Recent content by grainoftruth

Thanks guys, Decision time tomorrow and I'll let you know what I do - right now I'm going to sleep on it. Cheers Steve

Thanks Rod, I have thought about making my own but I seem forever to be making something to for the toolkit/shed rather than getting on with projects for the house or just pleasure. I work full time so have limited time and am tempted to buy just so that I can get on. You pays your money...

:?: I am in a quandary as to what it is worth investing in a router table set up. I am a hobby woodworker and need a flexible set of kit. Here's my thinking and confusion so far: Having got to the desperate stage of needing to rout some long edge details to finish a project I turned to ebay...

Mike, I'm impressed. I used to live in a victorian house with sliding sash windows and never had any condensation problems at at all - that was down to natural ventilation and the background heat in the house etc. Reinforces your point. I now live in the Chilterns and my house, garage and shed...

Mike, Your right if you put some heating in the workshop, as you suggest, but without that the insulation is a waste of time. As to ventilation, I agree with ventilation generally but it won't stop condensation, it will onlt speed up how quickly the condensation evaporates as soon as the air...

Sorry, bit of a long answer but it is saving me from X Factor so the pleasure is all mine. It's all to do with humidity and temperature. Basically air contains water in the form of vapour, the warmer the air the greater capacity it has to hold water. Unfortunately the same is true in reverse; as...

Many thanks for these replies. Drilling from both sides seems obvious as soon as you say it, I think I'll give that a try. Thanks for the offer Big soft moose - I'm in Great Missenden and if I don't get on any better next weekend I just might take you up on that. I'd like to do it myself if I...

Hi, I'm building a heavy duty workbench, the 4 legs are 135 x 76mm softwood (some spare nice wood I already had) and my plan is to mortice and tenon the lower rails through the legs for rigidity. I need mortices through the 135mm thickness (tenons are planned at 25 x 80mm). So, I've been testing...

Good stuff, thanks guys. I had read the Good Woodworking article, but it didn't seem to cover the movement point I was worried about. Good article though. I think using no glue must be the answer. My cupboard doors are definitely glued and they move quite badly. I can see that my full sized...

I'm a surveyor before I'm a woodworker so this is an interesting one for me. I'm not familiar with French law and this sounds like odd construction detailing even by their standards. If I understand you correctly, there is only 100mm between a solid sub-floor (earth?) and the flooring. If this...

I'm planning to make some oak ledged and braced doors for my home and am looking for a bit of advice. I have a few doors already, they were made by a joinery company and are close to perfect - they look great and remain perfectly true from season to season. What puzzles me is that I know the...

Hi, I recently bought a Record BS300 on Ebay. It looked to be in near perfect condition and I bought a selection of blades. I've had the devil's own job though, getting the correct tension into a 3/8" blade and reading several posts on this site I gathered that was normal. Last weekend I gave...

Thanks Olly, 90% will be up to 3" thick so 1/2" 4 tpi is sounding like the ticket, I have the odd piece up to 6" that I'll need to cut - I guess I can just do this more slowly and carefully though. Is it worth the investment in expensive makes of blade or is it just as good to pay buttons on...

Hi, I got my first band saw at the weekend, a Record BS300 about 18 months old from Ebay. It seems to be in very good working order but the blade is 1/4" and with very fine teeth and this doesn't seem awfully well suited to cutting down air dried oak for various furniture sections. I've read...

Some really interesting stuff here then. I'm going to cut the two larger tops in half again as both have split, but I'll leave them inside for another week before I plane up the joint faces. I will try and rout out the old plywood cross tongues and put new ones back; if that doesn't work I'll...