New Yankee Workshop Episode 9805


In this episode, building an old pine bar, Norm used the following tools:

Norm used a plain board clamped to the Unifence as a sacrificial fence.

I noticed the oddest thing when reviewing this episode—Norm did the pocket screw holes 90° out of phase from how they're usually done. Normally (ahem), one cuts the slots in the rail, which has two major benefits—the angled slot is hidden regardless of the width of the stock, and the screw drives into the long grain of the stile for maximum holding power. Norm cut them in the stile, which was narrow enough to leave a bit of a scallop at the end of the cut (although the face frame was actually set inside the side pieces, so they still wouldn't be seen). Worse, that way the screw drives into the end grain of the rail, providing a very weak purchase by the screw thread. I wonder what he was thinking—he's long been familiar with pocket screw construction (and even alluded to that fact in the episode).

The safety speech included video of a crosscut operation on the radial arm saw.

Field trip was to a private residence.

Norm made a reference to an “Irish carpenter” as the possible origin of the original piece. I belive that reference obliquely refers to the proprieter of Celtic Pine, the field trip location for The Irish Table (Episode 9801), which apparently no longer exists.

This episode was processed based on the full length original broadcast by PBS.

 

Last updated: 28 April 2007