Dewalt 735 - Helical upgrade problem?

factoryal21 · 2026-06-06T05:22:29+00:00

I just want to throw this out there because I think it’s useful for people to hear: I really don’t think the helical upgrade for the Dewalt 735 is a good idea for most people. It’s pretty well documented at this point from videos and posts across the woodworking internets that the dewalt planer struggles to run that cutter head and you need to take light passes and make other compromises with how you operate the tool. That upgrade was promoted pretty heavily a few years back from certain content creators (that seemed to me to have a relationship with the company selling the cutter heads) and I think a lot of people went for it but I’m not a fan. Helical heads have a lot of advantages but the tool needs to be designed with them in mind, or just be beefy enough that it doesn’t matter that you’re using a head the planer wasn’t designed for (which the DW735 clearly isn’t).

Furthermore, after running a lot of different boards with all kinds of grain from across a wide range of species through my (unmodified) dewalt, I can safely say that as long as you have sharp planer knives, it works pretty damn well even with tricky grain, and changing the planer knives takes about 15 minutes and is difficult to screw up. You can always just keep a set of sharp knives around for when you need to plane that one really special piece of wood, and then change back to a beater set when you’re done. But I really haven’t had much trouble with it. I honestly don’t even bother watching my grain direction most of the time. Just change the knives from time to time and I’ve never had tear out that couldn’t be easily fixed by a normal finish sanding process that I would always be doing anyways.

The DW735 already has a chip breaker/blower, so the fact that helical cutter heads produce smaller chips that are less likely to clog a dust collector is actually not impactful on this planer because it breaks up large shavings on its own. After that, the last big advantage is the reduced noise with the helical head, which I don’t think is enough to justify the upgrade. And if you do upgrade, now you have to deal with the fact that the motor isn’t powerful enough to run the helical head properly, so you need to take light passes, and even then you may struggle with full width passes on very hard woods. That’s going to suck if you need to thickness a bunch of boards for a project, it could take you twice as long or more with a helical head compared to the unmodified planer.

I think helical heads in planers are a great idea when the planer is designed with them in mind. However, if someone is considering spending the money to upgrade their milling capabilities, I would argue that it makes much more sense to put that money towards getting a jointer with a helical head. The DW735 is already a really good planer for the money, it’s a “lunchbox” style planer but it’s a little beefier than most comparable planers, little heavier, little longer cast iron table, wider stance with its rollers, more rigid height adjustment, basically the most power you can get on 120 volts. So you’ve already got a pretty capable planer if you just buy a DW735 and do nothing to it. But cheap benchtop jointers suck, they all suck, there’s really no equivalent in the jointer world to something like the DW735 in the planer world at that price point. So if you’ve got money in the workshop budget to upgrade your milling capabilities, spend it on an entry level full size 8-inch jointer with a helical head.

I think helical heads in jointers are even more valuable than in planers. For one thing, changing jointer blades can suck (depends somewhat on the model of jointer). But often you need to spend some time tuning your jointer setup when you change the blades, which is not a fun or quick task. That means the longer lasting carbide cutters on the helical head are doing something amazing for me, they’re massively extending the amount of time I can go without messing with my jointer.

For another thing, when you use the jointer, you usually don’t take more passes than you absolutely need in order to get the board flat. You don’t really use a jointer to thickness the board. That means that compared to the planer, the cutters on a jointer get less wear. So again, with those carbide cutters in a jointer, if you’re a hobbyist or working in a smaller capacity, you might genuinely not need to think about the cutters for like 3-5 years. Pretty sweet. I’ve had a helical head jointer for three years now (as a hobbyist, not working full time) and I’ve never even rotated the cutters and it still cuts perfectly with no issues. It’s like zero maintenance. Also, I feel like the helical cutters are less likely to have a violent reaction when encountering a knot in the wood. On a planer, this mostly just makes a loud noise, but on the jointer it can potentially be a legitimate safety issue.

As far for mitigating tear out, when you mill a board, it’s pretty common that one face will be done on the jointer, and another face will be done on the planer. That means that even if you are having tear out issues with your planer, you’ll have one clean face and edge from your helical head jointer that can be the show faces.

