Logan is preparing for a trip to China when we recorded this episode. Looks like he'll return safe and sound ... though perhaps a little tired.
Church Doors
He's working on a set of church doors in mahogany (or a close cousin species). He reports on using a shaper to cut the cope and stick joinery on the interior of the frame edges. Loose tenons will supply the oomph to keep the door parts together.
Just before he leaves, he turned a bowl for a friend from an ash tree taken down in their yard. His goal was to get it turned before the blank dried out any further and cracked. Sometimes last minute is the right time to work.
Shop Window Upgrades
Now that the weather is reliably warm, I've been spending more time in my shop. While I have several projects underway, I wanted to make some cosmetic improvements to the space. I pulled off the window trim (painted foam) and replaced it with simple trim in white pine. What sounds like a small change made a big visual upgrade.
Adding the new trim allowed me to make a bracket for a bench light and attach it to the casing. I spent way too long trying to find a good profile for the bracket. What I came up with has a reverse profile of gambrel-roofed dairy barns from my Wisconsin homeland.
Drill Press Bearings
Speaking of upgrades, a couple years ago, I gave my drill press some TLC. It paid off in better function and accuracy. However, my idea of lubricating the bearings wasn't the solution I had hoped. So I ordered a set of new spindle and pulley bearings from Hammerscale.
When will that project happen? Dunno. But I'm looking forward to it.
Phil (03:21.633) Hey everybody, welcome again to the shop notes podcast. It's episode number 229, I think. We'll see. Anyway, on today's episode, we're going to do some updates, get a sneak preview of Logan's international voyages, catch up on any other shop updates with a woodsmith, shop notes, and popular woodworking and a general discussion on woodworking itself. This episode of the Shop Notes podcast is brought to you by Harvey Industries. Good enough is not good enough. See all of our new tools at harveywoodworking.com.
John Doyle (04:08.296) When you talk about Logan's international travels, I imagine him like, voyaging to a land of the Lilliputians. Am I saying that right? Just all these little people becoming the king of them. I don't know. Yeah.
Phil (04:18.249) Okay. Yep. Yep.
Gulliver's Travels kind of thing. Yeah, I can see that. When last we left our intrepid Mr. Whitmer, he was embarking on a project of making giant sized doors.
Logan Wittmer (04:53.83) Yeah!
Logan Wittmer (04:57.361) haven't put together yeah I mean that they're not like glued up but I have all the cope and stick routed which I have to say like
Phil (04:57.523) And I... Do you really?
Phil (05:06.123) Okay.
Logan Wittmer (05:10.347) If you ever, if you ever see yourself doing anything at a semi-production scale,
I'm not talking like selling stuff like if you're making drawers or something or whatever. If you're ever planning on doing big parts moldings, you owe it to yourself to buy a shaper.
Logan Wittmer (05:34.277) Like just the ease in which that machine routes full depth, cope and stick joinery in eight quarter mahogany.
I absolutely. It's a three horse, I think. Might be five. But like it just blows through it, no issue. Super clean. I am surprised. the the cope and stick bits I'm using for this thing are from Infinity down in Florida. It is their OG profile. have a couple profiles. I'm using their OG profile.
Phil (05:49.931) Okay.
Logan Wittmer (06:17.01) That seems the most Serbian Orthodox to me with zero basis for that. So that's my stereotype for the Serbian Orthodox style. But.
Logan Wittmer (06:34.665) It surprised me how, I'm not gonna say loose, because it's not loose. Like there's no wiggle in these joints, but how, I'm thinking, okay, I'm gonna have to just mallet these things together to get them, you know, to test fit them. Nope, slips right together. Like absolutely slips right together. Perfect glue surface in there, like glue room. The way that these doors, the rails and styles you have,
Phil (06:53.247) Okay.
Logan Wittmer (07:03.345) top, bottom, and middle, but then you have one that's at a 25 degree angle to the rest. And then the styles that are in between the horizontal rails and that angled one, the way they all fit together, it's like self-loosening, which is really annoying trying to move these doors around because everything just falls apart. But they look really good.
Phil (07:25.336) Ha
Logan Wittmer (07:31.695) Yeah, so I messaged the church that I'm building these for and said, hey, I'm leaving tomorrow. I need you guys to get samples of what I have, or come pick up these samples I have done for color because I'm ready to start doing the panels and I'm going to pre-finish all the panels. So yeah, they're pretty cool. I'll send you guys a picture so you guys can see it.
