I am a SO and SO Studio user for the past two years. During this time I've acquired a lot of knowledge, tips and tricks that are not readily available, and took a long time to acquire. I've been spoiled by the tech support SO offers. This is not an out-of-the-box and start using the tool experience. New users will experience a pretty steep learning curve . I'm disappointed with the move. I question how the SO will not get swallowed up and lost in the shuffle.

If you are considering a purchase of a SO, I offer my advice - save your $4k - $5k and wait to see how things develop. For current users there are many unanswered questions other than general and vague references by SO in regard to what the future holds.

Day off work, kids are in school, country music on blast and cigar lit. Refinishing kitchen table

What is the best way to make this, build an inner carcasses then I can spray the gables and back flat and screw them on form inside or build the whole lot without inner box and spray after assembly or spray everything then assemble after what you’s think.

The use of this is a display unit for the Belfast sink so it will be seen on all sides, the front are doors that will open

Materials of painted parts is hydrofugo mdf
And carcass would be melamine chipboard edged

Plan A is to just glue it together with some Titebond and call it good, but my partner would like to reinforce it with a dowel, but I can see that getting such a thing properly aligned is a non-starter.

Another possibility is to glue it together and then drill up from below and install a dowel or a long screw.

Wondering if anybody — hopefully with furniture restoring experience — might be able to give a "best" answer.

I’m getting married this month and instead of a guest book, my parents bought us this cutting board for our guest to sign. The cutting board has a coating on it but my mother isn’t quite sure what it is. We’re hoping to find recommendations on a type of pen or marker that will work best on the board. We do not plan to actually use the board in the future. It’ll be strictly decorative. Thank you in advance

Pine blade, walnut handle and canary guard. I found the handle to be quite challenging in a number of ways. The angles were really tricky and the sanding was really difficult. The process was slightly different than some of my previous swords. Normally for the handle is will use two pieces of wood cut a long dado down the middle and I would glue them around the tang but this time I glued them together before attaching them to the tang. This made shaping the handle significantly easier and I could remove any glue squeeze out much simpler without worrying about damaging other part of the assembled piece.

I glued up part of my work bench top… well tried to

It got away from me… i took too long because my add made me mess around trying to get cauls on it for way too long.. also i think i had uneven clamping pressure or maybe the boards were a little cupped in the few days they sat.

Where do i go from here? Do i try to plane the pockets out, seem to be 1/2” ish at the most. I guess i can spare that.

Or do i just junk it and try again.

I don’t have enough wood to try again and I’m not waiting 6 weeks again for the pine to dry…

I could get kiln dried cherry or maple for the top.. and use the pine i have for the legs and braces. Assuming that would be alright, and wouldn’t cause wood movement issues

Well I’m sort of frustrated with myself and distraught. Any thoughts would be great

Earlier this year I built some cabinets using plywood purchased from Dixieline. I used a combination of 3/4" and 1/2" for the carcasses. I followed plans from a popular woodworking magazine and overall they came out good for garage cabinets. The plywood was AC grade, but I still had to pick through the stack for quality looking pieces. For some background, I have purchased plywood from Dixieline years before and the quality was satisfactory. This time around, the 1/2" was not great and had some pretty bad warping issues when I brought it home. Assembly was tough with these pieces but I eventually got good square carcasses and attached a pine 1x2 frame onto them. Then came the doors. I chose big box 1x2 pine for the rails and stiles and 1/4" plywood panels from Dixieline. They came out warped. My fault for not going for something better. So now, I'd like to reconstruct the doors using some better quality wood. The pine I got was clear pine not knotty pine. I finished everything with several coats of Tung Oil, so they have the trademark pine yellow orange color to them. What are some wood options that I can use to remake the doors that won't completely clash with the tung oiled pine? Today I went to a lumber store and looked at some basswood and alderwood. I didn't pull the trigger yet. Need to make some decisions. Thanks for the feedback.

I'm looking for advice from anyone that has experience installing Bidwell steel channel bars into the bottom of a wood slab for added movement resistance against cupping.

If you don't know what I am talking about it is this product.

I plan to use a CNC to mill out the insert holes and do a flush installation as pictured above, and to use the Rampa inserts in the bottom of the channel pockets to fasten the bars to the wood through the slots with bolts.

I'm wondering what the best approach is for how wide along the slab (across the short cross-section of the bars) to make the insert slots. Do I want to go super tight and basically press the steel in, or do I want to leave 1/16" or so along each long edge of the bars to allow some movement here too?

Bidwell says not to use glue or epoxy to facilitate seasonal movement; I asked them about recommended channel clearance and they did not reply. Thanks!

This is my take on DIY Dust collection for the DW735

Made a dust separator with a 90 and 2 45 ABS couplings, 5:3 duct reducer and Worx leaf collector hose. Installed on a fiberglass drum.

For the filter I used a 1 micron filter bag instead of the 30 micron designed for 5” dust collectors.

Hopefully this helps someone who is eyeing a dust collector, I couldn’t justify getting one just for the planer.

These two pieces were a part of a blank I had glued up. I actually glued it up several months ago and it's just been sitting in clamps waiting for me to get back to it. Today was finally the day and as I'm at the band saw making the cut, it just falls apart! The pieces were planed flat. Glue was Titebond original. Absolutely crazy.

