April Meeting: Turning for Furniture Makers

The highlight of the April CJWA meeting was an excellent presentation by Tom Jones, president of the Atlantic Shore Woodturners woodturning club on how woodturning can be used for furniture projects. Tom was kind enough to bring his own lathe for this demonstration and was able to show a number of spindle turning techniques that could be used for furniture projects. Tom demonstrated the use of roughing gouges, spindle gouges, parting tools, and skew chisels to turn all the shapes and forms that can be used for furniture parts.

Tom had some good tips for turning for furniture projects.  He likes using a Sorby Stebcentre instead of a standard 4 prong drive center, as he thinks the Stebcentre gives more control over the holding of the workpiece. He said that spindle turning often will use higher speeds on the lathe compared to bowl turners, often in the 1800 rpm range. Good woods for turning tend to be harder, and fruit woods are very good for this purpose.

Here Tom shows how to use a caliper and parting tool to establish a specific measured diameter on a spindle piece.

And this is what not to do.

CRAFTS of New Jersey tool auction this weekend

CRAFTS of New Jersey is holding their annual Spring Tool Auction this weekend at the Oldwick Fire House on Route 523 in Oldwick.  Although the auction always attracts a lot of attention, many CJWA members go for the used tool tailgating that starts when the first dealer arrives.  More information is available at the CRAFTS website.

April Meeting: Turning for Furniture Makers

The April CJWA meeting will be at 7 PM on April 14. We are very fortunate to have Tom Jones, president of the Atlantic Shore Woodturners give us a demonstration on how to use a lathe to enhance furniture projects. Many aspects of spindle turning suitable for table legs, columns, and so on will be shown.

Here’s a video of part of Marc Gaertner’s presentation on advanced router techniques at the March CJWA meeting.  In this video, Marc shows how he uses a router to raise a panel and the backer that he uses to prevent tearout, and the jig he made to allow for precision fluting operations.

March Meeting: Advanced Router Techniques with Marc Gaertner

We had 8 new visitors to the CJWA meeting this month.  Frank Vucolo gave a report on how our booth at the Somerset Woodworking show did.  Traffic and interest was high throughout the weekend, and we distributed 500 flyers.  We also had a writeup in Wood Magazine, and the article can be seen on the Wood Magazine website. Frank also mentioned that Lie-Nielsen has one of their Hand Tool Events coming up in Hillsborough on June 25-26, and that CJWA would likely have a presence there as well. Stay tuned for details.

The featured presentation was by Marc Gaertner on advanced router techniques.  Marc showed a number of jigs and setups he has used to use a router to greatest advantage in his shop.  He showed a router table built from plans from the book “Router Jigs and Techniques” by Patrick Spielman. This book is out of print, but used copies can readily be found on the internet.

The top of the table was initially made from MDF, but over time it warped, and was eventually replaced with 2 layers of 3/4” Baltic birch plywood with a laminate top. Marc did not put a miter slot in his router table, as he felt that the need to align the router table fence with a miter slot was more trouble than it was worth.  The fence on his router table is much taller than is usual, but the added height allows for easy clamping of jigs and hold downs.

Marc also showed a base he made for a plunge router with a series of circular Lexan inserts which are sized for the router bit being used at the time.  This provides an easy way to provide clearance for router bits ranging from narrow straight bits to large panel raising bits.  He also showed a sliding jig used to make precise stopped cuts, how to use a slot cutting bit for splines in boxes and picture frames, how to use a Microfence with a trim router for inlay, and how to use a router to quickly make quarter round molding.

Frank Vucolo and Matt Greco also shared advanced techniques that they developed for using a router for various tasks.  Frank showed a jig that he made to use a router to shape a fluted bobbin for a Sheraton table leg on the lathe.

Matt showed how he set up a router to make these detailed feet for boxes.

There are recommendations for setting the maximum speed of the router based on the diameter of the bit. A nice chart with this information can be found at the Woodline website. If you were a CJWA member, you could get a discount on orders from Woodline. So why not sign up for a membership?