"I nearly lost my lips kissing my beautiful router" This is a router table/lift/fence combo that will terrify the the guys at Festool and Incra. As Stumpy completes the three episode router table series he unveils the completed setup- two router tables complete with micro-adjustable lifts, built in bit storage, dual dust collection, a fantastic sliding table and a fence that uses Incra's innovative positioner technology without violating any patents.
In the meantime you'll see how to get a high quality router plate for about $10 and Stumpy will talk about how his magnetic personality makes tools stick. Oh, and the "deep thoughts" style humor segment returns under a new name.
All this and more on the latest episode of Blue Collar Woodworking...
Listen to the audio version above, or read the text version below...
The biggest holiday of the year has just past. Bigger than
Christmas, bigger than Rosh Hashanah, even bigger than Washington’s Birthday. It’s
called Black Friday and for good reason. It’s the day the shopping gods are appeased
by the sacrifice of virgin greenbacks. When America’s trailer parks empty and
the Walmarts fill with herds of greedy consumers looking for a deal on
something, anything that will satisfy their lust for stuff. I’ve seen a dozen
overweight women brawl like ultimate fighters over a bin of bath towels as if
they were desperately hungry and this was the last stock of government cheese.
(OH SETTLE DOWN! Before you call the P.C. Police you should know that I spent a
good chunk of my childhood living in a trailer park off government cheese,
which makes me qualified to make a joke or two about it!)
How does a woodworker fit into this grand celebration of
consumerism? As the saying goes, if you can’t beat ‘em… well, bring a bigger
club. That’s exactly what I did this past Friday. Determined to find a deal
worthy of a reasonably adequate woodworker with a tendency to pinch a penny or
two, I got out of bed at the crack of 9am and pointed the pickup toward
Woodcraft. I was prepared, sales paper neatly folded in my pocket, wallet
stuffed with plastic, pepper spray secured in a holster at my hip. You could say
I was a late shopper, but you’d be wrong, so why would you say that? No, I was
arriving just in time because Woodcraft doesn’t open early like the other
stores. They know that woodworkers won’t camp out on the sidewalks days in
advance, sacrificing sleep and dignity to save a few bucks. But I wasn’t taking
anything for granted; I was prepared to defend myself should any nut-job, drunk
with the holiday spirit, want a piece of this. As I pulled into my parking spot
I pointed an eye in each direction like a gecko, scanning the lot for dangerous
hooligans.
At this point I should tell you that I was once infected
with the Black Friday disease. Yes, even I, in all my worldly wisdom and
maturity, could once be found standing in predawn lines, thawing my blackened
toes over tiny fires kindled among discarded McDonalds wrappers on electronics
store sidewalks. I’ve elbowed my way into more than one store, emerging through
narrow entryway doors with my shirt torn from my body and my pants in tatters
around my ankles, scarcely alive but deeply focused on the mission ahead. The
intoxicating smell of discount televisions and giant summer sausage rolls for a
buck has enticed me to do things I am not proud of. I excused myself with the
fact that I’d never shoved an octogenarian with a walker or used a child as a
human shield. But I’ve lost a great deal of self-respect simply by being among
the crowd as passersby mockingly honk their horns and shout expletives on their
way home to warm beds as we fend off hypothermia with body to body heat. I have
spent long hours waiting to save fifty bucks without considering that a minimum
wage job would net me more for those hours, and spared me the painful
amputation of frostbitten digits. So I speak from experience, from wisdom
earned the hard way. You might even call it street smarts. I know the sort of
people that a reasonable shopper must look out for, because I once was that
sort of person. I’d kill you for a cup of lukewarm coffee as soon as look at
you.
So as I emerged from my pickup at Woodcraft my senses were
keenly alert. I scanned the sidewalks in all directions like a man in a horror
movie being stalked by brain hungry zombies. I gripped a chunk of hardwood in
my right hand, spikes fashioned from drywall screws driven through the end. I
sniffed the wind, listened intently for any sign of danger. But there was none.
