In the previous Shop Mobility blog post, we discussed adding casters to your existing tool stands. Now let’s look at adding wheels to the shop carts, tools and cabinets you build in house.

In my shop I have an older drill press that is too tall to be used on a benchtop, and too short for a floor model, so I built a short cabinet for it some time back. The simple box cabinet below on the left has no feet or toe kick, so making it mobile is no more complicated than adding four wheels to the bottom. The drill press never sees any real lateral force being applied, so there is no need to worry too much about keeping it still as it is being used. Simple swivel casters with locks can be used effectively here.

Tools like your router table, on the other hand, do need to resist moving when being used. As you are feeding a board through, especially when using feather boards, the wheels need to hold it in place. In cases like this, I prefer to mount two fixed casters under one side, and have feet on the opposite end. This allows my router table to be lifted from one side and rolled around much like a hand truck. Lifting one side reduces the effort of lifting, but having solid feet on the floor resists moving during use. In these cases, I prefer to bolt the casters through the base since the weight will be acting on the casters at an angle when moving.

Typically, it is much better to design your shop built cabinet from the outset knowing how casters will be incorporated. This downdraft sanding center  I am building (above right) will need a wide stance so I added a base frame with the casters well outside the cabinet.  Chances are however, that you already have shop cabinets without them, and a purchased router table or the like that needs wheels. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to work with preexisting cabinets or boxes. Casters can be bought with mounting plates that can be screwed or bolted to a flat bottom. Others come with threaded studs for mounting. There are even caster brackets that provide a solid mounting point for boxes where the bottom is not flush with the sides.

Being able to quickly and easily move “stationary” tools out of the way, or rearrange your shop to suit a project will make the most of your shop space and let you spend more time working. Look for creative ways to make the shop tools you built go where you want them to.

Maybe you need to store your tools away when not working, or maybe being able to shift things around to suit the project at hand would be helpful. Whatever the reason, shop mobility is an option that most of us have given some thought. Whether you work in a large commercial shop, in a basement, or share your workspace with the family car, you have likely thought about having your tools on wheels. In the next few blogs, we will look at options for making your tools mobile using different types of casters and wheel sets.

Many tools, like my 14” band saw, come with floor stands. Making it mobile was quite easy using nothing more than a piece of plywood scrap and a set of inexpensive casters. It rolls out when I need to cut larger pieces, and parks back against the wall when finished. Building my pergola this summer, I was even able to roll it right out to the patio where I had all the room needed to shape the ends of 8’ beams.

My “lunchbox” planer was next to go mobile. I had it mounted on a stand that came off a cheap portable table saw. I liked the setup, but as a unit it was heavy and difficult to lift. Dragging it across the floor risked bending the sheet metal legs. Not wanting to use a big piece of ply, I half lapped a pair of stretchers out of plywood scraps and added a set of locking casters. Now the planer requires almost no effort to move to an aisle if I need to plane long pieces, and the casters lock in place while I am working. Of course, if you do not have an extra stand around, there are tool stands available that are set up to take casters.

Casters come in a wide variety of sizes, styles and attaching methods, and you will need to choose the right type. Some come with a flat plate for mounting and others with a threaded stem to bolt into existing holes. For tools, I recommend locking casters. (Photo: Caster Added) Most can be locked to keep the wheels from turning, but better quality ones lock not only the actual wheel, but also the swivel. This is very helpful when the tool requires some force to feed stock through it, like a band saw. Note the weight rating on the casters as well. Some tools weigh a lot, and you do not want a wheel failing and toppling your expensive tool onto the floor. Finally, remember when adding casters that you are raising the tool up. Set the wheels as far out to the corners as possible for added stability. On the planer, the casters are directly under the legs. Note on my band saw how the casters are actually wider apart than the legs of the factory stand.

Tools that already have legs and stands are pretty easy to add mobility to. In the next installment, we will look at options for putting wheels under your shop-built tools.

So far in this series we have looked at simple wood bending in thin stock or with kerf cuts, and forming bent wood parts through laminating thin strips together on a form. In this final installment, we will discuss steam bending wood. Steaming actually changes the cellular structure of wood to make it more pliable. As the wood cools and dries clamped to a form, it very quickly regains most of its original stiffness, but in the shape of the form.

