New here...

[FloridaJamesHudson]

Hey all - I am new here! Here to learn and share a few ideas and stories I have from the past. THanks for having me.

[dbhost]

Welcome and thanks for joining. Tell us a little bit about your interest in woodworking. What kind of projects do you like working on?

[leehljp]

Welcome James and Daniel. Join in the fray, ask questions and give opinions. We have a good bunch of guys here.

[LCHIEN]

Hey all - I am new here! Here to learn and share a few ideas and stories I have from the past. THanks for having me.

Another newbie here. Thanks for accepting me

FloridaJamesHudson and Danielsk

Hi we enjoy meeting and hearing from new members whether they are new to woodworking or not.. We love to hear those stories!

Welcome both of you.

[cwsmith]

Hello to you FloridaJamesHudson and Daniesk,

Welcome to the Sawdust forum, I'll look forward to your participation.

Best wishes to you both,

CWS

[diyrebel85]

Hello all,
TJ (diyrebel85) here. I've joined to soak up y'all's knowledge/experience with this machine, possibly ask for some advice from time to time and hopefully share any of my own with y'all. I was unaware of the fan base before I purchased my saw about 2yrs ago(which has been in a storage unit until last month). I have since bought a second one for parts and contemplating a 3rd, lol. The price of the first 2 combined is $150! both missing the miter fence . Possible 3rd, guy is asking 250 but she's a buet! w/ some accessories. I don't have any particular hobby or projects to speak of, just a guy who enjoys the **** out of tools and using them to fix our things. Thanks for having me.
And a big thank you to Loring Chein, this man's efforts are a invaluable blessing.
PS
Fixing to install/use a dato stack tonight. It'll be a first for me

[LCHIEN]

Hello all,
TJ (diyrebel85) here. I've joined to soak up y'all's knowledge/experience with this machine, possibly ask for some advice from time to time and hopefully share any of my own with y'all. I was unaware of the fan base before I purchased my saw about 2yrs ago(which has been in a storage unit until last month). I have since bought a second one for parts and contemplating a 3rd, lol. The price of the first 2 combined is $150! both missing the miter fence . Possible 3rd, guy is asking 250 but she's a buet! w/ some accessories. I don't have any particular hobby or projects to speak of, just a guy who enjoys the **** out of tools and using them to fix our things. Thanks for having me.
And a big thank you to Loring Chein, this man's efforts are a invaluable blessing.
PS
Fixing to install/use a dato stack tonight. It'll be a first for me

Oh, wow, thanks for the shoutout!
Welcome to the forum and good luck on your projects.


Loring

[Stile_ss]

Welcome to our forums, hope we get along and meet in a random thread some time from now!

[nikiznb]

Hello, tell us one of your stories, we would all be interested in listening!

[pearson]

Hey there! What are your hobbies outside of woodworking? I always find it interesting to hear what people are into beyond their main passions. For me, I love playing around with tvg network from time to time — placing a few small bets and just enjoying the excitement of the races. I was actually checking out these reviews the other day, just to see what others were saying about it. Besides that, I’m big into cycling, especially when the weather’s nice. There’s nothing like hitting the trails or cruising through the city on a sunny day. What about you? Got any other hobbies or little things you like to do when you’ve got some downtime?

[KellyDawn]

Since this seems to be a thread for new members intros I thought I’d chime in and say hello as a newbie as well. I’m new to everything….this online group forum, woodworking in general, new to my new home area of PA and new to retirement where I finally have to time to pick up and learn new hobbies, read lots of books and generally ‘fiddle’ around in whichever direction the wind takes me. In my past life stages those winds have taken me to many places geographically, personally and professionally. I grew up in VA, went to college in WV and lived in FL, SC, UT, WV, MD and now PA. I have experienced a lot in 59 years, most of it pretty good with a few bumps in the road to make me grateful for what I’ve had. I had a childhood that was magical with lovely, wonderful parents who have sadly both passed away. They gave me lots of great lessons of life with a good work ethic, values of love and compassion with much humor mixed in and my own irreverence and sarcasm sprinkled liberally. One of the best gifts of my life though was with horses and a youth spent mostly riding, in my barn or off on some horse competition. I started working at a young age of 12 to help offset the expenses of such an expensive hobby and learned stable management and handling various breeds beginning at age 12. In my job life besides working on horse farms I have worked as admin asst and support in many places and capacities, 14 years as a professional massage therapist and the last career shift was care management for the other-abled and personal assistant to a private family in caring for their other-abled son. It’s been quite the life of learning new things and now in retirement I’ve begun a whole new set of learning skills with woodworking.