But yeah, they're pretty... I'm very happy with how they are progressing.
Logan Wittmer (08:11.611) So.
that's my picture.
Phil (08:17.153) Yep. Which is interesting to me because you think of giant entry doors as being a big project and they are, but there's also not a lot going on with it. It's just scale.
Logan Wittmer (08:24.912) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (08:32.485) Yeah, that's all it is. It's all scale. Now, if like, if I was routing, if I had a route like this Copen stick, and this is kind of where the Shaper really pays for itself. If I had to route this Copen stick in multiple setups, like if I had a route in OG on both edges and then, you know, either cut a data or cut a groove on the table saw with a data blade or a wing cutter or something to make the groove for the panels, you know, then you're looking at a much larger project.
But like after like roughing all of these parts and milling them, which was just a couple hours. I mean, I did all the cope and stick joinery in like an hour. Two setups. Yeah, two setups. You you set up the one portion of the joint, then you have to flip everything around and set the other. And this is my own idiocy that caused this.
At first I'm like, this is weird. This is a lopsided profile. Well, the way the cutters work is you have a top OG and a bottom OG on one set and then a spacer to create the tongue. In the opposite set, you have the same profiles, but with slightly different shoulders to cut away the waist area, top and bottom. Now this is coming from a guy that not used the Shaper a whole lot.
Phil (09:42.687) Okay.
Logan Wittmer (09:58.2) And then you have a basically a large fly cutter in the center to cut the groove
They're not, one part of each set is engraved with the item number, but not every one is. So I had them all mixed and matched. my first one, cut a, you know, the part that goes in the styles, which is the groove and then the OG, and the tongues on the OG part were different sizes. I'm looking at it like something is not right here. Like you can't adjust that. And then I realized I had the.
I had the cutters because I opened up the cutters and was playing with like how they made it together and I must have swapped them somehow so So I grabbed a paint marker and marked all the cutters so I know which sets go with which that way few I'm future foolproofing it so Yeah, they are for only being 30. What are they 30 inches wide? so they're a small door like
Phil (10:41.057) All right.
Phil (10:50.986) Mm-hmm.
Logan Wittmer (11:00.856) Most entry doors are 36. I think ADA says they have to be 32 or 33 for an entry door, but because these are French doors, you get around that, right? They're very heavy. They're so heavy. So now that I have everything kind of clamped together, even without the panels in place, I'm like, all right, at this point, I do...
100 % agree that there needs to be additional joinery within that Copen stick versus just the Copen stick joint because the weight of these things would pull themselves apart and I was talking to Brian DeYoung when I was down in Georgia a couple weeks ago because he has a lot of indoors He's like he has a slot mortiser. He has a Felder slot mortiser that he uses So he just goes in there routes out of four inch deep mortise and those loose tenons in each of them
Phil (11:38.152) yeah.
Logan Wittmer (11:59.258) which is great if I had a slot mortiser, but I don't. So he's like, know, most old doors were held together with dowels and that's how commercial doors are done. They just blow in big dowels, you know, one inch dowels into the joints and that's it. And he's like, you know, my problem with that is those dowels aren't going to stay around forever. It's a front door. So as soon as that dowel ovals a little bit, you know, you're losing most of your surface area on the glue.
John Doyle (12:01.565) You
Logan Wittmer (12:29.071) And he's like I've done repairs on a lot of old doors and they come apart real easily Like okay, I get it So I'm still I still have not Fully decided what my joinery is gonna be for this. I it's gonna be some form of Loose tenon whether I cut that on the panto router You know
Phil (12:54.913) So, yeah.
Logan Wittmer (12:58.766) I need to get a hold of the guys at Panda Router and see what their thoughts are on routing a 3 inch deep mortise with the Panda Router. I don't think it's an issue. I feeling you're going get quite a bit of vibration. I'm probably going to use a 4 inch deep end mill bit to do it.
Phil (13:20.619) You would almost be like you'd have to get two different sizes.
Logan Wittmer (13:27.051) Yeah.
Phil (13:28.587) so that you could route the, say like 75 % of the mortise with a short bit that isn't gonna flop around and then switch out and do the extra long bit.
Logan Wittmer (13:40.077) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (13:47.086) Yeah, my other thought was do I kind of do the woodsmith mortise, drill it out, and then not square it up with a chisel necessarily, but drill it out and then stick it on the panter.
Phil (14:03.239) yeah, that's true.
Logan Wittmer (14:05.228) You know, and then you're just zipping off those little dog ears.
Phil (14:08.267) Right.
Logan Wittmer (14:10.945) And at that point you've almost created like a bead lock type.
Phil (14:11.297) I can see that.
Phil (14:16.352) little bit. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (14:17.271) profile and it's like, I could probably just pound in some yellow pine loose tenons in there and they compress down.
John Doyle (14:19.181) Okay.
You
Phil (14:27.787) What would you do, John?
John Doyle (14:30.04) Yeah, the four inch bit in the panorouter seems like a lot of screaming router bit sticking out. For me, for my taste. But yeah, I might drill out most of it and then come back clean it up with the router. If you could.
Logan Wittmer (14:37.218) Yeah!
Phil (14:38.451) you
Logan Wittmer (14:48.622) Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. I know there, mean, so the problem is you have two options for router bits. You got girth or you got length. You don't generally have both of those, right? you, I think, I'll like it if you it with a straight face. So like, I'm like, okay, I could do a three quarter inch. They make three quarter inch.
straight bits, but they're not four inches long.
Logan Wittmer (15:23.967) So almost do a three quarter inch straight bit, like a two flute three quarter straight bit to give you the most rigidity.
John Doyle (15:31.245) Tweet.
Logan Wittmer (15:36.993) but I don't think I need a three quarter inch loose tenon in there. I think a half inch loose tenon would be plenty fine.
Or maybe even, maybe in 5 eighths, so that way if I use a half inch bit, I'm only cutting on one side of that router bit instead of both. Although cutting on both sides of the router bit might help stabilize it a little bit, I don't know.
Phil (16:02.689) That would be a question for Chris Fitch, because he did giant size joinery on his architectural outdoor stuff that he would do in a previous life.
Logan Wittmer (16:05.588) I know.
Logan Wittmer (16:12.758) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (16:16.811) Yep.
Phil (16:21.569) But there you go, anybody else wanna chime in with suggestions on that? That would be interesting. So, love to hear.
Love to hear your comments and thoughts on that.
Logan Wittmer (16:37.099) You know the one thing I did think about, which I think will be kind of cool, it will, nobody that's not a wood nerd would think this is cool, a woodworking nerd, but like, because the way the rails and styles work on this, the idea behind these doors is you add a little bit of molding around the face of the door to make the orthodox cross on it, okay?
Which means there's areas of that cope and stick joint that are hidden under molding I'm gonna shoot so many 15 gauge nails through those to hold those joints together Like toenail them, you know what I mean? Because then you're capping it with molding So I'm like, there's a little bit of a Silver lining on all this stuff. So get everything positioned toenail it with 15 gauge finish nails
John Doyle (17:30.239) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (17:38.26) So, yeah.
Phil (17:44.257) I recently ordered a new set of bearings for my drill press. I have a Delta 15-017 drill press that is almost as old as I am, I believe.
And it's a sweet machine, still works really well, but it has some bearing noises. And I would really like it to run as smoothly as possible. So.
John Doyle (18:18.228) Where do you get your bearings from?
Phil (18:20.859) There's a place in, let me just double check here.
think they're in North Carolina.
hammer scale.
Phil (18:35.125) dot com hammer scale technologies
Guy named Gary runs the place down there and he has a lot of vintage parts and kits for keeping old drill presses running. And it was kind of cool to explore his site. And he even does like a rebuild service. So if you wanted to, you could send your, the whole spindle from your drill press in and it'll get reconditioned and new bearings and all that kind of stuff. But.
Anyway, so I got a set of spindle bearings and a pulley bearing and we'll then figure out what it takes to disassemble my drill press and reassemble.
without quoting from short circuit often during that process.
Logan Wittmer (19:31.467) Having pulled a few Drupresses apart, they're not that bad. You just gotta make sure you like The biggest pain in my opinion is getting the return spring back at the right tension
Phil (19:43.766) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (19:44.747) because usually they're like a coil spring that the end hooks into something that's fixed and then the outside or the outer edge of the spring hooks on the housing and you have to like twist it as you like it. My walker turner is not tensioned correctly.
Phil (19:47.574) Right.
Phil (20:03.271) The interesting part about my drill press is that there is a little worm screw attached to the return spring, so I can adjust the tension real easily. So I can just put a, it's like a slot head screwdriver and I can just keep turning on it and dial it up or down as much as I want. So I feel like I have that in my favor.
Logan Wittmer (20:17.462) Logan Wittmer (20:31.72) Yeah, I don't have that.
I got a droopy, droopy handle on my drill press.
Phil (20:42.219) So anyway, I'm excited to.
I don't know, learn a little bit more about my drill press and figure that part out.
I've seen some videos on YouTube about it that make it seem like it's not too difficult and the a couple of manuals that I've found online, vintage manuals on it also kind of address that, which makes that pretty simple too.
Logan Wittmer (21:11.242) Road on the street is I have bearing pullers if you need them.
Phil (21:14.465) All right. I might.
Logan Wittmer (21:17.64) Yep. otherwise you're doing the mallet whack thing trying to get them off and they don't always come off.
Phil (21:25.217) Right. Then you're using language you don't really want and all that kind of stuff.
Logan Wittmer (21:29.834) Yeah, speak for yourself. I love using that language.
Phil (21:32.289) You
Logan Wittmer (21:39.507) Alright, so are you doing it? mean, to me, it's like a missed opportunity if you don't do other things to it.
Phil (21:49.547) such as...
Logan Wittmer (21:49.682) It's like changing the oil on your car without putting new headers and exhaust on.
Phil (21:56.768) Wow.
Logan Wittmer (21:57.482) Like, okay, so there is...
Does yours have a Jacobs chuck? It should, right?
Phil (22:07.105) I actually got a aftermarket keyless chuck on it.
Logan Wittmer (22:11.978) Oh, okay. Well, nevermind then. I'll say it because it's like there's maintenance you can do on like the Jacobs chucks where you pull it apart, re-grease it, kind of clean up. Like it always gunk up with like little metal filings and stuff. Okay, well.
Phil (22:19.527) yeah, yeah.
Phil (22:24.191) Right. The Jacobs chuck that came with mine, which I think is the original one, is just a little dinky one. So I had found, this was the Woodsmith store years and years ago, carried a keyless chuck that I think was...
Logan Wittmer (22:31.515) yeah.
Phil (22:43.819) that could also be used on a lathe. It just had the same taper. having a keyless chuck on the drill press is a nice upgrade for a vintage machine like that. So I do already have a link belt on the pulley, so that part's taken care of. And then was it like a year and a half ago? I did kind of a depth stop, and I did kind of a tune up on the machine.
Logan Wittmer (22:46.11) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (22:57.309) For sure. Yep.
Logan Wittmer (23:09.245) The depth stop.
Phil (23:14.101) Because when I got it, it didn't have a return spring. So I got our aftermarket return spring. So I have a lot of that stuff taken care of already.
Logan Wittmer (23:18.121) Hmm.
Logan Wittmer (23:24.074) It's already been lowered with 30 inch rims put on it. Okay, got it.
Phil (23:28.681) Right, yeah. I haven't done like new paint or anything on it, but the paint is in decent shape, so I'm just gonna let it wear its age pretty well.
Logan Wittmer (23:34.301) Yeah.
Yeah, got it. Does it seem to run pretty true?
Phil (23:47.389) It does actually. had always thought that, and this was what made me redo the, or do the little tune up on it a year and a half ago is that when I would raise the bearing or the pulley cover and turn it on, there was a flutter in the, in the belt. So I kind of adjusted the tension on that, lubricated the bearings.
Logan Wittmer (23:48.521) Okay.
Phil (24:15.745) because I thought that could be an issue with it just because it was an old machine. And because of that flutter, it sounded loud and kind of squealy. I think I had you guys out there once in my shop just listening to that, see what the issue was. And because of that, I always thought that it wasn't running true. But once I took care of those vibration issues, it seemed like the whole machine just kind of settled down.
Logan Wittmer (24:45.906) Gotcha.
Phil (24:47.019) So, and I think bearings will be beneficial also.
Logan Wittmer (24:49.393) and it's
Yeah, it's always interesting to me too that
Like.
The quality of bits that you buy, there can be lot of run out in a bit. You know what I mean? Like if you, especially if you buy like cheap twist bits or cheap brad points, the manufacturing of those can cause a lot of warping in the bit. like you get the center point that should be running true, but it's doing the little circles. And then you gotta kind of play the game to register it in your marked hole to get it to self center, you know.
