WOODWORKING--Lets see if anyone is interested

The house I'm in is bodged to ****. I ended up replacing two screws on a hinge because they'd fallen out. The screws that had fallen out were half the length of the ones I put in so hopefully it will stay.

I borrowed a Festool plunge saw (it was part of a track saw system). I used it with a homemade track which was mrely a piece of B/C 1/2" plywood and a 2x4edge guide . Tell you the truth, I wasnt overwhelmed as I think I should have been. I kept thinking of the price nd was I rlly getting 550$ worth of circular hand saw. I think Ill wait for what Milwaukee comes out with this winter . Its like the old Hilti tool promise'You pay a lot for the tool but will replace it forever" Well thats bullshit. All my Amish friends who are in construction first used Hiltis and when they had their tool replaced twice, the Hilti Company started reneging on their warranty (yes Virginia, there was some small print in their contract"

Given the jobs I tend to face, I've never been able to justify Festool's prices. The track saw system gets good reviews but I have sheet goods cut down at the lumber supplier so I can handle them relatively easily on my portable table saw or with my circular saw.

I recently had to spend several weeks replacing all the baseboards and moulding in a renovation job and so picked up a battery powered brad nailer. It's a Ryobi so fairly low-end but the damn thing worked pretty perfectly driving brads predictably and with perhaps only a half dozen misfires over the three weeks. Great battery life as well. And it will come in handy building jigs and the like. I love the thing.

I have never heard of Hilti.

Our main power tool company is Black & Decker.

I like both companies.

I dont have a battery brad nailer, but I ue my pin nailer for trim n frames.. Since I am involved in building wee boats for kids, I often make quick dimension changes on sheet stuff (Marine ply is kinda dear around hear). so I wind up dpoing my own dimensional cutting and much of it requires m to cut my patterns from a 25" or 26" ide long side of a ply board.

So, I have this homemade track jig that is really good on length wise cuts but since its not rally wide enuff I usually have to lay the full sheet on a floor with some risers to cut width pieces.(Am I making sense?)

My compound12" mitre saw is a RYOBI and I love it, its so accurate, easy to change out and the laser is dead on. The motor is powerful as hell and it came with this wheeled table like a big wheelchair. Most everything else, xcept big tools are Milwaukee and I think they are a happy mix for battery op tools. I like the way that, when they come up with a better battery, they will make sure it fits the earlier tools. Unlike many of the others who make you buy a whole new tool.
Milwaukee has found the "HP color printer business plan" . You buy a tool set reasonably and then you buy batteries like ink cartridges.

Hilti is a contractor grade (mostly) porta-potty tool and contractor table saws. They are like a MErcedes-Benz (over-engineered) and so they have a LIFETIME WARRANTY. They even have trucks that go around and pick up tools that break an eithr fix em free or you get a brand-new(I think) tool.
But as I said, they do have some small print on the warranty.
They are awfully expensive (even more than Festool ), A Hilti circular saw will run about 800US dollars, But the AMish may not take care of their horses but they sleep with their tools.

Black and Decker, (slowly I turned). I used to get free tools from them cause we did a lot of environmental engineering and their WORLD HQ is near Jarrettsville Md (about 70 mi south). Never really liked B&D Tools and I gave em all a good try. They seem to be very underpowered,so their motors burn out very easily. Also they were a first in company for battery operated tools but the batteries of the earlier tools were these NiCad which slowly lost power , unlike Li batteries which pump out the amps till the last few seconds.

B&D , made in America (now mostly Mexico) made ok line power tools but started cheapening up when they went battery power. Always look at the AMp Hour ratings and wattage and always choose a power tool over 1000 Watts, otherwise, if you are a consistent tool user (more than just once a week), you will be sorry. Black and Decker does have a good lin of tool called DEWALT, they arent as expensive as Milwaukee's and are about as good. I never shifted over to DeWalt cause Ive got all my spare batteries as Milwaukee. Whenever I go to tool shows, Dewalt and Milwaukee always have these "Battles" for new tools they invented in the last year. Many of the new tools are silly, but the plunge circular saw, like a plunge router is, gotta admit, a great idea.