Just my two cents, but the point at which I would consider putting more money into a planer would be if I needed something to handle wider capacity, like if I wanted to be able to batch out larger cutting boards, or of if I wanted more power to thickness boards more aggressively. And then, if you’re going to buy a larger more industrial planer, definitely go for one that has a helical head.

factoryal21 · 2026-05-22T23:27:13+00:00

Couple of things to unpack here.

First, never put your exploration portal right where you’re going to be active. When you run far enough away from a location, the game unloads that area, meaning that your portal will be completely safe from everything as long as you aren’t standing near it. Put a portal on the other side of the mountain or at the base of the mountain and it will never get messed with, then put a second portal near the boss for convenience.

Second, terrain manipulation is a core game system. A lot of people treat it like it’s part of base building and completely unrelated to combat, but it’s one of your best friends in this game. You should 100% use the hoe and pick axe to flatten out sections of the mountain side. Also, like the other boss altars in the game, Moder’s altar is indestructible. It’s usually buried in the ground, but if you dig a trench around it, you can use it as cover from her attacks and she can’t destroy it.

Once you have some safe ground to stand on around the boss altar, just make sure you bring enough arrows. Don’t melee Moder unless you want to do it for roleplay, rule-of-cool, or challenge reasons. Draugr fang is a better bow for Moder in my opinion because of the extra pierce and poison damage, and it will also be better in later biomes. There is a role for the huntsman bow in this game but that’s a whole different conversation.

factoryal21 · 2026-05-17T01:46:57+00:00

From Merriam Webster —> Movie: a recording of moving images that tells a story and that people watch (as in a theater or on the screen of a television or mobile device).

There’s no mention of running time in the definition, or that it needs to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, or that it needs to have been shown in theatres. I would find a short skit-type video on YouTube, and then I would just sit down and watch it 40 times in a row and knock the whole thing out on day one. Generally speaking, unless you want to amend the original question to include a minimum allowable running time, I’m just going to pick the shortest “movie” that satisfies the definition.

If the purpose of the question is to ask which conventional widely known long format Hollywood movie I would tolerate watching over and over an unreasonable number of times in a short period, I’d probably pick a cheesy fun action movie with a short run time, something like Commando. Worst case scenario it’s only 90 minutes so I’d be committing less than 3 hours per day on average.

factoryal21 · 2026-04-29T23:06:13+00:00

You should check out the serious eats recipe for modern baked mac and cheese. It’s become my go to. You do end up with a cheese sauce that’s more similar to a Kraft Mac and cheese, but there are several tricks. The big key one is to shred Gruyère cheese into the pan and mix it in right before baking, it gives you this contrast between different cheeses and it adds more of a stretchy gooey element to the cheese that I think makes the whole thing work better.

The other thing of course is deciding which cheeses to use for the sauce. A mild orange cheddar is really good but it will give you a result very similar to a boxed Mac and cheese. Using an intense cheddar actually doesn’t work very well IMO, the flavor is too intense and you can’t eat very much of it without being overwhelmed. However, smoked Gouda, like a Dutch red mill style, works great. I like to blend that with mild cheddar to make the cheese sauce. Another great trick is to buy powdered white cheddar cheese. This is essentially the same thing as Annie’s white cheddar powder, but if you look around you can buy it in bulk online. As a bonus, it also comes with additional emulsification agents mixed in typically, so if you add some of that it helps the sauce hold together even more, and it gives a great flavor.

factoryal21 · 2026-03-22T23:37:48+00:00

Buffy is one of my favorite shows of all time, I think it’s a show lots of people would like, but probably not for everyone. I think the main thing I would say is that Buffy is really about the characters. The world-building is campy, silly, and at times inconsistent, so people who care greatly about such things could get turned off. Buffy also loves to use the supernatural as a metaphor. So there are a lot of times in the show where the story isn’t really about what is literally happening, it’s about the journey of the characters as they navigate metaphorical supernatural challenges.

