Adventures in Woodworking
For some time I have wanted to try to build a piece of furniture but with the lack of space to have a shop I figured it was just never going to happen. Lately though with my lack of creative outlet I decided it was worth a try to make it work by creating a “mobile” shop that I can pull out of my storage unit in the basement of my condominium.
This has made me have to rethink what I can honestly expect to do and what it takes to do woodworking, specifically the tools. For instance the mainstay of most shops is a tablesaw which is the go-to stationary tool of probably 95% of home woodworking shops which I just do not have room to store or use. Plus when cutting sheets of plywood I would need another set of hands unless I have an outfeed table for which again I have no room. So the solution has come in the form of a track saw system. After looking around I decided on getting the EZ Smart Guide from EurekaZone Inc., silly bit of naming I know, instead of a Festool or similar brand. This was for a couple reasons; 1.) Cost 2.)Adaptability 3.)American made 4.)Works with any circular saw and can be adapted to work with routers, planners and over tools.
There has been a big learning curve not just because this system is new to me but woodworking as a whole is something I have done very little. I did start to take a class which I later left or was asked to leave, but that is something for a later post. The first place I had problems was getting a good square edge which is the one thing you want in woodworking and to some extent this is still a problem. Along with the track for the saw I also got repeaters and sliding square, see the website to see what I am talking about: http://eurekazone.com/. The repeaters are going to come in handy when I start cutting the plywood but I have found them difficult to work with when cutting the 1×6 birch that I have been cutting to length and then ripping to size. While cutting to length I have been using the sliding square which should allow me work quickly and confidently knowing it will be a square cut but I find it comes out of square far to easily. The act of positioning the wood and the track quite often for me has knocked the square out of square which can truly be infuriating. I have taken to treating it with kids gloves but the track and the square act like levers so it does not take much pressure to exert tremendous force upon the screw tightened connection.
The rip cuts brought their own issues with the track saw since they are significantly smaller in width then the track itself. The track has clamps which you use from the underside which hold your work piece in place but when this is done with smaller pieces they have a tendency to make the rip cut a slight bevel instead of perpendicular to the face of the wood. I found that if I clamped a piece of wood behind the work piece and clamped them both down with a scrap piece going across them both it would pull it back to square.
I find that working this way is much slower then more traditional methods but I do not have the room, so for now this is it. Though I might find over time that I get faster and find better ways to work with the EZ Smart system or get more components and build a power table with the Bridge. It seems odd to think about getting more parts when I have had problems with what I have but I can see how much better things would work for me if I did “upgrade”. Though every time the square gets out of square I definitely reconsider why I am doing it this way. Ok enough about the tools, what am I building?
“What’s he building in there…
I’ll tell you one thing he’s not building a playhouse for the children
What’s he building in there?”
-Tom Waits “What’s he building in there?”
So the first thing I am buildings is a nightstand or rather a pair of nightstands. The wall upon which our bed is located is not really all that long and so the nightstands we have now either hang past where we would like or sit at an odd angle so we want to have two narrow nightstands so everything sits nicely. Now I have kept my eyes open for something that would fit the bill for quite sometime and seen nothing that will work so I am going to build my own.
The Design:
So lets take a look at what I have gotten done so far:
