Now that is a Real Chop Saw

The machinery room at Dick GmbH is a power tool lover’s dream. It has an enormous sliding table saw, a jointer/thicknesser the size of a small car and a huge band saw.

But there’s no miter saw.

A couple days before teaching a class on “Classical Joinery” at the school, I spent a morning working in the machine room with one of the company’s cabinetmakers, Andreas. His English was better than my German, but that’s not saying much. But we managed to get a lot of the tools and wood sorted out before the class began using hand gestures and drawings.

I might have to rethink my dislike of mimes. Mime skills are handy in a foreign country. If only I could have mimed, “Where are the vegetables?”

In any case, Andreas had already processed most of the European cherry that we were using for the class, but I also needed some pieces for the students to use for test joints. Andreas dug around in the wood rack and produced some rough pine boards still with the bark on them.

They were almost 8′ long. How to crosscut them?

I looked out into the main bench room and there were some large Japanese hand saws suitable for logging. “Yikes,” I mimed. “I better limber up.”

Andreas simply stacked the rough boards on top of the sliding table of the massive saw and placed small spacers between each board , plus spacers between the stack and the aluminum table.

Then he reached behind the band saw and pulled out an electric chainsaw!

It was awesome. In just a few minutes he had all the boards cut to rough length and ready for putting them over the jointer and through the planer.

I think we need a chainsaw for our shop. It would definitely be a good thing to carry along to budget meetings when the accountants start talking about trimming our budget.

– Christopher Schwarz

While I Was Sleeping

– We just received the posters of Andre Roubo’s plate 11 that we are now selling in our store. The printing job is nice, and I’ve been enjoying looking at the plate at this higher magnification. Want one? You should act fast. We’ll be selling them at Woodworking in America and they are going to be hot. Here’s the link to the poster in the store.

– My new book “The Workbench Design Book” is going to be in our warehouse very soon. As soon as it arrives, then the price increases to the list price of $34.99. If you want to save a little money and you are going to buy it anyway, now is the time.

– When I return to Germany, I am going to go here, The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.