Something from Left Field: Fiberglassing your Fingernail

No, seriously, crazy cracks on toenails happen often enough in hockey and this is what I do to fix that problem except this time it was for a fingernail that couldn't stop snagging on everything.  Like the pillowcase.  Right after you roll over.

Review of SensGard Hearing Protection

Yeah, not a terribly sexy posting, but I like these quite a bit and that was the last thing I thought I'd say about hearing protection!

Since it's been at least a few weeks since I was a teen able to listen to heavy metal on "11" all day with obviously no damage (teens are invincible; stuff happens to other people...) I now actually find I like working with these on more than off.

SensGard makes two varieties of the ZEM hearing protection (you'll see it listed as ZEM not SensGard at local woodworking stores; dunno why).  A -26db attenuating and a -31db attenuating pair.

I wanted to review these about a year ago, but had no idea how to show you how well it works given my camera equipment at the time.  Now, I have a microphone I used so you can hear the difference.  I made sure the audio path to the camera wasn't going to mess with the sound so no automatic gain control or clipping.

Man, to think, just weeks ago I could listen to Iron Maiden at "11" with reckless abandon.  Hmm, that might have dated myself... okay, "few weeks" might be gratuitous...

Note: they won't stop the voices in your head.

Voilà, a video review of an audio product...

The Season of Taking

Now that the Season of Giving is more or less over (marked by the end of free shipping at Lee Valley...), we resume our regularly scheduled Season of Taking.  d'oh!

After typing that, I did a quick pass to the shop to make sure everything was locked up, again.  It's an annoying if healthy paranoia.

Before my day-job company closed between Christmas and New Years, we had a small pizza party and lots of conversation about anything but software.  One discussion stuck in my head: our president had his garage broken into and several custom bikes stolen (as in $1,700 wheels custom).  How they did it, and I'll discuss that below, is strikingly easy to do.  The interesting part is that of the 12 of us there, 4 had this exact same technique used to steal from their garages.  I knew of the technique because two of my neighbors were robbed the exact same way.

Likely your garage right now could be raided with this low-tech technique.

For fun, a few photos...

What you see here is my, er, somebody's shop.  Someone driving by can easily see there's at least $20 of tools in there.  Here's another view:

this is what the would-be thief would see after I close up for the day.

Now that we've seen the obvious, let's list what else these two photos show:

• the shop completely fills the two-car bay; there will never be a car in there (even if I get a girlfriend... it's a pre-existing condition!)
• the car is parked in front of the one-car bay.  It's likely the only car otherwise to use the car in the bay, you have to back out the first car to get at the garaged car.  Though the windows on the one-car bay are covered, this reasoning is pretty sound.
• the guy might be silly enough to have a garage door opener in the car for when he comes back with another sheet of exotic MDF and doesn't want to have to go through the house to open the door.  Someone might find it easier to pop the car door to take the remote, although the tactic I'm gonna describe later is much easier than breaking into a car while owners are home.
• windows.  The garage door has windows.

Next photo:

this photo tells us:

• the car is gone.
• as the car is likely the only car, nobody is home.

How does this ultra-easy break-in happen?  Someone pushes in one of the middle windows (they are held by metal clips; a baseball bat will make a loud noise when it pushes it open, but the 'glass' won't break; it's Lexan).  Nobody needs to crawl in... just reach for this:

Normally there's a pull-cord on the part connecting the door to the top rail.  Pop a middle window and you can easily grab the cord, pull, and you've released the door; lift at your convenience.  I removed the cord as a minimal deterrent; I routinely pop that release with a long clamp head when I install the red-neck A/C unit under the door.

Once inside the garage, they can close the door and watch through the window.  Grab some quick-sale stuff and go.  Worse... how many of you lock the door from the garage to the house?  I dunno if I have that key anymore!

Normally you can lock the garage door from the outside.  Mine could only be locked from outside so it was a major pain to do, plus the "locks" engaged these:

The steel cord went to the lock handle; when you twisted it to unlock the door, it pulled the spring-loaded latch out of the slot in the piece to the right that was attached to the house.  Problem is that if the door wasn't exactly lined up with the slot when you locked it, the tab never fell in the hole.  Silly.  I bet more modern houses have better systems, but a key here is that even if the locking part is better, most still use a steel cord to unlock; if someone pushes in a window, they might be able to use a simple hook to catch the cord, pull up, and unlock the door.  Worth considering even if you don't think you have lots of money in the garage; it isn't what you think the garage contents' value is, it's what the thief thinks.

Better deterrents, besides the obvious of keeping a half-starved Anaconda in your garage include:

Replace the door locks with latches and don't connect them to some goofy-ass knob on the outside of the door (i.e., no steel cords).  This is what I moved to:

I operate it by hand.  Push the rod into the door track to lock, press one of the releases to release the lock.  Someone would have to know that I have this latch and would have to stealthily reach from the window to move the bottom release to the side; not an easy trick.

