Dan Shapiro

Chances are that out in your workshop you have that one really great tool, the one you can’t wait to pick up, the one that you make up excuses to use. You can probably rattle off a whole list of all the wonderful virtues of that gem, and it probably has a place of honor in the shop.
In some dark corner that you tell no one about is also that colossal waste of money. Perhaps it has long since been forcefully ejected from your sawdust kingdom, but the memory of the wonderful project it ruined still haunts you.
The rest of the shop is filled with dozens of other tools that we never think much about. They may not be sexy, but they do their jobs well and we never give them a second thought. Take a second to think of some of them. The block plane that you smooth out a plug with, or the ROS that is always there when you need it. Now think about the person who designed it. How did they decide where the switch went? Why is the handle 5.3 inches long instead of 5 or 6 or 5.4? How did they know to add that little curve to give your thumb just enough clearance? How did they come up with the million other details that make everything come together so smoothly?
In most cases a good designer agonized over all these details. They spend days trying to balance each improvement with each little drawback. In most cases they put infinitely more thought into each little aspect of the design then most of us ever put into using the tool.
After our recent review of the Jack Rabbit Deluxe Kit I got the fascinating opportunity to talk with one such designer, Brian Giffin. Besides being a real nice guy, Brian is passionate about the details in his designs. He loved that I appreciated the quality and details that he had put into the Jack Rabbit and, since I’m an engineer as well, we had a great exchange about trying to reach that perfect balance in a design. I wanted to share with you a bit of what went into the design on his end, so here is a bit of what Brian had to share on the depth stop:
Because no matter how careful I am, using a hand drill, I can’t drill
straight into the wood, so any depth stop that is flat will contact on one
outside edge first. Because it’s the outside edge on a flat bottomed
depth stop, it’s going at a faster speed, in surface feet per minute, than the
diameter closer in, when turning at the same rpm. I made it convex so
that it contacts the inner part first, even when slightly angled. Second,
it’s brass, so the heat build-up that happens in steel is less likely.
Brass wicks heat about five times faster than steel. You can dent the
wood but burning is not so likely.
The other feature I built in, is a chip relief at the inner edge so the
chips don’t jam between the countersink teeth and the depth stop. With
most depth stops, they need frequent cleaning of the chips, to reproduce
the same hole depth, and keep it cutting a clean hole. This one sort of
glaciates out keeping a more consistent depth without having to clean it
so much. It’s not a perfect solution but 80% seemed better than nothing.
I’ve got two different versions of the chip relief on each side of the
depth stop because maybe it’s better in one material than another.
Wow! Now that’s alot of thought on just one surface of the depth stop! I love to learn about this level of craftsmanship and figured woodworkers like yourselves would get a kick out of it too.
So next time you head out into the shop, take a minute to look at those chisels, planes, saw blades, and power tools and then offer up some thanks for all the people who pour their heart and soul into all the infinite details that make our woodworking so much fun.
Brian Todoroff
Contributing Editor, Nothing Severed Yet
www.nothingseveredyet.com

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