captain_aggravated

captain_aggravated , 6 hours ago

Not much can top the 3DFX VooDoo graphics card boxes.

captain_aggravated , 3 hours ago

I think you're going to have to use trademarks for this.

Start a non-profit group promoting queer community rights, create a trademarkable logo (maybe a rainbow flag could be used, or you might need more unique symbology) and then you can license that logo only to companies that do actually support the cause.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Having spent my life around cats I struggle to get used to the round pupils on dogs. I'm used to slit pupils on quadrupeds.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

I've thought for a long time dogs only think in punctuation.

"Whose a good boy?"

"????????????"

"You're a good boy!"

"!!!!!!!!!!!"

This dog has interrobangs and semi-colons in his head.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

/home with some exceptions.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Kill the radars. If you haven't killed the radar sites, the Rapier SAM sites are faster to detect, track and fire on you.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Let me know how it turns out.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

With Mel Brooks himself producing, there is any chance whatsoever. He's almost old enough to run for senate so I don't know how active he's going to be, and, well...he's got a 20th century sense of humor.

I mean yeah yeah Blazing Saddles has a lot of racism in it because the thesis statement is "This is what racism looks like. It's pretty dumb, huh?" But go watch History of the World Part 1 again. It's funny but you'll involuntarily say "holy shit" a few times.

Spaceballs specifically...it was largely a parody of the first two Star Wars movies. It came out after Return of the Jedi but I'm struggling to think of anything referenced from that movie. And Star Wars was a PHENOMENON in the 80's, it had the culture's attention. Star Wars is of waning popularity right now because Disney ran the wheels off of it. Do you attempt to pick up where Spaceballs left off, or do you attempt to parody modern Star Wars?

And, is Hollywood at large capable of making a comedy movie anymore? They haven't done it in 25 years since the release of Galaxy Quest. Can modern actors deliver an actual goddamn joke that isn't just a pop culture reference?

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Welcome to the community! I'm gratified and flattered that my project sent you over here, so I'll try to point you to some good resources.

Information/How-To

As others have said, your local library likely has an entire shelf of woodworking books, that's definitely worth checking out.

Youtube is a great resource here. There are lots of great woodworkers of all stripes posting useful and fun videos. Some excellent channels include:

• The New Yankee Workshop. The classic PBS TV show starring Norm Abram is being officially uploaded to Youtube.

• Stumpy Nubs. A tool tips sort of channel that offers quite a bit of practical advice.

• 3x3 Custom. The host, Tamar, tends to post project vlogs, things like "here's how I built this bed frame."

• Wood By Wright How To. One of them hand tool purists who relies almost entirely on hand powered saws, planes, chisels and files to build his projects, occasionally allowing himself to use a modern power drill. He has a fun dad-joke style sense of humor and a lot of great videos on technique.

• Woodshop Companion. Craftsman Nick Engler, author of many woodworking books, shares fun and practical tool techniques and projects.

Among many more, those are just some of my favorites.

Another great place for woodworking information is your local makerspace. Makerspaces come in all shapes and sizes, I was a member of one with a very complete wood shop, along with a membership full of craftsmen of all stripes who were excited to talk about their work.

Finally, of course, there's this Lemmy community and its members.

Tools

You would be amazed what you can get done with a good hand saw, a few chisels, a block plane and a file or two. Though it can also be a pleasure to work with a garage full of power tools. Which way you go is up to you.

You can of course go spend a few grand down the tool aisle of your local home center, but that kind of outlay can be a bit much if you're just starting out and aren't sure if woodworking is for you or which direction you want to take your new hobby. Markerspaces/friends who are also into woodworking are again great resources here. You can find pretty good deals on tools at garage sales, estate sales, pawn shops, swap meets, thrift stores, hell your local library may have tools you can borrow.

Some of my tools I bought at Lowe's, some of them I bought on Amazon, some of them have been in my family for generations, some of them I made myself.

The first thing I want you to put in your cart when you go shopping though is a good pair of safety glasses, and some hearing protection for power tools. If you've still got those cloth masks everyone had during the pandemic, I find those can be nice when sanding or otherwise creating a lot of dust.

Wood

Some folks break down pallets to get wood. Some folks buy 2x4s from the big box store and chop those up. An aisle or two over from the construction lumber you'll find "project boards" which are a little better, but still not wonderful. I don't want to steer you away from these sources of wood, because newcomers are often more willing to take chances, make mistakes and get messy with lumber like this, and the lessons you'll learn the hard way from barely dried yellow pine are hard to teach otherwise.