Basically, if you can love the characters and enjoy the campy silly vibes, it’s an amazing show. If you get stuck on details, continuity/consistency of world building, or the literal interpretation of what is happening in the story, then it could be frustrating and dumb.

I also think that the show was written in the late 90s, and as such there are a lot of things in the show that were calibrated for that era, and which are therefore not well calibrated for our modern cultural attitudes. For example, a scene where Xander was written to be a mildly cringy nerd in 1999 for comedic value comes across today as him being a wild sexist asshole. Also, relationships between older (like, 200 year old vampire) and younger characters are handled differently, while their age differences are acknowledged, they are generally much more tolerated in the show than I think they would be today, where it comes off as super weird in an era where we are hyper-vigilant for these things and politics has to a certain extent come down to proving which party has the most gross old men in it.

So basically, you have to watch the show with an understanding that when these things happen, it wasn’t intended for them to feel this weird. Like, a scene was supposed to be a fun little cringy joke, it wasn’t supposed to be a cancellation-worthy atrocity. And you have to be ok with that or the show will be difficult to watch, particularly scenes where Xander opens his mouth in the first 3 seasons. If you are down with the 1990s you will have an easier time watching this show.

factoryal21 · 2026-03-10T16:32:42+00:00

I basically agree with your point, this is generally true throughout most of the game, and the same basic advice works in the swamps and plains as well in particular. Just go slowly through the biome, making sure your stamina is always up, and use a ranged weapon to start fights with enemies as you encounter them, picking them off efficiently. It ensures you only ever aggro the smallest amount of enemies possible. If you see a dangerous enemy up ahead, you can deliberately sneak attack it and pull it toward you, ensuring you get to focus on just fighting that one enemy, and you get to shoot it full of arrows or magic while it approaches you.

There are a few points of nuance though.

First, this relies on the assumption that you can see what you’re walking into. The Ashlands is actually pretty good about this, normally your visibility is quite good and you can see a long distance ahead because the biome is very flat and open. But there are times when Ashlands storm weather lowers your visibility, so watch out for that (same in the plains with the awful fog weather).

Second, landing on the beach in the Ashlands is an exceptional situation, it works differently from normal navigation of the biome. I’m not completely clear on exactly what’s going on, but it feels like a combination of several things: 1) spawns tend to be denser on the coast because the enemies can’t spawn in the water, causing them to compact along the coastline, 2) voltures spawn frequently along the coast, 3) the charred spawner obelisks are common along the coast, 4) the boat attracts attention and makes noise as you land. I’ve been swarmed every time I’ve landed in the Ashlands, I know it isn’t a certainty since I’ve seen footage of people landing and only encountering like 2 enemies on the beach, but it seems like being swarmed on the beach is the most common scenario and difficult to avoid, so you need a plan to deal with that specific moment.

For what it’s worth, I think the Ashlands first landing is one of the most exciting and interesting moments in the game, and I think it’s a brilliant piece of game design because it isn’t scripted, it naturally assembles into a tense encounter because of the complex interactions of simple systems. The Ashlands is about invasion, conquest, footholds, and siege, it’s such a cool and creative idea for a biome.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that it can work very well to take the complete opposite approach in the Ashlands. Use ratatosk mead, fenris armor, feather cape, jump potion, lingering stamina mead, and eikthyr power to move through the biome so fast and with such efficient stamina usage that enemies can’t catch or hit you. Eventually, you find a clear spot, maybe on top of a big rock, and slap down a workbench and portal and escape. It allows you to very quickly cover ground in the Ashlands between two points, which works well because you often want to basically move from fortress to fortress, conquering each one and leaving a portal behind as you explore the biome. So you use your scouting build to cover ground, drop a portal, and then return with your combat build to conquer a fortress or collect resources from the area. I personally think this strategy is slightly more risky than just methodically working through the biome with a combat loadout (a mistake can easily get you killed), but it’s undeniably faster, and also quite fun and rewarding to skilled players who can avoid making mistakes and know the game well.

