Man vs. machine: No contest

My wife and I spent 5 days hauling heavy luggage all over several airports and the city of Orlando, and when we got back, we wanted nothing more than to set our bags down, order Chinese food, and bask in the glory of a meeting-free afternoon and evening. So of course, the second the luggage hit the bedroom floor, I went out to buy some jigsaw blades.

Coping saw

I wrote earlier of my failure to execute a nice rip cut using my cheesy jigsaw, which is the four-point-something amp kind that you can buy from home centers for about $40. I described the sort of vibration that threw the cut out of line and threatened to shake the fillings from my teeth, and how this motivated me to try a handsaw, specifically a rather cheap coping saw, for the recurved pattern on the feet of the bench I'm making. I said the coping saw actually worked pretty well.

All the while, I harbored the suspicion that I'd chosen the wrong blade for the cheesy electric jigsaw, and that was why it greeted the wood with an epileptic seizure. I have a plethora of jigsaw blades, and while I am told that there are ways of telling them apart, I have yet to master the task. I thought I picked the right one. I probably didn't.

So after setting down the luggage, I went to a Big Box and bought the jigsaw blade set for dummies. It's by Skil, and they print the blade's purpose right on it. The set comes in a plastic case that keeps other tools from bunging up the blades.

Now it was time for a comparison of old-fashioned coping saw and newfangled cheap jigsaw. I fitted a scrolling blade to the jigsaw and attempted to follow the recurved outline I had traced for the bench foot.

Jigsaw

Whaddya know? The piece of junk worked great. The cut it produced was about ten times cleaner than the coping saw cut, and was about 50 times easier to execute. Vibration was no big deal. It worked so well, I used it to go back over the coping saw cut, shaving off about 1/16" to clean it up. So here's my advice: Buy a cheap jigsaw. They work. There's a reason why machines have replaced hand tools in all but the most specialized shops.

Keep in mind that I was working on pine and not 5/4 hard maple. For that kind of work, you might opt for a more powerful jigsaw.

Shoot straighter than before

All I want is to drill straight and true holes in wood. Is that so much to ask?

Yes. Yes, it is. It's really hard to drill straight. Several of my drills are equipped with onboard levels. I have also employed doweling jigs. I have even clamped straight-edges parallel to the work for a visual reference. The results have been mixed.

It is this very problem that drives most sane people to go out and buy a drill press. Plop the work on the table, pull the lever, and presto, a straight hole.

The General Tools drill guide. Skip it. Sears makes a better one for less.

You can get a benchtop drill press for about $100, but the problem is the same as with just about any cheap tool: It will suck. To be more specific, cheap drill presses have cheesy tables, not much capacity, not much power, and too much runout, which is to say "slop." You're out $100, and you have a tool that basically sucks. And all you wanted was to drill straight holes in wood.

So you start looking at real drill presses and gradually go insane.

Look. You have a drill. It makes holes. All you want is for the holes to be straight. There has to be a way.

The Craftsman drill guide. $27. Buy it.

And there is. Well, supposedly. It's called a drill guide. The Big Box stores sell one by General Tools for around $38, and I stared at it quite awhile before deciding that I would be better off with a $100 drill press that sucks. Then I ran across a much superior drill guide for $10 less at Sears. Yes, the much-maligned, evil, hated Sears. The Craftsman drill guide has steel guide posts, spring action, a Jacobs chuck, and a much nicer, more clampable footplate with a side-mounted grip. I took it home.

First of all, this is not a drill press. There's too much play in the mechanism, which translates to runout. But unless you're machining metal parts, you have my permission to laugh at runout. What I want to do with this thing is drill straight pilot holes in wood. Pilot holes are slightly undersized, and wood is malleable, more like clay than metal. Put away your feeler gauges and forget about runout.

Also, there's a lot you can do with a drill guide that you can't do with a drill press. You can carry it to the work. You can dry-fit and clamp up a whole cabinet and shoot holes right into the assembly. You can drill straight or angled holes in studs. You can carry it outside and drill holes in your house. For what I want to do, the drill guide is actually better than a drill press.