A bit about my current story…..a year ago my wife and I bought a beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced contemporary home in western PA (Butler north of Pittsburgh). We went from a townhome on the edge of DC of only 1000sf and small rooms to a spacious 2500sf home in a quiet development of custom built homes surrounded by trees. We fell in love with our home. As one can imagine going from 1000sf to 2500 sf meant we didn’t have enough furniture to fill it and so began our interior decorating and design journey which honestly has been lots of fun. One of the big pluses of this house was a basement which had a woodshop space set up by original owner Paul. After only having a small yard to mess about with building my first bench or working on DIY home projects it’s great to have a indoor designated space to build up a decent woodshop. My wife and I had a collection of basic power tools and some hand tools one would expect for DIY home ownership and maintenance but not really set up for a woodshop when we first moved here. The acquisition path of getting that started happened one day when we began looking for a casual everyday dining table for the solarium alcove area off the kitchen. I saw a live edge table on one of our shopping excursions for $1500 and said “I think I could make one for us, especially if I purchase some nice metal leg supports so its only the table top I need to make.” (I can only imagine the laughs this last statement is making out there).

Off I went looking for used power tools and hand tools, scouring FB marketplace, flea markets and even neighbors who were downsizing. I’ve taken classes at the Rockler store in Pittsburgh for Table Saw Basics, Router Basics and Epoxy Intro which were a good start. I’ve been picking up used books to read and learn like Charles Hayward, Christopher Schwartz, Alden Watson (love his book on Hand Tools) and various others that have been recommended by experienced woodworkers. I’ve of course perused lots of YT videos from some respected ww like Rex Krieger, Rob Cosman, Paul Sellers and so on. The traditional hand tool type of work is something I’m really enjoying learning and picked up some old Stanley Bailey hand planes to restore and tune up as well as some hand saws. So far I’ve managed to bring back to use a No 192 rabbet plane, a No 5 Type 10 hand plane and now working on a No 6 that I really need for flattening a couple slabs. My wife has noted that with what we’ve spent so far we could have bought ourselves more than a few live edge tables. I keep telling her how the woodshop being outfitted will be of good use for many home projects we can save money by doing ourselves for many years to come. She doesn’t seem very convinced yet but hopefully I will astound her by making something not only functional but beautiful. I’m ever hopeful and learning a new hobby has been both exciting and frustrating but that keeps it interesting. My main motto I heard from my father was ‘slow and steady’ which for my impatient nature was a tough sell growing up. This new pursuit with its penchant for losing fingers or other serious potential damage is a huge incentive to stick to his advice and stay vigilantly careful. I would ultimately like to use a hybrid style of woodworking using both hand and power tools. The power tool I am most intimidated by is my used table saw, a Ryobi BT3000 15 amp.

Along with hand tool acquisition I bought a used BTx3 table saw a couple months ago. The table saw came with all the extra accessories like router table parts and miter parts. It was missing some important safety aspects so found a source for the blade guard, riving knife and splitter as well as got some push blocks. Still….this is the one machine I get nervous about so I’ve not used it that much yet. I go to my circular saw and miter saw more often but I do want to feel more comfortable with the BT3000. I have used it with the help of my competent engineer BIL to rip straight edges on the spalted maple slabs I have for the dining table. We got it done but it wasn’t easy though and learned that there was some tuning up likely needed as well as some better blades. I’m now working on tuning it up better and need to make myself some sleds and jigs. I’ll be reading through a lot of the BT3000 threads first before asking any questions so I don’t post redundantly.

Sorry for the verbosity….I’ll try to keep it shorter in future. It’s a bit of a struggle and usually my wife acts as my editor but she’s busy today so ya’ll good people have to put up with the unfiltered me. Thanks for letting me join. “Oh the smell of sawdust in the morning….”

