Hi All,

  I'm new to this list and have been asked to do this bio as a right
of passage.  My name is Lawrie Silverberg.  I am a 51 year old
follicularly and estrogenally challenged person ( I prefer the days
when I was a bald male).  I live in the country north-west of Toronto
Ontario, in Canada (the hell of the used tool world as another member
has described it).   When not at home with my wife and the dogs,  I'm
probably in my dental office telling people that I won't hurt them. 
  I have only been woodworking for  about 1 1/2  years  and  don't
specialize in anything specific at this time.  I've mainly been making
things for my shop as practice for the more sophisticated work that I
hope to do.  Actually I have made a nice frame and panel stand for a
statue.  
   I have a TS, BS, ROS, and router (sorry) but get my greatest
pleasure from using my hand tools, which I use as often as possible.
Right now I'm making a storage unit for my tools and am cutting 208
dovetails by hand.  Hopefully I'll know how to do it by the time I'm
done.  

   

Hi Steve,

  Thanks for the welcome.  I'm surprised that I'm the only dentist
here, as I've met a number on the net.  Woodworking is a "natural" for
us as it's not very different from what we do all day.

> After a
>second or two of being surprised and wondering what on earth dentists have
>to do with files, I then remembered that they're quite the common and
>important dentistry tool.  (It was obvious, after all, only I hadn't ever
>really thought about that before.) 
    If you ever come across this paper I'd love to see it.  The
instruments we call files and rasps have nothing in common with
woodworking files and rasps.  Dental ones are cutting instruments used
in root canal.  They are round,  and tapered to a fine point towards
the end.  Stainless steel files are made by twisting a square wire.
The corners of the wire are the cutting edges.  You insert the file
into the canal and file the sides of the canal by pulling the file up.
Rasps are very similar (I don't use them as they have a greater
tendancy to break) but have more of a conical shape.  The newer
nickel-titanium files are more flexible and are cut out of the wire as
oposed to twisted.  The latest instrument of torture on the market is
the rotary nickel titanium files.  Interestingly, the ywork like
planes and shave the walls of the canal as they rotate.
   The closest thing we have to a wood file or rasp is the diamond
drills that we use.  They abrade like a file (I know some people refer
to a file as cutting but we make a distiction in that a diamond drill
abrades as opposed to a carbide drill which cuts).
  If you ever pass through Brampton, Ont., I'd love to give you a
personal demonstration :-)

Lawrie
				
>
>Am I being silly, or is it really something folks in dentistry do get
>into in that much detail?
   We don't usually discuss this type of thing at dinner parties :-).
I just happened to have taken a course recently on the new rotary
intruments.

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Lawrie Silverberg wrote:

 > Hi All,
 > ...
 > ...   When not at home with my wife and the dogs,  I'm
 > probably in my dental office telling people that I won't hurt them. 
 >   I have only been woodworking for  about 1 1/2  years  and  don't
 > specialize in anything specific at this time.  

Hi, Lawrie.  Welcome to a great bunch of galoots. :-)

I think you may be the first dentist on the list.  Well, you see, I've got
this chip over here outta this bicuspid, and ... oops, sorry, forgot my
manners there for a moment. :-)

Say, seriously though, I do have a question, in light of your profession. 
Doing some reading up last year on files and rasps, I came across some
really good info in a technical paper that went into the technical aspects
of the cutting-tooth geometry of files and their various cutting
characteristics, and really got down into the nitty-gritty of it all.  It
was a really, really good paper.  (But I don't remember the source,
though; it's been a while.) 

But about halfway through reading it and being fascinated by the info it
offered about files and how they work and the different types of tooth
shapes and how that effects their cutting, I was startled to find out that
the paper had been written not by some technos in a school or in a file
factory R&D department somewhere, but by a couple of dentists!  After a
second or two of being surprised and wondering what on earth dentists have
to do with files, I then remembered that they're quite the common and
important dentistry tool.  (It was obvious, after all, only I hadn't ever
really thought about that before.) 

So anyway, I don't know where I'm going with all this rambling, but I
thought of that connection between files and dentists when I read where
you said you "don't specialize in anything specific at this time" [meaning
woodworking], and I thought, well, yes, maybe you could tell us all sorts
of things about files we hadn't known?

Am I being silly, or is it really something folks in dentistry do get
into in that much detail?

In any case, now that I've made a fool of myself in front of everybody
(nothing new there) being so pesky, again, welcome to the group.  The
guys here really are amazing and good folks.

-- Steve