And I finally got myself a cordless drill. That all used a wired one, but with it he was tied to an outlet. And now, in general, beauty. You can use it anywhere in the garage and in the yard and not be afraid that the wire will catch on.
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And I finally got myself a cordless drill. That all used a wired one, but with it he was tied to an outlet. And now, in general, beauty. You can use it anywhere in the garage and in the yard and not be afraid that the wire will catch on.
^^^ Indeed cordless tools are Great!...but avoid my mistake of leaving the drill outside overnight on my workbench in the rain as I did one time. It killed the battery. I got too used to leaving manual screwdrivers all about :-(
Well, leaving a cordless tool in a humid environment is about the same as leaving a cell phone. But when handled correctly, it's really cool and handy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spacedude
I have IKEA-hacked a Lego playtable and building desk, both stuffed with storage boxes full of bricks. So now my kids can stay upstairs for WEEKS. With the amount of Lego we have now (estimated 50-60kg) it is mandatory to sort it if you want a pleasant building experience. Daddy is showing them how to build a cool castle, and it's amazing how fast I can now find the bricks I want. Pick out the right box, start digging, done in seconds. Even when there's still a lot of colours and sizes in one box, it's so much easier than digging through a knee-deep pool of blocks.
Stuff that bugs me: I remember you as a young student. And now you're grown up and have kids! Dang, I'm getting so old!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas
Oh, and 50kg of Lego? That's like 110 pounds. You rock!
Also: Kai Yeves was a high school student at most. Working on her PhD, I think!
I've been on these boards for half my life. :)
We joined about the same time, but it's substantially less than half of my life!
I'm sure relativity theory has the answers.
I bit the bullet and splurged on a router lift. So tired of going under the table to adjust router height. Now, to build a cabinet in the router table frame.
Attachment 25744
You're one step ahead of me. I'm still trying to make/buy a router table for my handheld router.
Totally worth it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas
Nice. I've heard good things about the Kreg lift. I posted about my own cabinet insert upthread (back in 2017) but the pictures are broken since I dumped my then-host. I loosely based mine on Kreg's project plans but it looks like they're removed them from their site. Still, reposting as food for thought:Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
Attachment 25750 Attachment 25753
Attachment 25751 Attachment 25754
I know, I know. Just a bit short on money and occasion to acquire one. But they are so useful for most routing jobs. I believe it's a bigger upgrade than when I added an XY table to my drill press.Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
Thanks. Ive seen some good designs on Youtube as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by PetersCreek
Is the router cavity in your cabinet sealed against the table top or do you just allow air to leak past when running the dust collector?Quote:
Originally Posted by PetersCreek
Yes, I sealed the top of the router compartment with foam weather stripping and put a louvered vent in the door for cross flow.
Mostly finished with the router table cabinet. I still have to build in a peg board on the side opposite the power switch. And I think I'll paint the front dust collection vent in yellow & magenta (ala radiation trefoil).
Attachment 25829
That dust collection fitting is designed for router tables, which is great. What isn't great is that my 4 inch hose that easily slips onto the fitting on the table saw doesn't with this thing. The OD is a tad too large. I'll have to do something with it but I don't understand why dust collection fitting often don't fit.
I love the giant red off paddle.Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
Every time I see one of these purchases or tool customizations by you guys I wish I had more room in my garage so I could add to my collection too! The conspiratorially-thinking part of my mind tells me the dust collection component fitting problem is the manufacturers trying to trap us in their particular product ecosystem. It irritates me when stuff like that happens.Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
It's been quite in my shop for a long time. All I've made recently is a wooden air deflector for one of the forced-air vents. Some days I think it looks better than its plastic predecessor.
An 8'8" long piece of rough sawn 2x8 cherry lumber has been acclimating to my home for the last 2 1/2 months. It was the best piece at the lumber place for my intended project, but it suffered from a check in one end, cupping, slight bowing, slight twisting, as well as irregularity that happened as it was cut from the log with a band saw. I don't own a jointer.
By chance, I have an unusually straight and square 2x10 - 10' left over from something or other. I lay the cherry on this 2x10, convex side up, shimmed it where necessary, and held it fast with numerous screws along the sides. The screws only went into the 2x10, but their heads firmly gripped the sides of the cherry. I ran it several times through the thickness planer until it had a flat surface, minimum 3" wide in the center, the full length of the piece. Next, I separated the boards and ran the cherry through the planer several times with the concave side up.
