Well, welcome to a new series that I'm calling Tools Unleashed.
Hey, I'm a tool geek.
I buy a lot of tools.
I'm in a really fortunate position that I get some tools sent to me to check out.
And a lot of these things don't really warrant a full review video,
but it would be nice to have a way to let you know about them
or give you some mini reviews or first impressions so you could decide
if maybe you need to add that to your next shopping list.
So that's what we're here to do, some mini reviews.
Now, it's very important for me personally that you guys know whether or not
I purchased the item, if it was sent to me for free,
and certainly if I have an affiliate relationship with them and the link
that I provide for you gives me a kick back in some way.
I need you to know about that.
And while I would never intentionally let profit
get in the way of honesty these days, you just can't be too careful.
And I think you guys need to be armed with the information
so you can make informed buying decisions when you get advice from Ding Dongs
like me on YouTube.
So on today's episode,
we're going to take a look at JessEm’s new stainless steel precision rulers.
Blue Spruce’s Optima mortise chisels and the Harvey RG2 roller guide.
Unleash the tools.
First up,
we have JessEm's new stainless steel precision rulers.
They come in six inch,
12 inch, 18 inch and 24 inch with metric equivalents as well.
You can get them individually or as a three piece combo for about $110.
So if you've ever purchased a ruler or some kind of a square from a company
like Woodpeckers, you know how much it can cost
to get some of these high end measuring tools.
So that price is actually pretty decent.
Okay, so why should we care?
Well, you know how with regular straight edges
you can get a little bit of slippage when drawing lines or making cuts
with a marking knife?
These rulers feature flexible grippy cut outs that help the rules stay put.
Now, while it's not completely locked
down, it's definitely a significant improvement.
And you can see on paper, the paper definitely moves with the ruler
a lot more than when you don't have that grippy stuff.
And on wood, the performance is definitely a lot better.
Again, I mean, you could still move it out of the way, but it's certainly
a lot more secure than if you didn't have that grippy material.
Now, I can say a lot of times in the past using a regular metal ruler,
trying to scribe a line with a knife, it can be a little bit dicey sometimes.
And I'm sort of white knuckling it as I'm pushing down
to make sure it does not move because movement means bad stuff
for the work as your cut line tends to waver at that point.
And then also it's a safety issue because if you slip and you're trying
to cut with an extremely sharp knife, you can obviously cut yourself.
Other than the grippy stuff,
these rollers are easy to read and there are a really nice thickness,
not so thick as to cause that parallax error when taking readings, but
thick enough that you can use the edge reliably with any pencil or cutting tool.
And it looks like we have 16th marks on one side and 1/32 on the other.
Now, I don't know if I'd recommend replacing all of your rulers with these,
but if you're in the market for some new rulers
and if you've had problems with rulers slipping in the past,
this actually seems like a pretty good thing to invest in.
You can check them out at JessEm.com.
Next up, we have the Blue Spruce Optima mortise chisels.
My first impression of these things is that they are just super beefy.
They're incredibly well-balanced and they just feel great in hand.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily want a super heavy standard bench chisel,
but a mortise chisel is something of a different beast
as we're often beating the hell out of it and using it to pry out
waste from a mortise.
They come pre polished.
Dead, flat and dead square.
The sides are also perfectly parallel.
The bevel comes in at 30 degrees and they include a 35 degree micro bevel.
And that 35 degree micro bevel is really handy.
That's a nice high angle.
And especially
when you're going to abuse the tip like you will in chopping mortises.
You'll want a little bit more meat behind that tip.
Man, this is going off the rails. You guys know what I mean?
So these guys are 100% ready to use right out of the box.
Even some of the best chisels out there will come mostly sharpened,
but you probably still want to hit them, at least with your highest grits,
maybe establish that secondary bevel, but not the case with these.
These are what I would call, if we could do such a thing,
of fine woodworking ready right out of the box.
So what's special about these is the steel core.
There's a continuous connection between the strike cap
and the cutting edge,
which means all of your striking energy is transferred directly to the work.
And because the handle exists around that core,
it supposedly acts as something of a shock absorber for your hands.
Now, honestly, I did some tests with this, and while I understand the logic of it
being sort of a shock absorber,
it seems like once it's all screwed together, it's kind of just acting as one.
But I didn't really feel any difference.
I actually directly compared it to making chops with this guy versus
my Lie-Nielsen set, and I feel just as much impact in my hands.
So maybe that's something that comes with time.
Maybe it's just advertising fluff. I don't know.
But I didn't really notice a difference Either way, this thing felt great in hand.
Big difference
when you
compare, not to knock on Lie-Nielsen, love those guys and I love their products.