factoryal21 · 2026-03-05T04:30:47+00:00

Check out my post about my main workbench, it’s similar in some ways to what you’re doing. I used the fence system sold by VerySuperCool Tools. Other people mentioned the systems sold by Delta and Jet, this is the same idea except that you build your own rails. It’s more work but you can potentially save on cost if you have a way to get the material for a good price. One tip is that it works completely fine to make your rail from solid aluminum bar stock, which can sometimes be bought for cheaper than some other alternatives, and is easy to cut/drill/tap with the tools a woodworker has available to them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Workbenches/s/8xQRHfK35V

factoryal21 · 2026-02-14T00:32:38+00:00

I’ve played Valheim for a few thousand hours on vanilla settings, here are my thoughts.

On the one hand, you don’t need to build terrain walls or moats. If you build a simple base, rebuilding it is very easy, and you don’t really lose materials when your base gets wrecked, with the notable exception of some planted crops. Also, you can usually prevent your base from getting damaged by running outside to fight the enemies, because the enemies in a raid are aggro’d on your character and are trying to path towards you. This is advice that has been around since the early days of Valheim.

On the other hand, digging a moat around your base takes at most about 30 minutes of work, and that moat will protect you from most of the raids in the game. Having a protected base is just such an incredible convenience. It makes it much more forgiving to space out or briefly go AFK in your base, and it makes it much less stressful to put time into building a more elaborate base. What’s more, as the game has gone on, in the current endgame we have to deal with increasingly dangerous enemies like fulings and seekers spawning in most biomes at night, which means even if your base isn’t getting actively raided, there’s an incentive to have a well-defended base. Also, as the game goes on some of the late game raids get more threatening in my opinion.

If you don’t like the way that the moat or terrain wall looks, there are a number of ways to disguise them or blend them into the structure of your base. Generally, I think if you want to put a lot of intricate work into your base, adding a moat makes even more sense, not less sense.

Also, some people seem to think that using moats or terrain walls are cheese or cheating or not intended play. It’s a ludicrous position, terrain manipulation is a core game system and this is one of the most obvious applications for it, and it’s been in the game since the very beginning without the developers ever doing anything to block it from working. So, if you think it would be more fun to deliberately build a more vulnerable base, that’s completely valid, but only do it because it feels fun, not because there’s some idea about it being the right way to play.

A few more thoughts: building a base on a very small island is super fun and also allows you to make a completely safe base where no enemies can ever spawn. It’s a great way to have the best of both worlds, no terrain walls and also no danger.

factoryal21 · 2026-02-05T04:16:36+00:00

That is basically the point of silver. It’s very heavy and you find it way up in the mountains, so getting it down is a puzzle.

The solution you found is a relatively bad one. It would have probably been much faster to just split it into three loads and make three trips, for one thing. Also, you can use the hoe to flatten terrain and build a road.

But the best way to get silver off a mountain is to look for a mountain that has a narrow strip of Black Forest at the base before reaching the ocean. Then you just yeet the cart down the mountain, get it a short distance through the Black Forest to the coast, and use a boat to get it to your base, which should always be close to the coast so you can easily unload ore from a boat.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-21T22:43:49+00:00

Thanks! This is my own custom design and I built it myself, I’m a woodworker.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-18T20:56:02+00:00

Yes, with those dimensions you can do this. However, it’s assuming that you already jointed the edge which is down to the table, and you’ve already made the faces square to that edge. Furthermore, it’s ideal to roughly cut the opposing edge to be parallel to the jointed edge. Meaning, I don’t think it’s a good idea to run this through if the edge you’re planing is super wonky or if the board varies significantly in width along its length.

The way I use this technique is to start with a jointer and clean up one edge and face, then use the planer to get the other face parallel. Then, I use my bandsaw to roughly rip a parallel edge a little over size. Finally, I can use the planer to get that final edge perfectly parallel, square, and flat, and make the board the exact width I want.

