Woodcraft Magazine October - November 2016

Starting out as a seventeen-yearold apprentice for a furnituremaker in Birmingham, Alabama, David Traylor has been building custom furniture like the Southern-style Huntboard (p. 36) for clients across the Southeast for over 40 years. In 1981, he opened his shop to students and has been teaching ever since. David is a founding member of the Alabama Woodworkers Guild and continues to teach classes and judge the annual woodworking show. David has recently partnered with City Hardwoods, a hardwood retail store in Birmingham, to offer classes in a safe and fun environment. For more information, check out cityhardwoods.com. Bill Schneider still remembers the giant speakers that were popular in his college days. But he didn’t give audio equipment much thought until 2007, when he happened to listen to a modern system at…

Best blades for your tablesaw. Check out this comprehensive guide to tablesaw blades. It’s got all the information you need to spend your money wisely and make sure your saw is set for any cutting assignment. Urban logging! Go to our Staff blog to learn about (and link to) a small company that operates a big logging and sawmilling operation in the unlikeliest of places: Brooklyn, NY. These guys have an impressive selection of live-edge slabs milled from historic trees of New York City’s streets and parks. They design and build nice slab furniture too.…

Working at Woodcraft Magazine can seriously disrupt your sense of seasonal priorities. As you read these words of welcome to our Oct/Nov issue, the chill of winter is nearly upon us. We’re enjoying the autumn colors and turning our attention to football games and plans for Thanksgiving and the Holidays. But the production cycle for the last two issues of 2016 comes in the middle of summer. The contents of this “cold weather” issue were produced while we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, and complaining about workshops without air-conditioning. The humor of this seasonal disconnect came to light a few weeks ago, when I visited the workshop of Probst Furniture Makers (probstfurniture.com) in Hamlin, WV. Jim Probst designed a beautiful “Go” gameboard that you’ll see in the Dec/Jan issue. Our job…

The cut list challenge I’m interested in building Ken Burton’s “My First Chair,” the Aug/Sept 2016 #72 cover project. Would Ken mind sharing his cut list? —Robert Mountrger, via the Internet Ken Burton replies: Having taught woodworking for nearly 30 years, I always start my classes by having my students develop their own materials list—even if there happens to be an existing list. I believe this exercise helps them understand how things go together. I also caution them to be mindful when referencing these dimensions and to make adjustments to suit what they have in hand. Case in point: I recently taught a class using the chair featured in the magazine. One student was adamant about sticking to the numbers on his list and cut all the pieces to size up front. As it turned…

The tablesaw is usually the most important tool in a woodworking shop. It’s also the most dangerous— prompting an average of 33,000 emergency room visits per year in the U.S. and about 4,000 amputations. With statistics like these, it’s easy to recognize the significance of a saw that offers flesh-detecting, blade-braking technology. Since SawStop introduced the first finger-saving saw in 2004, thousands of professional and hobbyist woodworkers have made the leap to that super-safe machine. Now it’s Bosch’s turn. Their REAXX saw combines features from their well-regarded 4100-series jobsite tablesaw with proven technology from the company’s automotive airbag division. What makes the REAXX unique is that it can save your saw blade or stack dado while saving your fingers. Like a SawStop saw, the REAXX runs a slight electric current through…

TOP TIP A simple spreader Like many furnituremakers, I do my fair share of repair work, often involving disassembly of chairs and other pieces. I have a reversible-jaw pipe clamp that can be used as a spreader clamp, but the jaws aren’t very long. Plus, I often need more than one spreader in play, so I devised this wooden spreader jig, based on something similar I saw once. The jig is simply a long hardwood bar with a fixed crossbar at one end, and a pivoting bar at the other, with a bar clamp wired to the fixed and pivoting bars as shown. Tightening the clamp creates a strong, controlled spreading action on the opposite side of the spreader. Size the jig to suit the job, and drill extra holes in the…