I'm super pleased that I can't detect any twist in the piece. I've never previously worked with such a piece of wood. After I lop off the checked end, and then cut it into two shorter pieces, neither will have any significant bow. I need to flatten the sides too before attempting any ripping. If that all goes well, I might even report what I hope to build. :)
I'm challenged for space in my garage shop, too. In fact, after this router table project I had to rearrange the location of certain big items - like the band saw - to accommodate the space the dust collection fitting takes up. The table would no longer fit where it was before.Quote:
Originally Posted by Torsten
Coincidentally, I recently watched a Youtube video on how to get rid of bowing and warping if you don't have a jointer (as I too don't). Exactly as you described it. Well done.Quote:
It's been quite in my shop for a long time. All I've made recently is a wooden air deflector for one of the forced-air vents. Some days I think it looks better than its plastic predecessor.
An 8'8" long piece of rough sawn 2x8 cherry lumber has been acclimating to my home for the last 2 1/2 months. It was the best piece at the lumber place for my intended project, but it suffered from a check in one end, cupping, slight bowing, slight twisting, as well as irregularity that happened as it was cut from the log with a band saw. I don't own a jointer.
By chance, I have an unusually straight and square 2x10 - 10' left over from something or other. I lay the cherry on this 2x10, convex side up, shimmed it where necessary, and held it fast with numerous screws along the sides. The screws only went into the 2x10, but their heads firmly gripped the sides of the cherry. I ran it several times through the thickness planer until it had a flat surface, minimum 3" wide in the center, the full length of the piece. Next, I separated the boards and ran the cherry through the planer several times with the concave side up.
I'm super pleased that I can't detect any twist in the piece. I've never previously worked with such a piece of wood. After I lop off the checked end, and then cut it into two shorter pieces, neither will have any significant bow. I need to flatten the sides too before attempting any ripping. If that all goes well, I might even report what I hope to build. :)-default
My next project is a coffee table. Currently looking at design examples to get ideas.
I still haven't worked out the plan for my next project. I have a newish pickup truck, and I want to put something in the bed to sleep in overnight & possibly do some cooking & cleaning in, like something somewhere between a tent and a motorhome.
The basic idea for what to put inside for this kind of setup is nearly universal and there are plenty of examples on YouTube: a mattress/cushion from front to back along the right or left side, and some kind of shelf/cabinet arrangement on the opposite side, on which you can mount a portable stove and/or water basin as well as various shapes & sizes of storage space. (Some versions have also included a corner space big enough for a large cooler, small fridge, or portable toilet.)
The challenge is the top, the enclosure. The simplest (and potentially most inconspicuous-looking) solution would be to buy a professionally-produced fiberglass/metal "truck topper". But...
- Those are extremely expensive.
- I like having my rear view completely unobstructed.
- I like letting air flow through my rear window.
- So the ideal solution* would be something cheaper that lets me have the higher walls & roof when I want them and a low-profile bed with little/nothing on top of it when I want that, but...
- I don't know whether those solid truck toppers can be taken off & put back on repeatedly.
- Even if they can, that wouldn't be as good as having something permanently attached that can unfold when I want the interior space and collapse when I want it down, which could be done in metal & fiberglass, but I've never seen an example.
- Yes, I'm aware of truckbed tents, but any tent is a lot less sturdy and offers a lot less thermal & sound insulation, and draws attention.
And that has me pondering building something unfolding & collapsing myself, using the only applicable material that I have the ability to work with, which is wood. It wouldn't need to fold down entirely inside the bed; if it sat on top of the side walls & tailgate, it could be a few inches tall before even beginning to block the airflow a the bottom of the cab's rear window. I do have a hard folding tonneau cover already, so I could keep that for the roof and remount it on an unfolding-&-collapsing wall system of some kind instead of building both the walls and roof myself. But that still leaves details to be determined concerning how the moving parts would move, whether the corners where the pieces meet should be completely separate or hinged, and how to lock them in place in both modes. I don't even know that I'll be able to come up with a satisfactory design at all. If not a conventional solid truck topper would be the fallback option.
*(Actually the most ideal solution in most ways would have been a van or SUV with no seats behind the front seats, and I've even pondered eventually getting an especially large van and outfitting it enough to stay in long-term instead of a house or apartment. And the idea of getting a vehicle I could do something like this with in the first place was based on my experience sleeping some nights in my last vehicle, a PT Cruiser, with its rear seats taken out. But there seem to be no vehicles out there today with removable rear seats, and even when I considered the idea of getting a van/SUV and permanently removing the extra seats the hard way, I found that those are a lot more expensive than trucks of similar size.)
Just a couple of thoughts here Delvo. I've owned a number of pickups with and without canopies. Where I live I've had no difficulty in finding used ones at good prices in the on-line markets. I bought one that way for my current pickup, and after a couple of years, sold it for almost the same price. They're really easy for two people to attach and remove, and use just four big C-clamps to hold in place. My biggest complaint about them is the amount of dust that gets inside when travelling gravel roads. This, despite foam seals.
I've also thought about setting it up for sleeping in the way you describe, but with one big difference: I'd attach the canopy to a separate box so it could be slid in and out of the pickup box in the style of a camper. It's much heavier that way of course, but it's also very convenient provided you have a place to store it when you need an open box for hauling stuff.
And here I thought I was being original. I spent a few hours over the last few weeks thinking about how I could square up that piece of wood.Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
Well done, then!Quote:
Originally Posted by Torsten
This planer sled has been on my to-do list for years.
Well, if I need to acquire a new accessory to make it work (a second person), getting advice on that might call for a separate thread. :D But otherwise, your post about just getting a ready-made shell made me start thinking about how I would address the factors I mentioned before if I had one. It would need to be tall enough to sit up when I'm inside, and I'd want the biggest windows I could get to make the rear view as open as possible, and the windows would need to be able to open pretty wide to allow as much airflow as possible through my cab's rear window. Those are all just factors in choosing the right one to get, not anything special I'd need to do with it once I got it. But another window mode I had in mind---connected at the top but swung out & open at the bottom like an awning, for when I'm inside it in warm weather and rain is falling---would still need some custom work. And as I started pondering how one would go about putting a custom-made window mechanism in the hole in the side of a truck shell, I realized that it would probably be easier to attach such a thing to... a shell I'd designed & built myself. But at least this version of building it myself wouldn't require the thing to be collapsible, which immediately eliminates most of the complications in both design and execution.Quote:
Originally Posted by Torsten
I'm hoping to get back in the shop next weekend. That is, if my new safety/reading glasses arrive by then. The old ones are pretty much useless since the surgery.
The canopy on my first pickup had side windows with three glass louvres that opened with a small crank. You can probably purchase these in RV supply shops. Both the rear window of the pickup and the front window of the canopy could be opened by sliding. But I don't recall driving with everything open for improved airflow. I'm finding your thought process interesting because I went down a similar path about 14-15 months ago, wanting to be able to overnight in the pickup on drives to remote areas to cross-country ski. I didn't follow through.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delvo
I like that! I think I even have the appropriate boards and panels in the garage to build one. I really need to improve the infeed and outfeed tables for my planer, as the clip on ones are just too short and I often get gouge at one end of the wood if it's not presented properly. A long version of this sled clamped into place would really help.Quote:
Originally Posted by PetersCreek
I'm looking forward to more posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by PetersCreek
Yep, the dreaded planer snipe. That planer sled doesn't get clamped in place. It and the workpiece are fed through as a unit. If you can adjust you outfeed table, you can try pitching it up slightly. That can help counteract the loss of pressure from the infeed roller as it falls off the end of the workpiece. I also apply gentle upward pressure at the end of longer boards as I'm catching them on the outfeed side.Quote:
Originally Posted by Torsten
ETA: Forgot to mention that usually run a 'caboose' after one or more boards as a sacrifice to the snipe gods.
Oh, I was referring to the other way of using it that Rod mentions near the end of the video (~4:30) in the link. For really thin stock, he takes off all the levelers and uses the "slab" part of it as a lengthy platen.Quote:
Originally Posted by PetersCreek
I've made it a wasteful practice to include a margin at each end to be removed later, but I don't like that! This time, to avoid the snipe on one end, I set up a gently sloped ramp on the outfeed side such that the board was level just as the last of it went past the knives. It was a makeshift solution that worked well for one end of the board. But I think a better engineered long infeed and outfeed is the solution.