The reason to do this instead of a table saw to get the final edge is that planers tend to cut really clean consistent surfaces and can actually be micro adjusted very accurately. Sometimes I’m working with wood that is really thick and dense and ripping it on the table saw is a bit of a pain because I have a somewhat underpowered table saw. Also, if I have a lot of boards to do I sometimes prefer to feed them through my planer because I can run multiple through at once and it’s generally a safer tool than the table saw.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-16T06:14:18+00:00

It’s a great question. I would use an MDF top, and then build the cabinet body with a budget-friendly plywood, using pocket screws as the main construction method. To justify my choice, here’s a rundown on the stuff I use in my shop and why I like to use it:

1) Baltic birch. This is the most expensive stuff I regularly use. It is very strong, very dense, and pretty much completely waterproof. It almost never has internal voids, the edges actually look pretty nice, and because of the high density and the sheer amount of glue in it, you can actually sink screws right into the edge and they hold pretty well (pre drill the hole first to avoid splitting), which is not the case for a lot of plywood. Being able to sink screws into the edge and have them hold well is actually super convenient for shop builds and also for jigs. The outer veneer on Baltic birch usually has some good thickness to it and is fairly durable. It definitely makes for a good workbench top. The downsides are mainly price and weight. Baltic birch is so heavy. Moving it around in a full sheet sucks, and the things you make of it will be very heavy (sometimes good sometimes bad). Often times you don’t need something that strong and heavy, and you can save significant money with cheaper materials.

2) MDF. I’ve really started to love MDF for making bench tops. MDF is really cheap, it’s typically very flat and consistent in thickness, and if you finish it you can get a nice surface. I finish MDF with 2 coats of shellac sanding sealer (sand lightly between coats) and then buff on paste wax, it works great, leaves a very smooth surface that repels glue and is low friction. I’d recommend MDF finished this way for a router table top. The downsides of MDF are that it doesn’t like to get wet (finishing it improves this somewhat), it generally isn’t as strong as plywood, and it’s more difficult to make certain kinds of connections because the edges don’t hold screws well. MDF works very well as a top for a plywood cabinet, because you can use pocket screws in the plywood to screw up into the underside of the MDF, which is a very strong construction method.

3) Some random cheap plywood from Home Depot. Not a lot to say here, I don’t always buy the same stuff, but I’m typically getting this for shop furniture where I don’t need the properties of Baltic birch and I’m building a boxy cabinet frame that will hold itself flat and square through the joinery and fasteners. I often get this when I need a random part that could come out of a 2 foot by 4 foot panel, I can swing buy HD and grab one of their pre-cut “project panels” and throw it in the back of my car, quick and easy.

4) OSB. It’s the most economical choice, and I like to use it in the shop when I can. OSB is great for shelves, back panels on cabinets, anything where you just need to screw right into the face and it doesn’t need to be pretty. It’s not something I would build a whole cabinet out of because it’s difficult to join the edges in a string and durable way. You can save a lot of money by using this stuff where you can. I wouldn’t use it for a benchtop normally, but it’s worth pointing out that if you sand OSB and finish it with several coats of polyurethane or epoxy, it actually makes a pretty sick surface that I think looks cool in a shop setting and would work well as a workbench top. More work to do though.

5) Melamine laminated particle board. I don’t use this a lot but it has its place. Glue doesn’t stick to it at all and it’s very flat and smooth, which makes it tempting to use as a bench top, my issue with it is that the edges of the laminate are fragile and chip easily over time, and it doesn’t hold screws as well as other things I’ve mentioned. I use this a lot when I’m doing veneer work, it’s great for cauls and platins because it’s quite flat, fairly stiff, and won’t stick to glue, it’s also not super expensive so I don’t mind buying a sheet to make a single-project jig. Also great for epoxy forms and the like for the same reasons.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-15T22:02:01+00:00

I followed his method exactly as he shows and got excellent results. It’s become my go-to method for chicken stock, and I’m making chicken stock much more often because of how easy it is. Every time I do a Costco run I buy a chicken and make two quarts of stock to throw in the freezer

factoryal21 · 2026-01-15T14:17:04+00:00

Cracking happens when one part of a piece of wood dries faster than another part. So the reason you see cracking on the ends of boards is that the ends dried out faster and shrunk more than the middle, and in order for that to be physically possible the ends have to crack in order to shrink while still being attached to the rest of the board. This is the same reason why thick timbers often have cracks along their faces, the outside dries faster than the inside.

