Buddy Can You Spare a Bit?
I have a small drill bit problem. It’s reached the point where the easiest solution is probably to get rid of all of them at once – maybe to a scrap metal dealer – and then go out and buy a couple of new sets with the pretty little boxes. The weird thing is, I only remember ever buying one bit – a size “O” for drilling pen blanks, and a set of forstner bits. But every time I bought a toolchest I got a few, and every time I bought a machinist chest I got a bunch. I used to keep them in their own toolchest:
They used to fit in here.
I had drawer for hole bits, regular bits, small regular its, those fat-tipped ones for concrete, a lot of spade bits (I hate those things but can’t stand to throw them out.) I had a drawer of countersinks until I moved them into the metalworking chest. But then I ran out of room so I threw a few into a plastic tote:
Typical junk-drawer's worth of drill bits.
And then before I knew it I had another plastic bin completely filled with bits just all piled in like sardines:
That can't be good for the cutting edge.
And then today I went through all the nooks and crannies where I’d piled other stuff, the bottom drawer of the oak dental cabinet, small boxes etc and ended up with a few more (hard to get a sense of scale but this pile is 12″x18″)
So that's where I left the bradpoint bits.
And of course most of them aren’t marked as to size, or if they are the writing is too small for me to see. I tried a few of those cheap gauges with the different sized holes, but they were worthless to me. I tried a micrometer – way too slow and then I had to convert to fractions and decide if it was a fraction, number, or letter bit. So the smart thing would be like I said above – toss them and start anew. But where’s the fun in that? Instead I went to MSC and ordered a cabinet made to hold fractional bits 1/16 – 1/2. Then I ordered two digital calipers – one decimal and one fraction. I’ll go through and toss the rusted junk, sort out the easy to identify ones, and start in measuring the rest. I figure if I can knock out 50 or so a night, by summer I should at least have all the fractional bits pulled aside and sorted. Then it should be easy to sweep up all the # size ones and drop them in drawer somewhere. The bradpoints I can pull out and make a small box for.
Finishing the Kitchen
Been a long month and not much to show for it but I did get the kitchen remodel done. This is the one I started about 3 years ago. I put in new cabinets, one soffit was crooked so I couldn’t hide the gap when the cabinets were straight, and the soffit wasn’t long enough so the fridge looked out of place. I took that down a year ago, but didn’t have the skill to repair the drywall. The ceiling had one texture, the wall another, and the backsplash area none. Now it’s all done. If you look very close you can see where the soffit used to be, but you have to look close. I need to touch up the paint on the corners and edges but I already repainted all the replaced drywall and it blends in very nicely. The soffit used to end just above the window, so the top edge of the window opening needed reworked too – that turned out to be the easiest part. The line at the top right of the cabinet in the first pic is the transition from the textured wall to the flat backsplash, it’s not where the soffit used to end. I need to touch up the paint in that spot. The paint difference isn’t as glaring in real life, it’s just a photographic trick caused by my geriatric big-bird color scheme (yellow on the side-walls, bright yellow on the backsplash, and a faded to white yellow on the ceiling.)
Soffit used to continue from that corner and go 9' to the right.
Soffit used to end in the middle of this cabinet.
And for those 3 or 4 faithful readers who were wondering what happened to the bedrock I showed earlier, I got the frog and started to fix up the plane. Cleaned off the rust on the one cheek and found this nice crack running in an arc from the front, in 2″ and up to the top:
Blown-Out Cheek on Goodwill's "Very Good" plane.
Ringing in the New Year with a (semi) Clean Shop
About a week ago I got the idea that a good pre-New Year’s resolution would be to clean the shop – sort out all the junk and get rid of the excess, and then if I actually accomplished that I’d turn the portable dust collection into a more permanent system. So I gathered up a bunch of boxes and some of those industrial strength contractor trash-bags and went at it. My goal was to get everything but the DC done by today. I didn’t quite make it. I got rid of everything that needed to go, and everything else is either where it needs to be, or piled in the general area. I still have a couple of issues – the oak cabinet has a pile of questionable items on it, there are some tools hanging on the wall that I need to sort through, and I still have a small pile of excess handsaws. But overall it’s looking a lot better than it was. I can walk from the big doors, through the shop, and out the side door without hurting myself, and after yesterday’s trip to the Borg I have a small pile of pipes and fittings outside waiting to turn into a dust-collection system.
