Great tutorial. The mallets look nice too. You must have a never ending supply of that spalted pecan!

Jonathan

Someone on here was looking for some Swan bits. I don't remember who it was however. They look very interesting and stout.
Jim

Your scenario sounds a bit like mine. My shop is 12x30. You may not to be able to circumvent using conduit, but you can surface mount it.



I do have finished walls, but one is a partition from the rest of the basement. And the plan was to hang cabinets and other fixtures. At the end of the day, I do like the look of finished walls, but I did leave one concrete wall bare to minimize the narrowing. I did paint the bare concrete wall white to make it easier on the eyes.



This is my shop layout:



And perpetually a work in progress:

I always look forward to you posting new projects. No one does it better than you. Ken

I built a down draft table that I also let run as an air cleaner when I'm done in the shop.

Very nice!

That joint looks great!

How do you prevent the edges of SYP from crumbling? The stuff I have must be 30-percent pitch and the rest molded sawdust. We rarely see Southern Pine here in the Pac. N.W. What I have is an HD special on short clears.

Cle-ver!
Ag

I've reached a point where I want to organize my fasteners and hardware, and I'm not sure how to proceed.

I think that it comes down to a spectrum of very simple to very complex.

• Option 1: get a few containers, let's say one for nails, one for screws, and perhaps one for washers, brackets, hinges, and everything else.
  Option 2: perhaps organize everything down to the "hardware store level", with very many containers and all organized down to minute details.....length, thread type, stainless vs zinc, finishing nail vs common, etc.
  Option 3: somewhere in between

Not about the bevel gauges...

My suggestion on laying out the tails: Don't.

Instead, I always recommend a little practice using scraps, to learn to cut parallel to a line, or to two lines or more:



1. Number your practice cuts.
2. This will give you some idea how your dovetail saw is doing, and whether you must do a little tuning first.

For very small boxes (smaller than a dovetail jig will handle easily), I sometimes use a shop-made dovetail marker, with slopes more severe than is "normal":



Al

But much of the time I simply eyeball the angles. Try it, after practicing following parallel to a line.

Also, I suggest you keep your practice joints: