A few thoughts,
To help bring it more to the attention of people, and to provide a specific area for Ratters, is it worth dedicating a forum specifically to the Rat?
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Neil, there is a woodrat forum, dedicated to 'ratters, of which both me and ALF are members. It's is part of the
www.woodrat.com website. Previously it was hosted on msn_groups or yahoo_groups, most recently it was on communityzero. I don't consider this to be a "US" forum, just an international forum.
If you have a really specific Woodrat questions that'd be the place to start - or to point people to. I think on balance, my feeling is that this does not justify a forum on this website - after all neither tablesaws nor other equipment gets one. Also I like to read topics that drift away and into new directions.
I assume people will take up woodworking primarily as a result of watching of watching NYW and GBW.
Nope, not me, I have always been interested in WW since school. Never even heard, nor seen on TV a dado cutter till I heard everyone talking about it.
Gidon, I still post on both forums! :lol:
If you do a woodworking evening class, I doubt they will pull out a jig for dovetails, a jig for M&T's etc (well not in my case). For small pieces doing a few joints by hand isn't so bad. A couple of comments on this site have suggested that doing a dovetail by hand is some sort of holy grail. The joint may not be perfect and may need some wood dust / pva filler! But it's very satisfying.
I have done exactly this, hand cut dovetails on my evening class. They look very good, 8) however, I'm very slow, and for us who have weekends and evenings only, I still prefer to use the 'rat.
Which brings me nicely to the Woodrat. I'm still cautious about recommending a jig which supposedly does everything to people new to woodworking
Although I bought mine as a complete beginner, without any workshop, or even a workbench, I used to clamp it to a workmate, in the back garden on the lawn. I built a table or two and the garden gate!
There's another good reason to recommend the 'Rat to newbies; they have no preconceived ideas about how such-and-such a task is performed. The Woodrat really does ask you to approach everything from a fresh angle, and that can be hard if you're used to going with the received wisdom on how to do various tasks.
Basically, as a complete beginner, I decided to go out and find a way to achieve dovetails, I read the magazines, saw Godfreys awful demo, watched the CD, looked at some jigs, and bought a woodrat. I definately had no preconceived ideas on this subject, I just did some research. It may even have been Jester who answered my very
first question I think :roll:
Adam