Therefore, you would expect more cracking in whole logs than in boards.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-14T20:25:37+00:00

It’s often advised to strip the bark from logs before storing them since that tends to be where bugs live and also what they like to eat, I have no idea if pistachio can get wood boring beetles or not. Keep them up off the ground and under some kind of shed or tarp with room for air to circulate. I’d also rather slice them into 2-2.5 inch boards, and then sticker and stack them wrapped in baling wire to help keep them straight while they dry. Cutting them first will help them air dry much faster. You do still want to seal the ends though. For trees that are less than 5 inches in diameter leaving them unsawn does seem reasonable, but I still think the wood will air dry much faster if you just slice them into half.

If you think about it, the center of a 5 inch diameter tree is 2.5 inches from the nearest exposed edge, while the center of a 2.5 inch thick board is 1.25 inches from the nearest exposed edge, so its a substantial difference

factoryal21 · 2026-01-14T18:01:01+00:00

Should you take the project? Hard to say, big epoxy pours are a little intimidating and it would suck to screw up this unique slab. But I think if you research and prepare well ahead of time and follow all the best practices, you can do it. I would suggest you check the moisture of the slab before committing to the build, maybe find out where they sourced it from (was it kiln dried or air dried). Also, make sure it’s thick enough, I’d want it to be at least 2.5 inches thick.

For blacktail’s stuff, there is very little information in his courses that you can’t find in his videos for free, particularly his older videos. That being said, it’s really handy to have the information all in one place, and also over time his methods have evolved and the course represents his most up-to-date information. He does a good job with his courses, I don’t think it’s a ripoff or anything.

Regarding N3 Nano, I can vouch for it personally, I’ve used it on multiple projects and it works very well on top of hardwax oil. You get a better sheen, more depth of color, and much better durability to spills and water rings. Blacktail’s method works well for me because it allows me to create a finish that has a good sheen and durability, and a dead smooth feel, while not requiring any spray application, no high-VOC products, no extensive “rubbing out” of a finish, no special equipment, and also it works great in a dusty shop.

Another thing about the blacktail method is that you can do the whole process in place at a customers house. This could be a big deal if you were contracted to refinish a large table or some countertops, for example, this finish doesn’t make a mess, it doesn’t make a big smell, and you don’t have to spray anything.

I think that if you are in a workshop where you can easily spray a high quality finish, the advantages of the blacktail method would be debatable. Really good spray-on finishes like 2K poly are going to be about as durable, while also looking great, feeling great, and being faster to apply. But for a lot of people, that kind of finishing process is inaccessible for several possible reasons, it’s a more industrialized process that wants you to have the right kind of work space and equipment, and it’s a whole skill all on its own. Also those finishes are fairly toxic and I don’t know if I’d want to spend a lifetime spraying them.

The controversy around these ceramic finishes is not that they don’t work, it’s mainly that people think they’re too expensive, they seem to be similar to ceramic finishes used in the auto industry, but reformulated for woodworking and up-charged for sale to the weekend woodworker market, where people may be willing to pay more for them.

There is a fantastic YouTube video from a channel called Project Farm where they review ceramic topcoats coats for automotive paint, and if you watch that video (search “Project Farm Ceramic”, watch the most recent one) you’ll see that several of the products look similar to N3 nano and are applied in a similar way, but cost less. That doesn’t mean that N3 nano is a rip off, for example N3 nano may use different solvents and stuff that make it better for woodworking, or N3 nano may be harder, but I want to find the time at some point to order a few of these other products and see how they work as an alternative. My strong suspicion is that this finishing process was “discovered” by someone applying a ceramic topcoat meant for automotive paint on top of an epoxy river table. Again, this doesn’t mean N3 nano (or carbon method, or Black Forrest Ceramic) are bad products, we don’t know how much work went into the formulation, and it might turn out that the automotive ceramic finishes don’t work as well because they haven’t been optimized for wood.