Do your Hiltis really outlast the competition?

They dont really advertise except at these tool shows. I saw where they pitched three circ saws off a church roof and they werent even damage except for some scratches and a fixable dent in one.
What a numb-headed test, I thought. Why not drop it from a helicopter at a mile and a half up.

Yes, making sense.

These new batteries are really good. And everyone, for obvious reasons, is using the same marketing strategy of batteries that will switch out for numerous tools. Indeed, once I had the Ryobi nailer, charger and an extra battery I found it very easy to pick up their matching trim router as well. In both cases, the added weight of the battery hasn't been a problem and certainly is more than compensated for by the elimination of cords and hoses.

I did not know that. Where I grew up in dairy country, horses were not a particularly important part of Mennonite farming culture. But they were pretty loving towards their dairy cows, I have to say. And they didn't/don't have any unusual strengths or interest in woodworking. And they like big cars.

I have battery nailers now. I used to have a PASSLODE. It got really dangerous, cause something happened to the control gizmo inside and It went full-auto on me once. It fired maybe 4 or 5 ,2" nails as I held it out an popped in a new fuel cell. I musta had my finger on the trigger but usually it needed to be pushing against the target to fire. NOT THIS TIME. I had it fixed and was told that this can sometims happen if its not cleaned meticulously every year or so. SOOOO when Milwaukee came out with the better battery styles, I got one of those

Yikes. It took me 2 or 3 days to put a 2" brad through my fingertip. Not the tool's fault. On the plus side, I'm considering setting up a profitable accupuncture business.

Ha!. I bought a few of these at auctions for my "Ole fashioned tools collection" . NEVER KNEW how to ork one. Seems like an awful lot of work when ordinary tracing would work.
Nowadays I use my cell phone camera and an art- projector for real complex patterns.

Definitely workable.

But why the hell do so many How To youtubers in carpentry, automotive, etc think its a grand idea to add some screaming electric guitars?

When I worked at the local shipyard we'd make up these tick sticks on the spot. Sometimes, for really complex shapes, we used hot melt glue to make rough patterns and then used tick sticks to accurately record points, sort of a 'belt and suspenders' method.

In the summer of '70, I went to work helping a local doctor complete the building of a big trimaran (it was the largest such vessel in Canada at that point). The main structure was completed when I came on so it was largely a matter of fiberglassing and painting to ready it for the water (the city had ordered him to get the boat and the big ugly structure we were working in gone). Though a doctor, he was rather uninterested in safety issues. I don't recall using masks when we sanded the fiberglass, for instance (and damn I still hate that smell).

Once the sanding was done, we set to painting. I'd never worked with marine undercoat before but it was not very nice stuff. Because we were in an enclosed space, some thoughts to ventilation would perhaps have been a good idea but the doctor didn't seem concerned. One afternoon, I was so looped from this undercoat that I just stepped right off the end of the port-side amma into nothingness. It was a 10 foot drop to the concrete floor. Somehow, I didn't even sprain an ankle.

On reflection, I suppose all of this might explain why my IQ doesn't match Oralloy's.

I recall framing a story and a half residence, where the boss had built the bottom floor and made a start upstairs. He took off with the crew on some other project and assigned me to work alone. The first thing I noted on beginning, there was a wall that the plan designated as 7 ft tall. The boss had made it 8. I worked around the wall until I could ask why that was so. The boss acknowledged the mistake but told me to leave it at 8. This altered everything related to the roof, so that none of it could match the blueprint. The rafter tails kept moving up and down. I finally got to the peak, still working alone and had rafters coming from every direction and no two the exact same angle. I had to custom-cut each individual one, while still going at it alone. After a time, I could measure the length and then cut a perfect angle with my trusty circular without marking a line on the board. Carpenters boxing the overhang kept getting frustrated and quitting. I was the recipient of plenty of rude remarks.

I keep the sound way low or even off when watching.

Are these the same thing as "story boards"???. Id use those for cabinet patterns and stuff like hanging corner cupboards.