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The problem with a single blade SLR is there lack of a fence. The blade is mounted from above with a tractor from below. You have a laser that aligns your cut line. So you wind up standing where you shouldn’t as you line up the laser. The tractor grabs the board and away you go. Sometimes you...

If the bulk of mouldings are straight, wouldn’t most planes including hollows and rounds have straight cutters? Skew is more money to make so skew on a panel raiser makes sense. Skew on a hollow or round does not but certainly some were made

in the first commercial shop I worked in, we had an SLR. Straight Line Rip saw. The owners son got hit my s kick back right in the golden marbles. Blood everywhere. From that day on we had to wear Kevlar aprons when using the SLR. Still don’t understand how that one happened

The industry caters to the newbies who are bright eyed and hungry to learn. They would go casters up with us old farts. What burns me is the suggestive need for an arms race in woodworking especially in the small shop space and hobby space. For every modern development there are a few old...

The one that got me lifting my eye brow was the over arm support. In older shapers, you often had huge cutter blocks. Sometimes 12 in to 16 in. These needed an over arm support bearing from above. Boxes with box joints would be done by stacking up 20 or more groovers with spacers. You load a...

Respect and Fear are two differing concepts. If your afraid to use the machine you have no dominance over the machine. Respect means you understand what it can do. I NEVER let anyone loose if I detect fear! I will not work for a boss who shortcuts common sense and has no respect for the machine...

Shapers often can run forwards or backwards. This is an advanced topic! Conventional milling versus climb milling. If you have ever had a router run away from you then you know what climb milling is! The problem is that climb milling often yields cleaner cuts. But you need to control the cut...

For me the shaper is the queen of the shop. The jointer is about accuracy. It sets the tone for all other machines. The planer does well planing to thickness. No other machine is as capable and versatile as a shaper with the possible exception of my Wadkin PK table saw. My current shaper is a...

Are shapers dangerous? I saw one fellow cutting veneer for musical instruments but didn’t have a bandsaw. so he took the fence off the shaper and installed a 12 inch circular saw blade. He would run the board thru the shaper, flip the board and run it again as he lifted the veneer sheet free...

Router tables are a fad in modern woodworking. Their principle is that of a shaper. It allows the occasional woodworker to do simple small shaper operations without having to resort to a shaper. I just read the MCLS router table lift advertisement. You can now raise and lower your router bit...

The spindle molder is the queen of the shop but I can understand why some think it’s dangerous. The split fence was designed to do a jointed cut. The infeed fence is set back a bit from the out feed fence like on a jointer. The issue in doing a jointed cut is the gap in which the cutter rests...

The shaper or spindle molder. As said the 30 mm is the way go. Get a cutter block that will take a variety of steel knives. Many of these heads or blocks come with a variety of knives with most likely the ones you need. Router tables are the fad but I think the English term is “a bit of a...

This is the most difficult issue I have ever dealt with. I just lost my job as my company shut down. One of the biggest issues was under bidding jobs. And some of those jobs were not small. We lost about 4 million US dollars last year. The next major issue was engineering of the jobs. A...

Here is a disconnect. Tha scandavian perspective. Scandavian furniture had its own unique style and one I admit I don’t understand it’s evolution. But as passed thru the federalist period at the same time as the machine revolution, we saw it influence modern thinking with the work of Frank...

Mark, you are so right. And after a while it becomes just another task on a list of tasks you need to finish. Maybe that’s why guys like Crossman and sellers don’t bother with crumongians like us.

There had been a lot of discussions about hand tools versus power tools. I think one of the most significant contributions of Gustuv Stickley was not his furniture but rather his approach to making it. He came up with a balance of machine work and hand work. Let machines do what machines do...

As an another example take the design of a bar or pub fitment. The successful designer will use colors and materials known to drop ones inhibitions. You go to the pub for a quick beer after work and wind up stumbling home at midnight. It’s not entirely your fault. You unknowingly have been...

Some of you said you had a look at some of Krenov’s work and said you weren’t inspired. Why? when you get that gut feeling of not being inspired … of not liking something…. I think it is to our own personal development to understand why we feel that way. Don’t think your alone. Worse yet...

I think we can all agree that the success of any design breaks down into three distinct immediate areas. 1). The execution of technical skills. How it’s made and from what. 2). The application of sound design skills and adherence to a desigm genra. 3). Ones own personal taste. I find cutting...

Some of us can. Some of us have done reproduction work of 17 and 18th century pieces. No one disagrees he doesn’t have skill. The issue is design. I envision his work standing alone in a dim lit room with specialized lighting highlighting the piece as a testament of modern art from our time.