Reasonably Intelligent Maker

A while back I built a little shed to house my lawn and garden equipment, and perhaps some beekeeping stuff that was taking up too much space in the workshop. It was mostly made of scrap wood, left over posts that once held clothesline and parts from a deck that we tore down. Once it was together and the outside was closed in with OSB I purchased a roll of house wrap from Lowes and decided that although it would not serve long term without some kind of siding, it might just help in the short term.  So I don't know how anyone else puts up house wrap, but what I did was start at the bottom nearest the back and stapled the edge to the wall then rolled it out to an opening and stapled it again, cut it off and went back and added more staples. I then repeated the process with another piece slightly overlapping the previous one. Because there is a giant hole in the middle (the door), I started again from the other side, repeating the process in mirror reverse fashion. Now it is significa...

  Here is an opinion, and observation. The opinion is mine, and I claim no expertise, though I have been sharpening and using woodworking tools for more than 30 years. If you find it TL;DR then suffice it to say "honing is your friend", but otherwise read on. I think sharpen might be the wrong word. There are several things that you do to an edge of a cutting tool. Most of them are simply referred to as sharpening and that throws off the concept of frequency. 1. (Profile Grind) Upon receipt of tool one should "grind" it to their preferred profile for that tool. This would be done on lower (more coarse grits for faster cutting). Sometimes over the course if its lifetime a tool is repurposed and will be reground to a different profile in order to perform a different task. Doing this frequently will greatly reduce the life of the tool, and because of this some people will invest in multiple tools of the same design and maintain them with their preferred grind profile. ...

 So check out my latest video where I make 3 different batches of soap in real time making use of the "aRTy O'SHLeP" method and masterbatching

 Okay, so it bothered me last night and I started over. I also based it on the image from the Disstonian Institute. So for those who are interested here it is, with drill holes and all!! There is a faint ghost of the original image in the JPG version below. However, it was distracting, so I removed it from the PDF.  Print it on US Letter Paper and double check that you are not doing any scaling and I think it should turn out right. The screw holes are not sized just positioned. The guide holes all have sized circles in them to assist with cutting it out.  If you run into any problems or find any discrepancies, let me know! And here is the PDF: Disston D8 Thumbhole Template

One of my favorite images of this saw is from the Disstonian site  The Disstonian Institution Many templates for saw handles exist online. Such as Craftsmanspace , Two Guys In A Garage , and  Blackburn Tools .  I just assumed that the popular thumb-hole D8 was one of them. Although I saw it mentioned in a few articles, like those on that paywalled woodworking site, the references to it seem to fall on dead links and 404 pages. After deciding that I will make one myself, I also tracked down someone who mentioned using a template found online. He still had a copy and shared it with me.  So I am putting a copy of that file here for all to have. I find no copyright statement in it so I feel comfortable sharing it here. If this changes, and someone wants to claim it as their own, I will happily give them attribution or take it down whichever is appropriate.  As well, I am in the process of creating one based on a photograph posted at Blackburn's site http://www.black...

I love "common knowledge", "common sense", and "rules of thumb!" They are great starting points, as opposed to random, arbitrary values changed periodically based on trial and error until they no longer fail. There is no data like empirical data!!! The problem with "common knowledge", "common sense", and "rules of thumb" are that once something becomes classified as one of these things most people generally no longer question them. Unfortunately for me, I am an engineer, and a gen-x'er. That means I am overly literal, want to understand the big picture, as well as each tiny little detail and all the answers to any question that starts with "why". Even worse, is that my generation didn't want to grow up and be president, and we don't trust authority, and don't have any heroes. Even though we expect to get let down by those we depend on, and lied to by those in power over us, we still feel saddened when...