Here’s a shot from the big double doors. Note that you can see the top of the tablesaw, and not just the part nearest to the blade. I put a small cabinet underneath the extension wing to hold the blades, tenon jig, dado set etc.
View from the double-doors
To the left of the doors I have the planer (I’m building a DC hood for it), jointer, and 16/32 sander. The planer and sander are on wheels so they just slide away from the wall when needed. There will be a DC drop just to the left of the window. I had an old Walker/Turner monstrosity of a jointer that I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of. It had no blade guard and needed about 5 pounds of shims to stay in alignment, but I still liked it more than this little Craftsman I’ve got now.
Lined up out of the way.
Past the planer and into the little side-room I’ve got two of the lathes. I finally found an extra extension for the Nova, so I think the total capability is about 42″ between centers.
The blue record mini-lathe was my first real power-tool and it's still my favorite.
Left of the TS on the interior partition wall I’ve got the remains of an old-bench I now use for rougher or dirty work, and my mill/drill. I need to build a small cabinet to the right of the mill to hold a few of the tools.
It's not where I'd like it to be, but it weighs too much for me to move.
Right of the TS is the DC and a router table. The TS also has a router insert with a lift. Mostly this router table gets used to hold hand-routers and all the excess router cr@p I seem to accumulate.
The little window is just so I can see from the houser when I leave the lights on.
Back left near the side-door is where I keep the small metal lathe (I still need to clean that up a bit). The stuff on the walls needs to come down and get sorted. I think some of it will end up in the workbench drawers if I have any room left. And to the right of the door is the shelf with the planes.
Didn't quite get to cleaning this part up yet.
The planes, my scrollsaw, a horizontal router table I never use and don't know why I have it.
And the back right has the bandsaw, some hand-saws to keep, some saws to get rid of or turn into scrapers, a few wooden toolchests (I have a small weakness for machinist chests. Counting the two by the lathe I’m at 10. That’s my limit until I find another) and my rolling clamp rack.
bandsaw handsaws chests and clamps
And that’s about it. No separate pic, but if you look back at the first one you can see the bench I made and behind it is the remains of some old kitchen cabinets with my disc/sander and some grinders/sharpening stuff. The foley saw sharpener is under a tarp on the front porch (under the awning.) And that’s my workshop. This week I will be working on the pile of stuff on that oak cabinet, and running the pipes for the dust collection pipes.
Happy New Year
Joe
Bedrock – Before
One of the last purchases I made on the Goodwill auction site (before they went totally screwy with their operation) was a Stanley Bedrock 604 smoothing plane. I was so disgusted with it once it arrives that I threw it back in the box and stashed it in a closet. I finally pulled it out today – over a year later, to see if it’s worth saving.
I bought it based on one very blurry picture – a side shot in which I could see the tell-tale flat sides of a Bedrock style plane. I knew it was either a Bedrock, or a V&B, or a KK series Keen Kutter. So based on the blurry pic, and the description “in very good shape with no defects” I bought it. Here’s a slightly less blurry shot of the plane that arrived on my doorstep:
The "Very Good" Bedrock from Goodwill
Well I don’t know what their definition of “very good” is but mine doesn’t include a cutter that’s been hammered to a mushroom on top, bent halfway down, and a cutting edge with less than 1/2″ of life left.
Of course if it was as simple as a dead cutter, I’d pull a replacement out of my stash. But it’s never that easy is it? Removing the mushroomed cutter reveals the top inch of the frog – to include the lateral – was missing completely. Apparently banging on the cutter with a hammer wasn’t the proper way to adjust a Bedrock. Whoda thunkit?
"No Defects" is goodwill speak for "top of frog busted off and missing"
I’ve got a line on a replacement frog. If that pans out then I know I’ve got a spare cutter or two in the parts bins so I’ll go ahead and clean this up into a user. If I can’t get the frog then I’m probably not going to bother – I’ll salvage everthing I can, keep the wood (it seems to be in very good (my version of VG, not goodwill’s) condition. Then I’ll try to pass on the body and frog adjustment screws to someone else. Maybe that way someone else will end up with a functioning plane so it won’t be a total loss.
