Woodworker's Journal December 2016

40 years of furniture, gifts and fun... In 1977 I was stationed at Port Hueneme, California, taking care of sick sailors and their families. On the other side of the country, in New Milford, Connecticut, James McQuillan had the crazy idea to start a woodworking magazine for home shop woodworkers. Looking at his first editorial, he identified the desire to build things from wood and to create things with your own hands as a panacea of sorts, a way to escape from and cope with the day’s “technological explosion and its mixed blessings.” I am guessing that strikes a familiar chord with you who are reading this editorial four decades later This issue is the last one of the year in which Woodworker’s Journal is celebrating its 40th year in print.…

Don’t Get Stuck Dry-fitting Dowel Joints Dry-fitting a dowel joint is a must before you glue it together, but the dowels are made to such tight tolerances that they can get stuck in their holes. To prevent this problem, I sand pairs of dowels of different sizes down a few thousandths, then I.D. them with markers or dye to set them apart from the rest of my dowel supply. I save these marked sets for dry-fitting. They don’t get stuck, and once I know things fit properly, I switch to regular dowels for the final glue-up. Dean Ross Missoula, Monana Bar Clamp as Planing Backstop Holding a box or drawer for final planing can be a challenge if your bench doesn’t have a vise or bench dog holes. I find that a bar clamp…

THIS ISSUE’S EXPERTS Chris Marshall is senior editor of Woodworker’s Journal and author of several woodworking books. Tim Inman is owner of Historic Interiors (restoration and reproduction) and author of The Art of Classical Furniture Finishing. Contact us by writing to “Q&A,” Woodworker’s Journal, 4365 Willow Drive, Medina, MN 55340, by faxing us at (763) 478-8396 or by emailing us at: QandA@woodworkersjournal.com Please include your home address, phone number and email address (if you have one) with your question. For the video on how to cut stopped grooves or dadoes using a router table, please visit woodworkersjournal.com and click on “More on the Web” under the Magazine tab. QAs a reader of the Woodworker’s Journal eZine, I watched Chris Marshall’s Tricks of the Trade video this summer on “How to Cut Stopped Grooves or Dadoes Using a Router Table.” In the video, Chris…

Readers whip their answers into shape What’s This? Darryl Mickelsen of Austin, Minnesota, found this tool at an auction. He didn’t know what it was, but bought it anyway. Do you know what it is? Send your answer to stumpers@woodworkersjournal.com or write to “Stumpers,” Woodworker’s Journal, 4365 Willow Drive, Medina, MN 55340 for a chance to win a prize! In our August issue, we presented a mystery tool submitted by Ben Cowling of Roca, Nebraska. Like Ben, one astute reader knew what it was: “The item is probably a buggy whip holder used in a hardware store to display buggy whips that had a knot in the end or tip. They were made of cast-iron in the late 1800s,” Erwin Fullerton of South Woodstock, Vermont told us. That is indeed what it is. According to tool…

Unveiled in June, this “off-the-grid” table saw delivers surprising power and runtime from a 60-volt lithium-ion battery. For video showing the new DeWALT 60V MAX* Table Saw in action, please visit woodworkersjournal.com and click on “More on the Web” under the Magazine tab. Sooner or later, in the frenzied race to make an ever wider array of cordless tools, a table saw was bound to pop up. And in June it did, when DeWALT beat competitors to the punch with its new 81⁄4" DCS7485 Table Saw ($499 with one battery and charger; $379 bare). It was launched as part of a new FlexVolt™ 60V MAX* battery platform, along with several other new tools designed for these high-output, 6.0Ah lithium-ion batteries. Weighing only 45 pounds without a battery, the saw features a steel roll-cage…

Brothers Build with Their Machine Joe Lovchik describes his and his brother Chris’s design process as: “We sit down with a couple of beers and come up with all sorts of crazy ideas.” The brothers are with LHR Technologies, inventors of the CarveWright CNC System, which they’ve used for Chris’s home library. Although not yet finished — “I don’t know that we’ll ever be totally finished,” Chris said — the 1,000-foot (50' x 20') room is already up to two-thirds full of books (it’s designed to hold up to 4,000 volumes). Carved busts serve as corbels to the room’s columns, while carved panels depict stories from disciplines such as math, physics or philosophy. Historical scenes pay tribute to the Eygyptian, Greek and Roman eras, as well as the Revolutionary War and World Wars…