[LCHIEN]

I'm a BT3000 owner (and author of the BT3x FAQ which you can download via the link at the bottom of my posts (of which there are a lot of). for almost 25 years now. I can make suggestions or perhaps help if you have questions. It has a lot of good points and some weak points.

[KellyDawn]

Thanks for the welcome. I’m deep into the BT3x FAQ threads at the moment and finding lots of useful info. There’s so much there I think I’ll be reading a good while and perhaps also working at making some of the jigs I’m finding people have posted within those discussions. That is such a great resource Lchien….thanks for creating it. I’ll keep your offer in mind for sure when I need it as I no doubt will. I’ve also been perusing the Glossary of Terms. There’s so many short cut abbreviations that I come across that I feel pretty clueless. You know I’m pretty new at this when I didn’t know what SMT stood for haha! Oh well….everyone was at the start at one point.

[LCHIEN]

You're welcome. The FAQ was labor of love in return to the community that built up around the saw.

[KellyDawn]

Hey Leehljp….it’s interesting you mention living in Japan. That is a country I would love to visit. Our FLW-inspired home has a lot of Japanese influences in it as well as in the landscaping outside. The previous owner was a big fan of Japanese culture, architecture and gardens. Japan must have had quite the impact but then FLW himself put a lot of Japanese influence into his architectural designs. Besides working at making a table and other woodworking projects for the interior I plan on working on a Japanese garden design for our backyard landscaping. I would love to be able to build some outdoor benches with Japanese joinery but I need to focus on getting familiar with my hand tools and power tools first.

With my woodshop I have managed to pick up some other decent used power tools besides the table saw. I’ve got a Bosch Colt palm router, Bosch combo router with fixed and plunge base and a 2 1/4 hp Craftsman router that can probably handle some of the bigger jobs like flattening slabs. Besides those I got incredibly lucky when a neighbor whose husband sadly passed away a couple years ago gave me whatever I wanted from his woodshop and it was quite the haul. I pulled out tons of chisels, basic hand tools along with some hand planes and saws, a small jointer machine, bench grinder, scroll saw, multiple Milwaukee battery operated drills, sawzall, Dremel and accessories, circular saw, jig saws, two drill presses, band saw, disc and bench sander combo, more bits and blades than I can count along with bunches of barely used Forstner bits, sanders and sanding paper, portable work tables, and even a lathe. To say it was a jackpot is an understatement and we often lend a hand to our neighbor whenever she has some home maintenance or repairs we can manage. She saved us thousands of dollars. I even told her she could sell it on FB or eBay but she said she didn’t want the hassle of having strangers, most likely men coming into her home to check all of it out. I don’t blame her on that score living alone. Anyway, I have a lot of gear to learn about and become familiar and safe with using but I’m well aware its an embarrassment of riches for a new woodworker to be able to start off with.

[leehljp]

Hey Leehljp….it’s interesting you mention living in Japan. . . .

I enjoyed my 26 years over there. Well, it wasn't a full 26 years; we were back home every 3 to 4 years for 8 to 10 months, and in the last 10 years a month or so every year. We spent our first 5 years in Tokyo, the next 14 years in the Osaka area and last 7 in Toyota City (suburb of Nagoya). We had a van while there the whole time, so we got to travel around quite a bit, in addition to trains/subways, Shinkansen (bullet trains) some flying in country and busses. So we had an adventure in addition to our work. My youngest was 2 when we went and her Japanese is impeccable. Many of her first words were Japanese. She is now 42. Our oldest 2 (6 and 10 years older) did very well in Japanese language in spite of going to international schools. We loved the culture and understood it well. Much of their in country language is "reading between the lines" and "unspoken/silence/ pauses" that most Americans (or those from other countries) miss or misunderstand. This silence and between the lines is learned mostly by those that have the most difficult in the grammar and vocabulary because they have to rely on external clues that quick grammar/vocabulary learners miss. (I was one of the "slow" learners and picked up that "silence" and "between the lines". Loved the food, the artistry, the people. It was really enjoyable.

[JamesDean19]

Welcome! What tools do you have in your shop now?