Better woodworking, one demand at a time

OK, enough gripping about the quality of woodworking products. Time to move on to my, I think, reasonable demands.

When I'm King of the World, everyone will be a lot happier. Especially me. When I control everything I'll eliminate the stupid and the illogical, making way for sense and order. To facilitate this glorious day, I thought I'd get a jumpstart with a few demands now.

Shop accessories with wheels are wonderful, but even the best, most expensive wheeled tool is stopped dead by the simplest of things: the cord. From now on, any tool on wheels must be able to roll over its own cord.

Every time a woodworking magazine runs a cover story on the ultimate this or the ultimate that, I cringe. When I see a magazine touting "Your Ultimate Router Table," my first reaction is gee, I hope not. You see, the word ultimate doesn't mean "greatest," "best" or "most wonderful." It means "last" or "final." If a product is advertised as giving you "the ultimate woodshop experience," what it's really saying is that you should have your will in order. Cease this now.

Almost every tool with changeable items has those items located on the bottom - router bits, jigsaw blades, sanders, etc. So, who's the idiot designing most of these tools with round tops so you can't set them securely upside down to change said items? From now on, all tools that have to be turned over to change attachments must have flat tops. Thanks.

Who uses a whole sheet of sandpaper as a whole sheet? Nobody. The first thing you do is make smaller sheets since quarter-size sheets automatically fit most sanding blocks and orbital sanders. But most sandpaper has the grit listed, at best, in only one place on the back. The moment you tear a full sheet you create a bunch of mystery-grit smaller sheets. Look, we don't need a couple hundred words on the back of sandpaper created by the marketing department touting its wonderfulness. We need one thing: the grit number, stamped all over the back so no matter what size sheet we tear, we can tell what the heck it is.

Ever drop a strip of nails or brads as you're putting it into a nailer? What happens when it hits the floor? It shatters into a hundred smaller pieces of nail strip. Effective immediately, nail strips shall be bonded with something stronger than the library paste they're currently using.

And finally - for now - as long as China is going to make plywood entirely out of solidified splinters, from this day hence all plywood will be sprayed with a coat of Bactine as the last step in manufacturing.

There, see? You're happier already.

Till next time,

A.J.