On the good side, the 1/8″ layer of dirt covering the body has hopefully preserved some of the japanning. I can tell from the raised portion of dirt behind the frog that this is a two-patent date version, so it’s pre-WW1. At least I think so, until I actually clean off some of the dirt I can’t be certain just what it says:
A nice thick layer of dirt makes a great preservative.
A Scrollsaw I Can Use (Finally!)
I have had at least a half a dozen scrollsaws over the years, and didn’t use any of them. They were all those puny little things you find at garage sales and flea markets for anywhere from $5-15. I think the biggest one of the bunch was a no-name 16″. They were all the same – unless they were welded to an anvil they would vibrate like crazy. They used that C-shaped arm design which meant in use there was this swinging chunk of metal up at eye level, and they used those obnoxiously small little clamps to hold these annoyingly little blades that would snap after about 3 seconds of heavy use.
I couldn’t afford one of the “premium” style saws like the Hegner Excaliber, so I just went without. I could use the bandsaw (Rikon 18″) for making scroll cuts, but I would rather keep the resaw blade on it since that’s what I mainly use it for. Then one day I saw an ad in the paper for a scrollsaw that was advertised as “old-school heavy iron” so I went to take a look and what do you know, it was a Delta-Rockwell 24″ saw from the early sixties. (When I first got it I thought it was even older, but I was misreading the serial #.) This is one sweet saw.
My Delta-Rockwell 24 Inch Scroll Saw
The hold-down is sitting on the shelt, I forget why I took it off.
It’s got 3 speeds, although I haven’t ever figured out how to change the belt without loosening the motor. The blade mechanism is unique in that it’s a spring up top, and it pulls from the bottom. There is no movement up top of the table except the blade. And the blade slides into slots on both ends – so it takes pinless blades of any length you want to throw at it. The blade mechanism can be rotated 90 degrees so you can actually use it like a bandsaw. The table tilts. It’s heavy as can be and doesn’t vibrate one bit. And the best thing, for me, is I figured out that I can use a piece of bandsaw blade rather than a scrollsaw blade, and power through just about anything. (The piece of scrap wood in the pic is honey mesquite – harder than a cheap chisel.) I can put a 1/8″ blade in with no modification, anything larger I have to grind the ends down to make it fit in the blade holder. It wouldn’t work with a 3-tooth blade, but I’m using a 10 tpi blade and it rips through the mesquite like butter. I’m looking for a small metal-cutting bandsaw blade that I can put in there to cut brass with.
Bandsaw Blades Work Just As Well
The Hold-Down Can Be Rotated 90 Degrees
So if you’re using one of those little toys and pretending it’s a tool – keep an eye out for one of these older machines. I paid $100 for this one and if I’d have known how good it was I would have gladly paid more.
Yea Detroit! Go Tigers Red Wings Pistons & Lions!!!!
Well the Detroit Tigers got bounced out of the playoffs early when their hitting couldn’t keep up with the runs allowed by that “stellar” pitching rotation. The Red Wings got crushed last night 7-1 but they’ll still make the playoffs (it’s the NHL – EVERYONE makes the playoffs.) The Lions just lost their second straight game – looking like they didn’t even want to play – and the Pistons aren’t playing because a bunch of overpaid idiots don’t think they can live on the measly multi-million dollar salaries they’re getting now.
Yep, it’s fall. the leaves are turning, snow is on the way, and the sports outlook in Detroit is slowly returning to that comforting level of suckiness we’ve come to love over the past few decades.
Yea! Go Team!
Hey Ohio! I’ll take in your exotic tools.
I see Ohio is going to clamp down on exotic animals after this home-zoo-gone-bad debacle. So if you’re in that state and worried about what to do with your Pootatuck Lion Miter Trimmer, don’t put it down or send it to a zoo – ship it to me and I promise to give it a nice home on a bench with another Lion Miter machine. I’ll keep it sharp and feed it a regular supply of cutoffs.
In all fairness, I’ll take any exotic tool you’ve got to find a new home for. I don’t really need another plumbing snake, but if you’ve got one to give then OK. I am doing some drywall work so I could use the flex giraffe sander. Anything by Tiger Tools is welcome. Just box them all up and send them to sunny AZ!
Wood Central
Another link I’m migrating from bookmarks to here, Wood Central is one of those all-in-one sites. It’s got chat forums, articles, reviews of books and more. There’s a lot to get out of it – they even hold contests from time to time – but I usually just go for the pics in the “Shop Shots” section.
