You Should be Blogging

99 posts ago I wrote my first post to the woodshopbug. I have had a lot of fun. I have become very famous (Brad Pitt invited me to one of his parties, but I turned it down since it was a school night) and have learned a lot. The reason I started was that I couldn't find a good blog on exactly what I am interested in. (I have since- see Notable Woodworking Blogs at the right of this page.) So this brings me to what I want you to do. Go to a blog host; wordpress, or blogger, and start. I use blogger because it's the first one I found, but I think that with wordpress you can make a more complex page. Either will be fine. Then start writing about what you do in your shop. Unless you stop woodworking (gasp!) you will always have something to write about, and therefore have no excuse for not posting.
The only tips I can think of about posting are to try to include pictures (in-action ones are even better, but not anything dangerous), don't go off in long rants, keep it concise, and proof read your post, spelling counts. Lastly send me an email about your blog,(thewoodshopbug@gmail.com) and I will link to you, which is not that big of a deal, but it's a start.

Making Toothed Blades

In the recent Popular Woodworking, there was an article about using toothed blades (see Deneb Puchalski demonstrate them here) and got to thinking how that might be a useful tool, but all ones they were selling were upwards of $60. That's a lot more than I wanted to spend. So I decided to make one. I used a .035" thick 1" diameter cutoff wheel(part # 4550A121 at McMaster-Carr) with a 1/16" arbor. I then shimmed the bed (where the glass is), until it was about 1/32" away from the edge of the wheel. I turned it on and let it rip. I didn't get the teeth in very far, but I think it is enough. I think I could maybe make the teeth more evenly spaced if I used some sort of indexing system.

Making It Knockdown

I realized the necessity of making a knockdown bench about halfway through the design process. Otherwise, I would never be able to get the bench out of the basement. For a bench to be knockdown, the goal is to turn it into 5 pieces, the top, the two side assemblies, and the two long front stretchers. Also the bench has to be just as stout as its non-collapsible counterparts. I bolted through the legs into the front stretchers, where I have a matching nut embedded in it. That was the easy part, but the problem was still how to attach the top to the base. At first I planned on making through tenons, like the traditional Roubo (see this stunning specimen), but then reality set in. So I decided to make a sort of cleat system that is bolted to the underside of the bench. I have completed this, and it works very well, I made 1" long and 2" square tenons on the top of the legs, but they were probably unnecessary.

Most of the ideas were from Christopher Schwarz's free chapter on knockdown workbenches.