Lovely wooden ideas

[ppppenguin]

I'm sure this will have a special appeal to some GVR members:

http://woodgears.ca/

[Retired]

Hi,

WOW Jeffrey; what a great website; I wish I had known about this site when I struggled so hard to cut my wave winder gears. The router jigs are just brilliant as are the rest of the projects shown; many thanks for adding such a useful website; I've bookmarked it.

Kind regards, Col.

[ucl82]

Fantastic link!

Many thanks for sharing Jeffrey Bookmarked too and might have to have a go at a few of the projects...

[Yorkie]

Well spotted Jeffrey!

There's so much stuff on the web that it's hard to 'sort out the wheat from the chaff', and that site is definiately a 'keeper'!

David

[Brianc]

What an interesting site - also bookmarked!

One thing that struck me is the quality of the wood the guy was using. I wonder whether that is typical of Californian "lumber" or does he have to get it from special sources. Several members of the forum have had a terrible job finding decent plywood in the UK and I wonder if it would be possible to make such a tool with the materials available here!

[Yorkie]

What an interesting site - also bookmarked!

One thing that struck me is the quality of the wood the guy was using. I wonder whether that is typical of Californian "lumber" or does he have to get it from special sources. Several members of the forum have had a terrible job finding decent plywood in the UK and I wonder if it would be possible to make such a tool with the materials available here!

The 'plywood' you see in DIY stores, and most of the stuff at timber merchants is contruction grade plywood - as Captain Kirk might have said 'it's plywood Jim, but not as we know it'. It's full of voids and the inner plys are wider thqan the thin vener surface, and are low grade softwood. Perfectly adequate for its normal intended use, but certainly not for such htings as furniture. You can get furniture grade plywood in the UK from timber merchants, but you have to ask for 'birch through and through' and of course, it's much dearer.

I've attached a pic of a piece of 'birch through and through' to show what it looks like and I think it's what most of us over 60 consider to be 'real' plywood.

As to softwood, if you look in B&Q you will see 2.4M lengths of nominally 3" x 2" and 4" x 2" planed square edge softwood with the corners softened. Its good quality, quite cheap and you can select it yourself for least knots and shakes. I've used a lot of it to build my workshop, including the pitched roof trusses, and to make benches and even scaffolding to cut a high hedge. It's called 'CLS' which I'm told is a generic term that stands for 'Canadian Lumber Stock'.

David

[Joe]

Captain Kirk might have said 'it's plywood Jim, but not as we know it'.

Not unless he'd really lost it and was talking to himself! This was Doctor Macoy's line: "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."

You're right about the ply and that bit you've photographed does indeed show that the proper stuff CAN be found, albeit, as you said, at a price.

Now I'll nick your line, David:-

Night, night

- Joe

[Yorkie]

Captain Kirk might have said 'it's plywood Jim, but not as we know it'.

Not unless he'd really lost it and was talking to himself! This was Doctor Macoy's line: "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."
- Joe

Ooops, so it was. I was distracted by 'Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard, bow, starboard bow', when I wrote that!

That's done me for the day - I won't be able to get that off my brain now!

To give some idea of what you'll get if you go to a typical timber merchant or DIY store and ask for 'plywood', I've attached some pics of a couple of pieces of what is 'construction plywood' - not 'birch through and through', which is furniture grade.

It will be evident from the third pic, that there are three low density, low grade filler plys - two of which can be seen as end grain, one long grain, sandwiched between two very thin surface veneers about 0.5mm think, of slightly better quality. The second pic shows a thicker piece of constructon grade ply, with many more plys, again surfaced by two very thin slightly better quality surface plys. So thin in fact that it's barely visible. As can be seen, the inner plys are low grade and there are many voids. The first pic shows the surface of that piece of plywood, which is actually quite presentable. All of this plywood is entirely fit for it's intended purpose, which was to lay over the surface of uneven floorboards in a Victorian House in London to level the surface, prior to having a very (very, very!) expensive gunstock oak solid hardwood floor laid. But of course, for cabinet making it would be useless.

How did it fall into my hands? From one of my skip diving exercises, this time outside the home of a near neighbour's of Nick Clegg, but I reserve my right to remain silent if questioned under caution:D

Unfortunately, the offcuts of gunstock oak were right at the bottom of the skip, and my wife wisely suggested that I should temper my enthusism to climb into the skip with a little more discretion, considering that it was under the noses of a posse of armed police guarding Nick Clegg's abode. Had I been alone, rather than with my 'carer' I'd have probably been in the skip quicker than a rat up a drain.(Knowing, as I do, that a person does not commit an offence under the Theft Act 1968 if he believes that he has lawful authority to remove the items in question, or that he would have it if the person entitled to give that authority knew of the removal of the items, and the circumstances of their removal. "Your Worships!").

David