Phil (25:04.42) yeah.
Phil (25:18.187) Yeah. Yeah.
John Doyle (25:19.723) Thank
Phil (25:25.161) Yeah. We had a set around here on the TV show set. I don't know if you remember that John where it was like, we'd keep pulling out a bit, put it in the drill press, fire it up and it'd be like, Nope, throw that one away. Or put it back in the, putting it back in the drawer. Yeah. Especially. Yeah. The funny part is, if you run Brad point bits at the speed that I think they should run at, which
John Doyle (25:38.642) you threw it away. I just kept putting it back.
Like, that one's no good, I'll just put it back.
Logan Wittmer (25:45.872) You
Phil (25:54.603) you for most woodworking sized holes is I think you should run your drill press like at 2000 RPMs or so or more even because you get a cleaner hole. But as soon as you fire one of those up with the run out or I don't know that it just looks really weird. It's a wobble bit. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (26:02.844) Yep. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (26:14.246) It becomes a fly cutter. That's what we call the waller bit. You waller out that hole a little bit.
John Doyle (26:16.327) It's a wobble bit.
Phil (26:22.464) Yeah.
Phil (26:29.301) Yeah, so anyway, I'm looking forward to doing that.
Logan Wittmer (26:32.379) Yeah. I've that's so I have this like list of projects that I obviously working on these doors right now, but then I'm I'm in the shop project mode after that, you know, done done like actual shop structure stuff, you know, finish some trim work. Landscaping is pretty much done outside like it's all coming together how I wanted it.
but it's like, now I got some shop projects to do after this. So it's like, I'm trying to like weigh my, what's my priority? know, is my priority going to be to rebuild my workbench, which I have all the lumber here for, or do I start tackling the outfeed table for the saw, which is also really kind of.
a high priority because I want to build a lot of storage into that, that's gonna help. kind of back seeded the drill press, this came from the drill press comments, I kind of back seeded my drill press restoration because it's running great. Like, thing runs great. So it's like, I don't really need to monkey with that right now. But what I do need, because it's a radial drill press, it has the bed on it.
Phil (27:42.261) No. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (27:54.639) is very similar to what you would find on a vertical mill. So it is a cast iron bed with milled ways in it. And right now there's a one inch thick MBF top on it. But in order for me to get the head low enough to drill through, I gotta raise my work piece up on some spacer blocks. So what I want to do is build like a four inch thick torsion style top for that. And that's a pretty like...
Phil (28:22.141) yeah.
Logan Wittmer (28:24.006) easy little project just for me to do. But I'm like, oh, that would make a really good article to do, you know, building flat torsion tops and it's like missed the content opportunity. So I have all these projects. I'm like, all right, what's the priority? And then we're just gonna ignore the the MOAC joiner that's sitting there waiting for a head because that will happen when that happens.
John Doyle (28:50.405) Just throw a workbench top on that. It's a workbench.
Logan Wittmer (28:52.39) Yeah. Yep.
Phil (28:55.265) Just a temporary auxiliary top on there just to...
Logan Wittmer (28:57.456) Yep. Yep.
Phil (29:01.109) get some use out of it. mean, that's the, I would think would be a little bit of the frustrating part is because you had such a extended gestation with the other jointer and then to have to sort of start over again.
Logan Wittmer (29:02.564) Yeah, no kidding.
Logan Wittmer (29:20.238) Yeah, it's one of those things I'm like, I mean, yes and no. It's like starting over again, but it's like starting over again like two years down the line. You know, between head and stuff that needed to happen and stuff. So yeah, it's just one of those things like once the head's here, it's ready to slap it back in and let's go, you know? So, but.
Phil (29:24.97) Yeah.
Phil (29:32.266) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (29:48.613) Yeah, there's just, there's a lot of things that kind of need to kind of need to happen. And you know, the other thing is I'm kind of sitting here looking, I'm working on these doors and I'm like, okay, that would be table would really be nice to get that finished. It would also be really nice to rebuild my workbench building new workbench because I have a lot of that content already there from, um, I think we talked about, you know, I have this article from Steve bun from
American Woodworker days that I'm gonna use as the basis for this. So that content's already there, but then I'm like, working on these doors and I'm like, I finally added my Harvey sliding crosscut table to my table saw. And I'm like, ooh, this is really nice. But it sticks out really far. But then I'm like, ooh, but I could really kinda incorporate that into like.
the outfeed table, but then I need to like sit here and think about how I need to do that. So it's not only physical power, it's brain power. got to put into it too and figure it out.
