Over the last year or two I’ve gradually accumulated 6 of DMT’s 8″ continuous diamond sharpening stones.  I started with Coarse, Fine, and Extra Fine per Paul Seller’s recommendation with a leather strop plus green compound for a hair-popping edge.  Then curiosity compelled me to get the Extra Extra Coarse, Extra-Coarse, and Extra Extra Fine models.  I have not purchased the special Medium stone because it costs $20 more than the other models.  I’ll be using DMT’s shorthand for these throughout this post:

This post is basically shitting on those last three models.  I feel that with the C, F, and E models DMT has produced some very effective sharpening plates that efficiently remove metal to the advertised mesh.

The lowest two (XX & X) do remove metal faster than C.  But not that much faster, not $50 faster.  And I honestly have not noticed much of a difference between XX and X.  XX has sort of a bumpy, gravelly feel to it not a sharp feeling.  Yesterday I was straightening out the beefy 2-3/8″ blade on my Woodriver 5-1/2 plane blade, starting with the X plate.  You know the drill, 3/4 of the bevel is done but then the remaining 1/4 has this thin triangular section that slowly wears away.  As I spent minutes upon minutes sharpening away I there wasn’t a noticeable difference in the speed at which that triangle disappeared as I switched between XX, X, and C.  No I did not time this or get very scientific but I was frustrated from a consumer perspective.

At the top end is the EE model.  Out of the box it leaves a scratch pattern much more coarse than E and apparently requires a ton of break-in time to get good.  Some folks on Bladeforums.com have had success, this fellow spent a year breaking in his plate.  Personally I’m not willing to spent that kind of time on a product.  We’re here to make things not sharpen.  Related to this, I recently picked up an 8k Kuromaku Shapton stone and got a mirror finish coming from the DMT E plate in something like 20 seconds.  Super fast and easy.

I did spend some time trying to break in my EE plate, perhaps 15-20 minutes scrubbing with a 1″ square of steel.  It still leaves a pronounced scratch pattern after all that; I’m done with it.

Concluding Remarks

Here’s my quick summary of the plates I’ve used

I feel that DMT’s plates belong in the middle of your sharpening progression.  Paul Sellers does C, F, E + strop.  Rob Cosman goes from a 1k diamond plate right to a 16k ceramic stone.

Serious shape changes can be done with the X or C plates, albeit slowly.  Or you could gently perform those modifications on your bench grinder.  Or you could do them on cheap sandpaper and a flat surface.

On the fine end a strop plus honing compound will get you a very sharp edge but you truly do need to hit it for 50 strokes.  Waterstones are an option here too but introduce more cost especially with the need to flatten them.

I’m going to stick with my C, F, E + Shapton for day-to-day tasks.  I’m keeping the X for waterstone flattening.  XX and EE are heading out to eBay.

I recently finished a new workbench with a face vise on the left and Veritas Inset Vise off on the right.  Most of my bench work is on the medium-to-small size and I wanted a means to secure those pieces to the bench top without clamps.  Most operations will be things like holding the work for assembly or sanding.  I don’t do a lot of hand-planing but when I do I use the face vise.

Benchcrafted’s wagon vise looks pretty sweet but it’s also at least $300.  Making one from scratch is an option but I’d still have to spend some money on the hardware not to mention the extra time on making the darn thing.

So I went with the Veritas option because it wasn’t horribly expensive and the installation looked pretty easy; just rout out a channel for it.  Installation was simple, I used my plunge router with a guide fence to make two parallel grooves forming the edges of the channel and then hogged out the middle.  I screwed up the routing process, cutting out the a 3″ wide channel the full depth leaving hollows underneath the two wings.  Oops.  But this wasn’t a huge deal I just made two spacer pieces to fill that void back, in gluing them in place.

I located the edge of the vise about 2″ from the edge of the bench in order to give more support to either side of the clamped piece.  As you can see I went with round 3/4″ dogs, starting them about 1.5″ from the end of the vise and spacing them every 7″.  The vise allows a spacing of 7-3/4″.  I made mine as Paul Sellers shows in this video.

So that is where my vise lives, but how well does it work?  I’d say pretty darn well.  My first test was a piece of plywood clamped up between the vise and one of my dogs.  Yanking on it I moved my entire bench before it budged at all.  So it is not lacking at all in the power department, it would easily snap off one of my oak dogs if I really torqued on it.  The work is very resistant to rocking motion too, but for extra stability there one could install parallel bench dogs for an ultra-sturdy triangular holding pattern.  As I said earlier I’ll be using those for mostly light-duty things so I don’t need to get that fancy.

The little toggle handle is kind of cheesy but it’s necessary for the vise top to be 100% flush.  While a wheel would be easier to use it’s really not so hard to quickly spin it around with your finger.. just not as intuitive.

My only real complaint was with the optional 1/4″ jaw that I ordered along with the vise.  Its locating pegs were a bit too close together, preventing the jaw from fully seating into the vise.  To remedy this I had to file away some material on their inside faces.