The first thing I did with mine was shoot holes for the hanger bolts that would attach a wooden face to my miter gage. Because I was attaching metal parts to the wooden face using nuts and washers, the pilot holes needed to be dead straight. And they were. Maybe with the right measuring tools and a bit of squinting, you could detect some error. But one thing's for sure: With the drill guide, I can shoot straighter than before. Much straighter. Was it worth $27? Oh, yes.

You can also mount this thing under a table with a hole in it and use it as a little drum sander. Haven't tried that yet.

Next: Coping saw vs. cheesy jigsaw in a steel-cage death match

Struggles with wiggles

Would it have killed Delta to make the miter gage slide longer on this thing? The literature says you can comfortably crosscut up to 10" wide stock on it. That seems about right. Sadly, I am cutting 11 3/4" stock for the bench (described in last post). Add 1.5" for my miter gage improvement, and you've got about 3 sloppy inches where the miter gage wants to wiggle.

About my crosscut jig (mentioned earlier here): I made it so that it can go in the right or left miter slot. On the left, it goes in backwards, with the miter gage body and fence first. It's easier to cut wider stock if the gage is in and the stock lying flat when you start the cut. Problem is, by the end of the cut, the miter gage is off the table, and things start getting wiggly.

This wasn't a big problem for through cuts, but it gave me fits when cutting the rabbets (see last post). Sometimes, the slide would come clear out of the slot at the end of the cut.

Anyway, I cut the rabbets on a standard blade in multiple passes. Even with the frustration caused by the short miter slide, I was surprised at how easily and accurately I could nibble 1/8" at a time from these boards. "Pish" to those who say you're better off with a circular saw and guide than a cheap table saw. Still, I had to smooth the bottoms of the rabbets with a chisel and much sanding. If it were a glue joint, I don't think I'd be happy. So my wish list now includes a short arbor dado stack.

Some reviewers knock this saw because they think the only dado blade that will fit on it is the cheap, short-arbor "wobble" type. Not true. Sears sells two short-arbor stacking dado sets for bench saws, one for $36 and another for $52. And in any case, you could use a standard dado set, as long as you didn't use all the chippers. True, you only get up to a 1/2" wide dado. But with clever use of stop blocks, dog boards, sacrificial fences, index marks, and so on, you can easily cut dados of any width. It may take two passes, but that's better than however many it took me with a standard blade.

Also on my wish list is a big crosscut sled that straddles the cut line and slides in both miter slots. I've got a 1/4 sheet of MDF to make this. I'll let you know how it comes out.

The slots on the ends of the bench, which are supposed to receive the rabbeted sides, were harder to cut than I thought they would be. I tried several methods:

• Table saw: works fine for the first side of the board, but obviously, when you flip it over to do the other slot, you have nothing left to reference the rip fence, seeing as how you just ripped that side. Also, since the blade is circular, it's hard to do a stopped cut. You can see where the blade is cutting at the top, but it's cutting much farther underneath.
  
• Cheesy jigsaw: Forget it. The vibration is horrendous. I tried holding a speed square as a guide, which works fine with a Skilsaw, but the jigsaw vibrated it all over Hell and threw the cut off line. Now I want a good jigsaw.
  
• Handsaw: The horror. The horror. A laborious failure. Maybe with years of practice, but.... but no. The good news is that I was able to clean up this raggedy cut by shaving about 1/64th" off on the table saw. Yes, 1/64". I remember reading an online review of one of these benchtop saws where the guy said he finally sprang for a contractor's saw, and the first thing he did with it was shave some bits of similar thickness off a board and mail them to his parents, saying, "This is what my new saw can do." Ha ha. Well, this is what a cheap saw can do, too.

Although the handsaw was a failure for a long, straight rip cut, I was so disgusted with the jigsaw that I didn't want to try it for cutting out the "foot" shape (which you can see in the pic at top, previous post). So I cut the first one by hand, using a coping saw. I was able to cut very accurately, though slowly. The result was exactly as lopsided as the design I traced on there, which is to say visibly so. It will need much sanding. For the other foot, I'm going to fit the jigsaw with a scrolling blade and give it another chance, just for grins.