Phil (30:58.433) Yep, just need like a shop daydream day or something.
Logan Wittmer (31:01.817) Yeah.
John Doyle (31:04.396) think for me, when I have a bunch of projects like that where it's like trying to decide priority, I always try to like get rid of the biggest pile first, because you're always like stepping over the lumber. So it's like, how do I get rid of the biggest pile of lumber first? Let's start there. But usually that's the biggest project.
Logan Wittmer (31:04.751) So, hey.
Logan Wittmer (31:17.316) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (31:22.854) That's a great way to approach it, yeah. And to be fair, in this particular instance where I'm looking at a workbench and outfeed table, they both have a lot of storage in them. So it's kind of like, and they're both gonna gain me a lot of space in the shop because the outfeed table is gonna become a lot smaller. The workbench is significantly smaller than my current
as well. So I'm kind of like, ooh, like, you know, I don't know, maybe I build a both at the same time.
John Doyle (32:02.018) There you go.
Phil (32:02.656) okay.
Logan Wittmer (32:05.229) So let's see which one is easier for me to build SketchUp first and then we'll figure that.
Logan Wittmer (32:13.125) I got a 13 hour flight to do that, so we'll do that on the airplane.
Phil (32:13.345) I mean, there's that. Yeah.
Phil (32:21.889) that is super funny.
Phil (32:26.785) Speaking of shop upgrades, I don't think I talked about this last episode, but I had some time in my workshop last weekend and was able to...
just dress it up a little bit and it's amazing. You can sympathize with this part Logan, is I have two windows at the back of my shop that had just mitered trim on it, just basic dumb home center stuff. And it was painted white, windows are, they're decent wood windows, but they're also painted white. And it just looked dingy and kind of gross. So I thought I would just pop off the
outer casing and replace it with some pine casing because I had some
kind of semi janky pine that you laying around your place.
Logan Wittmer (33:21.409) Only the best pine here.
Phil (33:23.593) Right. Well, you had said, what would, how did you send it out? It was like, I'd have some white pine that needs someone to love. Yeah. So, and it had a lot of surface checks in it, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I got it plain down, resawed and plain down and that, you know, some of the pieces are really nice. Some still have some knots in it or whatever, but it also just works for a shop like that. So I pulled off the casing, which turned out to be.
Logan Wittmer (33:30.177) Yeah, so probably.
Phil (33:52.927) the stuff that's made out of, I don't know, foam or dried cake frosting or...
Logan Wittmer (33:58.2) like the, yeah, like styrene, like the extruded styrene type boards. Yeah.
Phil (34:01.856) Yeah.
Yeah, I had thought because I knew that it was a little squishy, that it was just, you know, really bad white wood or whatever you'd want to call it from some home. But no, it turned out to be the styrene stuff and just snapped all apart. And so I put new casing on, which is just flat casing, added window sill to it. And it really judged up the place quite a bit. I was kind of surprised on how
much nicer it felt in the shop just by doing that.
Logan Wittmer (34:35.351) Yeah, well, and I have said this forever, and I use this as a crutch and excuse to buy nice tools, but the same thing goes with your shop, is if you feel good in your shop and you like your shop and you're proud of your shop, I feel like you do better work in your shop. So like, I'm not saying that you can't go into a dingy shed,
and do world-class work, you absolutely can. But for the way I work, if I know, if I'm like, hey, this place is clean, it's nice, I have nice tools, I can do nice work. Or it's like, if it's covered in crap and whatever, I just don't feel as good being in there, so I'm rushing through work. I'm not cutting corners, but I'm not doing the best work I could.
Phil (35:31.741) and less likely to go out there in the first place.
Logan Wittmer (35:34.124) Yeah, 100%.
John Doyle (35:36.166) Yeah, if you have a place that you want to just hang out in, sometimes work just happens if you're hanging out.
Logan Wittmer (35:41.506) Yeah. Yeah.
Phil (35:42.933) Yeah. And it was one of those things that I had always wanted to do. And it always feels like I should actually build projects rather than just make stuff, you know, dress up the shop or whatever. And it was like, no, this one needed to get done. And it was a really fun win to have to make me be out there more often. And I am. So that's been, that's been really cool. So.
