Woodworking & DIY Blog

I take a turn at the lathe with guidance from Derek Dix.

It’s late on Sunday night, the sawdust seems to have settled and the tools are all packed up. The Canadian Home Workshop Show is over. In the Woodworking 101 interactive area, showgoers built 285 wine racks designed by Jennifer Hart. Tim Alexander, the designer of clocks built in the Kids’ Corner, and his team lead young woodworkers through more than 300 projects. All weekend long, I saw happy people leaving the International Centre with new tools and machines that they had picked up at the show. And I, like many others, had a chance to learn new tips and techniques and to catch up with friends and contributors to our magazine. Man, it was a great show. See you at the next one in November.

My new pen.

Check these snaps from Friday and today. There’s more of this tomorrow. Come down.

Kids between the ages of seven and 17 can build these funky clocks.

Novice woodworkers discover just how fun it is to build a project in the Woodworking 101 feature area.

The action around the CHW Booth.

Magazines!

The Woodworking 101 project: a wine rack.

Building a wine rack.

Woodworker Ryan Shervill gives tips on how to build a stunning butcher-block table.

Ryan Shervill's butcher-block table.

I’m trying to get a shop-appropriate playlist together and I’m hoping you can help me fill it out. Here’s what I have so far:

• “If I Were a Carpenter,” Tim Hardin
• “Norwegian Wood,” The Beatles
• “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song),” Pete Seeger and Lee Hays
• “U Can’t Touch This,” M.C. Hammer (Because of the lyrics “Stop. Hammer time.”)
• “Screwdriver,” The White Stripes
• “Mr. Fix It,” UB40
• “Build It Up, Tear It Down,” Fatboy Slim
• “Let’s Build A Home,” The White Stripes
• “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II,” Pink Floyd
• “Build Ya Skills,” KRS-One

And here’s what I have for songs that use tools as musical instruments:

• “The Lumberjack,” Jackyl (It has a chainsaw solo!)
• “RDA (Rock Death America),” The Rheostatics (Circ saw and/or drill starts at the beginning of the song)
• The Weakerthans (I know they use a saw in a few of their songs. What’s their best use of a saw as a instrument?)

All right folks. What am I missing?

The Winter 2010 issue of CHW should be in your hands soon (sooner for subscribers). And when do you get the issue, you will see this map of Canada with some of the handiest places in the country. Biscuit Point, Drill Lake, Hammer Cove—the names just ooze DIY.

Out of this map, I would like to propose a contest: tell me, in the comments section of this post, what the No. 1 handiest place is Canada is. (Don’t say Drill Lake just because it’s No. 1 on the map. That doesn’t count.) In 50 words or less, make the argument for one of the places above or one that is not included here. Be honest or be witty or both. I’ll chose the winner, who will get a Milwaukee M12 copper tubing cutter worth $225.

So, what’s the handiest spot in Canada?

[Disclaimer: Contest only open to folks with a Canadian mailing address. Apologies international readers.]

Credit: Flickr/cesarastudillo

We all like a good deal, but lately, there’s been a greater examination of the true price we pay for inexpensive items. On a global scale, you have works like Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. In a review over at Boing Boing describes Shell’s analysis:

[The cost of discount culture is] a low-quality food supply, a ruined economy, a polluted environment, low wages, a shoddy educational system, deserted town centres, ballooning personal debt, and the loss of craftsmanship.

Of course that last word caught my attention. Craftsmanship—it’s something we all value when building our woodworking projects or renovating our houses. But even people like us are not immune to “cheap creep.”

It creeps up on you when you are in the home-improvement store and you see a huge set of screwdrivers for cheap. Our columnist, Paul Rush, explores this phenomenon in his upcoming column in the Winter 2010 issue of Canadian Home Workshop. (Look for it in early December.) With his trademark dry wit, Paul tells how he pays the price for his love of bargans:

Stout screws laugh at cheap screwdrivers. When you are out on the deck with the biggest drivers from your 20-for-$2.99 package, bad things can happen: you stick your slotted screwdriver into a screw you want to remove and you twist to the left. And there is movement, except it is the metal shaft of the screwdriver turning in the plastic handle. The screw just sits there.