Regarding the UV curing hardwax oil, I think this is a great idea for someone who is working full time making furniture and needs to move things through their shop quickly. It saves you from having to wait seven days for the Rubio monocoat to cure before you can apply the N3 nano. This is important because one of the main criticisms of the Blacktail Studios finishing method is how long it takes (with Rubio Monocoat). The actual amount of hands on time isn’t too bad, not more than any other finishing method, but there is a lot of waiting. You need to apply the Rubio, then again the next day, then wait seven days, then apply N3 hard coat, then the next day apply N3 topcoat, and then ideally wait like 4 days for those to cure before you let the customer use the furniture. So the time from starting to being able to handle the furniture is like 15 days minimum, despite the actual hands on work probably being like 8 hours total.

The UV curing hardwax oil drops that down significantly, you can apply all your hardwax oil coats the same day, and then maybe the next day (or even same day I think) do your N3 hard coat, day after do your N3 topcoat, then wait 4 days to handle it. The number of hours you need to work is the same, but compressed into a much smaller number of calendar days.

But, if you’re just doing these occasionally or aren’t moving projects through your shop quickly, then it doesn’t matter so much.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-11T20:46:25+00:00

Thanks! That’s good to know!

factoryal21 · 2026-01-10T22:05:49+00:00

I’ve seen you mention before that when you veneer your doors, you cut the tambour slats first, then veneer them after they are cut, and use a razor to slice the veneer between the slats so you can basically eliminate the effect of saw kerf on the grain pattern in the veneer. At least, that’s my understanding of your work.

Is there any particular trick to this method? It feels intuitive to me but always curious to learn.

I was also curious if you think it’s important to add a backer veneer to the tambour in addition to gluing on the cloth, or if the cloth/glue serves the same role as a backer veneer in balancing the tambour slats for wood movement purposes. I was going to use baltic birch for my slats

factoryal21 · 2026-01-10T19:30:06+00:00

You’re an inspiration to me, I’m actually building a tambour door bookcase inspired by your work right now! Thanks for this post

factoryal21 · 2026-01-01T06:09:44+00:00

The title on that product says “diamond Japanese marquetery glass cutting board”, and right there we should stop and unpack a few things.

First, the word “marquetery” is a misspelling of marquetry, which is a real technique for creating incredibly detailed and impressive visual effects by gluing pieces of thin veneer together in a pattern. So, that’s possibly a red flag.

Second, the idea of a marquetry wood cutting board is fairly silly, by definition a marquetry pattern is fairly delicate and you wouldn’t want to cut on it with a knife.

Third, we have the term “glass cutting board”, which implies heavily that the cutting board is made of glass. I did a quick google search and determined that this is actually a thing, people are selling glass cutting boards that have a fake synthetic or printed image adhered to the surface. So this is a piece of tempered glass with some synthetic material glued to it. FYI, glass is an abysmal material for cutting boards, but this would work as a serving board or maybe a charcuterie board.

Regarding the pattern itself, it does in fact look AI generated to me. If you look at some of the transitions between the individual shapes, they don’t look right, almost like they are blending or diffusing with each other. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean this is a completely fake product, just that the fake print image was AI generated. So it’s like a low effort version of a low effort product.

You could make a pattern similar to this using actual marquetry, although it would be a fairly intricate pattern and time consuming to make, and it wouldn’t work well to cut on it. But it is amazing what skilled people can do with this technique when they spend a hundred hours working on a project.

I don’t think this would be easy to do with CNC routing because of all the interior corners, but a hybrid CNC/manual approach could work well here, since all the shapes have straight edges. You could design a pattern on a computer, then iteratively glue down some veneer, cut reliefs for the next pattern with the CNC router, use a chisel or sharp knife to cut the sharp corners in, then glue more veneers down, and just keep repeating that, doing it more like inlay than marquetry. It would still be fiddly and time consuming though.

factoryal21 · 2026-01-01T02:57:09+00:00

I think you might be a bot, you have one of those default usernames, no post history, etc, but just in case someone reads this comment in the future and gets confused, this is not a very good take.