Steaming wood for bending requires having some form of steam generator and a container to steam the wood in. Up until recently, this largely meant building your own, but now complete steam generators are available that you can add to a shop-built steam box.

Wood selection is very important for successful steam bending. Air dried lumber is much easier to bend than kiln dried. Kiln dried lumber can be used, but needs to steam longer. Soaking it water overnight also helps a great deal. Certain species of wood bend much easier than others as well. Essentially, the more open the grain, the easier it steams which makes sense as the steam can penetrate the open pores more easily. Of common woods, white oak is best, followed by red oak and beech. You can find an excellent write up on steam bending basics here, and there are many good books and DVDs on the subject available as well.

Stock preparation for bending is no different than any other woodworking project. Your parts should be planed to thickness and ripped to width. Generally, it is difficult to figure exact length around curves, so crosscut parts long to be trimmed after bending. The parts are placed in the steam box insuring that there is space between them for the steam to circulate, then the steam generator is turned on. On average, you want to steam for one hour for each inch of thickness. I found that with kiln dried wood, and since it was cold outside my shop (you do not really want to have steam and water inside with your tools) I let the system run for about an hour to get everything fully warmed, then refilled the water tank and steamed the parts for an hour.

As you would expect, very thin parts, like the pieces that form the embroidery hoop, soften pretty quickly and thicker parts will take more time. Make sure that you have everything ready before removing the parts from the steam box. They will cool very quickly, so have all your clamps at hand. Parts that are ready to bend will be very hot and wet! Gloves are a necessity. Get the parts right to the form and force them into position quickly. Add clamps as needed to hold the wood tight to the form. They need to remain held in position to fully cool and dry, overnight at least.

As with other laminate bending, there will be some “spring back” when the parts are unclamped. Note how the form for the carry all handle over bends the part by 10 degrees on each side. When released, the handle sprang back to a nearly perfect 90 degrees on each side, but over a couple days opened up a bit more. The embroidery hoops spring back even more, but the inner hoop will be joined into a closed part and the outer hoop will get hardware to make it into a clamp, so this is less of a concern.

Obviously, a blog is not the best place to learn all there is to know about bending wood, but we hope that this series has given you ideas and inspiration to try using wood forming techniques to enhance your projects. Learning more through reading and practice can open up a lot of new possibilities for your woodworking enjoyment.

We started this wood bending series exploring simple and kerf bending. In this edition, we look at forming wood parts using thin laminates. As we all know, the thinner the part, the easier it will conform to a curve. Lamination is the process of bending many thin parts together and holding them in the desired shape until the glue between them dries. Once dry, the resulting part will pretty much hold its shape forever. There are two basic ways to clamp the parts while the glue dries; using physical clamps or a vacuum press, and we will look at both methods.

The obvious first step is to prepare the laminations. For this demo, I used a thin rip jig and zero clearance throat plate to cut a number of thin strips for bending. The thickness of the parts is largely determined by your bend. Shallow curves can be made up of fewer, thicker laminations, while tighter curves need more thin laminations. Once the parts are formed, changing the overall thickness will be very difficult, so take the time to figure out the number and thickness of strips needed to make up your part. If you have a drum sander, getting strips resized is pretty easy, but cutting them to the right dimension on the saw is faster.

Once you have the stack ready for bending, you need some sort of form to hold them in shape while the glue dries. Whether using clamps or a vacuum press, your form needs to be pretty strong. A lot of force will be exerted to hold the parts and you do not want your form to fail in the middle of the glue up. When possible, I prefer my forms to be solid wood. Being solid pretty much eliminates the chance of having a form fail. When the form needs to be larger, it can be built up.

A note on form design here: when you unclamp your dried part, it is going to “spring back” a little bit from the stresses in the bent wood. You may need to over-bend your parts to account for this. There is no formula. A few thick laminations will tend to spring more than many thin pieces. With experience you will get the feel for this, but keep it in mind as you work with your first bent parts. Make the radius of your form just an eighth inch or so smaller than you want to final part to be.

The laminate parts need glue between each layer, and to be clamped to the form before the glue dries. If you are using yellow glue, this does not leave a lot of time. I have found that a mix of 1 part water to 4 parts glue spreads quick, leaves a thinner glue layer which squeezes out less, and gives more open time, all without risking the glue bond.

