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Why I Remove This Safety Device | Woodworking Morning Show

This one was almost entirely off the cuff. Greg dropped a few notes in the show doc that morning, and past that we just hit start and talked. Which, as it turns out, is apparently what people want right now.

Our fake AI sponsor is now a real sticker

In a recent video, Marc made a joke about being sponsored by random companies and invented one: Skeeter’s Fish Tacos, the best tacos in Missouri, made with fresh mudfish. The logo was deliberately, obviously AI generated, because that was the gag. He had to explain to Mateo that it was a joke.

Nicole then had 100 real stickers printed for about 18 dollars. So they exist now. Send a super chat and email nicole@thewoodwhisperer.com your address, and she will mail you a pack, Morning Show sticker included; international addresses welcome. A surprising number of you were genuinely disappointed to learn there is no actual Skeeter’s.

The Powermatic phone call

We have been calling tool companies about donations for Woodworkers For a Cause, and the Powermatic conversation was the strange one. Every single person we worked with at JPW over the years is gone. There is no institutional memory of the relationship at all. Marc described it as talking to an ex-wife who also has amnesia.

To be clear, because this always gets misread: there is no ill will in either direction. It was a business decision; they make great tools, and nobody should go storming any castles.

What is in the auction so far

The response has been humbling. Listings are going up at 32auctions.com/wfc2026 and already include the JessEm Ultimate Router Table package, three bundles of Tallahassee Tung Oil, and a portable sawmill donated by Norwood. Yes, an actual sawmill. Stop worrying about the price of walnut and cut your own.

Also going up: the original end grain cutting board, the one that inspired the video. Important disclosure, since this caused a small argument on air. It is 20 years old; it has cracks, and it has separation. It has been sanded and refinished, and it feels great, but it is a piece of history rather than a new board. Marc will photograph the cracks so nobody bids confused.

In Marc’s order history

A remote controlled outlet, about 15 dollars, for the new fan on the laser that has no on/off switch. Marc uses these everywhere: shop lights, video lights, and the kids’ rooms where there was no switched outlet. Buy the version with two remotes and you effectively have a three-way switch.

He also bought an iPad keyboard, which is why the paper show notes are gone. That led to trying SketchUp for iPad, and a question for you: if you are doing real builds on a tablet with a stylus, in SketchUp or Shapr3D, Marc wants to hear how it is going. The Apple Pencil in question has teeth marks in it and has been run over by a car. It still works.

“The Long View” with Greg: the helical head surprise

Greg put a helical cutter head in his jointer and the biggest difference was not cut quality or noise. It was discovering that his technique had quietly gotten bad, and he spent the first hour relearning a machine he had used hundreds of times. Poor technique at the jointer is a safety issue.

This led to his real point. Safety is being marketed hard right now, and that is good, but we put too much weight on the manufacturer’s role and not enough on our own. If you will not maintain your tools or use the guards that came with them, that is on you. Before you start that project you have been putting off, check your blades, your router bits and your jointer knives now, because you will not want to stop mid-build. And if you have an older, well-maintained tool you enjoy using, you do not need the newest AI powered version of it.

“The Long View” is produced by Greg Batt.

Down with the pawls

Marc’s position, in short: get a blade guard on your saw, and take the anti-kickback pawls off. A good guard dramatically reduces the chance you ever touch the blade, which is the whole point, and it usually brings dust collection with it. The pawls are a different story. They dent workpieces when you pull stock back with the saw off, and if you are running a splitter they are redundant, because kickback happens when you are not using one. They are flimsy, they exist for liability reasons, and Marc thinks they are the single biggest reason people throw the whole guard in a corner and never use it.

The PM2000 that came back is getting an aftermarket Shark Guard with a custom-fitriving knife and better dust collection.