But this handle compared to this handle, it's no contest.
This is so much more comfortable.
Speaking of the handle, it's actually resin infused.
I think it's maple and that's a lot like all the other Blue Spruce stuff
that makes it incredibly durable and gives it additional heft.
They come in sizes ranging from 3/16 to a half inch and they don't come cheap.
A three piece set is $299, but if we put that into perspective,
those same three sizes from Lie-Nielsen are going to run you $375.
Now, full disclosure, a couple of years ago
I bought a set of Blue Spruce chisels and I returned them.
I had an issue where the tips were just really brittle.
No matter what I did, no matter how I sharpened them in
basic use, they were just kind of crumbling.
This was right before Woodpeckers purchased Blue Spruce.
And if you don't know, that happened a few years ago as well.
And I was kind of hoping that maybe that would lead to some improvements.
Some people thought
it might lead to bad things, but since then, I've had an opportunity to try
not only these, but some of their bench chisels, their dovetail chisels.
And from what I've seen, they fixed whatever that problem was.
Blue Spruce always had a fantastic, stellar reputation.
So I was really surprised when I had that result.
And it seems like whatever that was could have just been an
anomaly, could have been the set I had could have been my bad attitude.
I don't know.
But the bottom line is it looks like it's been fixed and these mortasing
chisels certainly don't seem to have any issues with edge retention.
So you can pick these up at BlueSpruceToolworks.com.
Welcome to my shop. My name is Caleb James.
I want to introduce you to our Wood Whisperer Guild project.
This is a round top three legged table,
and we're going to learn a few skills in this project that I think you'll enjoy.
We're going to talk about
a unique method to align boards so it makes glue ups really easy.
I'm going to be showing you how to cut large diameter circles
with ease, and then I'm going to show you some methods for turning.
So we'll talk about some of
the fundamentals of setting up your lathe and using your basic tools.
And then we'll go into making compound cuts at our tablesaw utilizing both
the miter gauge and the tilt of our blade, I think you'll enjoy this project.
It's going to
expand your skills and woodworking and take you beyond 90 degrees and square.
So for more information, visit TheWoodWhispererGuild.com
And lastly, today we have the Harvey Compass RG2 roller Guide.
So this bad boy actually came
as an accessory with the bandsaw that I recently purchased
and it looks like it's compatible with not only their bandsaw but table
saws, router tables, just about any tool that has the T-shaped style miter slot.
Now I've been using it mostly at the bandsaw and I have to say
I've been really impressed with this thing.
A lot of times when I'm doing a resaw,
I leave the surface that's facing out in its rough state.
I mean, there's no reason to mill it.
So having a feather board with two rollers each with its own suspension
really comes in handy.
Furthermore, I can actually adjust the position of the rollers on the fly
so if my boards thickness changes dramatically, I can pretty easily
make a quick adjustment to apply more or less pressure as needed.
Now, with most other feather board systems,
at least the ones that I've used once you're locked down
either in the miter slot or magnetically you're kind of stuck there.
So if you notice something that's going a little haywire
or you're getting too much pressure, or maybe not enough, making an adjustment
on the fly is a bit of a safety hazard because you can't really do it accurately.
You certainly don't want to do it near a spinning blade.
So having something like this
that safely locked in position, you can just kind of dial in a little bit
more pressure or a little bit less pressure.
That's super cool.
Now you can actually take this thing apart and flip it over
if you need the wheels to run the other way.
In some cases on some tools, you just might need to do that.
And they also sell an RG1 that has only one level of rollers.
Without a doubt, this thing is overengineered like crazy
and I'm here for it.
The RG2 is currently $199 and the RG1 is $179.
But if Harvey prices this thing like they do a lot of their other tools,
it will probably range from $2 to $400
depending on the way the wind is blowing in China that day.
I made a funny.
And you could pick one up at HarveyWoodworking.com,
so that's going to do it for this edition of Tools Unleashed.
Now, if you have any comments or questions or any other information
to add about these tools,
your personal experiences, please feel free to leave us a comment.
Of course, if you have any other tools or things you'd like to see me review,
assuming I can find it and afford it, I'm more than happy to bring it in
and talk about it.
All right.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
We'll see you next time.
So we got a little VO here.
Not BO, I said VO.
Although I think I think we do have some BO.
I moved the camera, how’d I do that?!
What do you think of the shirt?
Pretty good, right? Can't help but think of Letterman when
I do this.
What you looking at?
Hey, lolo.
Hoo hoo hoo
hoo hoo.
All right, here we go.
Isn’t Oreo the CUTEST?!