You'll want to find a proper lumber yard or sawmill in your area. It can be intimidating to walk into what seems like this huge, professional B2B operation and ask for three boards but they usually love to help. They usually stock wood that is rough cut with the idea that you're going to surface it yourself, but for a fee they'll surface it for you so you don't have to invest in those tools or learn those techniques as you just get started.

It can be really intimidating to learn about all the different species of wood and their characteristics, but start with a few, learn to compare and contrast them, and then go from there. Pro tip: there is a type of maple that takes on these grey streaks that some people think are unsightly, so it's sold for shockingly cheap as "paint-grade maple" or some such. This stuff is very nice to work with, a lot better than construction lumber, and very affordable.

Starter projects

You may have an idea for what you want to build, but if you're thinking "I want to build [thing] but that feels complicated, what are some more beginner friendly projects to get me started?" here are a few ideas:

Repair or restore existing furniture. Find a crappy old dresser at a thrift store, clean it up, fix it up. Great project for learning about stain and finish, to practice sanding techniques etc.

Bookshelves. A lot of my earlier projects were bookshelves made of plywood. A great project for practicing with the table saw.

Cutting boards or coasters. Great projects for practicing jointing and panel glue-ups.

Work benches, jigs and tools. You can buy a workbench but it's probably good practice to build one. You'll need lots of jigs and fixtures that you can make yourself better than you can buy; I would never buy a taper jig, for example.

Keep in touch, let us know how you're coming along. I hope you have lots of fun.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

It's not that difficult to find plans available either for free or for sale on the internet, though I have yet to build a furniture project straight from plans. I'll usually come up with something I want to build, and I'll look at pictures, watch build videos, maybe find plans, and then I'll design my own version in FreeCAD.

I tend to start in the spreadsheet workbench and list things like stock dimensions, pertinent detail dimensions and such, derive certain dimensions, I like to keep as much math in the spreadsheet as possible, and then I use the sketch > Part Design workflow to create the parts and the A2Plus workbench to assemble them. Creating a 3D model is often a sanity check to make sure all the parts fit together, I sometimes don't bother to model all parts or I'll only do half of a symmetrical assembly. I used to make drawings to print with the TechDraw workbench but for my purposes in the shop I stopped doing this as I would just work from the spreadsheet. If I was sharing my plans with others I would make more careful drawings.

This of course allows you to tailor the work to your space and you.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Yeah I would recommend a regular, good quality, Skil pattern circular saw over a track saw (which I believe is what you mean by "plunge saw") as a first tool along with a decent straight edge clamp.

Track saws increasingly come with things like riving knives, anti-kickback features etc. but a beginner is unlikely to start with large slabs of lumber but rather plywood, which is less likely to pinch in the kerf and cause kickbacks. And in the event that "woodworking is not for me" a circ saw is perfectly viable for carpentry tasks as well.

I do suggest avoiding anything that purports to turn a regular circ saw into a track saw. Just learn how to run the foot against a straight edge.

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

Nothing against track saws at all, they're excellent tools. My point is, if I had no tools, and I was going to buy one powered wood saw, it would be an ordinary circular saw.

For instance, what's it like cross-cutting a 2x4 with a track saw?

captain_aggravated , 1 day ago

As another comment mentiones together with a mitre saw and some jigs i think you could replace a table saw functionally, but its probably not the most efficient way of doing some things.

With a track saw and a miter saw, I think you can say "I can crosscut, miter and rip." But I don't think you come close to matching the capability of a table saw.

I think a track saw really comes into its own when handling large panels or slabs. If you hand me one of those 2 inch thick slabs you're making one of those trendy river tables out of and tell me to cut the live edge off of it and square it up, I'm not going to even try that with my table saw. Same with cutting some arbitrary diagonal line across a sheet of plywood.

Your average sliding compound miter saw is quite convenient but I don't think as good as a table saw for crosscuts, miters, bevels or compound miters. Now mind you as a carpenter I'd happily show up to build a house with my miter saw and a normal circ saw and leave the table saw at home, but for woodworking I want extra accuracy and precision that I can get from a table saw and a good miter gauge or sled.

