Rob Keeble
Member
- Messages
- 12,633
- Location
- GTA Ontario Canada
One of the greatest gifts i think a person can ever recieve is a book. It follows my view of teach a man to fish, rather than giving him fish. And if we consider history books have been a way of passing down knowledge over the years.
So i posted these comments on my new book(btw i aint no book critic) given to me by a fellow member in the New Tools section of our forum because i feel a book is probably at the top of the pyramid in new tools. After all what is a tool of any kind if the knowledge on how to use it aint there.
The book "Router Joinery Workshop" which Carol Reed (one of our family members) covers the subject of routers and frankly i now wish i had bought the book before i bought a router.
This is just a preview to what i have discovered lies ahead. At first glance its loaded from the beginning with valuable information that you keep going doh Rob if only you had read that first and so on. But i have learnt its never too late to learn. People like me though seem to learn the hard way. I would like others to benefit from my hard knocks and if at all possible avoid them and the waste associated with the method.
So this so far is what i gleened and this i might add is only by glancing through the book and page hoping for 30 minutes.
The biggest bonus that occurred to me, is that Carol is a member here and if i come unstuck with something in the book, a PM will allow me to sort it out. Now that is a first for me.
1) Get the book before you buy a router.
2) Get the book before you buy another bit.
3) Found a neat so simple scraper shop jig that i could kick myself all around my shop like a seargent would do in the army comics.
4) Dont keep router bits you damaged. Oh boy the horder in us thinks we will recover this bit someday but the brain says you aint. I even put the book down went to my shop and have a bunch of bits that promptly found their way to the garbage bin as a result.
5) The router can do way more than i thought. Way way more.
6) There is hugely valuable info on selection of bits in this book. Someday the tool manufacturers will wake up and educate their customers. I dont think they actually realize that there must be many people like me that dont buy the fancy bits because they just dont know how to use them or that the selection is so vast they seem contradictory. So you hold off. That is until you get a book like this. Carol has a page that shows three bits that do the same thing. Mmmh i had that sneaky feeling when i see them in the store but hey who was i to say that with my limited knowledge so not wanting to get ripped off you just dont venture.
7)If you have a technical and mechanical intuition which i would think most woodworkers have, you might find at times a little voice saying to you why did the manufacturer not do this or that. Then you see what Carol has done with router bases and additional handles and you have the aahah moment. How did they expect us to hold that router in our hands with the torque it generates and do it with what 6 inches between our hands. Make that base 15 inches wide and put two decent handles on there and watch the difference. Thats what Carol has done.
There is a ton more as i say this is just a first glance. I will add more to this post as i go through the book.
Just for the record my first router was a B&D plunge router with 1/4 collet. I bought it for a specific project when i first arrived in Canada. It seemed like a good choice but if the truth be told it was the fact that HD had it, the price was right at the time and i thought a plunge would do all that a fixed base would do so i thought i was getting two for one. Its now in the place where the skill vibrating jigsaw lives and the other junk tools i bought without the knowledge. I shudder to think how much i would have saved had i spent a little time and only a few dollars to buy a book like this first and then do my shopping.
Thanks again Carol for putting pen to paper and i particularly like the loads of pictures in the book. Thanks Toni for giving it to me.
I would urge all of you who find a particular book on our mutual hobby to post a few comments on the book and what you got from it on the forum. You dont have to be an expert to let other newbies know about the value in books like this. The magazines cannot make up in a couple of pages for what the books do in detail and as reference.
So i posted these comments on my new book(btw i aint no book critic) given to me by a fellow member in the New Tools section of our forum because i feel a book is probably at the top of the pyramid in new tools. After all what is a tool of any kind if the knowledge on how to use it aint there.
The book "Router Joinery Workshop" which Carol Reed (one of our family members) covers the subject of routers and frankly i now wish i had bought the book before i bought a router.
This is just a preview to what i have discovered lies ahead. At first glance its loaded from the beginning with valuable information that you keep going doh Rob if only you had read that first and so on. But i have learnt its never too late to learn. People like me though seem to learn the hard way. I would like others to benefit from my hard knocks and if at all possible avoid them and the waste associated with the method.
So this so far is what i gleened and this i might add is only by glancing through the book and page hoping for 30 minutes.
The biggest bonus that occurred to me, is that Carol is a member here and if i come unstuck with something in the book, a PM will allow me to sort it out. Now that is a first for me.
1) Get the book before you buy a router.
2) Get the book before you buy another bit.
3) Found a neat so simple scraper shop jig that i could kick myself all around my shop like a seargent would do in the army comics.
4) Dont keep router bits you damaged. Oh boy the horder in us thinks we will recover this bit someday but the brain says you aint. I even put the book down went to my shop and have a bunch of bits that promptly found their way to the garbage bin as a result.
5) The router can do way more than i thought. Way way more.
6) There is hugely valuable info on selection of bits in this book. Someday the tool manufacturers will wake up and educate their customers. I dont think they actually realize that there must be many people like me that dont buy the fancy bits because they just dont know how to use them or that the selection is so vast they seem contradictory. So you hold off. That is until you get a book like this. Carol has a page that shows three bits that do the same thing. Mmmh i had that sneaky feeling when i see them in the store but hey who was i to say that with my limited knowledge so not wanting to get ripped off you just dont venture.
7)If you have a technical and mechanical intuition which i would think most woodworkers have, you might find at times a little voice saying to you why did the manufacturer not do this or that. Then you see what Carol has done with router bases and additional handles and you have the aahah moment. How did they expect us to hold that router in our hands with the torque it generates and do it with what 6 inches between our hands. Make that base 15 inches wide and put two decent handles on there and watch the difference. Thats what Carol has done.
There is a ton more as i say this is just a first glance. I will add more to this post as i go through the book.
Just for the record my first router was a B&D plunge router with 1/4 collet. I bought it for a specific project when i first arrived in Canada. It seemed like a good choice but if the truth be told it was the fact that HD had it, the price was right at the time and i thought a plunge would do all that a fixed base would do so i thought i was getting two for one. Its now in the place where the skill vibrating jigsaw lives and the other junk tools i bought without the knowledge. I shudder to think how much i would have saved had i spent a little time and only a few dollars to buy a book like this first and then do my shopping.
Thanks again Carol for putting pen to paper and i particularly like the loads of pictures in the book. Thanks Toni for giving it to me.
I would urge all of you who find a particular book on our mutual hobby to post a few comments on the book and what you got from it on the forum. You dont have to be an expert to let other newbies know about the value in books like this. The magazines cannot make up in a couple of pages for what the books do in detail and as reference.
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