The first time I made a door jamb I used no power tools. This was not before electricity was available on Nantucket, it was in a house on Orange Street, under the tutelage of my father a good 35 years ago. He had me square off two pencil lines on the ends of two pieces of 1x stock and hand saw half way through the thickness on the inside of each line. I cut the material from between the lines with a chisel, creating the dadoes needed to hold the head jamb. I haven’t done that in years, I can’t believe I ever did it that way!
It’s clearly better to cut jamb dados with a router or a table saw equipped with the appropriate blade, but there are a number of old methods involved in hanging doors that I am loathe to give up. Unless I’m faced with hanging a lot of doors (and who does that anymore?), I still like to use a butt gauge, a knife and a sharp chisel to mortise for hinges. While router templates and self-centering vix-bits make short work of hinge mortising, they also take away some of the old tricks of hanging wood doors. Those tricks will be the subject of a future post, right now the point is one that I bring up with little prompting: It’s good to know when to use time-honored methods and tools and when to jump right in with the latest.
I’ve been trying a number of the newest offerings from Milwaukee Tools and have been very pleased with the results. My focus has been on the M18 Fuel line of cordless tools and some of the many new hand tools. My days are a mix of 100 year old Bailey planes, 40 year old Disston saws and brand new cordless drills. This makes the accessories very important, which brings me to what I will be reviewing in the next few weeks.
Much of my current work requires a lot of mobility, hence my enthusiasm for cordless tools. As I use more and more of them in place of the corded ones, I need to stay ahead of the battery game. I bought an extra charger to that end, but Milwaukee is coming out with a better solution, the M18™ and M12™ Rapid Charge Station (48-59-1807)
M18™& M12™ Rapid Charge Station (48-59-1807)
The promises of this unit are the capacity to charge 3 batteries rapidly and simultaneously and the capacity to charge both 18 and 12 volt batteries, something that I and the many others who use Milwaukee tools of both voltages will find very useful. When it arrives, I’ll make good use of it and share the results.
Another new item from Milwaukee is the M12™ Compact Vacuum (0850-20). This I’m sure I’ll like because I don’t like to build dirt into a job. I’m forever cleaning between studs and in tight corners and under cabinets. This vac should be a big help to that end by saving me from carrying a large unit and an extension cord.
M12™ Compact Vacuum (0850-20)
One of the questions to be answered concerns whether or not I’ll be able to get the vac out of the house and onto the job.
I appreciate and enjoy my old tools, many of which I still use, but I use these new ones with great satisfaction. It’s still a good time to be a carpenter.
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