Next: This is not a drill press.

Project 1: Pine storage bench

Sturbridge Yankee Workshop calls this a Shaker storage bench and charges $190 for the 41" model

Since I started reading books on furniture design, I've got into the habit of squinting closely at furniture in shops and catalogs. The item pictured at right brought to mind a question, which I posted to rec.woodworking: "The sides have to go 'crossways' to the front and back, both for height and to hide endgrain. So why doesn't the bench self-destruct?" The principle is that wood expands and contracts across its grain, and so you mustn't fix long grain to short grain, or else the wood will split or the joint give way. I got this reply from Andy Dingle:

There's nothing "Shaker" about it, they're a much older design than that. It's basically a 6-board chest, without full-depth sides.

Made one myself, to keep sweaters in.
http://codesmiths.com/shed/furniture/6board.htm

Because it's nailed, not glued, it allows some movement. This "bench" version also has a lot less cross-grain width, so will have inherently less movement to worry about.

I thought it would make a good first project for the TS220.

I should wind up with something like this chest by Andy Dingle, but not so deep.

Materials list:

1. 5 5/8x12x36" edge-glued pine laminate boards from the Big Box
   
2. 2 black strap hinges
   
3. a handful of cut floorboard or masonry nails

The strap hinges and cut nails are supposed to accentuate the bench's rustic look.

Procedure (please see the link to Andy Dingle's page, above, for visual reference):

1. Select a board for the top and rout a 3/8" roundover on the 2 ends and the front edge.
   
2. Select a board for the ends and rip about 1/2" off it.
   
3. Cut that board in half. These are the end, or leg, pieces.
   
4. Trace the "foot" pattern onto each end piece and cut out with a jigsaw.
   
5. Select 2 boards for the sides and crosscut about 1" off both. Also, neaten up the other ends by cutting off about 1/16". Exact lengths don't matter as long as the two sides come out exactly the same.
   
6. On the table saw, cut 3/8" deep by 5/8" wide rabbets in the ends of both sides. (Details later.)
   
7. On the table saw, make a stopped cut for 1/4" deep by 11" long notches on both edges of both ends. Finish the notches with a hand saw. These will receive the rabbeted side pieces and must come out the same as the width of the sides. (Details later.)
   
8. Clamp the sides to the ends, checking for square, and measure the inside width. This will be the width of the bottom.
   
9. Rip the bottom board to width. Be sure to cut a little fat, test fit, shave it down, and test fit again, until the fit is perfect. Not too tight, though.
   
10. Drill undersized pilot holes for the cut nails so that they don't split the wood. (I'll let you know how this works out.)
    
11. Nail the sides to the ends, and then nail in the bottom.
    
12. Attach the top using the strap hinges.

That's it.


Next: Wiggly world

Would it explode? wherein I turn on the saw

For me, turning on a new power tool for the first time feels like standing on a high diving board. I went through this with my router, which sat unplugged for months after I bought it. I'd handled an identical router in my father's shop with no problem, and yet, I was half expecting this one to launch itself across the room in a shower of splinters the moment the bit touched the wood. It didn't, and I used it to form a nice roundover, only part of which looked like it was done by a drunk Parkinson's patient.

Flipping the switch on the Delta TS220 filled my mind with similar apprehensions. Maybe the lights would go out. Maybe the breaker panel would blow out like the bridge of the Enterprise taking a photon torpedo hit. Maybe I left a wrench or something in the saw body, which would cause the blade to fly apart and spew shrapnel all over. Maybe the saw would judder violently across the floor, like an off-balance washing machine.

Or would it explode?

How to make a $180 saw as quiet as a $550 saw: a $6 pair of earplugs

I turned it on, and it didn't explode. Instead, it jumped abruptly to life, the way that universal motors do, and spun the blade in much the way I thought it ought to. I had some stuff to cut, so I got it ready.

