Looking for advice, horizontal boring, edge joining with dowels and glue

[woodhead52]

Hi Pete,

You asked about my desk from years ago... here is a link to the final look. The top was made of long oak planks joined with glue and dowels:
viewtopic.php?p=11464#p11464

Good luck in your endeavors!

nuhobby,

Well, I'm impressed. Nice work right out of the gate on your new (or new to you) shopsmith. Back in the day, that is.

Thanks for sharing it.
Pete

[RFGuy]

Pete,

Kiln dried lumber is $$$$. Don't forget that anything crafted out of real wood is still living in that it breathes moisture, forever. It will continue to move and adjust over time as the room and seasonal humidity changes. By your comments, it seems like perhaps you believe it is static once you cut it, mill it and assemble it and put it in your home. I have seen more than one woodworker put a potato chip wood table pic on IG because they didn't think through their choice of table construction and method of assembly, only to have it go "wonky" later. Homes have wildly varying humidity no matter where they are located. One other factor I didn't mention is some lumber has inherent stress built-in. I forget what this is called, but Stumpy did a good vid on this a year or two ago. As soon as you cut some boards a cup or twist presents itself that wasn't apparent before you touched it. Another factor to keep in mind with large panels and where joinery may tame a board that still has some stress within it. Aesthetically if you are happy with narrower boards then build panels with them, but I prefer as large of a board as I can get away with (and afford) to minimize seams and attempt to present one uniform wood surface visually. Best of luck.

[woodhead52]

RFGuy,

I agree with pretty much everything you posted above on wood movement and humidity. My point was that by knowing where the wood moisture content of the wood is and understanding ones climate, it can help ensure a better result. All that understood, as you said, neither time climate or wood is static, so, things can change.

I also get your point about using larger boards I've beautiful pieces made with large boards. Great looking table tops and even some with waterfall edges. Me, being so inexperienced with furniture making at this point I'll work my way up to that.
I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience. I respect it very much.

Regards,
Pete

[RFGuy]

Pete,

Thanks. Only trying to help. Myself and others on this forum want to help anyone that comes to this forum (except the spammers). We are all learning here and we all have different opinions and techniques so sharing is beneficial IMHO. While I have been doing woodworking for 30+ years, it hasn't been full time as work and life have often intruded. There are areas where I feel fairly confident but also others where I still feel like a newbie (like woodturning and hand planing). There are many talented experts on the forum, so I often don't respond here unless a topic falls into my rare area of expertise. One exception where I will respond is when I can provide a counterpoint, like on this thread, because my Shopsmith experience is different from the norm. I highly respect and appreciate the comments of everyone on this thread that responded to you, but my personal experience with horizontal boring on a Shopsmith has been different from them so I tried to share my own experience to provide talking points for you and others to discuss here. Wanting you to make up your own mind, so if you choose to horizontal bore and assemble a table with 60 dowels and have great results that is fantastic and I want you to report back on it for others to learn. Also, sometimes a new question can fall through the cracks on this forum, so please if you are not getting an answer, perhaps post an update on your own question or post again. I have only been on this forum a few years, but I have noticed periods of heightened activity and also periods where it goes through a lull (like right now). During both times a new question can sometimes languish with no responses or limited responses only because it gets missed. Keep asking questions here and someone should answer. While I deplore FB (Facebook), there are also a few Facebook Shopsmith groups in case you are interested. I prefer this forum, especially because I can give a long form answer so that I can elaborate. Other forms of social media, such as FB, IG, etc. tend to only support short form responses.

[edma194]

I don't think doweling is as difficult as some members have stated, but an entire table top requiring 60 dowels could be a tedious and frustrating job. It is fairly easy to make mortises on the Shopsmith by drilling a pair offset holes and using a router bit to finish them. I would also consider a biscuit joiner for a table top as long as there's a frame beneath the top holding it together. Most of the doweling I've done was for joining boards at right angles and probably dado joints would have worked just as well.

[RFGuy]

I don't think doweling is as difficult as some members have stated, but an entire table top requiring 60 dowels could be a tedious and frustrating job. It is fairly easy to make mortises on the Shopsmith by drilling a pair offset holes and using a router bit to finish them. I would also consider a biscuit joiner for a table top as long as there's a frame beneath the top holding it together. Most of the doweling I've done was for joining boards at right angles and probably dado joints would have worked just as well.

Ed,

Thanks. Exactly right and that was all that I was trying to highlight on this thread for Pete. Also, the Mark V is sold as a 5-in-1 tool (12+ in 1 if you listen to Saint Nick ), and some Shopsmith owners fall into the trap of believing they have to use all of them. After 3 decades I stopped trying to do things like cut a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood on my Mark V and now use a tracksaw instead. This is safer, faster and more accurate than my Mark V and frees up my single Mark V (in my small shop) to do other things that I enjoy more on it. As I mentioned before, I believe certain tools in the shop can be complimentary to the Mark V and I have gone all-in on this concept in my shop. Having said that, those who enjoy and choose to do everything in their shop on a Shopsmith tool, I applaud them. Just not want I want or choose to do in my shop and that is okay. We all have different preferences. For me, the horizontal boring is just not a feature that I use often, but when you need it, it is very nice to have available on a Mark V.

