29
Nov 17

Another interloper

No work in the shed last night, on account of aches, pains, freezing despite sitting beside the fire, and the usual pre-cold fun stuff. I crashed, went to bed, worked from home today (yes, you can type while under a duvet), and by afternoon was feeling somewhat more human.

So this evening when junior and mommy got back home, junior and I opened the large boxes from FFX and Rutlands that arrived over the last day or two and dragged the latest interloper to the shed…

It’s… slightly larger than anticipated. But not by too much. What it was was loud. The specs said under 85dbA, the meter says 96dbA. And when you start sanding, it peaks somewhere around 106dbA – 3dBA louder than the dang bandsaw. Hmmm. Maybe when it’s on the base and everything’s nailed down… yeah, who am I kidding. Not sure what to do about this. At least it doesn’t have a lot to do in the shed, it’s mainly for bandsaw boxes and the like.

Well, at least I’m all stocked up on glue for a while. I’m looking forward to trying the plastic razor blades as well to see how they cope with glue cleanup. The angle box may be useful for the bandsaw and the sanding table, all the dremel sanding paper should be useful for small parts, and the black-and-white tube there on the right up against the triton are some teflon rods that I’m going to use to replace the steel rods that are the bandsaw guides on the bandsaw. This way I figure I can tighten the guides up against the blade itself, turn it on for a minute or so and it’ll wear away the teflon to get the perfect spacing without damaging the blade. We’ll see. There are some smaller ball bearings in the post as well to try to replace the thrust bearings with so the larger blades don’t contact them when running without load, which is how every guide out there says to set them up (the bandsaw guide holder I have just won’t let me adjust that, because Cheap Tool 😀 ).

Also got a few grades of sandpaper for the sander. Now I have to figure out where to put all this stuff. I had a plan to put together a very, very rough platform from some 2x4s that were left over from making the bench…

The key here is to do this fast. Other projects are a-waiting, but until this is done I literally can’t get my bench back, there’s nowhere to put the Triton. So it’s all butt joints and glue and screws and forget face planing or anything we don’t have to do…

That’s the twp sides done. Next up, five crossbars (two up top, two undeneath which get castors later, and one at the back for cross-bracing), all of which will be lap-jointed to the sides along with glue and screws. And if I can find metal bracing brackets tomorrow I’ll use those too. This thing is going to be ugly and I don’t care, I’ll do a nicer one later on. Like, after this one breaks.

BTW, on the right, a Bosch power drill. On the left (well, in the middle really), a brace with a hex key screwdriver bit that doesn’t really fit the jaws. Three guesses which one crapped out on me after the second screw?

Hint: it wasn’t the seventy-year-old tool that has so much torque it could twist the screw into a pretzel if you wanted to.

Stupid batteries. If I wanted to replace them, I’d just buy a new drill – it’s almost cheaper that way (do you want one battery for 50 euro or two batteries and a new drill for 80?). Gah.


27
Nov 17

Sounds okay

Couple of bits and bobs arrived in the post today:

Some brass-plated hinges for the next project, a silicone hose adapter to try to improve dust extraction from the bandsaw:

Beats a spring clamp and a bungee cord.
And this little doodad as well:

I’ve been wondering how bad the noise from the shed actually is for the neighbours you see. Enter the Uni-T UT353, a cheap little noise meter from Shenzen. And after a wee bit of experimentation, some pleasant results – the loudest thing with the bandsaw running is the vacuum cleaner that does dust extraction. It’s 87dbA in the shed itself with the door shut; 65dbA just outside on the decking; and it’s 55dbA back on the patio by the back door (for reference, it’s 65dbA inside the kitchen with junior watching Rescue Bots and the other usual sounds of life).

Now, start cutting wood and that does change a bit – 102dbA inside the shed, 83dbA on the decking and 74dbA back by the house. But that’s still only up there with a car driving past, not the you-definitely-need-hearing-protection levels that were my only experience of it so far (because I’m in the shed you see).

So that’s nice to know. I don’t think I’ll be getting anything noisier (the sander is rated at 76dBA) and frankly I don’t want to; and I limit the hours I use the bandsaw to anyway because people have to work (and anyway, apart from the boxes, I don’t use it for much beyond rough cuts).

Tonight for example, I took some of that 8/4 oak which I’d rough-sawn (by hand because it wouldn’t fit in the bandsaw) to about 1′ lengths, and I trimmed off the damaged edges (pack straps tend to mangle those) using the bandsaw.

I should get the four pieces I need from that for the next project without much trouble. I just planed the sides flat and marked a centerline; I’ll cut that in half tomorrow and then in halves again, and then trim the depth on the bandsaw (because thicknessing from 8/4 to 6/4 is a bit much even for a scrub plane like Sid). I’m taking this slow in the (probably vain) hope that’ll minimise the wood suddenly jumping into twist or warp or cup or bow…

Then some mucking about with the legs and checking faces&edges and planning the profiling of the legs and whipping up a quick check-piece from a poplar scrap to see if the thing in my head looked the way I thought it would when I see it in real life:

I like the tapering off towards the back of the leg, not quite like an aerofoil shape but the same kind of idea. I think it’ll give it an interesting look (it won’t be quite so asymmetrical, but the size of that piece made it hard to hold which made it more awkward than it will be for a full-size leg).

And then I just laid out the tools for tomorrow and closed up the shed.

Quiet night tonight, I guess I’m just tired from the sudden arrival of winter…


26
Nov 17

Legs

Okay, winter’s here.

And of course that leaves us with the eternal question, why is it always the show face that chips out?

But at least the CA glue did the trick. And on with cutting more leg joints and then apron joints and then test fittings…

Chop, chop, chop…

Swear, swear, swear…
And then recut the mortice so the leg comes up above the apron to be trimmed.

At least the joints are tight enough. I can just about get a 0.10mm feeler gauge into parts of the joints when they’re set; I can’t get the 0.20mm one in.

So that’s all the leg joints cut, now, time for the halving joint for the aprons.

Looks okay, it’s the right way round at least (don’t have legs going up on one side and down on the other…)

But it’s a bit gappier than I’d like. Still, it won’t be structural, there are bolts going through each apron to anchor the tabletop, and there won’t be stress on the joint as a result.

Ha! It doesn’t collapse!

Then a half-hour or so flattening the tabletop with a scrub plane across the grain. That’s such a fun job, it really is…

And then I discovered I don’t have the stainless steel inserts I thought I had and I’ve had to order more because apparently nobody has them in Dublin. Gah. I’ll try the local shops tomorrow but I don’t think walking in will lead to better results. But you have to try. Worst case scenario, I have to wait a week or so and work on another project in the meantime, which is doable. Best case, I find them and the ones on order will do the next one of these (I have the rough-cut bits for more than one of these tables).