Which brings me to my first jig. Many sources, including my saw manual, advise improving the miter gage by attaching a long piece of wood to its face, thus making a straight fence that pushes the work across the table without permitting it to wobble so much. Problem is, the work still drags on the table. What you really want is a sled or sliding table.

Tiny sled for an even tinier saw than mine, from Wood magazine.

I have many dozens of pages of plans for such crosscut sleds, or cutoff boxes, or whatever you want to call them. They all require you to cut hardwood runners that fit in the miter gage slot. And they have to fit precisely, or else the sled will wiggle, defeating the whole purpose. I had a plan to use my miter gage to guide a crosscut sled, but first, just for kicks, I tried cutting a runner out of oak. I got the thickness I wanted, then went for the width. Rip a hairsbreadth off, try to put it in the miter slot, rip another hairsbreadth off. Repeat until it fits. I got it really close, then shaved off a hairsbreadth too much. Wiggly runner.

But the saw wasn't to blame. It was doing a great job on this delicate work. The fence locked down straight, and the supplied blade (a nice carbide-tipped combination blade) cut smooth. The guard/splitter/antikickback assembly worked as advertised, and I didn't have to throw it away, as some online reviewers had suggested.

Back to my jig, which I regard as a major breakthrough in shop-rigged miter gage improvements. It combines the miter face fence idea with a crosscut sled. The idea is to glue the "fence" to a slab of sheet goods, cut the slab down to size, carefully set the miter gage to 90 degrees, then bolt the fence to the miter gage. This is as quick and easy as bolting a board to the miter gage, and it provides the sliding bed of a cutoff box.

Fanciest crosscut sled ever. $35, wood not included.

I wanted to use a 2'x2' slab of 1/4" tempered hardboard, shiny side down, for the sliding bed, but the local Big Box was all out, and so I settled for 1/4" hardwood plywood. Bit of a mistake, as thin plywood tends not to lie completely flat. Next time, I'll go with hardboard or thicker plywood. For the fence, I used a 18" length of nominal 2"x2" (really 1.5" x 1.5") poplar I had lying around, because it was perfectly straight and square. I stuck a couple of 1/4" hanger bolts in it and attached it to the miter gage with wing nuts and washers. Presto: An easy-on/easy-off miter gage fence with a sliding bed.

It worked great for crosscutting some 12" wide panels I'm using to build a storage bench. There's one little hitch, but I'll get to that next time.

In slicing the plywood to size, I was amazed at the accuracy of the measuring tape on the front fence rail. To be honest, I expected nothing from it. It's just a decal. The one on my father's contractor's saw is off by 1/16", and I expected much worse here. Much to my surprise, it was accurate to within a hair of a hair.

Once again, the fence locked down straight, and the plywood edges came out nicely square.

The verdict on the saw so far: Straight fence, nice blade, accurate rip gauge, quiet motor (given earplugs), doesn't explode. Far from useless.

The verdict on my jig: A revolution.

Next: Project 1-- a storage bench

Blood on the Chinos: wherein I set up the saw

The online reviews I read generally said it took about an hour to set up the Delta TS220LS and similar bench saws. It took me more like a year. Not working around the clock, of course.

Clearly, I wasn't in a mad rush to get the machine going, and other duties interposed themselves between myself and woodworking. I was glad to have only $179 cash tied up in assorted saw parts lying around the shop in various stages of assembly. Score one for going cheap.

Eventually, I put the saw together. The instructions were very clear, and though it's not like me to say this, I found it crucial to read and follow all of them. Adjustments in particular are critical. If you don't measure and adjust everything 11 ways from January, you won't have a saw. You'll have a diabolical appliance that chews up your wood and wants to injure you.

Take the sawblade for instance. The instructions say, "The blade was adjusted parallel to the miter gage slots at the factory." Sure it was. I'd like to know, then, how it got kicked so far out of alignment that you could see it. It was off by 1/8" from front to back. "In order to insure accurate cuts and help prevent kickback when cutting, this adjustment should be rechecked and if necessary, readjusted." Truer words were never written.

