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  2. Realise that Japanese chisels need to be sharpened freehand. If you are not up to this, then begin with less advanced chisel designs. This set, and expensive chisels like this, are not for a beginner. I am sorry if this is going to come across as condescending. Get yourself something useable - read much cheaper - and learn on them. You will thank us later. This is not a time to purchase the best you can afford so that you "buy once". It does not work that way. I am not saying buy rubbish. I am saying get something modest to learn on. Narex chisels are superb for those starting out. You may even decide not to purchase others. Regards from Perth Derek
  3. Today
  4. Thanks everyone for the really great advice. It's a good deal, but it's not an epic deal on the chisels. A lot of you are saying I don't necessarily need the number of chisels in this set right now and I agree with that. I'm going to purchase about four high quality chisels for now and use the rest of the money on some planes. I know there are lots of threads on this already, and I will also search, but could someone chime in with a good high-end chisel manufacture I should look at purchasing? Thanks everyone, especially for the warm welcome.
  5. wtnhighlander is on to something. You had a preconceived idea of how the floor "should" look. It looks different. If you were walking through a model home and it had this floor would you stop in your tracks and say "dear god, what happened here!?!" or would it just be another flavor of flooring? Enough maple to make a floor is going to result in boards that look different from each other. Maple itself will look different throughout a board. I think you will be happier a year from now if you make lemonade out of this lemon by looking at it with fresh eyes versus the unexpected result of what you were after.
  6. All the above is true. If you REALLY can't stand the appearance, a lot of sanding might get you back to square one. Which leaves you with a choice - leave the maple natural, or take another chance on coloring. Maybe the blotch control products help, maybe not. A possible alternative is chemical coloration, essentially speeding up the natural darkening process, without adding pigments that result in blotch. But that method has its downsides as well. Aside from the potentially toxic chemicals, the process depends on tannins that already exist in the wood, and which vary from tree to tree. Unless you somehow obtained flooring from a single tree, you are likely to still have drastic variations from board to board, even if the color of any given board is smooth and even. My advise would be to stop now, and get on with the rest of your life.
  7. I have had issues with the roller jamming on my Mk2 guide. I use it for oddball blades, but prefer my L-N side clamping guide for normal sharpening. It is faster and I haven't had any issues with it. Like OakStBeachBum, i made a set of stops on my sharpening board to set the angle. Very fast and repeatable.
  8. Yesterday
  9. Everything seems to be healing just fine. I've been making limited appearances in the shop every day. I'm using this time to get a PM 100 up and running that I purchased last winter. It is in a whole lot better condition than I thought. I can't find anything wrong. I've just got to finish the electrical tomorrow and fire it up. Thanks to everybody for their thoughts and concerns. We all need to be reminded about safety. My boss to me that I need to be more careful. I told him that I'm always careful however what I forget is not to be stupid.
  10. I've noticed that even factory stained & finished engineered maple flooring shows a lot of blotchiness.
  11. There was no technique issue. It's just the nature of the type of wood. Maybe no one had ever complained before, or even in his 20 years, maybe he'd never stained Maple before.
  12. It’s unfortunate that the contractor didn’t know or didn’t warn you about the splotchy nature of maple. How did the contractor respond to you being disappointed in the results?
  13. The contractor could have warned you that maple blotches. There is a fine line to walk between thinking the customer knows what is going to happen and needing to prevent a future complaint. There is no preventing dye/stain blotching on maple, there is only minimizing the effect. Any wood conditions/bloch preventives have limitations despite the sales pitches their creators claim. They also have a financial and aesthetic cost. Generally they won't allow the wood to pick up as much pigment so the coloring is a lot lighter. I don't want to be rude but maple is the problem and the blame lies with the wood. Maple can be a beautiful wood. With time it will oxidize to a beautiful light caramel color. It's hard to get over how light it is and how yellow it looks originally. If you are brave and can give it time the end result is great. I believe there was a picture on here in another thread about maple that shows the difference between new wood and wood a few years old.
