SPLINTERS

Tennessee Valley Woodworkers
   Vol. 16/ Issue12                December 2001               Editor: Tom Gillard Jr. 

Meeting Notice:
The next meeting of the TN Valley Woodworkers
Will be held, December 18 at 7:00 p.m. in the
 Duck River Electric Building, Decherd, TN
All interested woodworkers are invited!


The following people have agreed to serve as contacts for their particular skills.  If you have questions, suggestions
for activities, or other comments relating to these skills, please call these folks.  Their interest is to help the
club better serve their area of expertise.  Your participation with them will help them achieve that goal.

Alice Berry     454-3815    Design                    Phil Bishop      967-4626    Finishing
Tom Church   967-4460   Turning                     Harry May      962-0215     Carving
Bob Reese      728-7974   Sharpening              Ross Roepke  455-8310    Joinery

Maurice Ryan  962-1555   Health and Safety

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Spiral Bits

Downcut
As the name implies, the cutting action of this bit is downward, or away from the router base. That shearing motion imparts a clean edge on rabbets, dadoes, grooves, shallow   mortises, and plunge cuts in both sheet goods and solid stock. When cutting grooves or dadoes deeper than the diameter of the bit, don't try to take the full depth at once. Instead, make several progressively deeper passes. A downcut bit tends to pack the wasted material down into a deep cut, rather than ejecting it, and shallow cuts reduce the problem.

Upcut
This bit wasn't designed to leave a clean edge like a downcut bit, but rather to remove the chips created in a deep plunge cut.  That makes it ideal for plowing out a deep mortise in solid stock. Tearout caused by the upward  shearing will be hidden by the tenoned workpiece.

You also can use an upcut bit in your router table  for any edge treatment that you perform with the  workpiece face up, such as jointing solid or highly    figured stock. (Remember that in a router table, the upcut bit is now cutting down.)

Upcut/downcut or compression bit
The unique geometry of this bit cuts from the top down and the bottom up at the same time, and it's ideal for cleaning up the edges of hardwood plywood or melamine-coated particleboard (MCP). For such easily chipped materials, WOOD® magazine shop manager Chuck Hedlund first cuts the pieces oversized on the tablesaw, leaving an extra 1/16" on all sides.  He then loads up a compression bit in the router table, setting the center of the bit's cutting flutes  to about the middle of the workpiece's thickness.  Finally, he offsets the outfeed fence 1/16" and joints away the chipped edges.
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It's all too easy to sand through the thin veneer of plywood and fibercore lumber when  beltsanding a finished frame edge, whether in a cabinet or a picture frame. Sanding frames that mount to the bottom of a few recent-model belt sanders help,
but what if you don't own such an accessory?

TIP: Shade a wavy pencil line on the veneer edge that butts up against the frame. Stop sanding the joint just after the pencil line disappears. The same technique works well on banded tops and shelves.

                 —Terry Leach, Lovington, Ill.

Congratulations to Maurice, the winner of the DeWalt router...

Tom

I certainly want to thank the members of Tennessee Valley Woodworkers for
the nice gift I was presented  at the Christmas party.  It was a  Lee
Nielsen plane in a commemorative box.  Things like this is suppose to happen
to someone else.  Thanks again for the gift and most of all for the thought
and allowing me to be part of such a great organization.

Doyle

Bob Reese:  #14 Violin out of Birdseye maple, 2 pecan bowls and other bowls.
Steve Shores:  Black locust bowl, sassafras bowl, and Bradford pear bowl
David White:  Two frames for decorative ceramic tiles.
Bob Lowrance:  Finch, bird, that he carved while attending the John Campbell Folk Art School
Ross Roepke:  Magazine rack and “traveling cross” for a minister.
Bob Leonard:  Display stand for a Christmas ornament made by Bobby Clemons
Doyle McConnell:  A sample of the rosette blocks for his daughter’s house and the jig he used to make them.  Also, a sample of the 80 spindles he is turning.
Hugh Hurst:  Maple bowl. His first!
Manual Brown:  Multi-wood species pencil boxes and three maple and exotic woods segmented bowl having an American flag motif.
Jim VanCleave:  Jewelry box with spline joinery and the jig to cut the splines.
Jim Parker:  Handkerchief table with hand carved Cabriole legs.
Aaron Schroer:  Marquetry plaque with Pokemon faces
John Troxler:  Marquetry jewelry box from Italy

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WEB SITES of INTEREST

WOOD ONLINE newsletter

Arrowmont School

Falls Mill

Appalachain Center for the Arts

Forest Products Lab. 1999 Wood Handbook

Highland Hardware

Woodworker's Journal

WOOD Online TVWW page

Kevin's Woodturnings

Precision Blade and Tool

Webmaster:
Tom Gillard Jr.