"Start by loosening the nuts below the four screws (C) Fig. 47 on the table. Then loosen the screws (C)." This is from the online version of the owner's manual. I think my version just said, "loosen the screws." Ha ha. Sure, loosen those screws. They're dogged down so tight, you'll strip the screwheads out before you turn them. No, you have to get under the saw, figure out some way to get a 10mm wrench on those nuts, and then figure out some way to turn the wrench. I tried to do it without taking off the sawblade. I thought, the wrench is going to slip, and I'm going to slice my knuckle on the blade. Then I did exactly that. Then I took the blade off and finished the work in my blood-spattered khakis. I found it necessary to hit the wrench with a hammer to get the nuts loose.

"If sufficient adjustment cannot be achieved by loosening screws (C), screws (D) may also be loosened if absolutely necessary to make the adjustment." It proved absolutely necessary. I still found it tough to move the blade into alignment, but I finally got it to within about 1/100".

The rip fence was a different story. With a few turns of the screw on the front, it clamped down parallel to the miter slots right out of the box. But some careful measuring revealed that it clamped a little crooked on the extension wing. A slight nudge is required to bring it straight.

The miter gage proved typical. To set it to a perfect 90 degrees, I had to use a square. It was easy.

Many online reviews lambasted the saw guard and splitter assembly. Some said it was useless, even dangerous, and needed to be thrown away. I don't think so. You just need to spend a good bit of time and care using your eyeballs and a straightedge to get the splitter absolutely perfectly aligned with the blade. It's a pain, but it can be done. I suspect this is the case with most saws.

With the saw bolted to the stand and everything tightened, the machine felt surprisingly solid and stable despite its light weight. I didn't like where it was sitting, and so I picked it up and carried it across the room. Try that with a contractor's saw.

So there it was. And there I was. It was finally time to fire it up.

Next: I do a jig

A fool and his money

"Information is chaos." That's a law of communication we learned in Information Science school. If it held during my first two years as an aspiring woodworker, then my life was bedlam indeed. I memorized hardware catalogs and spent more on woodworking books and magazines than I did on tools. I learned how to do things that I still have no idea how to actually do.

The time came when I had read enough. It was time to build something. I got my cheap Skilsaw, a doweling jig, some red oak boards, four stair balusters, and a slab of edge-glued Aspen, and I made a little hall table. It was alright, and I learned the limitations of the cheap circular saw.

Your typical circular saw for under $100 usually has a stamped steel footplate with curled edges. Because it is riveted to the saw body, you can never adjust the blade perfectly parallel or perpendicular to the footplate. It's a lot of fuss to set up a straightedge for a cut, or to start the cut in just the right place, or to complete a cut without the cheesy footplate riding up on the straightedge. And unless you support the board in four places, your cutoff falls to the ground at the end of the cut. So it's hard to cut straight and smoothly and accurately with a Skilsaw, and repeatability is virtually impossible.

My $60 circular saw, with cheesy footplate

Now imagine making accurate angle cuts with this little beast. I managed to make an angled box with it, but it's not what I'd call a showpiece. It was supposed to be a planter. Instead, I'm using it to hold scrap wood.

I knew I needed a better saw, and at this point, I had two choices: Get a more expensive circular saw, or take the plunge into the world of stationary tools and spring for a table saw. A decent circular saw with a beefy, square, fully adjustable footplate costs upward of $120.

A much better circular saw, at twice the price

Problem is, the improved footplate only solves a few of the circular saw's inherent problems. Sure, you can tune it straight and true, and it won't ride up on the straightedge, but setting up cuts is still a bother, and the cutoff still clatters to the ground, throwing the cut out of line. Still, $120 is a lot cheaper than a table saw. Desperately clinging to my money, I searched for ways to make do with the handheld saw. I was soon sucked into a world of nifty clamps and high-tech straightedges and even complicated tables that turn a Skilsaw into a makeshift table saw, or overhead armatures that turn a Skilsaw into a makeshift radial arm saw. Once you add up the cost of these items, however, you might as well have bought the table saw.