Things I think you would struggle to get done with only a miter saw and a track saw (or: why you're probably going to get a table saw)

• Ripping boards narrower than about 8 inches

• Resawing

• Non-through cuts such as grooves, dados, rabbets and tenons

• Multi-purpose jigs such as taper jigs, sleds, tenoning jigs, panel cutters and the like. Try tapering table legs with a track saw. Actually don't.

• Job specific jigs and fixtures are possible but less useful.

• Coving. If you haven't seen this done go check out a video of someone cutting a cove with a table saw. It's a hoot.

Not to mention that table saws are just more practical to set up for repeated operations/batch work

captain_aggravated OP , 3 days ago

Thanks!

captain_aggravated OP , 3 days ago

We'll see how well my joinery holds up. This is actually the first project I've successfully built with f'real tenons.

Oak is rapidly becoming a favorite material of mine.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

See that little rectangle sitting on the near corner? That's a coaster made of pine, walnut and maple.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

Wait checks blueprints shit you're right I read this in inches and it's laid out in feet. I'll find something to use it for though.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

Thinking of getting into woodworking?

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

Tell ya what I'll catch you over there.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

I did most of the joinery on a router table with some help from the table saw and a bit of hand finessing with chisels.

All but two of the mortises are routed. A 3/8" up-cut spiral "end mill" bit in the router, set the fence the shoulder thickness plus the reveal away, mark the extent of the bit on some tape on the table, mark where you want the mortise to stop and start on the work, plunge in, run a groove, then either stop the router and wait for it to stop or plunge out. These were 3/4" deep so I did them in two passes. This leaves a slot with rounded ends which I squared with a chisel by hand.

You see the I-shaped brace? The two mortises in the middle of the short braces I did a more traditional way, drilling out some of the stock with my drill press and then chopped the rest out with a chisel.

All of the tenons were made with the router table and the table saw. I've tried and failed before to form tenons with my dado set in the table saw, ie "cut two rabbets" because I can't seem to get the precision I need from the table saw's depth setting. So what I did was mill the stock with my thickness planer very carefully to precisely 3/4" thick and crosscut them using a stop on my table saw's miter gauge so opposite pairs were exactly identical, used the fence and the miter gauge together to make precise shoulder cuts (this is not a through cut, no off-cut was left trapped between the blade and the fence so this is safe, but if it sketches you out you can use a stop block or a sled) then I set up the router table basically for rabbeting with a straight bit, if that makes sense. The two wings of the fence opened with the bit set almost but not quite 3/4" high and protruding 3/16" out of the fence. I then ran the stock vertically against the fence to make the cheek cuts. Two 3/16" cuts took a total of 3/8" out of the thickness leaving a 3/8" tenon that fit snugly into the mortises. To make the side cuts I did a couple of them with a dovetail saw, got bored and then used the sled on my table saw to put them through the blade vertically. A little bit of cleanup with chisels, a hand scraper and some sandpaper and the dry test fit was surprisingly sturdy.

The top panel is held on with metal Z clips that slip into a groove in the aprons cut with a table saw and then they screw into the top, otherwise it's just a flat panel.

captain_aggravated OP , 2 days ago

!woodworking Welcome to the community!

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Well first of all it's quite attractive when finished, I really like the figure of the grain and the medullary rays are particularly attractive in white oak.

It's a multifunctional wood, it's well rot and bug resistant so when finished correctly it holds up well outdoors, it's hard and durable enough to use as tabletops or other surfaces that get a lot of wear, and especially when quarter sawn it's quite stable.

It's not as blade meltingly hard as maple or hickory and not as gooey and resinous as pine. I quite like how it smells as you cut it, reminds me a lot of bourbon (in fact white oak is why bourbon smells the way it does). The grain is large but straight and even, there aren't many surprises halfway through a cut where you suddenly hit something dense. It is definitely a hard wood but it's not too tough on tools.

It finishes beautifully; Freshly sanded it's pale tan with a slight pink cast to it but it takes on a very nice gold when oiled or varnished and the medullary rays form fascinating patterns.

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

That sounds like it takes some real craftsmanship and a lot of patience.

That actually means a lot to me. I'll admit that impatience is a significant personal flaw of mine. I'm quick to jump down my own throat at a setback. Someone looking at my work and saying "wow that must have taken a lot of patience" wasn't something I was ready to hear.

