NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 43, $3.50 Making ... - Wood Tools

(continued)
Letters
design that I once found so prevalent are now few and far
between. And why, oh why do you devote so much of your
magazine to the likes of Wendell Castle and Sam Maloof? It's
no secret that they are master woodworkers, that their work
commands high prices. You insist on representing these people
over and over again, while there are thousands of woodworkers,
designers and craftspeople who are so deserving and
worthy of coverage in a magazine such as yours. I cannot help
but be disappointed. -Kitty Kocol, Milwaukee, Wis.
I wish to compliment you on the September/October issue.
As a specific illustration, I point to Ken Rower's trestle table
article with its many nuggets of insight into accomplished
furniture design-everything from proportions of overhang
and stretcher placement to the use of beveling to blend in toeboard
relieving. I realize that such things may be well known
to professionals and students, but we self-taught chiselers
have to glean the tricks anywhere we find them. Anyone who
has ever watched a baseball game will know how to play first
base, but as soon as the coach shows you how to tag up with
your left foot instead of whatever is handy, he is replacing
instinct with civilization. And that's where I'm at.
-Thomas H. Peer, Pittsburgh, Pa.
I am one who liked the format of the magazine the way it
was. With all the advertising and such at the beginning half
and the substance the second half, the mind could tun free
after the last page. Now advertising has taken priority.
-Ken Davignon, Muskegon, Mich.
cy. But
Your illustration and description of the accessible saw switch
(FWW #42, p. 10) leave something to be desired. The idea
seems great as a quick way to turn the saw off in an emergen­
what about the ease of an accidental turn-on? A belt
buckle might even do it as you lean over.
-William Steinmetz, Santa Barbara, Calif
As an amateur woodworker and a pharmacist, I enjoyed
George Mustoe's article on respiratory hazards (FWW #41).
By chance I came across a review article on documented cases
of aplastic anemia and red cell aplasia due to exposure to
pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative. The article is authored
by Dr. H.). Roberts and appears in the January '83
issue of Southern Medical Journal.
Roberts cites six cases from 21 to 73 years of age. One 21year-old,
using pentachlorophenol at home for two days to
paint furniture, developed aplastic anemia after a month. Another
person developed the same anemia after eight months.
The author suggests that his research represents only the til2 of
FWW
the iceberg, because the cause and effect [of previous cases J
were overlooked or not sufficiently documented.
-Peter ]. Sargalski, Miami, Fla.
As a wood collector, I know of at least one domestic source
for the doussie which David Kolanek inquired about in
#42, p. 16. He is Art Green, 117 Fairfield Ave., Bastrop,
La. 71220. As James Krenov points out, the wood is
unknown in this country as doussie, but when it is available,
it's identified by its genus, which is A/zelia, or African
afzelia. -James ]. Heusinger, Berea, Ohio
Just to keep the record straight, I'd like to comment on the
band saw sharpening article in the May /J une issue (to agree
with what it said) and to take exception to what Harold Read
said in his letter in the July/August issue. He calls the article
wrong in saying that blades get brittle through work-harden-
6
ing. They do. I've spent more than fifty years investigating
and coping with the idiosyncrasies of sttuctural steel used in
bridges, and there's a misconception that brittle fracture results
only from repeated excursions above the yield point of
the material. . .. Extensive research has proved that brittle
fracture can result from repeated stress well below the yield
point. Some steels will fail with only a few hundred thousand
repetitions. Others will go several million. The best will go
around ten million or more.
I think we can agree that a tightly stretched bandsaw blade
goes through stress every time it flexes around a wheel. The
stress is well below the yield point of the material, so no
permanent deformation results. The number of these stress
excursions between two moderate stresses, however, will
mount up into large totals for a well-used bandsaw blade.
-Arthur L. Elliott, Sacramento, Calif
Donald Bjorkman's router table (FWW #42) is a handsome
variation on a tried-and-true design. OutS is quite similar, but
a bit ctuder in the finish. An easy addition to Bjorkman's jig
is a hole· cut in the back for a vacuum hose. With a closed
box such as this, the vac really pulls the chips away from
the cutter. I suspect that the airstream serves to cool the motor
also. -Bill Lego, Springfield, Va .
It all started when Chuck, a fellow woodworker, mentioned
that he knew a farmer with five walnut logs for sale. Chuck
and the farmer agreed on a price of $40 for the logs, which
were about 18 in. in diameter, straight, and about 8 ft. long.
The logs were nine months old, but we considered it a trivial
matter since they had been kept up off the ground and were
good and solid. Luckily, the farmer had a tractor with a
front-end loader, and that, along with much grunting and
groaning, got the logs loaded on my pickup truck.
We pulled into the log-buyer's yard full of optimism. The
buyer came out, looked at Out logs for a few minutes and
then said, "Looks like you fellows got a pretty big load of
firewood here." He pointed out that the logs were full of
radial checks and explained that sawlogs need to be sawn into
lumber as soon as possible after cutting. If you can't get them
sawn right away, you need to seal the ends and keep the
EDITOR·S
entire log
NOTE:
moist. Needless to say, it was a pretty quiet trip
home. Still not totally convinced, I sawed one of the logs into
firewood lengths and witnessed
be
exactly what the buyer
meant. The checks went all through the log. It wasn't exactly
the kind of education I like, but a lesson on sawlogs I'll
never forget. -Tom Joch, Fairborn, Ohio
FWW
While checks may indicate a log unsuitable for sawing,
chopping it into firewood is not the only alternative. The log
can always be carved, and it can also split, riven with a froe, and
drawknifed into usable stock. The checks give you a place to start.
Paul McClure's reply to Douglas Newhouse's letter in
#40, p. 8, contains some errors. Swietenia macrophylla
(aka Brazilian mahogany and Honduras mahogany,
and by at least 16 other names) belongs to the family Meliaceae,
not Meliazeae. Although S. macrophylla is the true mahogany
of today's commerce, it was Chippendale and Hepplewhite
who gave mahogany its lasting fame as a cabinet
wood. What they used was probably the wood of S. mahagoni,
West Indies mahogany, now scarce and virtually impossible
to get. The botanical name for sapele should be
Entandrophragma cylindricum, not Enpandrophragma cylindricum.
Similarly, the correct binomial for tigetwood is
Lovoa klaineana, not Lovoa klainea as printed.
-Robert D. Pinney, Cedarville, Calif