Ten Great Ideas For Your Workshop

DIY’ers and woodworkers are always looking for ideas to solve problems or simply for better ways of doing things. Here are ten problem solving ideas that you may find useful.

- Willie Marneweck

1. Breaking the joint

Sometimes things just go wrong with a glue-up. Panels may end up out of square, wrong sides glued-up, etc. How can we break a joint and start over? Modern woodworking glues are extremely strong and fairly water resistant. Watertight glues such as Belcotan, Alcolin Ultra, etc. cannot be broken by the following method (toughies!). Ordinary cold glue joints, be it mortise and tenon, Dominoes, biscuits, etc. can be broken. Carefully pour boiling water onto the joint. Allow the water to creep into the joint, adding more hot water little by little. Try to find even the smallest opening and get some water in there. Carefully hammer and shake the items in the direction to open the joint and try to get a paint scraper or something else somewhere into an opening. By persisting you will find after a while the joint will start to give, more hot water and more prying and eventually the pieces will come apart.

Be careful with this method if the items are of chipboard or MDF board (medium density fibre board). Nonetheless, if the joint was made with ‘biscuits’ it can still be broken without much damage.

For cabinetry I prefer ordinary white glue. It gives more clamping time and joints are strong. Recently I cut about 20mm off a solid wood tabletop along the cross grain. To discard the strip, I tapped it on the rubbish bin to break it in to shorter lengths. None of the breaking points were at the glue joints!

2.Sponge holes and cylinders