The tilting router lift

Chad Green asked about the Sauter OFL3 pivoting router lift, sold exclusively through MicroJig, which tilts your bits up to 50 degrees. Marc’s read: neat, genuinely useful for a specific person, and that person already knows who they are. The use case he would reach for is angled mortise and tenon work, chairs and pieces meeting at odd angles, the sort of thing he used to do on a multi-router or a PantoRouter. The caveat is that anything that moves is one more thing to check for calibration, and he is not in the habit of verifying his straight bits are 90 degrees to the table.

When a tool is too smart

On the Harvey D1 DreamSaw and its flesh detection, Marc’s answer came with a story. Nova once sent him a drill press with a screen where you could program bit size, depth, and speed, and it worked exactly as designed. He hated it. All he wants a drill press to do is spin. Same thing happened with an INCRA fence on a table saw: it worked, and it made him stop enjoying the saw. Some tools are great because they are simple.

That said, he would take accurate digital height adjustment on a table saw in a heartbeat. The one he has on the Felder is a luxury he genuinely loves. And the real ask for the whole industry: give us a non-destructive way to stop the blade. Saving fingers is worth it, but clipping a Resaw King is a couple hundred dollar mistake.

Fixing epoxy that will not stop oozing

Scott Emrich filled a large gap in a live edge walnut table, put on four coats of Osmo, and now has epoxy seeping out in a few small spots. Marc’s instinct is that this is a formulation problem rather than a finish problem, most likely too much dye in the mix, which is exactly how he ended up with permanently soft knots in his own dining table. The honest answer is there is no easy fix. Gary in the chat suggested CA glue, which Marc agreed can work: spot seal with CA, sand it back, then refinish. But the Osmo has to come off first, because a hard wax oil cannot lock anything in the way a film finish can.

Squaring a plane blade

Marion Dorsett has a grinding wheel and is nervous about using it. Reasonable. Use a slow or variable-speed grinder, and upgrade off the stock wheels, which are aggressive enough for a lawn mower blade and not much else. Look at CBN wheels. Then improve your platform: Marc uses a Wolverine system that gives a wide table in front of the stone, where you can clamp a scrap block as a guide and creep up on square, checking as you go. Tilt to a non-critical part of the bevel first and confirm your grind line is square before you touch the tip.

Shop humidity, and can it be too dry

Chris Wittmann asked whether a shop can get too dry. Theoretically yes, but if you are dehumidifying because you live somewhere humid, you almost certainly cannot overshoot. Marc cannot get this space below about 40 percent even with the AC and a dehumidifier running, and 40 is fine. The real trap is the opposite one: if your shop is drier than the house your furniture will live in, you have created a problem. Match the home, not a number.

PM2000 versus SawStop

Keith asked Marc to be specific about where the SawStop felt like a downgrade. The answer is not about function. Things on the Powermatic simply felt beefier and more industrial: the handwheels feel heavier, the components feel thicker, and the SawStop cast iron seems to scratch more easily. None of it changes how the saw cuts, and Marc took the trade happily for the technology. The PM2000 is back in the shop now, so he gets to find out whether his memory matches reality.

Related, for Jeanie and her PM2000 dust collection: the port necks down to roughly three inches inside the cabinet no matter what you do at the inlet, so upsizing the port alone will not save you. Collect from above the table as well, and check that you actually have enough CFM at the machine, because too many runs or too long a path will starve it.

And a giveaway

The keyword was fish. Out of 89 entries, the Guild course goes to Bear Country Woodworks. The prize is Marc’s mid-century modern table course, which starts October 2.

Marc is also teaching at the Florida School of Woodworking in Tampa in March: a Japanese-inspired end table with mortise and tenon joinery and compound curved legs, and hopefully a breadboard top. It is not built yet.

One last thing

The biggest surprise of bringing this show back is that the numbers are good. We brought it back for the people who love it and expected it to stay small. Greg’s theory is that there is an anti-AI current running right now and people want something authentic and conversational. Apparently, the unpolished thing Marc has been doing for 20 years, the thing people used to tell him was too much talking, is now a format with a name. Yapper videos. Wonderful.