For this curved apron, I used a form built up from two plywood faces with blocking in between. Clamp the strips to your form in the center and work out to the ends, keeping the work tight to the form. Have lots of clamps on hand, you won’t have a lot of working time after gluing all the pieces. Having the form open in the center allows the clamps to stay perpendicular to the arc. Let the parts set over night.

A solid form was used for vacuum clamping this small part. Clamping in a vacuum press applies a surprising amount of pressure evenly across the entire part. When set up right, there will be no gaps in the lamination. With vacuum clamping your form needs to be exceptionally strong or it is likely to crush and ruin your glue up. Vacuum clamping is especially useful for wide parts like curved doors where it is difficult to properly clamp in the center of the part. Many lumber suppliers will sell pretty wide stock already cut into thin pieces that are meant for laminating.

Clamping up simple, fairly shallow curves is a great way to start out and adds a whole new dimension to your woodworking. So far, we have been working with simple forms, but two-part forms can be useful as well.

If you do not have lots of clamps in your shop, a two sided form can effectively clamp up a laminated stack using only a few bar clamps. Two part forms are also essential when your laminated part needs reversing curves.  This formed handle has very tight bends that reverse in a short space. The only effective way to clamp this part up is to apply a lot of pressure all along both faces.

Making the form is not difficult, but it is more than just cutting a block into two parts. The faces of the forms do not match each other, but rather the final shape of the part. The first curve is laid out and cut. Once that is correct, the second cut is laid out 3/4 of an inch offset from the first line to account for the part thickness. The glued up stack will go into the form mostly straight and be forced into shape, so I waxed the faces of the forms to allow the strips to slide into shape more easily. The strips can also be soaked in water to make them a bit more pliable and reduce the chance of cracking.

This is a pretty extreme bend, in fact the first attempt did not work and I had to make the curves a bit more shallow to form it properly. The forms look oversized for a small part, but the clamping pressure was enormous. The strength of the forms made it possible to apply the pressure with two clamps without them breaking.

The methods of bending we have explored in this series so far add a lot of new capability to your woodworking. But there are limitations. In the next installment, we will look at steam bending. Heat and steam actually change the physical structure of the wood, making it flexible, so thick parts can be bent for some very interesting possibilities.

Nature hates straight lines, and as woodworkers we spend a huge amount of time and effort in making things straight. But curves can and should be a large part of your woodworking. There are several methods for forming wood into curves, and the next few blog posts will explore these techniques. We will be looking at simple force bending, kerf bending, lamination and steam bending.

The most basic method is to simply manually bend the wood and attach it to a solid piece to hold the shape. Banding the edge of a curved piece of ply is an excellent example. If the curve is not too tight, and the stick relatively thin, this is easy. It stands to reason that the tighter the curve to be edged, the thinner the stick needs to be to conform to the curve. Veneer can follow a very tight curve, while a 3/4 inch thick piece of oak cannot be flexed much at all. Typically, the part is held to the curve with glue only since piercing the wood with a nail or screw would tend to break it under the bending stress. A good rule of thumb is that if the part can be formed by hand, then a good glue joint should hold it perfectly well. Glue up the mating surfaces and clamp the parts together. To avoid gaps, start clamping from the center and work outward, or from one end to the other. This allows you to work gaps out as you go.

Kerf bending is the process of cutting a number of slots into a piece of material that allow it to bend. Essentially, by kerfing the part, you are making it thinner, so it can be flexed to follow a curve. While this method is not very strong, it does allow for easy forming of wide or tall parts.

Nearly any saw can be used for kerfing. Here I used the table saw, but for very long parts, a radial arm saw is ideal. A circular saw or even a handsaw can do the job too. The trick is to cut most of the way through the material to allow it to bend, but not so much that it becomes too fragile. Keep the kerfs close together and regularly spaced so that the bend is smooth and regular with no flat spots. I have even seen small moldings that were hand kerfed with a fine saw used as trim on antique doors.

Kerfing allows for bending all sorts of thicknesses of stock, and is especially useful for bending plywood. Note here how I kerfed just the areas that were going to be curved, leaving the flat areas to be attached conventionally.