Recently, over at Professional Power Tool Guide, they ask “Are Cheap Power Tool Accessories Worth Buying?” I bet you can guess the answer:

If you have an inferior accessory, it can cause a lot of problems. First, the job might take longer because you are replacing blades or other accessories more often and in the long run this actually cost more. Another problem is putting more wear and tear on your power tools. Because the accessory is not working to its maximum capacity, the way a professional accessory should, the tool has to do more work, which means more heat, which means a shorter life of the tool.

So, that’s a lot of evidence against the cheap. Now here comes CHW’s Steve Maxwell with his own counter-intuitive observation. In an article appearing in our Winter 2010 issue, Steve dismantles a Milwaukee 18-volt drill ($300) and an 18-volt TMT drill ($90). Here’ s what he finds:

Cheap tools are getting better at a rate faster than the high-end ones, and you have to wonder where it’ll all stop. Sure, top-end tools are still clearly built better, but even the cheap ones are surprisingly good these days.

I guess the jury is still out. Where do you stand on cheap tools? I’d love to read your comments below.

Makita LS1016 10" dual-sliding compound mitre saw

Here at CHW, we often get the inside scoop on tools directly from the folks that make them. But we, as I’m sure most of you do too, still get get a lot of information from your nearest tool shop.

The store that is literally down the street from me is Atlas Machinery. I stopped by yesterday to see what was new and interesting. Sean, Atlas’ machinist, told me that they can’t keep the Makita LS1016 10″ dual-sliding compound mitre saw in stock. He said accuracy was one of the saw’s features, but I was skeptical. Those dual-sliding compound jobs always have too much wiggle for the fine stuff. But Sean said this saw was solid. He would have shown me but, well, he didn’t have one. I guess I’ll have to go back.

Work can be so difficult sometimes.

Our technical editor Steve Maxwell has put out a video on three small tools that are indispensable in his shop.

Three Shop Essentials

What tools do you have that punch above their weight?

On page 34 of our November 2009 issue, we presented some holiday gifts that you could make in your shop. Here are links to all four projects in one handy spot.

Credit: Roger Yip

Photo frame: This simple project will please anyone on your shopping list for about $10.

Credit: Roger Yip

Artist easel: Build a place for a mini-Picasso to paint with about $15 worth of materials.

Roger Yip

Cribbage board: Challenge your friends to a matach after you build this game board for roughly $10.

Credit: Roger Yip

Magazine rack: Great Mission design and about $25 of material is all you need.

Moen's low-flow faucet, the Dorsey

If you have an old kitchen faucet, that piece of hardware could be letting water through at 20 to 50 l/minute. Sure, we all like the classics, but that dinosaur has to go. I mean, that kind of faucet doesn’t meet today’s standards. The maximum flow rate set by the Canadian Standards Association is 8.3 l/minute at 60 psi.

To slow the flow of that old faucet, you can use an aerator, a set of screens that add air to the stream of water. Some aerators blend in nicely with a faucet’s design. Others—not so much.

If you are not a fan of those bulbous, white, swivelling aerators, and serious about water conservation, Moen has its new Dorsey Eco-Performance kitchen faucet. This piece of hardware has a setting that can lower the flow rate to 6.6 l/minute, which Moen says can give you 32 per cent in water savings. But, if you need the maximum 8.3 l/minute, you can switch back.

Do you know of other low-flow faucets? If so, post below.

Relationships by Michael Hosaluk. Credit: Fox Chapel Publishing

Yellow Cactus Chair by Michael Hosaluk. Credit: Fox Chapel Publishing

Now, don’t get hung up on the traditional image of a box: you know, five sides and a lid. The 34 craftsmen and women featured in New Masters of the Wooden Box sure aren’t limited to a “boxy” box. Take Saskatchewan native Michael Hosaluk’s shrimp-like boxes made from Australian jara and Canadian maple (above, left). They are more works of art than containers.

Scribble by Michael Hosaluk. Credit: Fox Chapel Publishing

In fact, most of the boxes in this book are on the fanciful/artistic side of things, as opposed to the practical/craftsman side. But these artsy boxes are introductions to other stunning works, such as Hosaluk’s Yellow Cactus Chair (above, right) and Scribble (right), a maple bowl decorated with acrylic paint. These both show a level of creativity and construction beyond usual project plans.

And why not travel to the outer reaches of woodworking? There’s probably some inspiration out there that you can bring back.