The few customers I saw seemed to be human and they were filing into the store
with order and something I had never seen before: I think my grandfather used
to call it…. manners. One man held the door for another who smiled, yes,
SMILED! This was no day for smiling! This was Black Friday! It had to be a trick;
I resolved keep my guard up. But even so I surrendered my club and stalked
toward the entrance with my hand over my pepper spray like a desperado ready
for the quick- draw. As I entered the store the scent of coffee struck me in
the face like a slab of hard maple. I wasn’t expecting this, it felt wrong. The
lady at the front counter greeted me by name and I shouted “LEAVE ME ALONG! I’M
JUST BROWSING!”
This is where the whole incident took a dramatic turn. You
see, I had come expecting to me molested by angry crowds whipped into frenzy by
the tantalizing sales papers and the heartless employees mocking us through the
glass as they delayed opening the store for a few seconds just to see if one of
us would go off the deep end. But I found no long lines at Woodcraft, no
toothless cussing or savage beatings among unruly shoppers. People were
browsing, chatting, even laughing and enjoying themselves! The “door-buster” items
that many had come for were easy to locate, without the crushing disappointment
of losing out on the last one to some teenager with an infected nose ring that
is clearly just going to put it on ebay and make a tidy profit. I drank three
cups of coffee without a rebuke from anyone; the salespeople were accommodating,
even friendly.
Now, you may think an internet woodworking celebrity such as
me would have a hard time in a Woodcraft store. But I swear it was as if I was
just another customer. Nobody asked for an autograph, not a single child peed
his pants with excitement, nor did any of the store’s female clientele toss
their undergarments at me when I walked down the aisle. I hovered around the
front of the store for a good long time just to confirm my suspicion, and was
satisfied that everyone was just too polite to bother me. Clearly they were
trying their best to pretend that they didn’t know that I was among them, and I
was very grateful for their convincing act. I collected my items, drank another
cup of free coffee and checked out with speed and efficiency. It was like an
episode of the Twilight Zone, without the poor acting and even poorer special
effects. In a city full of chaos, where sirens could be heard in the distance
as emergency personal rushed to the latest scene of consumer carnage, I had
found an oasis of peace and tranquility, a place where a person could spend a
little more than he could afford without feeling like a steer in a stampede
toward the killing floor with the smell of blood in the air. I wasn’t shoved;
nobody tried to feel me up. I only had to throw one punch and that was over a
cookie, so it’s at least partially excusable.
The bottom line is this… I survived Black Friday at
Woodcraft because woodworkers know how to deal with shopping without losing
their minds. We don’t shoot anyone; we don’t get into our cars and try to run
down the guy who got the last VCR. We are a breed of honest, reasonable people,
with a ratio of nut-jobs that is infinitesimal when compared to your average
population. I take at least partial credit for that, as the host of Blue Collar
Woodworking. I mean, after all, what clams the holiday nerves better than good
old fashioned woodworking entertainment from a chubby guy with questionable
skills?
Next year, I might even leave my flak jacket at home. But
the pepper spray stays on my hip. You never know when you’ll need it.
Technology is unavoidable in today’s workshop. Be it a smart
phone in your pocket that rings just when you’re stretching to apply that last
clamp in the most awkward of positions, or an e-reader filled with the last two
decades of woodworking magazines and sawdust, only the most stubborn among us
has successfully banned all technology from their workspace. Even Roy
Underhill, who will not allow something as modern as a steel measuring tape in
his shop, tolerates the digital filming equipment that beams his show into our
television screens.
A woodworking shop is by definition a place where a bit of
the past is kept alive and the future is held at bay. In a world where more and
more furniture is made from manufactured wood products that a tree would never
recognize as its kin, by machines that suck a board in one end and spit a chair
out the other, the small garage shop is a throwback to vanishing way of life.
