Nice job on the benches Rob. Have you had a chance to work on them?

If you live in the KC area, you should join this guild. I had the pleasure of taking a chair building class there last September. its a great facility and a great bunch of folks.

Jonathan

Assuming your technique is good, three things come to mind when you note that your details are not as crisp as you would like.

1. Sharpness. I'm always amazed at how touching up a tool with the strop will improve the cutting and the surface the tool leaves. Sharpen constantly. (I'm betting you know this already.)

2. Mallet vs. hand pressure. Sometimes hand pressure is all you need on a gouge, but I get better results on outlines (esp. with a V chisel) when I use a proper carving mallet.

3. Wood species. Some woods just don't take nice detail. A lot of softer woods tend to fuzz when being carved. But even some harder woods just don't yield smooth, sharp results. To get the results you want, you might need to consider a different species of wood. You mention gnarly wood, so I feel like this might be your problem.

This can be done (control lights from 3 locations) with two three way switches and one 4 way switch wired between them.

Skip Home Depot. Go to a fireplace store. They will be able to help you out.

Twinn

You mean one of these?

Basin Wrench

Personally I do not think you can hurt the plane by running the plane over your jointer. You can't hurt what doesn't work, by anything you do.

But the only other thing that I can think of is that the bedding for the iron itself can be off. If that is the case I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it. Just use it as a decoration and get a different one. They are very reasonable around here as far as cost goes.

Tom

I never heard of Graco being "really good" except the high end commercial stuff. Graco is typically in the House Painting or latex painting business.

If you have a compressor and know it's CFM rating in the 40 to 50 psi range (it should be printed on your compressor), find some choices that match that range.

If you intend to shoot a wide variety of finishes (thick and thin), find something that either comes with a couple different needle and tip sizes (1mm to 1.9mm for instance) or look at buying a couple guns with different sized tips and needles. I'll bet you can do that under $100.

You should also look into an air drier and oil separator for the outlet of the compressor. They can be had at reasonable prices also. Do keep your tank drained.

I got 13+ years out of the one from Lowes.

Course mine died on a Sunday, so I put the updated model I had from Lowes back in. It was about the only option I could find that I could install the same day.

Heavily used but still runs perfect.
WHT sells an autopsy saw?!

Maybe send a note to Larry Williams and ask him. Straight from the horse's mouth as they say.