Festool's incomparable circular saw and guide system costs as much as 3 DeWalts, but it's still a circular saw

After I built my little table and spent some time hoping no one would look at it too closely, I built a serious oak hall table with my father. In the meantime, I found that virtually no books, articles, or websites were devoted to building furniture with a Skilsaw. This finally convinced me that I needed a table saw. I think these circular-saw-and-guide systems are a godsend for contractors who spend their days ripping large panels on construction sites, but there's a lot they don't seem suited for. Cutting dados, laps, and other tight-fitting joints, for example. Sure, I have books that tell you how to cut them with a circular saw, and I'm sure I'll use those techniques if I'm ever desperate enough. I imagine myself on a desert island, with only the tools I carried onto my now-stranded boat.

So it was time to buy a table saw. Having memorized several dozen catalogs, I was aware of the price range I was dealing with. At the bottom end were benchtop saws with tiny, webbed aluminum tables and noisy universal motors, and they went for around $100. At the top end-- my top end, anyway, which excluded the lavish cabinet saws going for $1200 and up-- were contractor saws by Delta, Jet, and Ridgid. They feature big, solid, cast-iron tables and smooth-running induction motors. To get into one of these, you figure on spending around $600.

Bottom of the barrel	Middle of the barrel
Delta TS200	Delta 36-650

In between lie many portable and semi-contractor's saws for around $300. Ryobi and Delta make good examples of these. You're still getting a nonstandard table, motor, fence, and other parts. It's about half a table saw for half the price.
The top of the bottom

	Ryobi BT-3100
	Delta TS300

This didn't seem like too good a deal to me. I didn't mind half a table saw, but I thought a fairer price would be more on the order of one-third. That's when I happened on the Delta TS220LS.

Look on my saw, ye mighty, and shrug: The Delta Shopmaster TS220LS

This saw, along with the two other Delta "TS" models on this page, is part of the Shopmaster line, which is Delta's way of saying that it's an el cheapo tool, not to be confused with real Delta saws like the 36-650. The TS220LS went for $179 at Lowe's and is much like the even cheaper TS200, except this saw has:

• a 15-amp motor, as opposed to 13 amps
  
• a bigger table of smooth, solid aluminum
  
• a stamped steel extension wing
  
• built-in outfeed support
  
• beefier fence and miter gage
  
• legs
  

I figured these features made it about half a table saw at less than a third of the price, and so my mind was made up. All that was left to do was to read online reviews and agonize and flip-flop for about 6 months.

It seems that there were two kinds of reviews: "This saw is perfectly respectable"; and "this saw is useless junk." I noticed the "respectable" posts talked a lot about careful setup and tuning, while the "useless junk" camp seemed to expect great results from a $180 table saw right out of the box. Eventually, I broke down and bought the damned thing. I had many reservations about not going for a real saw, which I justified as follows:

This saw...	which is OK because...
has a nonstandard miter gage, so you can't buy standard jigs and fixtures	I'm too cheap to buy jigs, and you should make your own anyway
has a smallish table	there are many ways to rip big panels, which I don't do very often anyway
has a very short miter gage with too much slop at the beginning	no miter gage is very good, and a shop-built crosscut sled will take care of that
can take only a 1/2" dado set	you can cut full 3/4" dados in two passes
has a noisy universal motor	I own earplugs
requires much fiddling to make accurate cuts	so does any saw
is made of plastic and aluminum, and weighs less than any stationary tool should	I can heave it around my little shop, or up the stairs, or into my station wagon
features very iffy angle markings on miter gage and blade-tilt mechanisms	that's why God made squares and angle-finders
might be too inaccurate for making furniture	I'll still have a portable saw for cutting studs, pressure-treated lumber, and such
is not a real table saw	it's a vast improvement on the Skilsaw, and it's cheaper than dirt

I think the final consideration was the deciding one.

Next: Setup is Hell, and I make my first jig