January Sledding in Miami
December 31st, 2008Call me the Wood Whimperer
I didn’t get a whole lot of input on the planer sled idea, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a done deal. One reader said it was a pain to set up, but compared to sacrificing a fourth of the garage for a jointer that will only plane small pieces of wood, that is a small problem.
As for planer choices, it sort of looks like a reconditioned DeWalt is the way to go. I just got a reconditioned router, and it appears to be unused. A new Ridgid or Delta planer costs about the same amount, but the Delta is not as good as the DeWalt, and the Ridgid is not as good as the Delta. And DeWalt offers a good warranty on recons. You can’t compare it to Ridgid’s lifetime deal, but you get a much better tool.
I have to think about a project, and I have to get the lowdown on obtaining wood. I’m interested in using free local live oak. Some people say it’s not very good, but I have seen bowls made from it, and they looked fantastic. Not as pretty as maple or walnut, but well worth the effort. I wonder if any of the exotic trees we have here are of any use. This town is full of Australian pines (casuarinas) which have very heavy wood, but some people say it’s useless because it cracks and warps as it dries.
I can just see me, jumping out of my dad’s SUV and wrestling people’s garbage into the back. That’s where live oak is found; in trash heaps.
I don’t know of any other hardwoods that grow down here, except for mahogany. We have no maples or hickories. Definitely no walnuts or pecans. The web says there are red maples in the Everglades, but I’ve never seen one in Miami. Believe it or not, citrus wood is supposed to be good for turning.
If I succeed in making even one box, everyone who reads this blog has to tug the forelock and acknowledge my prowess.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:09 AM
You need to start with commercial lumber. There’s plenty available and it won’t kill you.
Getting the right cut out of a piece of wood, drying it properly, keeping it dry, and making something beautifum out of it is a great thing- and I highly reccomend it. But you should begin wiht commercial lumber so you know how it’s supposed to work and machine.
Live oak is a great hardwood, and great for shipbuilding- but it is very dense, difficult to dry properly, and it is rare to find any straigh grained. The curved grain means it twists and warps while drying.
I sold my jointer and planer ages ago. I can still use them if i need them, but generally, it’s easier to buy dimensioned lumber and be done with it. And I’m surrounded by forests of oak, maple, walnut, just about any hardwood you can imagine. The work involved in properly drying live oak- or any hardwood, for that matter- will frustrate you and make the tools you have worked hard to accumulate less fun for you.
Get a bunch of boards from the lumberyard and just get used to cutting, dadoing, etc. Buy a coping saw and make new table inserts out of pieces of scrap countertop. Develop the skills, and move on from there.
if your family has a kiln or a covered space, cut up some wood and take it there and let it sit for a couple years. Or buy an old conex box, fill it full of staked wood, and set a fire under it. Get a lignostat, they’re not horribly expensive. And be safe. make sure you have comfy safety glasses.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:12 AM
It’s now clear that you were a little off on the new domain name. “toosfortoolssake.com” does still appear to be available, though.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Lacking a band saw and the willingness to wait for wood to dry, I am almost certainly headed for the lumberyard.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:20 AM
“If I succeed in making even one box, everyone who reads this blog has to tug the forelock and acknowledge my prowess.”
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Do we have to prostrate too? I pulled a back-muscle hanging the kid’s bikes up in the garage, so I am a little limited in my obedience gestures…unless I can delay the prostrating for a week or two 🙂
December 31st, 2008 at 11:21 AM
I guess it’s okay if you put it off, although I’m still mad because you had the audacity to compare my amazing router hole to your puny feat of building an airplane.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:48 AM
I have the DW733, and it does a great job, used within it’s limitations. I don’t know anything about the 734, but I hear mixed reviews about the 735, mostly slippage issues.
The only green wood I deal with is turning stock. BTW, if you want a monster that will end up consuming every available inch of space that you have, get a lathe. Start making things with a stable variety of pine, or poplar. Make shop jigs, fixtures, and small boxes for chisels, etc. Both are relatively easy to work, and in the case of poplar, stable enough for jigs that require a fairly high degree of accuracy. And neither will break the bank, so you won’t cry when mistakes are made. And you will make mistakes-we all do, don’t worry about it, it can often be turned into a design feature.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:58 AM
I remember reading sometime ago about the abundance of Cuban Mahogany in S. Florida. Seems that they were planted as ornamentals in the early 20th century. Now, any time that a major storm rolls through there, there are people running around gathering up the downed trees ahead of the cleanup crews. See if you can locate any at a decent price. This is arguably the most cherished furniture wood in the world, and can’t legally be imported into this country.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:02 PM
There was one small, anemic red maple growing on the street in the neighborhood in Westchester I used to live in before I moved out of Miami.
