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Popular Woodworking
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Learn How. Discover Why. Build Better
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Woodworking in America Slideshow
We're editing our photos and video today from our Woodworking in America conference.
In the meantime, please visit the excellent
slideshow from Narayan Nayar. Narayan is a tremendous photographer ? I think he
took the best photo of Roy Underhill that I've seen so far.
Warning: There are a few photos here that will either make you drool or your wallet
to twitch.
After you visit his Woodworking
in America slideshow on flickr, I'd also check out Narayan's slideshow
from the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill.
? Christopher Schwarz
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Puzzle House: Built With One Tool and No Fasteners
Above, the Shopbot shed from the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas.
OK, you have a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Your challenge is to design a house
or structure using 4x8 sheets of plywood without driving a nail or screw. Oh, yeah,
did I mention no glue either?
A recently closed exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed just how
to do it, thanks to the efforts of the architecture and engineering colleges at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). You can watch a short
video of the New Orleans House being assembled (click on the arrow in the lower
right corner of the video player to advance to "Housing for New Orleans"). It took
three MIT students just a few days to assemble the 20' x 40' one-story house that's
part of the Museum's exhibit "Modern Dwellings: 5 Contemporary Pre-Fab Houses."
How does it work? Instead of stud walls, lengths of plywood strips lock together in
an "egg crate" fashion. The exterior plywood edges have "tabs" milled into them so
exterior sheets of plywood with corresponding "slots" are applied as a "skin" which,
in effect, produces a torsion box. Where plywood sheets butted together, a series
of joints not unlike an interlocking puzzle pieces were used.
All this precision cutting of a few hundred sheets of plywood was done using a Shopbot Buddy 48
CNC system. All the parts, according to Ted Hall, president of Shopbot, were then
tapped together using a rubber mallet. He added that New York officials insisted all
the parts be glued, although that wasn?t necessary to create an extremely rigid structure.
In fact, he said, after testing MIT engineers and architects concluded the amount
of plywood used could have been reduced by half or more and still provide sufficient
strength. The New Orleans House was rated to carry a load of up to 250 people and
used more than 500 sheets of plywood.
Why so much plywood? Hall said the MIT plan called for parts to be cut and delivered
to the MOMA site in the sequential order of assembly. The material was not cut for
optimized yield, which led to more waste, Hall explained.
Another example of the construction method was employed in a shed structure Shopbot
produced for Austin, Texas "Maker Faire," where
the company was awarded two blue ribbons from the editors of Make magazine
? one ribbon for the shed and one for Shopbot Buddy 48 CNC machine. This kind of shed
is today a more practical application of the building method because local building
officials usually don't require permits for smaller structures and getting them to
approve a new construction method is often problematic, Hall explained.
For MIT, the objectives of the design were to use locally available materials to produce
a structure that could be erected quickly using parts either made on-site or near-by
and require a minimum amount of labor and minimal construction skills. Using good
design and engineering "digital cutting techniques put the smarts in the parts,? Hall
said. Then, just about anyone could knock together a shed using only a rubber mallet.
Will such building methods catch on? Hall said he hopes to introduce the technique
to backyards all over the United States with simple shed designs. And farther into
the future? Hall said he dreams one day a customer could walk into a "Kinko's" type
business, browse some catalogs, choose a design for not only a shed but kitchen cabinets
or coffee tables, then have the parts cut out in the back room on a CNC machine for
home assembly.
? Steve Shanesy, Publisher
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? Like tools? We do! Read our latest tool coverage HERE.
? Looking for free project plans? We have hundreds. Click HERE.
? Learn a new woodworking technique today. Click HERE.
? Want more videos? See all our free videos HERE.
? Check out our selection of half-price woodworking books HERE.
? Get 8 years of Popular Woodworking on one CD. Click HERE.
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A Stampede For Colt's MaxiCut Bits
We?ve received a number of inquiries asking about the MaxiCut bits that were first
seen at the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta and were included in our coverage
of the show. (Click
here to read the entry by editor Chris Schwarz.)
Originally, we reported that Colt would have MaxiCut bits available in the States
sometime in October. These bits are selected as one of our ?Best New Tools for 2008.?
(Click
here to see the list.) Well, October has come and gone and with the Thanksgiving
holiday fast approaching, these bits cannot be found.
