Al gets a lathe!

The story starts as usual, me getting a deal. I was at a garage sale on the weekend and spotted a lathe. Mr man initially water $80, he had reduced it to $30 as it was getting late in the morning. I offered he $20 and a deal was done! When i was a kid i remember going to my grandparents house and being assisted by my grandfather, using the lathe. It was good times and not that difficult, well for basic stuff anyways. A lathe is something i've always been keen to have, every now and then a need for one arises (trivets for instance) but i've never been able to justify buying even a cheap lathe. Until now. It seems $20 is the buy in price for Al to buy a lathe.

A$20 lathe! It wasn't in bad condition little rusty, little been dropped from a bench, and average paint condition. As i had it outside i thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give it quick refresh.

So the following work was done.

• Full nut and bolt teardown
• Sand to bare metal and respray.
• Bearings were in perfect shape, no movement side to side and spun freely.
• Power switch also in very good shape, almost no wear to the contact pads.
• Low friction tape applied to metal on metal contact points.
• New power lead attached.
• No bolts were included to keep the side door closed, so a 6mm thread was tapped to allow for the star knobs on the side.

All in all i'm rather pleased with the outcome. It was great to get some more practice with the spray gun. Hopefully now with its mid life update it'll continue to function for years to come.

Till next time.

Al

OCD Screw Style!

As with so many of my projects this one starts by getting a deal! I am constantly on the lookout for high quality inexpensive cases to hold stuff. In this case i found some good cases almost half price from repco.  One of these cases would be perfect for storing commonly used screws in the bottom of my tool chest. The case just fitted and i removed the lid by removing two rods from the back so that should i wish to take the screws on the road it would only take a minute to reattach the lid.

The most common screws i find myself using are 8g screws, so they are easily at reach in the top sections. 6g Screws can be found by lifting out the MDF container as shown in the above pic. I made the MDF containers and dividers from 3mm MDF hot glued together. The project was finished off by a quick labeling session to quickly identify what was in each container.

Till next time

Al

Trivets!

With christmas rapidly approaching, gifts need to be found or in this case made.
The basic idea behind the design was poached from some ones i found in a homewares store. Those ones were just pieces of dowel with holes drilled to hold the rope. I thought i could make a more interesting design and for much less then the $35 the store wanted for one.
And so the project begins!

I really wanted to make my own dowel as i have some hardwood stair treads laying around that would have been perfect for this project, but alas operation "make a doweling jig" did not end up with a usable jig. So 25mm hardwood dowel was purchased and cut to 175mm lengths. Then planed round, the store bought dowel was mostly round, but not round enough for what i needed it for.

Next up was to drill some holes in each end. It dawned on me that even if i punched a mark on the timber prior to drilling the holes it would be almost impossible to get holes that perfectly matched up. So a jig was made!
I cut a hardwood block in half, drilled a 25mm hole in each end, then carefully marked and drilled a 4mm hole in the top of each one. And lastly cut a slice out on the bandsaw from each bottom so the final dimension of the 25mm would be slightly less when a clamp was applied holding the dowels tightly in place.
Once that was made i was able to drill the holes at the end of each dowel precisely.

 I wanted to cut two  grooves at each end of the dowel. Usually this operation would be preformed using a lathe, which i dont have. So to the internet! Turns out other people have faced this problem and making a router jig was the easiest solution. So i knocked up this contraption. Dowel gets feed into the hole, the router is lowered till it reached its depth stop and the dowel rotated (hence the need for really round dowel. I found that if it wasn't really round it would bind and get stuck when i tried to turn it) then when all dowel was cut the jig was adjusted to cut the second groove.

The end result.

I applied a coat of tung oil to one of the test pieces and was quite happy with the result, but i felt it needed something more but i wasn't sure what. So i took 24 hours to have a think.
The next day i was doing some plastic welding and it dawned on me, i needed to blacken the groves with the soldering iron. So with all the enthusiasm in the world i set to it! And stopped once my back started to get sore, which was only 10mins after i started and i had only done 4 grooves. A quick bit of math removed any bit of remaining enthusiasm . 4 groves per rod and a total of 14 rods = 56! This was going to take a while. Luckily Mrs Paleface was kind enough to lend a hand so it went a little quicker.

After a coat of tung oil.

And the finished product after a second coat of tung oil.
Its design allows for it to either be compressed like on the left (and the cord can be placed under it to hid it) or extended like on the depending on your trivet needs.

Till next time

Al

Welding trolley follow up.

Last week i finished off building the trolley, and this morning i spent some time fitting it out.

Starting from the top.
I bolted the grinder to the top of the cabinet, its quite heavy and i was concerned the trolley would become top heavy, but luckily the welder is heavy enough to maintain good stability.
A shelf containing clamps and right angle magnets
Welding gloves, helmet and chipping hammer.
And lastly the welder on the bottom.

Close up of inside shelf.

Left hand side containing 4" grinder with cutoff and grinding  wheels and  arbour adaptor.

On the back is a 6 way powerboard which i modified to use 15amp power power cable. I didn't want to see the effects of voltage drop over the 10m run. Also although the welder is rated to only 10amps they use 15amp cable with a 10amp plug. The power cables for the welder and bench grinder are nicely cable tied to the frame. It was when i installed the final tie i released that now i could not get to the welder wire in the welder as there is not enough room inside the cabinet to open it, and now with the power cord cable tied, i cannot move the welder out of the cabinet! Oh well. Sounds like a problem for my future self.

And lastly the right hand side with 5" grinder and accessories.

All in all i'm rather pleased how this came out. It should make for a far more efficient welding experience. The only other thing i'd like to do it change the power lead on the 4"angle grinder, it has a really short lead on it and i can't get much beyond the front of the cabinet when its plugged into the rear power board.

Till Next time.

Al

Welding trolley.

I recently got a great deal on the mig welder, and although it's portable it weighs about 30 kg and doesn't have wheels. Also my welding stuff is in a big box and i often don't weld something because its such a pain to set up. So.. a welding trolley was commissioned.

The finished project after 2 coats Scandinavian oil.

Its made out of 12mm ply, radiata pine, and molding made from cedar.

The objectives I wanted to achieve by doing this are the following.

- Practice mitre joints, as i've never really tried them before and it's a skill i'd like to have.

- Have a play with Scandinavian oil

- Make molding

- Use pocket hole joinery, again never really used this in a project before.

- End up with a trolley for the welder.

The mitre joints for the most part came out really nice. And I got good experience at cutting mitres after cutting 28 of them! 

Same with the mitred pine to edge band the plywood top.

I also invented a new join. I'm calling it a double half lap. I cut a half lap on two pieces of timber then went back to the saw an cut a half lap from the new joint and out of a new piece of timber and glued them together. and that formed the corner joint you can see in the photo.
All the side panels are held in place with pocket holes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNHZ2rQtH4
A short video explaining how to make a pocket hole.

I had to drill 48 holes which is a bit painful to do, but its way stronger then using a butt joint and easier than using dowels. As this was a shop project it doesn't really matter if the screw holes are visible.

This trolley will probably be repurposed at some stage as building a welding out of wood was not my best decision, however i didn't have enough steel to make one from that. So when i do i'll make a steel one.

Till next time...

Al