Sawdust on the Floor

I think it was last week that I posted an article that discussed the Kreg Klamp Table. In that post I stated that I had visited one of the local Woodworking stores to get an up close and personal inspection of the Kreg table. That inspection left me unimpressed with the structural integrity of the table, along with the actual size of the table.

To my surprise, I received an email from a Kreg representative. In his email to me, he expressed concern about my impressions of his product, and suggested that perhaps the table had not been properly when it was put on display in this particular store.

First of all, I was impressed with the fact that the Kreg organization took the time to respond to my concerns. It was refreshing to know that there are still companies that care.

With that in mind, I made a trip to another woodworking store in the area, and revisited the Kreg table. In the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that when the Kreg table is correctly assembled that it does provide a stable work surface. And also in that same spirit, I have to stand by my belief that the surface area is still too small for a lot of work.

I thought the comments from the Kreg rep were very good and should be reprinted for you to provide their point of view as well.

As for the size of the table… it’s always difficult to find a balance between usability and space savings. I can’t speak for the designers, but most likely I’d say the decision to make the table this size had to do with a few things:

1) We already have a 4’x8’ Face Framing Table for professional face-frame builders.

 
2) We offer a variety of Klamp System™ components allowing any customer to build the EXACT solution that they want/need. As big or as small as they want.
5) Even though some larger face-frames may not ‘fit’ on the top of the table, that doesn’t mean that the Klamp Table™ can’t handle the job. Because of the tremendous amount of downward pressure our Bench Klamps apply, you can actually work with many oversized frames by simply hanging them over the edge and using the Bench Klamp™ to hold the assembly in place.

3) The Klamp Table™ size we ended up on is big enough to handle most standard face-frames.

4) The Klamp Table™ Top is roughly the same size as our Precision Router Table Top. This allows the two to be interchangeable on the same stand so you can save space in your shop. 

I did take a lot of the ideas from the Kreg table and am in the process of integrating them into the extension table on my Unisaw. Using the components of the Kreg table, along with the structural integrity and size of the Unisaw table should take care of my individual concerns. And I promise to give you all of the details, once I figure them all out.

As an aside, in the email from the Kreg rep, there was also a link to another Kreg web page that I really found interesting and wanted to pass it along to you.

Kreg Jig Owners Community

Please check back later for the details on how I reworked my Unisaw with the Kreg table components.

Looking back over my 30 plus years of woodworking, I have noticed that several things have changed in my shop. The quality and array of tools that are now available to me, are legions better than those I had 30 years ago. But if the truth be told, my budget and my selection process have also greatly improved. And the difficulty, and hopefully the end results of the projects I now under take, are also greatly increased. To my way of thinking these are all part of the normal progression of any woodworker, crafts person or artisan. One of the other things that has changed, is that I now work a lot harder to allow the natural beautify of the wood show thru, rather than covering it up.

For years, when ever I built a project that wasn’t destined for several coats of paint and primer, I tried my best to keep any knots or impurities in the wood from showing. This was a real problem back then, when I made almost everything out of pine, because as we all know that common pine is 30% or better knots. Back then select pine or God forbid real hardwood was out of reach for my budget, and not readily available to the home woodworker.

Now most of my projects are made of either Oak, Walnut or Mahogany. And I have learned to, and you will have to excuse me here because I really hate to use this terminology, but…. celebrate the natural elements of the wood. Most of the woods that I work with all contain a certain amount of knots, or other impurities. As long as they don’t compromise the structural integrity of the wood, why hide them?

Today, when I have a piece of wood that contains a knot, instead of trying to hide it, I work to bring it out. When I built our kitchen cabinets, some of the Oak that I used for panels in the door contained dark almost black knots, which really stood out from the reds and browns of the oaks. If I were to try to cut these out, I would have wasted a lot of good wood. If I were to try to fill them with a wood filler, that would have made to knots even more pronounced. The reds and browns of the filler, would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, when compared to the black of the knots.

I don’t know of any commercially available wood filler that is really black, so I made my own. I took some very fine saw dust, mixed it with a little dark wood glue to form a paste. Then I dyed the paste with some ebony stain. This mixture is then applied just like any other wood filler. Once the paste was dry, I was able to sand it smooth and continue with my normal finishing process.

There were a few panels that the knot was really neat looking, but as I ran the panels through my surface planer, to get them to the final thickness of 1/4″ , they started to become very fragile. I was concerned that the next trip across the planer knifes, the knot would come free. This would not only have destroyed the pieces of wood, but could have caused injuries when the wood from the knot went airborne. To stabilize the knot, I used some Cyanoacrylate Adhesive ( CA). This fast setting glue was perfect for this type of application. Because of the costs of these glues, they normally have very limited use in my shop, but this is one time that the results was worth the expense. I could use the panel with the interesting knot, without worrying about the knot coming out.

If you were to look closely at some of the other projects I have posted on here, you may have noticed that when I have the opportunity to reuse or repurpose wood that contains stain marks from either worm holes or maybe a long ago removed nail, I don’t try to cover over these. In fact I really try to make them more pronounced. My way of thinking is simple, knots and worm holes are part of the natural evolution of the wood, who am I to try to correct mother nature.

So please forgive my flowery language, but I have come to believe that we need to allow the natural beauty of the wood to show through. If I wanted to work with something that was perfect, I would be working with particle board and laminate. No, thank you. I will continue to use real wood and like its beauty shine through.

For more information on the products mentioned in this post, click on either the images or the highlighted links.