The good news for Horst Miebach (maker of MaxiCut) ? but bad news for woodworkers
in the U.S. ? is this new Forstner bit is so hot and demand so strong in Europe that
the company is unable to ship Imperial sizes until later this month. This translates
into the bits being in stores by mid-December.
If you?re wondering why the demand is strong in Europe and why U.S. woodworkers are
patiently awaiting its arrival, see
the video of these bits in action.
So where will MaxiCut bits be available? In December you?ll find it at The Best Things
(thebestthings.com), Infinity Tools (infinitytools.com)
and Packard Woodworks (packardwoodworks.com).
After the first of the year, MaxiCut bits will be available at Lee Valley Tools (leevalley.com).
I?m in line for a set of these bits, for sure.
?Glen D. Huey
Looking for More Free Woodworking Information?
? Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.
? Like tools? We do! Read our latest tool coverage HERE.
? Want more videos? See all our free videos HERE.
? Get 8 years of Popular Woodworking on one CD. Click HERE.
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Prizes and Cash for Your Best Tricks
 Tricks
of the trade is one of our most popular regular columns. In each issue, we print the
best ideas submitted by our readers for making life in the shop easier. Every trick
we publish is rewarded with a cash payment of $50-$100, and the reader who submits
the best one for each issue receives a $250 gift certificate from Lee
Valley. The easiest way to get in on this is to submit your trick by E-mail.
We recently made a major overhaul to our corporate E-mail system, and in the process
our "Tricks of the Trade" address was out of commission for a few weeks. It's now
up and running, but if you submitted a trick in the last couple weeks, we don't have
it and we need you to send it again. If have an idea, now is a great time to send
us your trick. In addition to our usual prizes, we have some extra incentives
for the best tricks submitted between now and December 15, 2008.
The best trick submitted will earn its author a Ryobi router table and a Ridgid Router.
Second prize will be a Porter
Cable Model 390 low profile random-orbit sander and third prize will be a Popular
Woodworking 2000-2007 CD containing every issue from those years in PDF format.
To submit your trick, simply send an e-mail to popwoodtricks@fwmedia.com.
If you can attach a picture that's a plus. Don't worry about the quality of your writing
or the quality of your photo. We have a team of professional writers and artists standing
by to fix that stuff, all you need to do is come up with a good idea.
Click here to submit your "Trick of
the Trade"
--Bob Lang
Looking for More Free Woodworking Information?
? Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.?
Looking for free project plans? We have hundreds. Click HERE.
? Learn a new woodworking technique today. Click HERE.
? Check out our selection of half-price woodworking books HERE.
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Contest: Show Us Your "Cool Tools"
With Thanksgiving just around the bend, the pressure is looming for one of the hardest
jobs of the year ? holiday shopping. I?m not sure which is more difficult ?choosing
what to purchase for your loved ones, or convincing them how much you need that new
Lie-Nielsen plane. Although I can?t offer much help with the first problem (I can
only recommend against pink bunny costumes) here?s hope for the latter.
Starting Thanksgiving Day through November 30th, DIY Network will be airing a ?Holiday
Blitz? of their show Cool Tools. For four days host Chris Grundy will show you
nothing but the coolest and most innovative tools on the market. This is a great chance
to do some heavy hint-dropping to your loved ones ? or at least to find out which
?presents? you want to gift yourself.
If you can?t wait for the Holiday Blitz, head on over to the show?s web site ( diynetwork.com/cooltools)
and take a look at the videos. I got a chance to poke around the ?Woodworking Tools?
category of videos, and although I was expecting to see only power tools featured,
I was shocked and impressed to see an awesome video tour of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks.
This is definitely a show to watch.
So what are your favorite ?cool? tools? DIY Network wants to know and so do we. They?ve
given us three brand new Komelon SS Gripper tape measures to give to our readers who
submit their votes for coolest tool. So click on the ?Comments? link at the bottom
and tell us your favorite tool for a chance to win. The winners will be randomly selected
and contacted via their provided e-mail addresses ? so make sure you fill in that
line if you want to win.
?Drew DePenning
Looking for More Free Woodworking Information?
? Sign up for our newsletters to get free plans, techniques and reviews HERE.
? Like tools? We do! Read our latest tool coverage HERE.
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