estebanana -> RE: Getting started in woodworking (Jan. 16 2013 19:58:34)
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Ryan, If you have a table saw and a compound miter saw you pretty much have all you need. Here is what I would do, go buy the best blades you can afford for the two main tools you have. For the Compound Miter, depending on what diameter blade you have I would try the Freud line of cross cut blades. Get couple of cheap blades under $20.00 for rough cutting and getting your stock to basic sizes and then invest in a good blade in the $40.00 to $60.00 range that is for smooth accurate cross cutting. For the table saw same thing for the rough blades, get an under $20 dollar Freud blade for ripping and one with say 24 teeth for medium accurate miter cuts, but not an expensive blade. Then sink your money into the best ripping blade you can afford. You might spend upwards of 60.00 to get something good, but baby it and take really good care of it. An expensive blade can be resharpened at a good sharpeners shop and it is worth it. If you choose to work with fine plywood, which is a good idea, get an excellent ply wood blade. Talk to a good tool dealer about the blades they carry. Educate your self about table saw blades. Then you can buy SPF lumber at your Home Depot like store....don't know what it is called in Canada. SPF means Spruce -Pine- Fir, depending on what they have. Often you can find clean fairly dry SPF and it is cheap relative to hardwoods. There are species such as Hemlock Fir which are actually like Spruce and Spruce and Doug Fir... various kinds of Pine. Clear White Pine is hard to come by, but you get Knotty Pines etc. It is all easy to get and inexpensive. You can also buy kiln dried grades of the same woods for a bit more at lumberyards. By using the best ripping blade on your table saw you can dimension this lumber and have it come out with really smooth surfaces and you will not need to strain over much power sanding. To keep from stressing the good blade you use the cheaper blades first to get close to your final dimensions, then make the final passes with the good ripper and you will get smooth clean surfaces. With clean smooth surfaces you can sand with a hard wood block behind your sand paper and go through successive grades of finer grits, then you will have wonderful surfaces if smooth is what you seek. The trick is to begin with a well cut surface before you sand. In the beginning you might consider a basic construction method where you use the Compound Miter saw set at a stopped depth to create lapped joints. Look up 'Lap Joints'. And in combination with heavy brass or bronze screws you can get at a boat yard you can make a lot of sturdy outdoor furniture. You can also make mortise and tenon joints with a combination of miter saw, table saw, drill and chisel. Buy a book about table saw technique. And you can get a really inexpensive doweling jig to use with your electric drill. It is a clamp on drill guide and if you index it well you can use it to join big sections of lumber into table tops. Using dowels is underrated in my opinion as a starter technique. If you wanted to make a rustic table top out of 2x6" fir or pine doweling that big thing together would be really fun. You need a heavy hammer, to bump the sections together and some accurate dowel placement and glue. Clamps are helpful, but if you line it up well the dowels will provide the friction needed to bump the seams closed well enough for service. So my take on it is to use what you basically already have. Plan ahead and maybe in the summer do a lot of roughing out when you can set up out doors. Make a cut list for each project and then store the dimensioned lumber away until deep winter. Then you use hand planes, hand saws dowels, counter sunk screws, etc to assemble. My advice, start on small projects first. Bigger than a bird house, but smaller than a table. The real secret to wood working, if there are any secrets, is that wood is a fiber material, the wood worker is always thinking about how to cut that material in its different forms of hardness with the sharpest, fastest, cleanest means available. Focus your mind on how to part wood fibers in all your researches and strategies. Sharpen, sharpen, sharpen. The rest will fall into place. And get some good rulers, a carpenters square, a framing square, a pencil sharpener, a marking knife ( a drywall knife blade works) Sharp + Square = Fun. Dull + Wonky = Frustration.
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