Me:
I’m building an igloo and I need it to have a curved roof. All I have to work with are a small spade, an ice-cream scoop and the snow. I have NO MONEY for tools, NO Eskimos living within 500 miles. Has anyone ever done this and if so how do I get the curved roof?

Reply 1: Joe, you don’t need a curved roof. I’ve seen plenty of flat-roofed igloos in upstate NY.
Reply 2: There’s this guy on ebay who sells custom igloo tools. They’re pretty expensive, but tell him Jim sent you and he might give you a discount.
Reply 3: This one time at band camp….
Reply 4: Maximum curvature of an igloo’s roof is dependent on so many things – density of the snow, ambient air temperature and humidity levels, wind direction, pollution levels. In my city you can’t build an igloo without a set of plans, permits from the city, an inspection. You should look at your local code and maybe hire an expert. If you do, you’d be better off with a member of the igloo-makers’ union, not with those fly-by-winter wannabees you see advertising on Craigslist.
Reply 4: Joe, what color is your snow?
Reply 5: I built a curved roof igloo a while back. It had 3 bedroom, a man’s cave and a walkout to the jacuzzi. Here’s a dozen blurry pics. I forgot what we used but it was made of metal.
Reply 6: Curved roof igloos are so seventies, you should use ice-cubes and make a gabled roof.
Reply 7: My house in Boston had a gabled roof! The pigeons used to crap in that corner where the gable meets the eaves, and then the rain would wash it down the side of the house and there’d be long white streaks on the brick – it was disgusting.
Reply 9: You’re from Boston? My sister’s ex-husband’s gardener’s neighbor was stationed at Fort Devens years ago – it’s about an hour west of Boston.
Reply 10: I hate pigeons.
Reply 11: This one time at band camp…

So that’s why I think that forums can occasionally suck. Hate to type and run, but it looks like I need to run to the library.

Partial installation took approximately 15 minutes.

First I removed the left hand crank from the mill/drill and installed the supplied gear. It just slid into place with three like the hand crank, and tightened with an small set screw:

This hefty gear replaces the handcrank.

Then a bracket slid over the end of the table and tightened with two bolts:

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Sits in place, lines up automatically.

Then the main body gets bolted to another frame piece – this is the view from the bottom where the two hold-down and adjusting bolts are.

The two bolts are kept semi loose until it's all adjusted.

Then the body and 2nd frame part hook up to that first frame part that lipped over the side of the table. Up to now it’s taken about 4 minutes. The next 10 minutes was spent trying to align the gear underneath the body with that gear I put on the shaft. It has to be just right and there’s not a lot of clearance, (a 2nd person would have helped here) but once it’s aligned all I had to do was tighten the two screws from underneath and there it is:

Attached and ready to go. It is parallel to the table.

The last thing to do is attach the limiter switch. This keeps you from falling asleep and just unscrewing the table. It bolts to the front of the table. The 2 existing holes don’t line up – but it comes with an adapter. Unfortunately I need two longer bolts to make the adapter work, so until I get into town I’ll just have to not fall asleep at the mill/drill.

Gotta bolt this down someday.

And that’s it. The feed has an on/off for the motor. You just turn it on, flip that big switch into forward and away it goes. The small gray knob sets the speed you want from fast to slow. When you get to the end you throw the flip in neutral, then into reverse. If you’re in a hurry – once you’ve got it in reverse you can push another button and it goes full-speed back to the start.

It’s too early to tell but my first impression is that this is a quality piece. It’s made in Taiwan. The gear that goes on the shaft is thick, heavy and nicely polished. The finish on the body of the feed is nice and everything seems solidly made. Hopefully it will last a long time.

Moved it by myself from garage to workshop.