When we make something by hand, one piece at a time, with a material that is
widely considered an old fashioned luxury, we are reversing some of the
progress of our modern and enlightened society. So, why would a woodworker
allow his shop to be invaded by the very essence of this society, the computers
and cellphones and the tablets that are the tools of the society that seeks to
destroy what the small shop stands for? Why would a man who retreats to the garage
to unwind, after a forty hour work week in an office, flip on a satellite fed,
high definition LCD television screen over the bench? Why would a person who
cuts his dovetails by hand design that project on a sixty-four bit, four
gigahertz hyper threading computer with three dimensional modeling software?
Today’s woodworker is a sawing, sanding contradiction. We
take pride in our traditional craft, but if you offer us a faster way to
dovetail a drawer we’ll give you four hundred bucks for the jig. We rail
against cheap, mass produced furniture, but if we could justify the expense of
a CNC machine you can bet we’d make every project with a digitally controlled
router bit and just assemble the parts like a puzzle.
Of course, not every woodworker embraces all of the latest
technology. Some still insist on the quiet, dust free bliss of traditional hand
tools. Not the wood-bodied planes used for centuries, mind you. No, the best
“traditional” hand tools are precisely machined to tolerances measured beyond
the thousandth. They upgrade to the new tool steels created in labs and
cryogenically hardened. They sharpen that steel with state of the art honing
films and diamond pastes that are far finer than the messy old oil stones.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of you. I love the idea of
traditional woodworking. I imagine myself sitting on a shaving horse with a
drawknife and hickory shavings up to my waist. But I also love the idea of a
micro-adjustable, multi-functional, lead-screw driven box joint jig.
I suppose it all comes down to the meaning of two words:
“technology” and “traditional”. I imagine that the first caveman woodworker
simply banged a stick with another stick. To him, any edged tool was
“technology” and those who used them were betraying the “traditional” craft.
I’ll bet the great masters of the eighteenth century had an entirely different
idea of traditional woodworking than we have today. To a guy with an iron
combination plane, a set of wooden skew rabbet planes must have seemed old
fashioned indeed. When Stickley began mass producing his craftsman furniture in
a big shop full of steam powered workstations Roubo surely rolled over in his
Paris grave. But who today would look at a piece of Stickley furniture and call
it a betrayal of the craft?
The point I am making is a simple one. If you want to be a
true purist you’ll have to reject far more than workshop computers or power
tools or even iron hand planes. You’ll have to go back to rocks and sticks.
Otherwise you will just be the newfangled woodworker with all the fancy tools
to the first cave man you meet. Today’s latest technologies are sure to become
tomorrow’s traditional tools just as yesterday’s innovations are today’s
antiques. My solution is to embrace the true tradition of the craft, and it has
nothing to do with the tools or the way you use them. It has little to do with
your selection of materials or choice of joinery. It’s what drove the first
woodworker to pick up the first stick and say “ugh… me turn this into chair for
Thag…” It’s the desire to create something from scratch, to take raw materials
and turn them into something you can point to and say “I made that”. It’s art
even if you’re not artistic, you’re creating even if you’re not creative. THAT
is the true woodworking tradition, and it won’t matter if woodworkers of the
future cut flawless joints with lithium crystals controlled by a series of eye
blinks from an easy chair. Because some day, even that will be considered old
school woodworking.
Part two of the three episode router table series: Stumpy makes a router table that will rival the Festool CMS (at least he thinks so)... We make some featherboards and show a unique safety jig from an old woodworking magazine. Then Stumpy tells you how he keeps Randy sharp, what Joy does when you call her fat and starts a revolution. It's a lot to fit into one short eposide, so you'd better get started...
The “great particle board build off” that’s captivated the woodworking world is progressing nicely, but Stumpy takes some time off to make a router lift that just might save the universe. Then he chisels away at the confusion surrounding what types of chisles people should own, does a tool review, and gets Randy to touch dog poo. That and a lot more on the new, exciting, action packed and informative episode of Blue Collar Woodworking.