  14. Thank you all so much for your advice. Our flooring subcontractor insisted on finishing the job, saying that we might like the final result. Unfortunately it ended up looking like a shinier version of the same thing. If I could ask a petty question: where do you think the blame lies here? I feel that there's some shared responsibility: on one hand, I should have researched staining maple before buying the wood. On the other hand, there are products that prevent blotching (like Charles Neil conditioner), which could have prevented it. The flooring subcontractor claims to be in the business for 20 years, but it seems like they didn't use anything to prevent blotching. Is this completely our fault for using maple? Would you attribute any fault to the subcontractor's technique? (See finished photos.)
  15. They weren't wood. We bought the blanks that were white foam especially for epoxy resin, with a thin wood stringer. A blank for a 9 foot board would weigh just a couple of pounds. There is a lot of science in the rocker, so we didn't want to get into experimenting with different rockers. The blanks came rectangular, with the stringer already in the blank, and the rocker precut. The glassing is not difficult, after you've done it once. Best to just go ahead, and do it, rather than trying to go slow.
  16. Yes, there are a lot of videos on glassing. Of course it's one thing to watch it, but another to do it. I can tell it will be messy. With your windsurfing boards, what wood did you use for them?
  17. I would ride it a few times, and then hang it on a wall in the house. Looks awesome. There should be plenty of youtube videos on glassing a board. We used to make really lightweight windsurfing boards in my boat shop. Our method required babysitting, and catching the kick just right to trim the excess glass off with single edged razor blades, at just the right time. That method works good for boards with hard rails, like yours. The glass is bent over the up side rail, and just hangs straight down below the lower one. Catch it right, and you can trim that hanging off part very easily. You end up with a lot of resin on the floor, as the excess is squeegeed off. Hobie Cats came in two long cardboard boxes, and we always left several of the boxes opened out on the floor. It helped a lot for that shop to have a grossly oversized AC system, so I could cool it down fast to low 60's for fiberglass work, and then turn it back to normal for it to cure. We could glass a board, go eat a meal, and then come back to trim it later.
  18. I'm making the board for my son who loves to surf. It's also a challenge that has been fun to tackle. Who knows I might just try to surf some after this build. What I really want to make for myself is a SUP (stand up paddleboard). I plan on putting that on my list if this goes well, I have plenty of paulownia wood left over for that and a few more boards. This project fits into my interests with a lot of shaping and some artistic license for design. The downside so far has been the seemingly 1 million glueups I've had to do!
  19. Awesome work...only if there is a way to keep the red coloring...mine all faded away after several years. -Ace-
  20. Another great project B. Is this surf board something you will use or was it just a project to challenge the woodworking juices?
  21. I think your basement has kept you plenty busy! I wouldn't call you a slug. I got the resin from a surf board supply store, made esp for boards. Says it's got UV stabilizers, whatever that means. I'm assuming this may be different stuff than regular, but we'll see. I also have an additive I'm supposed to add. All new to me.
  22. Wow that's awesome! Thanks for taking us along although i'm not going to lie at the rate at which you and Chestnut knock out high quality projects makes me feel like quite the slug lol One tip I'm sure you were planing on it but just in case you will need to coat the epoxy with a top coat as UV will break the epoxy down.