Stair builders often use this technique for the large "bullnosed" bottom stair on a fancy staircase. Getting the right depth and spacing can be a bit tricky at first, so practice your technique with some scrap material before committing to kerfing your actual parts.

If you do not want to go through the effort of kerfing your own stock, you can purchase kerfed panels that can be cut to size and wrapped around a form. This option is excellent for decorative columns and such. Rockler sells 1/4 inch thick Neatform sheets for this purpose, and large lumber suppliers typically have 4x8 sheets available of various pre-kerfed materials. Kerfed plywood or MDF faces can be painted or veneered to achieve the final look your project demands.

Practice these bending techniques to get a feel for how they work and might fit into future projects. In the next blog, we will look at laminating thin sheets into permanent curves.

This dust collection blog series from Rockler started with ideas for hooking up your shop vacuum to your portable power tools and has worked up to connecting multi-horsepower collection to your stationary tools. I hope you have found it useful. For the final post in this series, we want to try and tie all the information together, and point you in the right direction should you need more information.

As you well know, dust and chips can get in the way of accurate work and nowhere is this more true than at the router table. Chips swirling around the cutter create excess heat and can build up along the fence forcing your part away from the cutter. A router table typically needs collection behind the cutter and under the throat plate. Sharp eyed readers of the last column may have spotted Rockler’s Router Table Dual Port on my system (above right). It allows for one 4” connection to serve both locations at the router table and works with the Dust Right Quick Connect System.

We have talked about many products that connect various tools to your dust system, but sometimes there is no good way to capture the mess at the source. For that, a bench top dust scoop positioned nearby may be the right answer. A big square funnel made of high impact plastic, the dust scoop can be quickly set up near your mess. The suction will capture a lot of the airborne dust, and it is a convenient place to sweep the mess off the bench! I have used them at the drill press, behind my chop saw, and even clamped onto my jointer while preparing a big stock run.

As you saw in my last post, my shop uses a 1 hp dust collector that I can connect quickly to whichever machine I happen to be using. But if you have a stationary collector, it is pretty easy to run some pipes and hook all of your tools up at once. Joints, junctions, blast gates and even through the wall fittings are available! Rockler’s website has an excellent selection of all things dust collection, where you can find all the parts and pieces we have been discussing.

Keeping the dust under control will make your shop safer, make your work more pleasant and accurate, extend the life of your tools, and let you spend more time working and less time cleaning up. It does not have to be a major project or cost a fortune, but whatever you spend will be well worth it.

We have been discussing dust collection for the last few posts, concentrating on shop vacuums as the collector. While these can be highly effective for hand held tools and even many stationary power tools, many home shops have dedicated dust collectors that typically use a 4'' diameter hose.

Many woodworking articles and several books have been written comparing these units and discussing how an entire shop can be piped to effectively connect all your tools. But in many home woodshops like mine, most of the tools are mobile. Fixed pipe-work does not really fit and is an expense that can be better spent on additional tools. This blog post will be looking at accessories and options that make it fast and easy to move your existing dust collection from machine to machine as needed.

My 1 HP dust collector is centrally located in my shop and can be rolled around, but with a flexible 10 foot hose, I rarely need to move it more than a few feet. (Photo: Shop Set Up) I used to simply slide the hose off one machine and onto another as needed. But the “4 Inch” outlets on my various tools are not all exactly the same dimension. So I had to tighten and loosen the hose clamp with each swap, or let it sit loose on some machines and lose some of the vacuum efficiency.

Rockler’s Dust Right system is a great accessory to solve this problem. Adapters are added to each machine’s dust port making them all the same. A combination handle/port attaches to the flexible hose from my DC. It slips snugly on and off the adapters, no tools needed. It now takes only seconds to switch from machine to machine with no loss of vacuum. And Rockler’s Router Table Dual Port works with the system as well, providing collection in the cabinet and at the fence.

So look into the 4'' dust collection accessories that are available and spend less time swapping around and more time making treasures. Next post I’ll be looking at some other 4'' accessories for keeping the mess under control.

What's the best way to improve your woodworking skills? Practice, of course! But if you're ready to make a quantum leap, there's no better way than taking a class at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. It's not only one of the nation's top woodworking schools, but also enjoys an especially picturesque location in the coastal town of Rockport, Maine.

