Off on a little road trip
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By STEVE BATIE
Lee Newspapers
Monday, May 5, 2008 11:26 AM CDT
LINCOLN, Neb. — My buddy Pete stopped by the house a few weeks ago and, because he’d never been over before, we went on a tour of the HouseWorks workshop.
I do this with virtually every new visitor, and it never fails to impress.
Oohs, and aahs all around.
But I was especially excited for Pete to see the place because … well … Pete’s one of us.
I’ve known him for a couple of years, and whenever we run into each other, we always wind up talking about woodworking.
Me, because it’s basically what I do when I’m not doing this reading and writing stuff for a living. Pete, because it actually is what he does for a living.
Anyway, I was pretty buzzed about showing him my workshop.
Pete was less than impressed.
No oohs. No aahs.
But I forgave him because he brought me a lot of scrap walnut and cherry that his boss was tossing out -- pieces too small for a commercial shop’s use but just right for whittling.
That’s what I did for next three weeks, hand-carving a couple of handles for beer taps that he and I were going to give our favorite bar owners.
Pete had been after me for more than a year to see his own shop, so when the carvings were finished, I took them over to L.K. Schweitzer & Co. for Pete to mount their final fittings.
Schweitzer & Co. is a custom woodworking shop, specializing in commercial case goods, store fixtures and custom millwork. It designs and builds display cabinets and shelving for retailers all over the country.
Larry Schweitzer himself, who told me he got into the business after making wooden toys for 10 years, gave me a shop tour, showing off some of the toys he’s playing with now.
The first was a giant computerized router table that was being used that day on a stack of 4-by-8-foot sheets of fiberboard.
A four-inch router blade made repeated passes over each sheet, shaving it just 1/16th of an inch thinner, an almost comically simple procedure for a machine that Schweitzer said could be programmed to perform any sort of router work -- repeatedly and perfectly.
There were two different machines that apply banding to sheet goods, disguising the edges so plywood or veneered fiberboard looks like it’s solid wood. I’ve done the job myself using an ordinary clothes iron to melt the glue that adheres the thin strips of edging to the sheet.
The banding machines, one for straight edges and another for curves, are a lot faster.
And a whole lot tidier.
Just like when I make dowel joints. I have to clamp on a drilling jig, bore out the holes, remove the jig, clean out the holes, apply glue, smack in the dowels with a mallet and wipe up the glue that always oozes out.
Then move on to the next set of holes.
Again and again and again.
But yet another massive shop gadget, Schweitzer explained, can be set up to do all that in less time than it took you to read this sentence. It’s so quick, in fact, that the machine requires two hoppers of dowels. Gravity isn’t fast enough for one to keep up with the drilling and gluing.
And it does its job repeatedly and perfectly for as long as you need it to.
Such is the wonder of a modern woodworking shop.
By the way, that routing table I mentioned occupies a hunk of floor space at Schweitzer & Co. that’s just about the size of my entire shop.
So maybe it’s no surprise that Pete was less than in awe of my little setup.
Send your home repair and remodeling questions to: HouseWorks, P.O. Box 81609, Lincoln, NE 68501, or e-mail: houseworks@journalstar.com.
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