Greetings,

I just whipped up a triangle loom for SWMBO. I wound up using finishing
nails, because chucking and shaping box nails was taking too long. (Had to
finish by yesterday.) The wood was 4S 1x3 maple from the borg, ripped and
trued to 2" x however thick they turned out after hand planing.

For those who don't recognize this sort of loom, like me a week ago, they
comprise an isosceles right triangle with a hundred-odd nails along each
of the wide faces. The hypotenuse nails are, of course, 1.41 times as far
apart as the side nails.

Driving a row of nails along the grain is going to split the wood. So, I
pre-drilled. Too lazy to look up the exact diameter of the #3 finishing
nails, I just cut of the head off of one and chucked it in the DP. (Had
lots of practice chucking nails recently, you see.) Thus I had holes that
should be exactly the same diameter as the nails. Hole depth was a couple
of millimeters shy of the final nail penetration depth, and 4 or 5 mm shy
of the far edge.

My nail wore out after the first 104 holes. I drilled the two sides with
a 1/16" drill. Much faster... Those holes seemed a shade tight.

Drove the nails while holding a stop block against them. The hammer head
hit the block, ensuring consistent height. So far so good.

The long edge split. That was the one drilled with a nail. So if the
holes were the same size as the nails, and the nails were spaced farther
apart than those on the other two sides, which did not split, how the heck
can I prevent splitting on the Mark II model? Hole deeper than the nail?

--
"Keep your ass behind you"
wreck20051219 at spambob.net