I'd love to see more of you posting your projects. We want to see what you're working on; share in your triumphs and tragedies. Preferably more of the former and less of the later.

Hey everyone, I assume you've seen our video shorts on YouTube, or one of the other social media platforms. If not, search for "Sawinery" on YouTube. We've currently got well over 100 shorts posted. We're using those as a platform to teach people woodworking techniques and share ideas. That's where you come in. Do you have any questions that you'd like Rich (yeah, me) to answer in those shorts? We're always looking for good ideas and would love to be able to answer questions that our members might have. In the mean time, keep making sawdust out there. We all need to have our daily requirement of sawdust fulfilled.

One of the first tools any woodworker needs is a good saw. What kind of saw we buy often depends on the budget we have available to us. Like many woodworkers, I started out with only hand power tools (back then there weren’t any cordless ones) and no stationary tools. Although I had learned woodworking from my dad and used his table saw, I couldn’t afford one myself. Of course, I was a teen at the time, just having moved out of the house and working my first real job. Paying the bills and buying food pretty much ate up whatever money I had. But not everyone who starts out in woodworking is in that same predicament. I’ve run across many woodworkers who are retired and just starting out their woodworking journey. For them, the issue isn’t buying the cheapest thing they can, which will do the job; but rather buying the best thing for their needs as beginning woodworkers. So, should someone in that situation buy a circular saw or a table saw? The first thing we have to understand about the two, is that they aren’t really the same tool. I mean, the circular saw isn’t just a portable table saw. While the blades look more or less the same, other than size, the table and the fence give a table saw much more capability than a circular saw. It is the table and fence that make the table saw the most versatile saw in the workshop, able to do much more than just make straight cuts. While table saws were once considered useful only for ripping boards and breaking down sheets of plywood, today they are used for many more tasks, like cutting tenons, crosscutting, making miters and making keyed spline joints. This wide variety of tasks, and more, is possible due to various sleds and jigs that woodworkers have developed for use with their table saws. On the other hand, the circular saw is actually a carpenter’s tool, designed for cutting dimensional lumber quickly. It excels in cutting through 2x4s and larger boards. Carpenters also use it for cutting plywood, but they generally aren’t looking for the degree of accuracy that woodworkers are. For the most part, ± 1/8” is accurate enough for carpentry work.

Just ran across this information on a FB post, but it wouldn't be hard to calculate: A little basic geometry tells us that a 10" table saw blade, traveling at 5,000 RPM, has a speed, at the teeth, of 157,000 inches/minute. That really doesn't mean much in our minds; but it works out to 785,000 feet per hour, better known as 149 miles per hour! Since kickback happens the blade grabbing the wood and transferring its energy to it, rather than cutting it, we can safely assume that the energy transferred to the wood is at a velocity of 149 miles per hour. That's the same as a car driving towards you at that speed, with the board sticking out the window. When it hits you, it's going to hurt. 3 things to do: - Always stand to the left of your blade, so that if there is any kickback, it flies past you. - Never remove the riving knife from your table saw; it's there to keep the board being cut from pinching the blade, resulting in kickback. - if you're using the blade guard, don't remove the anti-kickback pauls.

A lot of people wonder about which project is best. That's not limited to woodworking, but in just about everything we buy. Here, in woodworking, that question covers everything from tools to tacks, with a wide range in-between. So, we decided to take a honest look at Gorilla Glue, which I have to confess I don't have a good history with, comparing it to the old standby: Titebond. Here's what I found out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzO9soiS4ZI