[woodhead52]

Pete,

Thanks. Only trying to help. Myself and others on this forum want to help anyone that comes to this forum (except the spammers). We are all learning here and we all have different opinions and techniques so sharing is beneficial IMHO. While I have been doing woodworking for 30+ years, it hasn't been full time as work and life have often intruded. There are areas where I feel fairly confident but also others where I still feel like a newbie (like woodturning and hand planing). There are many talented experts on the forum, so I often don't respond here unless a topic falls into my rare area of expertise. One exception where I will respond is when I can provide a counterpoint, like on this thread, because my Shopsmith experience is different from the norm. I highly respect and appreciate the comments of everyone on this thread that responded to you, but my personal experience with horizontal boring on a Shopsmith has been different from them so I tried to share my own experience to provide talking points for you and others to discuss here. Wanting you to make up your own mind, so if you choose to horizontal bore and assemble a table with 60 dowels and have great results that is fantastic and I want you to report back on it for others to learn. Also, sometimes a new question can fall through the cracks on this forum, so please if you are not getting an answer, perhaps post an update on your own question or post again. I have only been on this forum a few years, but I have noticed periods of heightened activity and also periods where it goes through a lull (like right now). During both times a new question can sometimes languish with no responses or limited responses only because it gets missed. Keep asking questions here and someone should answer. While I deplore FB (Facebook), there are also a few Facebook Shopsmith groups in case you are interested. I prefer this forum, especially because I can give a long form answer so that I can elaborate. Other forms of social media, such as FB, IG, etc. tend to only support short form responses.

RFGuy,

I look forward to receiving differing opinions, in this forum. I know that the experiences of forum members will be different and I really like that.

I belong to several forums for my different interests. I also belong to numerous Facebook groups. I want to note that I have almost always had better results in forums than on Facebook. While not always true, it's frequently true. A case in point: I posted this same question on one of the Shopsmith Facebook groups that I considered to be one that included some serious woodworkers and not just equipment collectors and traders. My response was nothing like this. Now I have received crickets in forums so I understand lulls, and now there are so many avenues it probably serves to dilute the potential to even get noticed. That said, I'm really thankful for the ability to pop questions off to the ether and get some great answers back.

I don't think doweling is as difficult as some members have stated, but an entire table top requiring 60 dowels could be a tedious and frustrating job. It is fairly easy to make mortises on the Shopsmith by drilling a pair offset holes and using a router bit to finish them.

Ed,

I actually watched Nick Engler do this very recently as an alternative to using a domino, I found it while I was investigating using dowels.

I would also consider a biscuit joiner for a table top as long as there's a frame beneath the top holding it together. Most of the doweling I've done was for joining boards at right angles and probably dado joints would have worked just as well.

Ed,

I actually have a shopsmith biscuit joiner and now that I have a stronger understanding of what it's good for I have some thoughts on this.
Because of this thread, I now have a real grasp on using dowels, biscuits and loose tenons. Thanks to RFGuy, I understand how these different alignment methods work and what they can and can't accomplish. For instance, I can now see that it's probably possible to do a combination of using dowel pegs in the starting ends of the boards for vertical but more importantly horizontal alignment followed by biscuits to help maintain the vertical alignment. Such as dowel, then biscuit, biscuit, biscuit. Similar to how I understand Dominoes to work.

Ed,

Thanks. Exactly right and that was all that I was trying to highlight on this thread for Pete. Also, the Mark V is sold as a 5-in-1 tool (12+ in 1 if you listen to Saint Nick ), and some Shopsmith owners fall into the trap of believing they have to use all of them. After 3 decades I stopped trying to do things like cut a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood on my Mark V and now use a tracksaw instead. This is safer, faster and more accurate than my Mark V and frees up my single Mark V (in my small shop) to do other things that I enjoy more on it. As I mentioned before, I believe certain tools in the shop can be complimentary to the Mark V and I have gone all-in on this concept in my shop. Having said that, those who enjoy and choose to do everything in their shop on a Shopsmith tool, I applaud them. Just not want I want or choose to do in my shop and that is okay. We all have different preferences. For me, the horizontal boring is just not a feature that I use often, but when you need it, it is very nice to have available on a Mark V.

RFGuy,

I agree with your philosophy. In my case, I want to work as safely as I possibly can. So, safety as well as ease of use is my guiding principle. I like to think that I've always had a reasonable amount of respect for power tools and how dangerous they are. I saw plenty of misuses in my day and was probably guilty of a few. Luckily, I never sustained a serious injury, but I know a few guys that did, Mostly finger/s loss.

I've never cut a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood on the Mark 5 and have zero desire to do so. I don't have a track saw yet, but it's on my list. For several years, I've used the Kreg, Accu-Cut XL track system and the Kreg Rip-Cut System with my circular saws. These actually work very well as long as the time is spent setting them up properly in the beginning. Still, I love the plunge feature and angle feature afforded by some of the track saws, so, yeah definitely on my wish list.

Regards to All,
Pete

[RFGuy]

Pete,

Why do you keep calling yourself a newbie on this forum? I just checked and you started posting on the forum back in 2013, well before I knew of the forum and joined it (even though I have been a woodworker for a loong time). If you have been using Shopsmith equipment for 10 years or more, I think you have earned the right to stop calling yourself a newbie! Sorry, I didn't look you up sooner and realize you had been on the forum longer than I have.

[JPG]

Re track saw; A straight board and a couple of clamps will provide a 'fence' for a saw to ride against.

[RFGuy]

Re track saw; A straight board and a couple of clamps will provide a 'fence' for a saw to ride against.

JPG,

Agreed, but a bit more effort to get an accurate, on-the-line cut with that method. Using a tracksaw it is effortless and less tear out due to the ZCI track splinter guard.