to high. The mini-split re-seller is probably making most if not all their margin on new equipment they sell and not on the installation labor. (At least I was when I resold Mitsubishi mini-splits). Makes sense they would charge you more to install your old piece of equipment vs. installing something they just marked up 20-40% over their cost and sold you.

Matt: I’d be cautious about bringing a basement shop into the conditioned space of the house by tying it into the furnace. If you just ran a supply duct to the shop, then you’d be pressurizing that space with respect to the rest of the house when the furnace came on. That could push dust and fumes up into the house. If you also ran a return duct, you may get real lucky and not be pressurizing with respect to the rest of the house. However, you would also be sucking shop air into your ducts… I’ll let you ponder that for a sec. Regardless of that, the thermostat will be up in the living space so you may not get much heat down there anyways. I’d say Shannon was right on this one. Insulating the walls with rigid foam wouldn’t hurt either.

Cheers,
Kevin

Thanks Kevin. That’s a really good point. No equipment markup so they have to make it worth their time just on labor. And concerning the supply duct in the basement, that was actually me who was right. I simply cannot let Shannon get credit for me being right. It would screw up my average. 🙂

Ah, sorry, bout that. You did bring up the point about it being a different space and that’s the right way to think about it. Bonus points for grasping the building science concept. It’s essentially outside of his conditioned space (i.e “outside”) even if the furnace is down there – the ducts are not connected to it. Shannon gets partial credit for the space heater idea. There, that sounds fair.

Kevin

PS. Also an unconditioned basement woodworker so I should probably contribute a possible solution. I have insulated my basement but there is no heat source down there (yet). I do exactly what Shannon said and use a space heater to get it up to the 60 degree range. To overcome fume issues I have a large squirrel cage type type fan that a previous home owner had mounted in a window. This does cool it down but it helps keep the fumes from being pulled up into the house. Basically it has enough pull to overcome the “stack effect” that pulls the air up into your house under normal conditions. For a more belts and suspenders approach, make sure all exhaust fans in the living space are off when applying a finish. Those would be bath fans, kitchen hood fans and your dryer. Those will act to pull air up from the basement. Hope this helps!

#ThumbsUp on the reply guys – I appreciate your answers to my questions on flooring. I hadn’t thought about the potential need to replace a floor panel. Though I don’t own a SawStop (Santa are you listening?), and am not as bulked up as Matt so cannot bench press one of those bad boys anyway, I agree there may be a need to replace one. Such as, when we move out the stains may not appeal to the next buyers… Also, if I find I do need an acoustic treatment, I can always pull up panels and install that between layers. So I plan to follow your advice and install T&G plywood over the existing ply. I’ll shoot you a photo when we’re all moved in.

Shannon says Sturbridge village is “super super hokie”. I say…Shannon is a pompous ignorant ass.

As a “woodworker” or “ice-cream scoop maker” you should have some respect.

My father is one of the curators at the village and works very hard in the upkeep, procurement, and authenticity of many priceless pieces of furniture.

Sorry to hear that A. Sandino. All I can say is I visited this past summer and I did not have a good time. It felt much like Disneyland. Don’t get me wrong, I love Disneyland but in comparison to other living history museums like Williamsburg, Old St Mary’s City, Plimoth, Jamestown, etc it didn’t have the same feel. I will add that there was some kind of special event going on and perhaps that clouded my experience. I’ll tell you what, let me know what I’m missing and I will be sure to check it out this August when I’m passing through again. In fact if you want to show me around I would be thrilled to get an informed perspective.

I missed out on the beginning of your conversation, but it sounds like you are heating your basement as part of putting shop space down there. Also in the Denver area, fwiw. So the following is probably off topic.

I’ve gone around the block a couple of times on sub-grade insulation. Current DOE recommendations (insulation is cheaper than heating) is to insulate the perimeter walls (not so obvious a discussion if you have a crawl space) versus insulating the floor joists. As you get more than a few feet below ground level you get a more moderated temperature range not unlike caves.

Sound attenuation in a home comes down to compromises if the home is already built. Otherwise we would build them with more shop space not in the house (duh). A big surprise is that drywalls peak harmonic frequency is right in the middle range of the human voice. A couple of techniques can still be effective. Use staggered stud walls (i.e, 2×4 studs on a 2×6 top/bottom plate, odds to one face, evens to the other). Use low R value insulation woven through the studs (nothing thick enough to compact). Use 50% thickness (or less) insulation in a ceiling. And cap it off with resilient channel (Lowes Depot). There are sound deadening tapes, and other products (such as hemasote — same amterial as used in ceiling panels — used as a drywall backer), and resilient sound absorbing caulking for drywall edges (ceiling/wall). Don’t forget the vent pipes — I have some sound deadening vent pipes to get rid of (and even meet fire codes). Metal pipes just ricochet the sound around and out the worst places.

Unsure if you have lived in homes with basements, but make sure you have good drainage away from the basement, including not watering with in a few feet of the house. It makes for a high waterline in there. And more moisture. You always have some moisture due to the concrete.

Marc,

I have a similar situation in my garage in regards to the lighting. What LED lighting did you find at HD that you installed?

Thanks.

Apparently Siri thinks Matt and I sound the same. During this episode about the 16:54 mark Matt said something that activates Siri on my phone and apparently it also activated his since he says “Siri’s been listing to everything I said”. So long story short I guess if you need a stunt voice for Matt one day at lease Siri thinks we sound the same.

As far as heating the basement by just pulling a leg off of the existing HVAC unit as far as I know it’s not allowed by code anywhere. The same thing is talked about a lot where I’m from in Texas. It’s hot and people work in their garage and want to just pull from their existing HVAC system and run another piece of ductwork to the garage for air-conditioning. The most dramatic example is to imagine leaving the car running in the garage momentarily and the exhaust going into the ductwork and being disbursed throughout the house where a baby may be sleeping. I can’t think of as much of a dramatic situation that would occur in the garage but in the HVAC world that’s just a big no-no.

Hey guys, I just recently started listening to the show and been catching up on past episodes. I’m loving it!!
I Thought I’d Share my experience with the wood shop floor. Our family shop has a wood floor that we installed years ago. 2/3rds of the floor is on 12″ center joist that we’re all straight lined and the other 1/3 over a concrete slab using 12″ center furring strips trimmed to make it level. The whole floor is covered with tongue and groove 1″ plywood that is glued and screwed down. That’s not a typo, my dad had a giant stack of custom 1″ thick 12″ wide cutoffs from a job. We used wood glue instead of construction adhesive to prevent the glue holding the plywood up. The floor is incredibly flat and solid. We also added a coat of Thomsans water seal, it’s enough to protect it from spills without making it slippery. And my favorite part is that it allowed us to run dust collection and wiring under the floor for all the center placed tools. I started a part-time custom furniture business (RSL Custom Furnishings) 3 years ago out of my own garage Unfortunately I live 90 minutes away from the family shop and rarely get to use it.
Keep up the good work!

Tim Liby

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