As for having space for a shop, behold:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/dbc7b5b7-9d81-49d1-95b2-cc3301c9b638.jpeg

The 10x12 foot garden shed into which I have crammed a nearly complete furniture shop. The table saw and the planer/jointer cart have to go outside to really use them, and I've got absolutely nowhere to put a band saw or a lathe. It would be quite a luxury to have a table saw I don't have to unfold before working. And my little shop is positively cavernous compared to some I've seen. Carve out a little space and pick something out to make.

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

Oak is the second most abundant wood in my area after yellow pine. My uncle's got an oak log that fell in a storm I need to haul down to the sawmill.

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

That's Minwax's Helmsman semi-gloss spar urethane, thinned 60/40 with paint thinner and wiped on with rags cut from an old T-shirt, 4 coats, 8 hours in between, buffing each coat with a little chunk of paper grocery bag in lieu of high grit sandpaper. Learned how from this guy: https://www.youtube.com/@paulsDIYsolutions

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

Mine are birch plywood or worse. The shelves in my bathroom linen closet I shit ye not are half inch OSB. Maybe someday I'll redo those.

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

That sounds excellent! Be sure to post it here when complete.

captain_aggravated OP , 1 day ago

The above shed was built by my father when I was a zygote. I was born just before it was complete. He made himself a little wood shop and built a few pieces of furniture into the early 90's, then life kinda happened and nature kind of took it. You may notice in the picture some of the 2x4s look a lot newer than others. We heavily remodeled it a couple years ago into what you see today, took it down to the studs, cleaned it up, Tyvek, siding, roof sheathing, and shingles. It was that year's major project.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

I actively try not to.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

I own a diamond wheel for my dremel that will eventually gum its way through titanium.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

Fine I won't help.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

Depends on whose wang it is.

captain_aggravated , 4 days ago

She was killed in a traffic accident senior year.

captain_aggravated , 4 days ago

the vast majority of skincare products.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

The best treatment you can put through a gasoline engine is ethanol-free gasoline.

captain_aggravated , 3 days ago

Sample size of one here, but my skincare regimen consists of bar soap and water, and I appear to have healthier skin than people I know who have sinks and bathtubs FULL of plastic bottles and squeeze tubes of gunk that promises the cleaning power of [noun] or the moisturizing action of [noun].

I'm also pretty convinced that the special face washes they make for pizza faced teenagers are, at best, normal soap and/or detergent and have no special teenage hormone zit fighting powers.

Soap is a degreaser, lotion is a regreaser, sunscreen is a regreaser that has something in it that's opaque to UV, and anything that says it's got Vitamin Q and the moisturizing power of pumpkin spice is probably gunk, perfume and marketing.

captain_aggravated , 5 days ago

Cats are very routine oriented and have shockingly good senses of timing.

captain_aggravated , 7 days ago

Can anyone show me the most recent political debate that had a winner or a loser? Because that's obviously not how any of this works.

captain_aggravated , 6 days ago

I would not describe bagels as "dry."

captain_aggravated OP , 8 days ago

The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing were one of those sects of mutant Christianity that happen all the time in the United States, they were nicknamed "Shakers" because let's be real nobody's going to actually call them The Organization Of The United Brotherhood Of Jesus' Best Friends Forever And Ever Society...and because their worship services involved jumping up and dancing. To quote a Crash Test Dummies song, "And when they went to their church, they shook and lurched all over the church floor." This is also how the Quakers got their name. Yes, as in the oat mascot.

They believed in separating themselves from society, they took some passage in the bible that says something like "of man and woman was He" to mean God was both gendered and thus they had both men and women in positions of leadership in the church, though they did pretty strictly conform to gender norms in the workplace; women worked indoors cooking, doing laundry, practicing crafts etc, men worked the fields and workshops. They were so celibate that men and women weren't even allowed to use the same staircase, which is largely why this comment is written in the past tense.

They're a bit like the Amish in that they associated simplicity with piety, though they weren't deliberately retro, there were many notable Shaker inventors, along with artists and musicians. The song "Simple Gifts" was composed by a shaker. They also strongly agreed with the statement "Idle hands are the devil's playthings" and so they were all about hard work and craftsmanship. Which is why today they are strongly associated with a style of simple yet well made furniture.