Phil (36:12.807) side benefit to it is with the solid wood casing i have a over like a
an LED bench light. I don't know, it's about two feet wide. I can adjust the brightness on it and it's got the adjustable like Pixar arm on it or whatever. And I had it on a little base that fit into a dog hole on my bench, but just put that at the wrong height. It was like, oh, it's headbutton that thing. So I made a bracket for it and was able to screw that to my new window casing. And now I have the light
I could put it wherever I want on my bench and really illuminate the whole space and it's up a little higher or I can position it as high as I want or as low as I need it to be. That was just a super cool little feature too.
Phil (37:15.009) So this week on the TV show, we're making picture frames.
Picture frame moldings is the thing, using a bunch of bits, random pieces. Chris and I are taking this show. Chris did two molding profiles that incorporated some veneer, which I thought was really cool. And then I did two different built-up moldings, one relatively simple and one that's a little bit more involved. And that part is a lot of fun.
even though you feel a little bit like a pit crew, because you're changing router bits all the time, it feels like. And then we got to the part of, in my opinion, the worst part of making picture frames.
Logan Wittmer (38:04.159) We know what it is. Yup.
Phil (38:05.461) Yeah, it's miters. And Chris made a miter sled from based on a, I think it was a Ted Krylachek design from Woodsmith. And probably because Chris did it, like it just cuts exact miters, just the way they should be mitered. And it's a little disgusting.
Logan Wittmer (38:32.097) You know, annoying.
Phil (38:34.602) You
Logan Wittmer (38:36.385) Which is funny because, back to these stupid doors, the most intimidating part to me, and it's not intimidating, but the part that I'm like, I just don't want to do this, is the stupid molding, because there's lots of little 90 degree corners, and the way that the cross works, if anything's off a little bit, it's gonna look wonky. So maybe, maybe I Chris to come out in my shop and build me a miter sled for that.
Logan Wittmer (39:08.097) I will say one thing I did, one of the things I really enjoy about how we make popular woodworking is I get to go to people's shops. The thing I also hate is how we make people popular woodworking and I have to go to people's shops. Like, because there's sometimes I just want to be home. But I love seeing how people work and I like being able to pick up little tidbits from each shop I visit and each person I visit. And when I was down with Brian last, or a couple weeks ago,
He was doing the bottom molding on this teeth chest that we were building and he had those little miter clamps, the little pincher style ones. Yeah, yeah, his were not C-shaped. His looked more like, for lack of a better term, they looked more like a squeeze clamp, or not a squeeze clamp, but know, pliers kind of.
Phil (39:51.081) the little like hog ring ones or whatever.
Logan Wittmer (40:07.68) and then he had set of setting pliers for them and He was poking them together with those little pinchers to hold the bowling together like that's freaking faint like I've seen those obviously I mean I've seen them I've never actually seen somebody use them So what I do as we're sitting in his shop, I order a $20 kit on Amazon because I'm like, yep need those So I have not used them yet. They're still in the box. So I don't know how they'll work, but all
I'll give Phil a link for those so he can add it to the shoutouts page, because I thought they were pretty sweet. And seeing somebody actually use them in the correct way, I'm like, oh, OK, I think this makes sense.
Phil (40:49.665) That's cool. Yeah, because sometimes I look at those and I'm like, this feels like you're just making up a solution.
Logan Wittmer (40:50.784) So.
Logan Wittmer (40:56.928) Yeah, yeah, but, I'm telling you, watch Brian use them, I'm like, yeah, I'm down with those.
Phil (41:08.705) All right. Yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes to those.
Logan Wittmer (41:14.164) comes Logan's buzz that he's sending you guys a message.
John Doyle (41:20.926) Got it.
Phil (41:20.993) There we go.
Logan Wittmer (41:21.44) There it is.
Phil (41:28.097) All right.
There we have it. So by the time people are watching, listening to this podcast, Logan will be on his way probably back from China.
Logan Wittmer (41:38.771) Home. Yeah.
Yep.
Phil (41:45.569) Going to see the folk at Harvey Industries.
Logan Wittmer (41:45.874) It's a thing.
Logan Wittmer (41:50.653) Yeah, it'll be very interesting. saw...
