Made in Canada

I pulled the trigger on the jointer upgrade. This 8" sweetheart is about 10 years old, one owner and was virtually unused. Tables are flat and co-planer, fence is flat, like the day it left the factory. Only problem is the pork chop blade guard is cracked and needs a repair/replacement. Unfortunately it's not the long bed model, but it should be a nice little precision machine, perhaps worthy of a shelix upgrade one day.

Uncle Wolfie returns

I glued up the two long aprons & legs first. This made it more manageable for uncle wolfie to flush the long aprons with the top of the legs, in a civilised fashion at the bench, instead of skating around the shop floor. Uncle wolfie was again happy to oblige. For these long glue-ups, I actually used my bench end vice as a clamp, worked well. Six glue ups brought the frame together nicely, then it was time to move onto the table top. The big RA was equally obliging in crosscutting the 6/4 planks (slightly oversize). Then it was time to flatten a face. I use three jointed 2X3's as a planer sled, with some hot melt glue. It's a low tech affair, but does the trick. An edge jointing marathon ahead, but nice to see some planks on the table today.

Table Joinery

Uncle Wolfie thought it was christmas (my dad's Record jointer plane). What a treat cleaning up those long walnut edges. Sometimes you have to walk into the shop in the morning, take uncle wolfie off the rack and stretch his legs.

Catching up with Santa

Santa brought me a few goodies for the hand tool rack, including this 3/4 Veritas shoulder plane, that have been patiently waiting in the shop. I was very impressed with the machining quality of the Veritas router plane I got last year, so was expecting more of the same. Not only was the sole not square with the shoulders (kind of fundamental for a shoulder plane), but the shoulders weren't even close to flat. Get it together guys. I'm all for checking and fine-tuning your new tool, but there's no excuse for not being within tight acceptable tolerances.

I know this should have been returned to Lee Valley, but like most woodworkers I've become accustomed to tuning up tools out of the box, and couldn't justify the time and money to return it. I'm sure this is why tool companies continue to do sloppy QC, unacceptable levels of workmanship are not brought to their attention. So I don't think I've done anything to help the cause. Anyway, to address the problems I clamped a jointed piece of wood to my bench with some sticky back sandpaper underneath, and very carefully lapped the sides and sole using the wood to keep things square. The sides seemed to stay parallel and everything squared up nicely, but this could have taken a lot longer than the hour or two had things gone sideways. No doubt this will be another useful tool that certainly comes to hand very nicely.

Time to Make More Planks

Finally, I have an apprentice glue-up buddy. It dawned on me that the boy shows a real knack for sticking things together, so he's been recruited. Here's the delivery and milling of the 12/4 walnut for the dining table & bench (quarter sawn for the aprons, rift for the legs), and glueing up the aprons (4" wide by 1.5" thick). The rough stock was only available in 13 foot lengths, pretty hefty sticks. I spent the better part of an afternoon investigating them and planning the cross cuts, not wanting to get it wrong. But it's always a bit of a gamble, and only ended up with what I wanted after re-milling the legs. The Shelix cutterhead on the planer started paying dividends, it's first big test, flawless performance.

A Little Cross-Cutting Gem.

Here's the steel motor cover I made. I made some mounts so that it slides on and off in a second. Also the blade guard with dust hook-up that I made. A woodworking buddy kindly donated an Excalibur splitter to the cause, which made a good mounting point for the guard. Surprised the blade guard with dust hook up had to be a project from scratch involving lots of research and head scratching, there should be thousands of these coming out of China. I based mine on the Sharkguard and the Saw Stop guard, neither of which are readily available. It seems to be working well for cross-cutting and I'm happy with the dust collection. I mounted a chunk of aluminum on the miter guage T slot, to serve as a sled type fence. I made a shim and glued in to the beat up arbour nut flange after lapping it, so that it mates properly with the inside flange. It's not pretty but it works, the last picture shows the base I made for the bottom of the cabinet for dust collection, notice the top louvre was left open to create airflow. I also put some holes in the motor cover to help cool air wash over the motor, but sealed the gap between the cast table and cabinet with weatherstripping foam, and made magnetic covers for the blade angle & rear trunion slots. Lastly knocked up a bunch of zero clearance throat plates. Time to throw it into production.

A diamond in the rough?

Here's an oldish Rockwell Unisaw that I picked up to replace my dead hybrid saw. He's got a couple things going for him; good blood-line, a lot of cast iron, reasonably  flat top, good arbour, good motor/switch. and some very sexy louvres. Not sure what happens next, but I'm sensing a paradigm shift. Perhaps a sliding table modification for a dedicated full capacity cross cutting machine with pinpoint accuracy...

Seems to be making perfect test cuts. Might be a sweet little rig until a true European slider miraculously lands in the shop one day. Of course a few days were spent going through him and doing a full tune-up. A few more days will be spent building in dust collection.

Don't forget to check the miter slot for parallelism at both 90 and 45, if they're not both parallel then the table needs shimming level. There's only one problem I could find with the saw: the flange on the arbour nut side was in very poor shape,perhaps not original, and not mating with the arbour flange on the inside, and distorting the blade. I lapped the nut flange which helped, then added a makeshift ply blade stiffener. Fortunately there's lots of old unisaw parts on ebay, and I bought a handwheel for the blade angle that was missing.