Woodworking Comments

I started off, a long time ago, with a radial arm saw. It was a Sears 10 inch, and I still have it. Now, I mostly use it for cross grain dado cuts, and those cuts that are too long for the miter saw. Shortly after, I got a drill press, and probably (and eventually) ruined the bearings by using it as a mill. Still, it runs and runs moderately well. If I get another one, I’ll get one with a tilting table and a crank-up table. It might be larger than 15 inches, too. We’ll see.

The next item that I got was a joiner planer. That helped in cleaning up some of the wood, and I got a 3 sided workbench to mount it on. Well, one of the problems with a joiner planer is that it is wonderful at what it does, but lousy at thickness plane work. Sometime after that, I got a Sears 10 inch table saw, which worked quite well for a number of years, although the fence was a miserable piece of work. I finally bought a 50 inch fence from the local woodworking shop, and built an extension table for the saw. Now I can cut a 4 by 8 foot sheet of plywood in half. If only I could get one home….

Sometime after that, I picked up a miter saw, because I was tired of the inaccuracy of the radial arm saw in doing miters. I’ve changed brands to DeWalt, and have found that they are much nicer than the Sears stuff I’ve been buying.

Someplace else in there I picked up a 10 inch bandsaw. Unfortunately, it was only a wood bandsaw, and would not work on metal. It didn’t have two speeds, and the blade size was available only in wood cutting blades. <grrrrrrr>

 
So I’m almost finished with the major acquisitions, although I should mention that I picked up a belt/disk sander that is quite useful.

Eventually, I got an air compressor, because I wanted to do airbrushing. I had to run a hundred feet of air hose to get air from the garage to the art room, and that got old after a while. Now I’ve got a monstrous CO2 cylinder that works for carbonating cider and running the airbrush. (I like closeout sales at stores…)

I did get a dust removal system working, but the shop vac I was using couldn’t handle the flow from the surface planer, so I just got one of the larger 4 inch dust removal systems. It’s a bit quieter, and seems to be a lot easier to deal with. I just hooked it into the existing system and ran a separate 4 inch line over to the surface planer. I did mention the surface planer, didn’t I? Well, it’s surprising the number of things that can be made from relatively inexpensive lumber. Cedar, especially, can benefit from surface planing, especially since the only kind I’ve been able to find is the rough hewn type. Don’t want that in the house.

One last indulgence has been a mortising machine. I’ve not gotten it yet, but I do expect that it will open up an entire new dimension of wood joints and furniture. I’m looking forward to it, but I suspect that it will see minimal use until I get the right project. Still, it was on the “eventual purchase” list, and it was on sale. I’m going to stop buying things, I am. This must sound like a lot, but it was purchased over 10 years or more, so it isn’t quite so much.

 
I’ve gotten some nice benches built, especially for the surface planer and the miter saw. I’ll put pictures of them up after a bit.

That’s all for the wood shop for now. There’s project details in the other sections, you’ll see how woodworking did help on the barn door, the metal shop, and the telescope accessory cases, oh, and the tripod, too.