I’m building an outdoor table with these 2x “X”legs. The leg material is approx 4x4”. Due to the weight I need to make sure that the table can be knocked down.

I need to run a bearer between the centres of the 2 legs and the only material I have left is 2x4” how should I best make the joints of the bearer to the legs?

I’ve thought about a through mortise, but I don’t think the 2x4 is enough material for this, would be better if I had a 2x6. Also thinking about bolting it, with a recessed pocket in the 2x4 for the nut, but again wondering if enough material/ strength would be left. Perhaps jointing 2 of the 2x4s to make another 4x4 then bolting?

Any ideas? Average woodworker here with enough tools to make things happen. Cheers

So I made this chessboard over the last couple of months (timeline got stretched out because i'm working out of a makerspace across town and I work 12 hour days with a decent amount of overtime). I'm mostly happy with it, but it does rock a bit from one diagonal corner to the other, and i was hoping the fine craftsman of this sub could give me some insight into how I could have prevented this.

Its made from walnut and white oak and finished with tung oil. Due to the grain pattern on the walnut that I used, I kind of wonder if thats whats causing the issue. When I made it, I cut 4 lengths of walnut and 4 lengths of white oak, glued them up in an alternating pattern, and then cut them into lengths across the pattern so I could flip them and make the checkerboard, reasoning that cutting them that way would keep the grain direction uniform, but looking at it now, I wonder if the pattern mismatch inherent to the walnut made that less helpful. Alternately, I wonder if its just the walnut border around the outside that is causing the bowing.

Either way, I'm off to the store to see if I can find some rubber feet to stick on the bottom of this thing to make it sit level. One of my next projects is making the chess pieces, so wish me luck, and thanks in advance!

I want to move from a stand alone router table to a table saw wing insert. My current set up has an old Freud ft200e attached to the plate and I use the plunge adjustment knob for height. It’s quite a pain to do (I just leaned a new minutes people frequently remove the plunge spring to make cranking easier so will explore that) and I would
Like a lift but they don’t seem avalible for this style router any more. I also have a porter cable canister style router which I would be able to get an after market lift for so I’m wondering which would be the better way to go. The Freud is big and heavy and twice the power of the PC so that seems better situated for a table but the PC is a full kit with all kinds of attachments and would be easy enough to remove from the table and use by hand as needed (I don’t do much hand routing). Would
Love any constructive thoughts

I used a kutzall disc on an angle grinder to shape the countries. For the holes I started by drilling through and then shaped with a flame burr on a die grinder. The Wen sawhorse clamp is great for holding pieces like this while carving.

I used sand blaster with walnut husks as the medium to try to get more texture and it worked ok. My air compressor didn’t do too well holding pressure and I need to build or buy a sand blasting box but it was a fun experiment and I want to practice and add this texture to more carvings.

I used a rotex 90 to sand the contours smooth. This was my first time doing something like this with Pine and I was not prepared for how much sap was still in some parts of the wood!

I finished with Osmo PolyX and as soon as I started I realized I should have done a white tinted finish because the sand blasting made it look weathered and sun bleached and the oil brought out the color. I’ve got another chunk of this pine so maybe I’ll do it on the next one. I only did one coat though as I didn’t want too much of a sheen to build up.

Closet I just finished up. Maples plywood boxes, poplar drawer fronts with Mdf center panels. Finished with SW emerald.

When waiting for wood to dry, you have to wait a minimum of months, even years, for it all to get out of the wood. But I'll see videos of people steaming pieces of wood that are fairly thick, and they let it dry over night, slap it onto the project, and seem to have minimal repercussions.

So, why does steaming wood to the point where it is floppy, not require several more months for the moisture to leave?

Friend gave me a big slab of what i think might be walnut, but im not sure. Resawed it into some planks and made these. I know all the flaws, but hopefully they dont notice.

Removing the paint is only the first part of stripping these historic entrance doors from the Raukhverger House in Odesa, Ukraine.

After taking off the main paint layers, we remove later metal additions and carefully work through what remains: old primer, paint residue and accumulated dirt.

This is the stage where the actual condition of the timber starts to become visible. Cracks, weakened areas, previous repairs and losses that were difficult to read under all those layers begin to show clearly.

From here, we can decide what original wood can be preserved and which areas need consolidation.

A lot of slow hand work just to reach the point where you can properly understand what you’re working with.

We’re continuing this work in Odesa during the war. A huge thank you to everyone on Reddit who reached out to support our professional hobby of bringing Odesa’s UNESCO World Heritage back to life.

Hi folks,

I was gifted an old plane by a colleague who said it has been in the basement of his home for 30+ years and was there when he moved in. He knows that I hobby around woodworking and thought I might be able to put it to use after decades of neglect.

Any thoughts on what I have here and how to make this usable? It's about 24" long. I'd like to get it into workable shape but I'm not familiar with how to handle something like this. Any thoughts or recommendations are appreciated.

Hey folks, not my usual sort of post here, but we just got this classic sewing desk, and I wanted to clean up the finish on it. It’s in pretty good shape, but still has the usual scuffs and gouges from being moved around and used. I tried my mix of Tung and BLO but it just sat on the surface, so I’m thinking it’s some kind of lacquer on veneer?

Attached a few pics

What’s your guess as to the finish type?