Helpful Woodworking Tricks You'll Actually Use | Useful Woodshop Hacks 

We chemists call it cyanoacrylate to make woodworkers feel inferior. 😁

@@RatBasterd ha!

@@RatBasterd nosebleed😁

I'm pretty sure I'm losing. I better order some more...

Keep Being You

He who controls the clamps, controls the universe.

He who dies with the most clamps held it together for a long time.

I thought it was old car tires

In October of 2017, I cut my left index finger by trying to cut a tiny piece of cherry shoe base moulding at a 45 degree mitre angle without using the zero clearance fence (plus I had taken my blade guard off of my mitre saw). Needless to say, I was rushing and didn't allow the blade to get up to full speed before making my cut with my left index finger holding the piece of shoe base against the saw fence within an inch of the saw blade and when the teeth made contact with the wood it caught and kicked the piece of wood, pulling it (along with my left hand/index finger) into the rotating blade. Chewed up my finger pretty bad. Happened so fast. I immediately grabbed my finger and squeezed it firmly with my right hand and could feel bone protruding and I knew I had just nearly chopped it off. I was working on a jobsite at a customer's house and didn't have my guys working that day (I'm a self employed finish carpentry contractor who specializes in interior trim work/moulding) so it was just me and the homeowner/customer there. I knew I needed to go to the hospital immediately but couldn't drive myself cause I couldn't release the pressure I was exerting with my right hand. So I went into the house and told the homeowner that I needed her to take me to the hospital. She dropped me off at the emergency room and left and when I showed my finger (or what was left of it) to the ER paramedic, he said, "Oh wow, ok you can continue to apply pressure to it (squeeze it). I'm not going to lie. It's bad. It's really bad. One of the worst injuries I've seen and I've seen everything." I said, "That's what I was trying to tell you!" So, to make a short story long, what had happened was the saw teeth had ripped and shredded along the side of my index finger, causing multiple bone fractures and the severing of a lot of nerves and tendons as well as chunking out the muscle and tissue right along the side of my finger from the first/top/end joint (distal interphalangeal) to the tip of my index finger (so about an inch or so of my finger or about 25% of the overall length of my finger). After hours of waiting for something to help the pain, they finally numbed it with something similar to what dentists use to numb your gums (i.e. Novacaine or Lytocaine). Then I overheard the nurse and X-Ray technician discussing the situation and that it was definitely going to have to be amputated. I wasn't shocked when I heard that but it was still hard to hear, even though I had already realized my left index finger was pretty much toast. I tried to take solace in the fact that I'm right handed and pretty much do everything with my right hand because the left has always been basically retarded, weak, and uncoordinated so I was momentarily consoled that it was not my right index finger. The consolation, however, was short lived when a haunting thought came to my mind; that one of my favorite hobbies was playing the guitar and, being a righty, I strum with my right hand and my left hand does the fingering along the fretboard (pressing down the strings). That's when it really hit me how significant it was going to be to lose my left index finger, in part or whole. And it wasn't just thinking about not being able to play the guitar again without great difficulty (or at least not well) and thinking about other things that would be more difficult if not impossible to do (like rock climbing which I enjoyed although I wasn't a climbing fanatic like friends of mine are), but I was also contemplating, with dread, the aesthetic implications; by the sheer grotesqueness of becoming an amputee; a gimp, forever (I was very superficial and vain when this happened). I thought they were going to have to amputate at least half of my finger. But it turns out they were able to salvage everything below the first finger joint (the distal interphalangeal). So I ended up losing about an inch of my finger. Totally sucked and it took me about a year to be able to play the guitar without the pain being overbearing, but now I can pretty much play at the same skill level (or lack thereof) that I was at before the accident. The moral of the story is to be safe when using power tools and learn how to do things the right way, safely before taking risks that could change your life forever. It tends to happen so fast, in a split second, and your life is forever changed. And there are so many far worse/more serious stories of accidents involving power tools than my story. I consider my story to be quite mild by comparison and really ended up being something that made me reconsider my shallow, materialistic, vain, and Godless existence which ultimately led me to Christ which is worth infinitely more than losing part of my finger so I now consider it a blessing. God bless.

That’s really great. Can I make a suggestion (from an old man with 45 plus years of woodworking). There is a normal emotion of, when just starting, wanting to make things. And make things. And make things. Don’t fight that but try to balance making with learning. By which I mean learn and practice the basics - without which anyone would be a hack and not a craftsman. First for me would be measuring and marking. Firstly then, you need accurate and reliable rules, tapes and squares. That doesn’t mean the most expensive (most people like owning lovely things; people drove a Rolls Royce but it doesn’t get you there any quicker than a Mini). It doesn’t have to be new. It often doesn’t matter that your tape is 1mm inaccurate over 2m as you probably want reliability more than absolute accuracy. For example, you measure an alcove with your tape at 997mm - when actually it’s 998. But, when you cut a piece to fit nicely, you use the same tape to cut at 997mm and it fits. The square needs to be square; easy test; take a scrap of sheet paper or card or even mdf. Place your square on it with the short edge of the square facing left (needs to be accurately placed at the edge and sometimes a thicker piece of card or timer makes this easier) and the long side on the card/timber. Draw a line along the long side with a sharp pencil. Then flip the square over with the short part again along the edge of the card but now facing right. The long side should be very near to where you had it before. Draw another sharp line. If your square is perfect, then the 2 lines that you have drawn will be parallel. If they are not exactly parallel, then you can measure the degree by measuring the out-of-parallel and dividing that by 2. For example, if your out of parallel measurement is 2mm, then your square is out of square by 1mm over the length of the long side. If your square has been bought new, then don’t touch it, just take it back. If it’s secondhand, you can certainly try and make it square by taking a sheet of emery paper wrapped around a long piece of timber and try to rectify the inaccuracy. Personally, I would just throw it and learn the lesson. Then you have the good ways to mark; to saw; to chisel. Actually, there are lots of good ways and a few bad ways. There is no ONE way. If anyone finds this useful, I’m happy to write a bot more.

For larger holes, I've used a wooden golf tee....good tip

Skewers, garden stakes...