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New Toys! / Shed / Tools / Woodworking — 6 Comments
18
Nov 19

Shed jobs

Took a few days to get back into the shed after dousing the bench in BLO. I thought it’d be dry by now. Nope, still had a small film of oil on top. Not gummy, it’s just that it’s been so cold (-4C last night I think) that the BLO hadn’t started to cure yet. So I wiped off the excess again (whatever’s penetrated into the wood will cure in its own time, and that should be the majority of it) and got on with the small shop jobs that have been piling up.

First though, new toy…

I have no idea what I’ll use it for, but it’s a bottle jack. Thousand and one uses. €13 in lidl at the moment and 3000kg load and just over seven inches tall. Dinky little thing. Anyway, set that aside and onwards…

Some serious tidying up needed here. I won’t get to it tonight, but I did manage to open the cyclone and check its levels (about 20% full) and pop the sides back out and put in a brace to stop them being pulled in again. And took measurements of the space available and the size of the cyclone, the shop vac powering it and the box of finishing supplies that needs to go into a drawer of sorts (I’ll have to do drawers for the stuff under the bench as well, the plastic tubs were only ever a temporary solution and they’re starting to crack and break under the strain). Some sketching to do in my head and then I’ll get to it shortly.

First, this is on the bench and has been for about two years now….

So out with the metal drill bits for the first time in a long time, and I cut the z-clip in half with the bandsaw and deburred it with a handfile, then screwed the dust hood into place by the really awkward three screws on the sides and underneath that are DeWalt’s idea of how it should work; and arranged clips and centerpunched for bolt holes. Had to take out a plate from the planer to attach the actual latch rather than disk drilling into something you shouldn’t drill into…

Bit of faffing about with taking the hood off and on a few times to figure out placements and finally had the hardware installed.

Now when I want to attach the dust collection hood, I can just push it into place and the latch holds it there:

I have less than a huge amount of faith in my show vac and cyclone to keep up with this thing’s production of shavings mind you, but at least this beats the fiddly screw arrangements. At some point I’ll get a 100mm extractor from Rutlands or somewhere I think. But I might as well try this for now. Compared to the mess when I don’t do this, it has to be worth trying at least.

Also, now it stores away somewere convenientish. Sortof. I mean, if it doesn’t work, it won’t be much good at all and I’ll stash it in the attic until I get a 100mm extractor I suppose, though your guess is as good as mine about where that would go. At least it’s done; I’ve been meaning to get to this for something like two years now.

Next up, I got a new fence for the bandsaw. The aluminum extrusion I’ve been using is fine, but fiddly to set up. Peter Millard installed this fence on this bandsaw and seemed to have good luck with it, so I figured it was worth a try…

But it’s after nine by now so not a time to drill metal. I’ll rewatch Peter’s video and figure out what I’ll use to duplicate the install. And I’d rather get this done sooner than later, I have more toys to play with that have been hanging around for a while…

Tools / Woodworking — 4 Comments
04
Aug 18

Toys

Not done a tap in the shed in nearly two weeks now. Between work kicking up a notch and a short holiday away, not been near the place.

You might wish you were here, but it’s hard to know where “here” is…

 

On the way back, I did get to browse around The Carpentry Store for a few minutes, but alas they don’t carry Ashley Iles so I couldn’t try out those dovetail chisels. Mind you, I almost bought a few other things (but I was good…)

 

One day… when I have a bigger shed… it shall be mine…

 

And then there was the shiny shiny…

 

And I now finally understand why people go nuts for Stanley 51s…

This thing is awesome. For the price, it bloody well ought to be, but still. Wow. Solid. Chunky. But just so well balanced, so well put together. Damn nice. Maybe after I win the lotto 😀

And then there were lathes. I mean, even forgetting the fullsize monsters, there were ones that would fit on my bench…

You don’t really grok until you’re facing these just how compact they are. Which is a dangerous place to be when carrying a credit card 😀

But no, I think I’ll hold off on this a little longer because there was something already waiting for me in the mail room in the office. So we returned home, and then this morning junior and I headed into the office via the post office and…

It’s a nice little thing this, just a cheap and reasonably accurate DRO kit. Of course, then I needed something to attach it to, so…

😀

Finally caved in and bought one second-hand from a poster on the UK woodworking forum. A bit of unwrapping later…

And that’s a wee bit larger than even I was expecting.

And holy hell it’s loud. 110dB when cutting wood. I mean, even if you hated your neighbours, you couldn’t do that very often. So this is basically just for when I need to do a lot of hogging off (basically replacing the scrub plane) instead of doing planing per se, and it will live under the bench most of the time (I need to move the sharpening gear, but then I wanted that to be out where I could get to it more readily anyway). I might have to move finishing stuff around a bit though, but hell, that’s life in my workshop. I have to move stuff around if I get a new idea, let alone a new tool. And it works quite well, though I need to get an adapter for the extractor and I’ll have to modify the extractor hood so it’s more readily removable/refittable because it’ll be taken on and off more often than DeWalt though to plan for. There is a mod to do that, I will probably be doing that:

I need to find a way to protect that DRO as well, instead of knocking it off when putting the planer away.

I did think about having a stand to put it (or the mitre saw) on and Lidl were doing a cheap special (which to be honest, looked exactly the same as every other cheap mitre saw stand for half the price) so:

However, given how loud that planer is, I think this is a non-runner. The soundmeter puts it at 110dB inside the shed, and 79dB on the deck outside the shed with the door closed and that’s just too damn loud. I think I can reduce it slightly with more sound baffling on the one surface left that isn’t already covered in baffling or lining:

But I think this is going to be one of those things that only happens for short times at civilised hours like weekend afternoons.

And lastly, the last time I was grinding metal out there for a scratch stock, I noticed a lot of sparks heading towards a lot of flammable things that I was standing in the middle of and at that point I became very cognisant of the distance to the nearest fire extinguisher, so….

Better safe than on fire I say…