  23. I've been playing hooky from my Hank Chair build. First I'm having trouble getting into that build, second I hand to order a few router bits, and thirdly I think I have ADD. Well, while I was waiting on my order of router bits to arrive, I pulled down a framework I had made for a surfboard. I had put it together awhile back but the wood I planned to use for the project still needed some drying time. I milled 3 paulownia logs this past year specifically for this project. It dried real fast, but needed a few warm months to fully season. I milled it in Dec, and 2 weeks ago it was down to 12%. I started messing around with the frame and before I knew it I was knee deep into the build. And this build took up my whole shop, since it's a longboard, approx 10 ft. No room for the Hank chair. I thought this would be an interesting build to show, and even though I didn't take a ton of photos, here goes. First, I've been doing a lot of research on building a board. There are a few techniques, all resulting in a hollow board to reduce weight. Wood needs to be light and paulownia fits the bill perfectly. For those who have never worked with this wood it is an absolute pleasure to work with. Tools easily, bends well, and is SUPER light. I was originally planning to do this build with my son, but he is living at the beach this summer where jobs are plentiful. I plan to do the build and we plan to glass and finish the board together down at the beach. To start the build you create what they call the spar, it's basically a skeleton framework that the shell is attached to. I used 3/8" plywood for this. I bought a pattern for the spar. Printed it and glued it to the plywood, cut it out and shaped it. The skeleton was rather flimsy and did not have a lot of surface area to glue the deck boards to, so I supplemented the gluing surfaces with 3/8" paulownia strips. Here's what that looks like; High spots were leveled off and then I started laminating the deck. Starting with the center board, I worked out to the edges. I used Titebond 3, this was the recommended glue. The decking was just under 3/8" thick stock, resawn from the 6/4 boards I milled. The info I researched said 3/8' for balsa and 1/4" for paulownia, I split the difference. Here's the top deck roughed out and glued on; The plan calls for a relatively flat top deck and a curved underside. The curve on the underside is referred to as the rocker, here's the board ready for the underside, gluing up the last of the paulownia supplemental glue strips; Here's the underside completed, walnut accent like the top; From the side profile you can appreciate the curve of the rocker; Now it's a matter of squaring up the sides and start gluing on strips to form the rails. The rails are laminated pieces you glue to the sides that will be rounded off. I started with one solid strip and now I'm adding a decorative strip of walnut: Adding these strips have made me appreciate the number of clamps I own; The plan also calls for a fin, here's what I came up with; Where I'm at now is I need to finish gluing up the rails, shape them, add the front and back pieces that will make up the front and tail of the board. Final shaping and sanding is last. Once at that step you need to glass the board, which is adding fiberglass sheets to the board, epoxy will be used for this step. After glassing you add the fin, that is epoxied and glassed on separately, and then the whole board is sealed with a layer of epoxy. This is completely new territory for me so doing it at the beach seems best as there are a bunch of surf shops around in case my son and I need help. One other necessity with a hollow board it to install a vent. This is so if the board is sitting in the sun it won't heat up internally and start to delaminate or crack. I'm going to use a goretex vent that doubles as a leash attachment. I've glued a backer board on the inside for this and we'll install this after the glassing also. Thanks for looking.
  24. x2 of the routers listed the only one I would by is the Dewalt its a great set. If you pick it up on CL you should be able to find one close to your budget. The Makita is an good router but for what you are doing I would want a plunge router, even though it can be done without, the plunge feature makes it much more straight forward.
  25. Before you go either way (cheap or worthy) take a little time to learn about files and rasps as tools. I can't put my finger on the URL's right now, but I found web pages explaining the types of files (e.g. what is a flat bastard) and their purposes. It's worthwhile info no matter which way you go.
  26. So. Much. Red. Some of the shavings coming off this wood looked like bacon.
  27. For me, I lean to "buy once cry once". This may be all the router you need today, but you're getting into this activity and you will need a router again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. But then that's how my wallet thinks-- all those huddled masses of green paper yearning to be free.
  28. I'm with Tom on this - the Iwasaki carving files are amazing, and they're not crazy expensive. I've bought a fine and x-fine from Lee valley. The fine is the tool I use the most in fine tuning the fit on joinery, and ends up being a general problem solver. It can be very aggressive, or with a lighter touch can leave a surface almost like the wood was planed. It's so much better than trying to use a home center rasp and then spending forever trying to get the gouges out of the wood. These ones:,42524
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