That's one deterrent and it is quick to lock/unlock.  I also use a padlock in the track:

Uhm, I lock it usually :)  I keep the key very close by so for me to open it from the inside is very convenient.  If you have these locks, you don't need the latch I showed you earlier.  You also only need these on one of the two tracks for the door.

I also have one of these in the shop:

it's just a webcam connected directly to a computer on the second floor.  I haven't yet found something I like yet, but there are many security camera software applications out there.  Since the camera is there anyway for when I stream with woodworker friends ("shop at a distance" :) then I may as well have it record all day long.  It uses a roll-over buffer so I have the past 24 hours recorded at a slower frame rate to conserve disk space.  The monitoring software increases the frame rate when it detects motion.  Some applications allow you to set motion thresholds when it will send you a text message; when you get one, you can remotely access the camera with any browser and see what's going on.  When I find some software I like, I'll write up a post here with some configuration information.

It also wouldn't be a bad idea to occasionally take the video camera and walk the shop; open all the drawers, pan slowly, save the SD chip somewhere.  Makes a claim much easier.

Safety Awareness Week 2011

Safety Awareness Week 2011 is upon us again.  A couple years ago, Marc Spagnuolo set aside a week to focus on safety issues in the shop and now it is a recurring event, much like National Backup Day and equally without a plethora of useless Hallmark cards.

In this video, I go over a couple things I have in my shop to keep me counting to 10 with my shoes on.  Some are original ideas (that I know of) and some were stolen for the better good of my digits.

Safety is boring, kinda like backing up your personally penned haiku collection, but not nearly as boring as reading last year's Field & Stream in the ER waiting room.

If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments!

Crosscutting Wide Stock Safely on a Table Saw

When I created my shooting board, I had to cross cut the back to even up all the protruding molding, veneers, ply substrate, and likely a french fry or two.  Thing is, the board is 14" wide.  The cross cut capacity of my saw with the miter gauge is about 12", significantly less with the blade height I needed for the 1 5/8" thick shooting board.

Some people will punt and use the fence, but a long narrow piece on the fence is a big kickback risk.  Instead, do what I did in this picture: put the saw's stock miter gauge in the track backwards.

Push the stock against the gauge and use it to guide the cut straight and square without the risk of kickback.

Here you can see the extra capacity you get from this simple, safe trick.  Further, when you raise the blade, you add to the capacity for those times when you just need something a little bigger :)

Crosscutting with the Fence

It's funny that a small nondescript block sitting on a saw fence gets asked about more than anything in my shop.  Maybe the rest is too messy... This block is simply two pieces of 1/2" MDF glued together with a 5/16" hole drilled in one edge.  I use it to do crosscuts with the fence.

When crosscutting, you cannot normally use the fence since you're highly likely to pinch the offcut between the fence and blade setting up a spectacular kick-back.  This block, being 1" wide, makes a perfect spacer for aligning a cut to the fence (plus a burned inch)...

...but it isn't involved once the cut gets started.

The 5/16" hole in the top works well with a fence clamp.  I usually don't use the clamp as I'll put the block there, align the stock, and remove it. The size of the block stows perfectly on top of the fence between the sides.

And so this isn't completely boring, voilà, what 20lbs of Cocobolo and 5 lbs of Ebony look like... lots of plugs, miter keys, inlays, handles, and other nice things to come.

Handiest Bandsaw Thingy

I'm vocabularily challenged tonight.  Many things are thingies.

In the absolutely waning hours of Safety Week (yes, technically it ended 3 hours ago, but I haven't gone to bed yet), I post this addition.  Behold, the handiest bandsaw thingy (oak version):

At the bandsaw, I find this scrap of oak more useful than many things I actually paid for.  The nub sticking out is a 5mm Domino.  You could use a piece of dowel.  I don't glue it in so I can replace it when it looks even worse than it does right now :)

The distance from the front of the thingy to the front of the Domino is a hair less than then distance from the front of the bandsaw table to the blade.

This nub lets you hook it onto the front of the table. I do this often with my featherboard stack since it doesn't quite make it when I'm dealing with thin stock.  It also has the advantage that the featherboard pressure is evenly distributed over the oak board and I find it handles slightly bowed stock better.  The nub keeps the thingy from advancing as you push the stock.

 Here it is in action when I resawed a "stile"-sized piece of walnut into 6 strips for inlaying.

 Lastly, I often use it as a pushstick when resawing.  Note how I can use it on the side of the stock and the nub pushes the stock through. If the nub hits the blade and loses, pull it out and pop in a new Domino.
If you look carefully, there's a corner seriously dented on the thingy.  Yup, you can use it as a Howard Cosell Brick and hurl it to blow off steam... it's only scrap.