The Hub

I've been building up my "2 car garage shop" for about 10 years preparing for retirement from health care. This spring I finally quit punching the time clock. Over the same time I've build 13 mandolins and 4 guitars. Now I pretty much have all my tools in place and enough wood stored to build for quite some time. My work benches are built with a heavy door for a top and base cabinets I scavenged from work. Lately I have toyed with the i…

Like many of us, I work in a small space - a quarter basement with maybe 6 -1/2 feet of headroom. Sawdust is a problem. There’s no room for an extensive ductwork system or a blower setup. My shop tools (bandsaw, drill press, vertical belt sander, etc.) have a 1-1/2 inch connection for vacuum, but I have mostly been too lazy to use them. (note that I finally added a portable shop air cleaner with HEPA filters). When the most recent Wo…

I think this could be of use for our messy drawers: https://www.tooltrace.ai As seen here:

I'm looking for the name for the door curtain material that is heavy, thick, and clear. I've seen it in old industrial shops and high school wood shop circa 1970s. It can be seen in the Frank Frank Tour of Gryphon in the doorway to the tool room. My search terms don't seem effective. Tom

Dear looth community/colleagues around the world, During 2023/24 I have developed a digital gauge to measure so-called longitudinal twist of (bass) guitar necks: the LTwist® gauge. Just to be clear, this is about the "cork screw" type of deviation along the length of a neck, not the bow of a neck. I think there is no need to explain how a too severe neck twist can make it difficult or even impossible to set up a stringed instrument (guita…

Just wanted to say I bought a chisel through Hyperkitten Tool Company and it went great. It's very old school, ordering and shipping are not a fast process, but if Josh has a tool that piques your interest I highly recommend it. I picked up this long boi paring chisel from the mid to late 1800s and I'm quite happy. https://hyperkitten.com/

Should a CNC be able to cut a perfect looking circle? I'm trying to make solid wood rosette rings. I made the tool path a profile cut. The top and bottom of both Y positions come out uneven in width than the rest of the ring. I've tried slowing down the feed and plunge rate, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I have an old second generation Nextwave CNC shark and use Aspire for CAD and CAM. Linear cuts seem to be accurat…