So overall I’m very happy with this vise.  It works very well and due to its simple installation it can retrofitted into existing benches.  After spending a few weekends building this workbench I was very glad to be able to install the vise in one evening!

I’ve had the Lee Valley / Canvas Apron for a month and have been pretty happy with it so far so I thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

To test the concept of using a shop apron I had been using a cheapo model from Menard’s but I really disliked the neck loop.  However I did really enjoy keeping things close to hand and up high as opposed to using cargo short pockets; dust collector remote, pencils, ear plugs, etc.

The Lee Valley apron gets 4/5 stars from me.  The construction quality is very good and the pockets are well thought-out, especially the large side pockets.  My only gripe with the apron is the extra webbing that sticks out from the shoulder straps; when I reach back to manipulate the main buckle I often wind up grabbing a stray strap or one of the adjustment buckle.  I need to pin back the excess strapping to keep the back clear as you see in Lee Valley’s product images.

But overall the apron is very comfortable and useful and is worth $40.

There’s one advantage to a fixed head lathe; the source of dust and chips is always in the same spot!  Given a dust hood that can cover 10″ you’re set for most projects.  Given a sliding headstock lathe and now your dust collection needs to be a lot more flexible, it will have to travel a few feet in either direction.

When I first got my new lathe I made a dust arm that mounted to the lathe body but I didn’t like it because it was always in the way of the banjo.  The next version is a telescoping arm that mounts to the wall via a French Cleat.  So far it’s worked really well, here are some photos.

Complete collector

Arm with hood removed

Back of cleat

Front of cleat

Closeup of telescoping surround

It’s a pretty simple design.  The arm is sandwiched between two boards, pinned with a 1/4″ carriage bolt and plastic knob.  Notice how the cleat is quite long, this was done to accommodate the side-to-side wobbliness of the collector as it’s moved.  An earlier version had a narrow cleat (~5″) and it would tend to tip out.  The extra boards on either end also help it stay put.  The surround is four pieces of wood glued up to form a rectangular tube.  A piece of 1/4″ plywood glued on top provides a mounting point for the plastic hood.

The arm is about 10″ long while the surround is about 9″ long.  I found that the surround only needs to have about 1/3 of the arm inserted into it in order to provide a stable connection so I cut the arm back such that at maximum extension the surround has this much engagement.

Careful sizing of the parts help it slide smoothly as does a good coating of paste wax on the arm.

The plastic dust hood is  the magnetic jobber sold by many vendors.

Over the year that I’ve owned my sliding table saw I’ve really come to appreciate the convenience and safety of having a built-in crosscutting & ripping sled.

I just finished a set of tapered legs which on a normal cabinet saw one would use a taper jig to cut.  In this post I’ll show how I accomplished the same thing with my sliding table and two hold-down clamps.

Finished product first.  Four legs that started as 2″ squares.  The taper starts below the mortises (about 4.25″ from the top) and ends a half-inch from the bottom edge leaving a 1″ square foot on the bottom.

These photos show the uncut leg with the taper penciled in.

This photo shows how the legs will be positioned on the sliding table.  The cut starts at the foot and will end a little short of the mortise.  The leg is pushed by the miter fence while its taper angle is set by the fence’s flip-stop.  An important note here: I am indexing the cuts from the waste side not the good side.  This always gives me a square surface to set up on.  If I indexed off of the good side I’d have to deal with trying to index off of a taper which would involve making shim blocks.  Nuts to that.

Setting up on the slider required establishing two indexing points.

• One for the foot set 1/2″ inch from the blade.  This is the easy one I just used the fence.
• A second one to establish where the cut will stop near the mortises, 4.25″ inches from the top.

The second indexing point was harder to set up because that point is out in space.  I needed to move the flip-stop to “aim” the cut at the desired point below the mortises.  I gave myself a target to aim at by clamping a stick to the table at that location and then cutting it off:

The marking stick

Stick positioned about 4.25″ from the top

Chop!

Now with the stick in place I could move the flip-stop around to get the stick flush with the place I wanted the taper cut to end.

After confirming that the setup worked fine on my test piece I cut all the tapers.  Two Kreg hold down clamps did a fine job of keeping the work in place and my hands away from the blade.  A Diablo ripping blade left a very nice surface which only left behind very faint tool marks; a few scrapes and the surface was ready for 220.

I needed two more 48″ clamps on my current project and because it’s just a simple carcass I thought I’d give Harbor Freight’s a try.  I already have some Dubuque clamps so I’m able to compare the two.

As you can guess, the Harbor Freight clamps are a lot shittier, just look at the sidewall thicknesses above.  On the HF clamps the whole assembly twists while you’re putting them in place and none of the other components are as well-made.

However for the purposes of this particular project they work just fine.  Once you have them lined up and tightened they can hold a cabinet together just as well as much nicer clamp.  And their light weight makes them really easy to maneuver into place unlike my heavy 48″ Jorgensen Cabinet Masters.

So while I don’t think I’ll buy any more of these they can service lightweight assembly jobs just fine.