Getting the lathe moved the last 150 feet was an adventure. I tried hiring help off Craigslist but couldn’t find anyone that would actually show up, or that wanted less than $250 for an hours worth of work. I guess that whole double-digit unemployment thing down here in southern AZ is just a lie, or I’d have had a few people willing to work 60 minutes to earn $100. Oh well, what I did instead was take the tailstock and chuck off, and disconnect the lathe from the bed parts (the two stands and the drip pan). Each stand was well over 100 pounds, so I put them on the moving dolly and dragged them through the sand out to the shop one at a time. Then I put the remaining 2000 pounds of lathe on my 1500 pound capacity trailer – on big oak beams because the belt guard stuck downwards and I couldn’t figure out how to get it off – and drove the trailer back to the shop. I backed up right to the door, put the engine hoist inside the shop and lifted the lathe. As I lifted it slowly slid inside and I propped it up on more oak beams – lifting and sliding and propping until it was all the way in the shop.

Then the fun began – each stand bolts to the lathe with three holes. The stands are too heavy to lift by hand, the lathe was up on the engine hoist spinning in the wind, and I had to guide it down with one hand while aligning two drift pins with the other hand (Hence the lack of pics – I ran out of hands.) The first stand took 45 minutes of maneuvering to get on, the second one took about 15. Then I lifted it again from the middle of the floor, and rolled it into place.

Power is from a Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) which converts the 220V single phase power in my shop into 208V 3-phase to power the motor. 3-phase motors are very quiet and you can’t hear it run, just the sound of the pulley moving the belts (which I also had to replace – ordered 3 off the internet from surplus center). Hookup was a breeze, once I found where I’d hidden my box of electrical connectors – just three wires from the motor, two from the plug and one for the ground.
It’s a simple on/off button. The knob can adjust frequency, which speeds it up, but I’m using the actual gear levers to do that so all I need is the on/off.

Took longer to figure out what to order than it did to hook it up.

The day before the move I went to an auction and got another wooden chest. This one is oak, 14 drawers, It came in a traveling case but I lifted it out and put the case in the shed. It’s made by Rogers and Madison. I paid $40 but if you want one then the only other one I can find is here and they want just a bit more money for it so I think I got a good deal. I’ve already moved all my lathe and mill tooling into it.

Rogers & Madison 14-drawer Oak Chest

Just a wee bit bigger than my 6" Craftsman-Atlas.

It came very cheap. The seller wasn’t a user, and didn’t think it was 100% because there is an old stripped gear tied to it with a wire. His information was that it was running when pulled from service last year, but that it “didn’t go back.” So I thought it might need some near gears. Well I pulled the gearbox cover and it is beautiful – not a single missing tooth, no wear to be seen. I tried every lever combo by hand and it all runs smooth. I checked the feed screw, it’s fine. Cross-slide feed works in both directions, reverse works – I’ve checked every single gear on this thing and it all works fine. so now I’m waiting to find a diagram to see if that old gear even belongs to the lathe.

Next steps: I want to pull the cross-slide and chuck, clean up the cross-slide and remove the taper attachment since I don’t plan on using it, clean up the chuck (it’s an L-00 taper, not a screw-on type) and see what I need to get a 5C collett chuck on there. I also need to clean about 2″ of caked on grease/swarf out of the drip pan, and decide if I’m going to swap out the 1hp 3-phase motor with a 3hp 1phase motor, drop in a VFD, or buy a rotary converter.
Then it’s just paint the bed, paint the stand, and get a forklift and team out to move it into the workshop. It all sounds so simple if you’re like me and don’t know a single thing about a tool of this type and size. Should be fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got more than a few of the retractable type –

Tape Measures Big and Small

For smaller measurements I prefer to use a ruler. they’re easier to hold, they’re always open – no spring to break, and fit easily in a pocket. Just like the planes you’ve got two ways to go.

Wood

Wood Rulers, Folding Rules, Caliper Rules and Zig-Zags

or my true favorite – metal

Machinist rules are just as useful for measuring wood.

Of course if you prefer to measure in style, and can’t do it without a certain amount of “bling” then you’ll need to step up to the ivory and german-silver rules:

Stanley #40 ivory folding rule

They used to fit in here.

Typical junk-drawer's worth of drill bits.

That can't be good for the cutting edge.

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.

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.

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.

It's not where I'd like it to be, but it weighs too much for me to move.

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

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

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.

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.