The Center's schedule offers 27 one- and two-week summer workshops in furniture making and design, turning, carving, and finishing for all skill levels. Courses are taught by a virtual who's who of outstanding professional woodworkers from across the nation and around the world. Still ahead this summer are courses in basic woodworking with Peter Korn, carving with Chris Pye, a hand tools skill-builder with Garrett Hack, finishing with Teri Masaschi, and much more.

If a summer workshop leaves you anxious to dive in deeper, you can always head back for a Twelve-week Intensive in furniture making beginning in October. The Intensive is geared toward individuals considering furniture making as a profession, as well as those on sabbatical from their present career or simply pursuing woodworking as a life-enhancing skill.

For more information and to see the full schedule, visit the Center's website at www.woodschool.org, or contact them directly at 207-594-5611 or cfc@woodschool.org. Woodworking with experts, famously delicious sea creatures and some of the country's most beautiful surroundings - what beats that?

Most of us have a wet/dry vacuum cleaner in the shop, and they typically have a 2-1/2" diameter hose. So why is it that manufacturers virtually NEVER make a simple way to connect their tools to the hose of our vacuums? It seems that every brand has their own size vacuum port, and none fit a 2-1/2" hose. Rockler's new 2-1/2 to 3/4" Rubber Hose Adaptor bridges the gap between your vacuum and your tool's dust port.

Made of durable rubber, it is molded in steps to fit a wide range of dust port openings. Simply cut the adaptor to the proper opening and slip it on. Adding direct vacuum to my belt sander made a surprising difference in the mess left behind. And the results were just as good when I connected the vacuum up to my random orbit sander to finish sand the same part.

Whisking away this dust as you sand not only makes the work more pleasant and safe for your lungs, your shop stays cleaner so you'll spend less time sweeping up. Your tools will last longer without all the dust building up inside, ruining bearings and electronics. And going a step beyond simply hooking a vacuum up to your power tools, Rockler now offers a slew of new accessories for turning your wet/dry vacuum into a 2-1/2" dust collection system.

Adding a clear ten foot, 2-1/2" diameter hose gives me more reach and better control when working around the shop, especially up on benches. I've always figured that there was no good way to contain the chips flying from my router, but at least for edge routing, there is now. The Edge Routing Dust Port is surprisingly effective when working on the outside of a part. It even swivels to keep mostly out of the way around curves. And there is even a dust hood for the Dovetail Jig.

If you have not done it yet, especially if you work in your basement or attached garage, do try hooking up your portable power tools to your vacuum. You'll be amazed at how much cleaner your work will be, and your family will thank you as well.

In the next post, we'll look at getting dust collection to your stationary tools as well.

This is Woodworking Safety Week, and while we here at the Buzzsaw Blog are all about using push sticks, safety glasses and hearing protection, we want you to think outside the box a bit when it comes to being safe when in your shop. As woodworkers you put a lot of time and care into the parts you are fabricating, but we want you to consider the stuff you leave behind!

Everyone is aware that woodworking is more pleasant when they are not covered in sawdust, and that dust in the nose, lungs and throat are not good even without wood allergies, but good dust collection enhances shop safety beyond what may be obvious.

Slipping on dust or shavings on the floor while running a router is a recipe for disaster. Seemingly harmless bits of sawdust built up between a board and the rip fence on your table saw can lead to kickback. And dust built up inside and around motors can cause overheating and even fires. In every measure, having good dust collection set up makes working safer, more accurate, easier and more pleasant.

Setting up proper dust collection in a shop used to require purchasing pipe and fittings from an industrial supplier or cobbling a shop-built system out of sewer pipe and plumbing fittings. But with the rise in woodworking as a hobby, there is now a huge array of DC options for the home woodworker.  So to kick off Woodworking Safety Week, we are presenting a series on Dust Collection in the Home Shop, with the help of guest blogger Ralph Bagnall.

Over the next few weeks, Ralph will be looking at parts and accessories that make dust collection easier. We will explore options for both standard dust collectors (those with 4" or larger diameter hoses) and how your existing shop vacuum cleaner (2 1/2" hoses) can be fitted to your tools to help keep your shop clean, pleasant and SAFE. As you follow along, please feel free to tell us about the DC solutions in your shop as well.