Trial and Error – a blog you should read.
I’m cleaning up my bookmarks. There are a lot of woodworking or old-tool sites that I read and I bookmark them all and the list gets long and I miss some so I thought maybe I’d thin the herd, and at the same time migrate the list here. That way I have them all in one place and my bookmark list won’t be 27 pages long.
First on the “keep” list is Trial and Error. It’s by a guy in Texas who decided to build a treadle lathe. Now lots of people have thought about building a lathe, quite a few went as far as to download plans, make parts lists, or actually clear out a corner of the shop, pile some lumber and call it their “future” treadle lathe.
This guy built the whole thing, in his garage, and he’s got the video to prove it.
So visit the site – link is on the right of the page. Start with the oldest post and work your way forward (save the video for the end.)
I Bought A New (Old) Tool(s) – My Shopsmith 10E
I’ve had a box of Shopsmith parts that I’ve slowly been selling for the last year or so. Last week I shipped an arbor to Australia. Once I’d emailed the buyer to say the part was on the way, I surfed over to Craigslist and stumbled on an ad: “Shopsmith 10E $100″.
All-In-One tools like the Shopsmith have never really interested me, but this one make me take a second look – not just because of the coincidental timing, but because 1) the model # was one I didn’t recognize, and 2) the price was very low. (I’ve been seeing Mark Vs listed in the 350 – 700 range) So I did a quick Google and found that the 10E was the first model of Shopsmith, made just after WW2 and before the current makers of Shopsmith were in business. So I said to myself: “Self, you know it’s worth $100 to see one of these contraptions in operation, and once I got bored I could part it out and hopefully make some of my money back.” So $100 and two trips later (it was bigger than I thought, I had to come back for the trailer) I had this sitting on the front porch:
Shopsmith & Stand $100
Model #10E, serial #9459.
10E in the 9000 range
If they started in 1947, and made about 4k a year, then mine (built in San Francisco) probably was born in 1949-50.
I’m still playing around with it a bit, but my initial impression is that although the gizmosity factor is up there, in the end this thing just isn’t for me, and eventually I’ll part it out.
As a tablesaw it doesn’t compare to my cabinet saw, or even a rinky-dink portable saw you can buy at HF. The blade (currently a cheap 7.25″, but it holds up to 8″ plus dado blades) sits unexposed under the table, and is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. There is a shelf on the other end of the tool for supporting long stock, but with only the miter gauge to hold the stock square, it’s about worthless. (The shelf isn’t in the pics, it’s sitting in the living room on pile of lathe tools, table inserts and a bunch of bolts & nuts I haven’t yet figured out.)
Tablesaw - Blade Guard up Top, but nothing underneath?
The lathe part consists of an arbor for the headstock, and a MT2 live-center for the tailstock for spindles, or a faceplate (mine came with the 3.5″ one) for the headstock if you want to try bowls. The tool-rest is nice though – easily adjustable. The biggest problem is that there are only three speeds to choose from, none of which are really fast enough, and changing speeds is a pain. You can turn a table-leg if you had to, but it doesn’t hold up to my Nova 3000. Or my Record Midi, or my Craftsman/Atlas (I do NOT have a lathe problem.) To set the length you move the headstock, not the tailstock. Once I sanded the rails a bit it moves easily.
There is a fence and arbor for using the Shopsmith as a shaper, but with the mediocre speed selection I don’t see myself even trying.
There is a 12″ faceplate for mounting a sanding disc. I have a 6×48 belt sander with a 9″ disc, so I don’t see myself ever using this. It would be useful if I didn’t have the other sander, but even then the glue-on discs mean you can only use one grit at a time.
There is also a soda-can sized sanding drum. It didn’t come with any sleeves and I’ll probably never buy any since I don’t use the sleeves I already have in the shop.
Arbors, lathe tool-rest and mortise attachment.
Shaper Fence and Sanding Drum
The best use of the tool seems to be as a drill press. Quill travel is about 4.5″ which is enough for just about anything I’d want to use it for. And it did come with the attachments for a mortise chisel which struck my interest. The Shopsmith can be used in the horizontal or vertical position, so maybe I can use it as a horizontal/vertical mortise machine. I ordered some very cheap mortise chisels/bits and they should be here today or tomorrow so I can try it out.