Indholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2024 i Popular Woodworking

Thrifty Square You can’t beat a 12" standard drafting triangle for an extremely accurate and inexpensive set-up tool. It’s particularly useful for adjusting a tablesaw’s miter gauge at both 90° and 45°. This precision tool is superior to a combination square or a framing square for setting up a saw. While a combination square has only one long arm, a drafting triangle has two. A metal framing square is unwieldy and can bang against the fragile carbide teeth of your saw blade. This plastic triangle is compact and can’t possibly damage your blade. Hang it under the saw or store it with your saw blades. In addition, kid gloves aren’t required when handling this precision tool, even when you’re in the thick of cutting on your tablesaw. Unlike a very…

Seen by many as the ultimate shop flooring, an epoxy floor looks great and is durable. For our shop, we chose a full-flake coverage epoxy from Spartan Epoxy (SpartanEpoxies.com). The HDPRO is a tough, DIY kit that goes on smoothly with a little planning. With any epoxy, surface prep is key. Grinding the concrete is best, but because this was a fresh slab, we chose to etch the concrete with muriatic acid. You’re looking to open up the pores of the concrete to allow the epoxy to bind to it. After drying for several days, the work can commence. The epoxy is mixed together and spread out in about 200sqft sections. Three people are key — one mixing, one squeegeeing the epoxy out, and another back rolling. The final surface…

I don’t think that there has been something that’s increased my enjoyment in the shop as much as getting a good dust collection system in place. I enjoy working in a clean space, and any rogue dust drives me nuts (let alone is a health hazard and isn’t great for our video and photo equipment). So, as we moved into our new shop, I knew that getting the right system in place, and planning the proper layout was a key part of this journey. Having a lot of questions, I started researching and planning out this system. However, there is a lot of information (and misinformation) out there. Luckily, I know some people. So, I reached out to Jeff Hill, CEO at Oneida Air Systems to pick his brain on…

Plastic smartphone amplifiers can be had for about $15 a piece, but expect to fork out $100 or even more for a fancy handcrafted wooden one. They give a louder and richer sound than the phones by themselves. In a nutshell, they are just a box with a front opening and with a slot on the top to accept the phone. I made mine out of poplar and plywood scraps. In this article, I will show you a well-thought-out process that guides you through the making of a large batch of amplifiers in as few as two shop days. With literally everyone—young and old—owning a cell phone nowadays, these amplifiers could well be one of the most popular gifts you ever make. Create the Design Phone amplifiers can be made in…

Harvey’s TURBO T-60S The first time I heard of Harvey International was in 2018, when it was announced they acquired Bridge City Toolworks. Within the year, I started to see an offering of power tools from Harvey that, on the surface, seemed to be priced very reasonably for the features they included. Last year, at AWFS in Las Vegas, I got to visit with their founder, Mr. Jack Xu, and that’s when I came to appreciate the backstory and reason behind Harvey. Mr. Xu had been in the manufacturing industry for years, building machines for nearly every manufacturer in the United States. Over the years, tool companies kept asking for cheaper tools, requiring compromises during the manufacturing. With the end-user’s interest in mind, Jack said “that’s enough” and decided to…

Driving through the countryside or stopping at flea markets, you’re bound to come across large white sharpening wheels. You know, the big ones that you imagine a cartoon character sitting at, sharpening an axe. In reality, there’s a reason that these water-trough stones are so common — they simply work. That’s as true today as it was a hundred years ago. A water sharpening system, like the Tormek shown here, is still a great way to get a razor sharp edge on a variety of tools. In this article, I’ll give you the basics of a water sharpening system, and some of the jigs and attachments that I find useful. The system I’m using here is one made by Tormek, a Swedish company that’s known for making some of the…