Shaker furniture tends to have few if any features intended for decoration, instead deriving beauty from well-chosen proportions and symmetry. They eschewed metal handles and so when a piece has doors or drawers it will have simple turned wooden knobs. Occasionally they would allow such things as tapered legs or chamfered edges, as I have added to this piece, but they would make mission-style furniture seem downright ornate. They did have a tendency to stain or paint their pieces in solid colors, often red or orange but sometimes green. Shaker furniture tends to be the platonic ideal of whatever it is; it's difficult to describe a shaker chair as anything more than "a very well made, simple wooden chair.'

Related to shaker furniture, they always installed a wooden rail along the walls of their buildings with evenly spaced pegs, which could be used to hang such items as clocks, small cabinets, clothing, or even lighter items of furniture such as chairs when not in use.

captain_aggravated OP , 8 days ago

Both of those would be a great choice for a project like this, both are nice to work and they'll finish up nicely. Go for it!

captain_aggravated OP , 8 days ago

That set of coasters was my first ever panel glue-up. I had made a few things, had some random narrow scraps, so I glued them together and made coasters, mostly to practice making panels. I learned a lot, and I use those coasters every day.

captain_aggravated OP , 7 days ago

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/95d473b7-38af-4c2e-807a-abef6cf5da01.jpeg

The only photo in progress I have is this the top and the legs glued up in the clamps. I should have taken some shots of it at various stages.

I will share here my journey with mortise and tenons, for this project is a rematch. The two end tables I posted about a year ago were designed with mortise and tenons, and I tried to cut them on my table saw with a dado stack. I've seen others do it that way but I struggle to control the depth of cut precise enough to make tenons. So I cut the tenons off, routed mortises in the end grain of the boards and used floating tenons. Saved the project.

On the kitty approved porch table I built this spring, I designed the aprons with floating tenons to begin with since I had a method for doing that I was comfortable with. That table got breadboard ends, because I didn't want the captive panel's movement to rack the legs. I did one of the tongues on the table saw keeping the tongue intentionally too thick and then rasping/planing/filing/sanding/chiseling/chewing/eroding it to proper thickness. Then I tried using a router, and it worked like a charm.

The plant stand I built uses end-of-board-in-mortise joints (The legs splay outward in 5 degrees to form a narrow pyramid, and the legs are very subtly tapered. FahahUCK trying to lay out the shoulder cuts for those tenons) which necessitated squaring the corners of the routed mortises with a chisel. So I got some practice with my bench chisels. I'll admit posting that project here was a little bit of validation seeking; I took fairly flattering photos of it. Because there aren't tenon shoulders on the aprons and rails you can see every apprentice mark on the mortises, and the patch on the leg where I plugged the mortise that I cut in the wrong damn face of the leg...the curse of the craftsman fell thick and fast on that one, I made it, I see every single flaw, and I don't think I could see it as a piece of nice furniture if it wasn't for this community's kind words.

And having seen a couple videos on Wood By Wright's channel about cutting mortises and tenons by hand, I gave that a try in some scrap, and it worked like a hot damn first try. So I felt bold enough to build this little table. And while it isn't flawless I'm genuinely proud of this one. When I set the top on it I had one of those "look how far I've come" moments. Those first end tables took me nearly a month to build, basically all of November. This project went from rough sawn lumber to dry varnish in 4 days.

You want to tackle a mortise and tenon project? Great, go build it and come back here and show us. I'm looking forward to seeing what you build.

captain_aggravated OP , 7 days ago

Thanks! The finish I've used on all of my outdoor projects so far is Minwax Helmsman spar urethane. I thin it to about 60/40 with paint thinner and wipe it on with rags cut from old T-shirts, 4 coats ~8 hours apart, rubbing out between coats with a paper grocery bag. Takes on a very nice feel and water beads right off. We'll see how it holds up long-term but so far I like it.

Yeah that guitar neck looks a lot like how I make those scrap coasters. You end up with thin cutoffs from ripping rough stock to width, so joint them, glue them up into a narrow little panel, plane it to a uniform thickness of about 3/8" or so, cross-cut it into squares, put a roundover or a chamfer on them to dress them up, sand and apply your preferred finish. I've used Minwax's "I Can't Believe It's Not" Tung Oil Finish (basically it's danish oil) on the one in the photo, just today I made a set specifically for outdoor use that I put spar urethane on.

captain_aggravated OP , 7 days ago

Question for the room: What price tag would you put on this table? Dimensions are 18.75"h x 16" x 24" solid oak.

captain_aggravated , 2 days ago

Weren't the launch codes 00000 for the longest time?