Now I'm gonna say this and I don't mean anything by it. Okay, I feel like I just need to preface everything I say with that. I think we all have a preconceived notion about what a Chinese manufacturer of any product is, right? Like I think we in the States are like, it's a small, dark,
John Doyle (42:01.938) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (42:23.603) dingy factory in China that just has black smoke rolling out of it and they're just producing widgets. know, 20 cents on the dollar, right? I saw a video of a couple of the Harvey US people's trip to Harvey a couple years ago. Absolutely not what you would expect. Like, I'm talking like, not skyscraper, but very close and...
you know, glass offices all over showed the production floor where people were creating and assembling machines. I mean, like that is not what I expected. Like I had a stereotype in my head that's based on absolutely nothing and could not be further from the truth. So I am bringing the camera. We are going to do some media coverage on like the production process of woodworking tools, because I think that is very interesting.
John Doyle (43:14.674) Hmm.
Logan Wittmer (43:22.303) And yeah, we'll be including that in an upcoming issue, which will be very.
Logan Wittmer (43:31.795) Yeah, because how often do you get to go to China and visit one these manufacturers?
Phil (43:36.681) Hmm seems not that often
Logan Wittmer (43:39.198) Yeah.
Phil (43:41.729) All right, there you go. And then in just a few short weeks after that, Logan and I will be at Grizzly for their tent sale in early June. So time to make the pilgrimage to Springfield, Missouri and get yourself some Grizzly deals there as well.
Logan Wittmer (44:02.687) Watch everybody throw hands with each other trying to get the sweet deals.
Phil (44:08.585) It is a speck, even if you have the opportunity to go and you even don't really want to get anything, it is a show.
Logan Wittmer (44:15.997) Well, and it's one of those things that we all get the Grizzly catalog, mine's sitting in the Limmert bookcase. We all know Grizzly has a lot of stuff. There is so much stuff that they have that you don't know they have. Which, like Phil and I just walking around last year, you know, we're walking around on the VIP day, which would be the day before the sale.
just I mean the showroom I'm like my god like I did not know they had this I didn't know they had this I didn't know they sold these or like just crazy
Phil (44:52.277) Yeah. And the, not only that, but also the like diversity of models within a category. Cause it's one thing to say like they make router tables and to, know, they have four skews of router tables and you think to yourself, well, it's the same basic router table, but this one has legs and that one has a different fence. Nope. These are totally different, you know, evolutionary strains of router table that goes with it. And it.
Logan Wittmer (45:02.557) Yeah.
Phil (45:22.261) You know, it's like pick a category. That's the same thing. Milling machines, lathes, table saws, all that.
Logan Wittmer (45:30.398) Nope, there's like 85 of each and you just choose the features you want. So the thing that surprised me, I mean, I've always thought about Grizzly as like a tool manufacturer, but what surprised me was the amount of accessories and the peripheral stuff that they carried. Like, yeah, there's the Grizzly.
Phil (45:35.881) Right. Yeah.
John Doyle (45:44.586) Good luck.
Logan Wittmer (45:57.022) tools, you know, there's the grizzly bandsaws, the table saws, the lathes, but then when you start looking at like, look at all their turning accessories they have, they have an entire corner of their showroom that's all turning accessories, or go look at all the machinist accessories, they have every measuring device you'd ever want, they have cutters, they have everything, you know, and fill in any blank there and they have it, you know, carving tools, like just like...
There's no wonder why they have like 30 product managers, because each one has 400 SKUs under them.
Logan Wittmer (46:37.819) But what's surprising to me is those product managers, they know what are their gem tools and what ones that they missed the mark on. Like when we were walking around talking to Pat last year, he's like, yeah, we're phasing out these tools because they just weren't good. Like R &D.
We tested them, they seemed pretty good, but once we started using them and people got them in their hands, we realized they weren't very good, so we just immediately stopped all orders on them and we're phasing them out because they're not good. We're not gonna put a product out like that, which is, that's respectable.
Phil (47:20.897) Yep, so there you are, early June. Come see us, we'll be there.
I think that's a good place to end it. Thanks for listening to the Shop Notes podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or smart remarks, you can put those in the comment section on our YouTube channel or send us an email, woodsmith at woodsmith.com. Special thanks to Titebond Glue. Titebond has the glue you need to get the job done with confidence. From interior glues with strong initial tack and short clamp time to exterior glues with exceptional strength and water resistance, look to Titebond, the right glue for your next project. For more information,
visit tightbond.com.
for John and Logan and myself. Thanks for listening everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye.
Logan Wittmer (48:07.207) Just long enough for the guy to finish his sauna.