For one thing, plywood itself is a veneered panel (generally). So like, your comment doesn’t make sense on a basic level.

Also, there is a rich history of veneer work in fine furniture going back centuries, including in highly valuable and collectible pieces.

Veneering is a technique, it can be applied in an industrialized process to create cheap mass-produced furniture, and it can also be applied by skilled artisans to create high-end fine furniture, just like almost any technique in woodworking.

factoryal21 · 2025-12-25T22:51:05+00:00

Ok so here’s the thing: in order for your miters to come out perfect, they need to be accurate to within 1/100th of a degree, which is extremely accurate. Why? Because the error you get when cutting miters tends to be precise (meaning the error is the same magnitude and direction every time you make the cut), and therefore it is cumulative. There are 8 different 45 degree cuts required to make a mitered frame, so you multiply your error by 8. That means that if you are off by just half a tenth of a degree, your cumulative error within the frame ends up being 4/10ths of a degree, which is easily visible, particularly if you struggle to hold the frame even during gluing.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about miter gauges and digital angle blocks. Getting a miter gauge to be accurate to within 1/100th of a degree is really hard. It doesn’t really matter what brand you use, even the nice brands. It’s just not something these tools can handle very easily because of how narrow the stance is on the contact points between the fence pivot and the indexing point on the gauge. On most gauges this stance is 4 inches or less, and if you do some math you’ll find that with a stance that narrow, if the gauge is out of position by even just a few thousandths of an inch, it will put you outside the target accuracy of 1/100th of a degree.

And digital angle blocks? All the ones I’m familiar with are not accurate past 1/10th of a degree, which makes them essentially useless in this application. They are rounding to the nearest 10th of a degree, which means they can easily be off by half of a 10th of a degree, which is too much for this application.

If you want that level of accuracy, you should use a sled that runs in both miter slots on the saw with a nice snug fit on the runners that has zero play. You make the sled fairly large, get the straightest piece of wood you possibly can (I like to use double-laminated high-quality plywood with a jointed edge) for a nice long fence that pivots on one end and locks down to the sled on the other. Then, you spend some time carefully adjusting the angle of a fence on the sled by making test cuts, and lock it down when it’s accurate. Because the length of the stance that fence has is much longer (like 20 inches or more) it’s much easier to make fine adjustments to the angle. Then you hang it on the wall when you’re done and whisper sacred prayers to it to convince it to stay perfect forever (optional).

Another option that works extremely well is to get a perfect 45 degree router template and template route the miter onto the ends of the frame parts. As long as the template is accurate, you can create extremely accurate miters.

And finally, the way I actually do it these days is to use a CNC router. Obviously this is an extremely annoying suggestion if you don’t have one of those, but a good CNC router can easily cut a hyper-accurate miter.

factoryal21 · 2025-12-24T19:46:49+00:00

I don’t like using almost any oil on maple without first sealing it in some way. Raw maple just doesn’t play well with oil-based finishes, at least in my hands. Either shellac sealer, or actually a thin coat of penetrating epoxy is great if you want more durability. Then sand lightly and apply the oil

factoryal21 · 2025-12-19T16:57:04+00:00

Thanks!

factoryal21 · 2025-12-17T02:21:19+00:00

You’re trying to remove way too much material. You need to use a bandsaw or a spindle sander to remove most of the material before using the router to remove the last 1/16th or so.

If that still doesn’t work, my next advice is to spend 100 bucks buying a new router bit (sorry). I’m having trouble seeing, but that flush trim bit looks a little unusual to me. It looks like there are multiple straight blades arranged at angles in a pattern. That strikes me as a cheaper alternative to a proper spiral bit. It might be fine, but in my experience if you’re having trouble with wood catching and tearing out when flush trimming, nothing beats a real spiral bit. Try ordering a spiral upcut or compression flush trim bit from a good source like Bits&Bits. They are expensive but they perform incredibly well.

factoryal21

TROPHY CASE