By the way, when you move up to Central Florida, you’ll find all the red maples you want. They grow like weeds. (And are treated as such, though people have them in their yards too.) We’ve also got real oaks, though they are planted as ornamentals, not wild. There are the turkey oaks, which are a “real” oak (ie, what I call non-evergreen oaks), but I believe they are a brittle, sort of crappy oak. I don’t know how good their wood is for making stuff. We also have hickory. I tell you, this isn’t just another part of Florida, it’s like a different planet from South Florida.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:17 PM
Reconditioned/refurbished equipment–at least for computers–frequently means “the first guy to buy it brought it back unused but opened, but he broke the seal on the box so we can’t sell it as new.”
December 31st, 2008 at 12:30 PM
The highest honor one could bestow on a ‘woodworker’ would be to genuflect and kiss the fingerless ring wouldn’t it?
December 31st, 2008 at 2:22 PM
You’re just gonna *love* setting the knives in the DW735.
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Setting planer knives is all by itself the reason to buy the Ridgid. Loosen the bolts. Take out knives. Turn over (they’re double-sided) or replace. Tighten bolts. Done.
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Five minutes, tops.
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If you start setting a DW735 today (as a noobie), you should be happy with it by …April. Heh.
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…well, it’s going to take a couple of hours plus of “fiddling about” …and that’s when you actually get good at it.
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December 31st, 2008 at 2:26 PM
PS – Not to mention sharpening the knives (the Ridgid knives are disposables). YMMV
December 31st, 2008 at 8:43 PM
“I guess it’s okay if you put it off, although I’m still mad because you had the audacity to compare my amazing router hole to your puny feat of building an airplane.”
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I must bow and ask forgiveness (at least when my back gets better). I can’t even claim great tool-owning prowess; the tools used so far on the airplane are only hand/portable power tools, thereby showing my complete tool inadequacy.
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With your generous granting of a delay, at least I have time to practice my bows; now is it bow, touch forelock, then open-palm gesture, or is it touch forelock, bow, and then open-palm gesture? I can’t remember…
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Looks like I need the “Ms. Manners” for men, but who is it? Surely it’s not Richard Simmons?!?
December 31st, 2008 at 8:57 PM
Okay, okay. You built an airplane from scratch. Whoop tee doo. Can we please move on to important things, like how I managed to drain my Harley tank and only spill a gallon of gas on the garage floor?
December 31st, 2008 at 9:11 PM
“Can we please move on to important things, like how I managed to drain my Harley tank and only spill a gallon of gas on the garage floor?”
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At least it wasn’t the oil/gas mix. I spilled some (intended for the Snow-Thrower) in the Garage and it took 3-months for the smell to dissipate (or maybe that was because it was winter at the time?)
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Anyway, Happy New Year…
December 31st, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Miami has a lot of tropical hardwoods. Lignum Vitae being one of the hardest woods in the world grows here. Sapodilla besides producing wonderful fruit is a very striking red color. After Huricane Andrew, Fairchild Garden brought in a portable saw mill, cut all of their downed trees into planks and sold them. I got a lot of interesting wood from there.
I saw two Dewalt planers on a clearance table at Home Depot today. Sorry I didn’t get the price.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:12 PM
Here’s another source of hardwood for you.
I’ve made some nice stuff from the oak dunnage at commercial constructioon sites.
Of course I work on them, so can just pick up a piece of 4″x8″
oak from the plumbers cast iron pipe pile.
But if you talk to the G.C., he might let you go through his dumpsters.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:00 AM
Crikey! Which Home Depot?
January 1st, 2009 at 11:35 AM
You may already know, but be careful with some of the tropical hardwoods; the dust can be a bit toxic. Ebony is one of them; get much of the dust on your skin, especially if you’re sweating, and at the least it tends to make you itch until you wash it off.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:19 PM
Your Sheet metal fabrication shops get their flat steel on big ole honkin’ pallets made of hardwood. I have salvaged 3×3 and 4×4 poles in lengths form 6 to 12 feet.
There WILL BE metal in the hardwood.
Plan for it.
Deal with it.
Rotsa ruck
January 1st, 2009 at 6:26 PM
I used to get mahogany from piano shipping boxes from Asia. I think they were Yamaha. BIG piano sized crates.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:51 PM
Bill Parks. Lignum vitae. Man, that is a fascinating wood. I worked with it earlier years. Hard as hell and equally as heavy but works beautifully, if you take your time. I even turned some duck call tubes out of it. They produced a pretty good tone but if you dropped one in the water, it went to the bottom like a rock. Because of the oil in the wood, it was self-lubricating and used as shaft bearing in ships for years. I think it was even used as shaft bearings in submarines and the Germans used it the U-Boats…
January 1st, 2009 at 10:37 PM
Steve, The Home Depot with the clearance Dewalt planers was the one on US1 near the Falls shoping center. They weren’t in the tool department but on a big pile of stuff near where they sell window blinds.