• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

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  1. O

    Heads up on this sad sale.

    I don't know which 'older' joiners you are referring to, but pretty much all of the guys I've worked with in recent years who were late 50s and older were products of an apprentice system which up until the 1980s produced "carpenters and joiners", i.e. your qualification required both site and...
  2. O

    Heads up on this sad sale.

    My personal experience of apprentice carpenters isn't quite that, however, they do seem to resent the low wages they receive, whilst often also thinking that achieving a Level 2 NVQ makes them fully qualified and worth the same as a fully trained and experienced man is. They are also, for the...
  3. O

    Wadkin router

    Red and white by any chance? On the late 60s/early 70s they made an awful lot of very similar looking drills with minute differences in spec. If being bought out by Bosch hadn't killed them (S-B) off, variable speed, hammer drill gearboxes and bigger motors (AEG and Bosch got into a wattage...
  4. O

    Why are plunge cuts more dangerous?

    The Festool has changed somewhat over the years - dual position depth indicator (shows depth of cut both on and off the guide rail), scoring setting (something Makita had first AFAIK), thinner blade and on one of the latest versions a separate scoring blade in front of the main blade. TBH the...
  5. O

    Why are plunge cuts more dangerous?

    They most certainly are! As an example of safety, take the case of cutting out a 75mm thick, 3-layer pitch pine mill floor (with sundry embedded nails, screws etc as well as 1mm thick loose tongues between boards - nightmare stuff): this is a task I undertook on one job maybe a four or five...
  6. O

    Wadkin router

    Un In that case you'd probably find the 1940s to early 1960s tools (especially drills) from Bridges (later Stanley-Bridges), Wolf, Black & Decker, Desoutter et al of interest - polished aluminium, stamped brass ratings plates , etc. The Bridges models are relatively common - polished B&Ds and...
  7. O

    Why are plunge cuts more dangerous?

    The "optimism" you describe is the result of nearly four decades of using plunge saws (starting with an Elu MH25, then a Holz-Her Mosquito, neither of which used a guide rail) - and just a few years of college doing my C&Gs. So not optimism at all Attention when using tools which posses fast...
  8. O

    Heated gloves for the workshop?

    Try fingerless gloves (e.g. Scruffs which have vibration damping in them) with a couple of Hotties (heated hand pads) stuffed down the palm sides. I use those out on site and they work quite well when combined with a Makita heated gilet (uses standard 18 volt batteries)
  9. O

    Wadkin router

    The Wadkin router from the late 1970s/early 1980s was a Ryobi R-500. I had one of those circa 1979, albeit a Ryobi badged one. They were replaced by the RE-600 which in updated form is still being dold as an AEG today. AFAIK the planer was another Ryobi model. I believe the part of Wadkin...
  10. O

    Makita router collet sizes DRT50ZJX3

    Mine (DRT50), and the RT0700 before it, came with 1/4in and 3/8in. Metric collet sets can be had cheaply from AimTools (directly, eBay and Amazon) in 6 and 8mm, etc - these are for the Katsu routers, which are copies of the Makita originals. I can testify that they work with the Makitas (as do...
  11. O

    Why are plunge cuts more dangerous?

    I'm with Mike - probably done ten thousand or more plunge cuts with a saw and rail over a quarter of a century with only the occasional kick back, invariably my own fault. If you plunge in you need to ensure that your blade is sharp (blunt blades can cause kickback) and that the blade is...
  12. O

    Using a Track Saw for Rip Cuts Instead of a Table Saw?

    I've used a Hilti, then a Festool (actually two of them in different sizes) and more recently a Makita (36 volt) and a Bosch plunging rail saw. Any of these is a far safer, easier to use option than trying to use a small workshop table saw for the same task. Like Steve I use a breaking down...
  13. O

    Hinge fitting

    TBH the CraftPro aren"t all that good. Better than the cheap Chinese tat, but still not good. A number of former colleagues baulked at the price of the Trend Snappy models (and the price of Trend Snapy drill/countersinks, for that matter) and bought the cheaper CraftPro ones only to eventually...
  14. O

    What is it with the Fairer sex and soft furnishings?

    We were taught (at school) to draw a triangle pointing towards the front of the box. Same sort of thing, really. The language I used was City & Guilds Mnomic - and I had to look that up just to confirm my mind wasn't playing tricks. The programs were sent down to the local college to be run on...
  15. O

    What is it with the Fairer sex and soft furnishings?

    75? Assuming I can still count in binary. Anyone else get taught that at school?
  16. O

    Numbered woodscrew sizes

    AFAIK they used to be quite common in the days of 2-1/2 and 3in sheet steel hinges. Similarly, I've seen no.9 countersunks sometimes supplied for 4in hinges In terms of suppliers, over the last couple of years I've been busy on a grade 1 refurb where it was necessary to "replace" several...
  17. O

    I didn't think i said anything wrong to my wife.

    You are a man, which automaticslly makes you wrong, even when you think you are right. Get over it! (source: my missus)
  18. O

    Has anyone tried routing marble?

    When given repaired leaded glass to reinstall in historic doors I always take along a low angle block plane. Mine trims lead a treat (sometimes the new leading can be a tad oversize). Much easier and safer for a wood butcher like me to use a plane than one of those finger removers (lead knives)...
  19. O

    Has anyone tried routing marble?

    Yes indeed. Hence my comments to Steve about masks, etc AFAIK not Corian or other solid surfaces. Those are basically either just acrylic or acrylic/polyurethane co-polymers but otherwise generally contain no silicates. It's quartz worktops, mainly artificial, which are the big concern, because...
  20. O

    Has anyone tried routing marble?

    The CNC guys use diamond-coated router cutters for stone (Google "brazed diamond router cutter" and you'll get loads of results). They can also get used on portable routers (providing your router is powerful enough). Your router will likely get very hot, like they do when routing hard composite...
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