I agree with you on the burking...
did you ever think about making your own belt sander?
Yes, then I hit myself over the head with one of the hammers I made from scrap baltic birch. At this point making tools
as projects is a dream I can only imagine having time for.
Keeping in mind Gregor when working in older homes that may have settled significantly, you may have to cheat from time to time.You seem to have lots so I'm sure you will do well.
Thanks for the great tips gasgas.
Gregor-I'm done wishing for a table saw. Have you ever used yours without the vac, or just tried tossing a bag on it? I just can't see myself getting a track saw, and a kapex, and a sander, and a jigsaw...the ts will probably be the end of the line for me, and the vac doesn't seem necessary for just the one occasionally used tool.
*he says as he realizes his constantly used miter saw is probably not good enough, and the dust collection ***** on it, and now that he thinks about it, he never cared for the dust collection or lack there of on his Hitachi orbital...*
Sh!t. Here we go.
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Yes, thanks GasGas (is that GasGas as in the Spanish trials bikes?) the tips are appreciated and I'll be giving them a try on the next round. I feel like by the end of the house I'll have one perfectly trimmed door, one perfect drawer pull, one perfect drawer and a timeline of my learning curve everywhere else.
As for the track saw without the vacuum - it's like getting a pickup without the tow package. Like a superbike without traction control. Hell, it's like a stripper without heels.
You feel me?
Seriously though, the tools are great in and of themselves but it's the incredibly tight integration with the vacuum that makes them so great. Any time I use the saw without the vacuum I'm sort of astonished at how much saw dust is produced. Same with sanders. At this point I don't associate woodworking with dust and the fact that my machine tools in the shop aren't covered in sawdust probably says all you need to know.
The Kapex is the only tool that doesn't have exceptional dust collection and yet it's worlds better than any other miter saw. After a few days or weeks of cutting I have maybe 1/4" of dust behind the Kapex.
I would think of the vacuum as something that you need to have in a shop anyway and the extra cost buys you a really sophisticated vacuum that integrates with all your tools. The fact that the vacuum is switched on with the tools, that it can vary it's power and has a ton of great accessories means it's more like a tool and less like the crappy home depot vacuum you replace every few years. My CT22 is now about 14 years old, still works like new and integrates with all the new tools. In that same time I've gone through three home vacuums. To me that's value.
Here's an example. I've put one coat of poly on the drawer faces but it needs to be knocked down. Too aggressive and you'll blow through the poly and right through the stain and then you're screwed as you have two different colors. Hand sanding will clog up your sandpaper almost instantly. Here I turned the vacuum down all the way, and then I turned the sander down all the way (you can see it's at "1"). It was
extremely gentle and
very easy to get a smooth surface without going through the poly. This allowed me to put on only two coats which means the wood looks like wood and not plastic coated wood grain.
Lower down you'll see a close up shot of one of the drawer fronts - you can see the grain hasn't been obliterated by a thick coating of clear. I now like two coats if I can get away with it.
And back to our regularly scheduled project...
The stainless on the left has been "grained" as they say and the two on the right are just the cold rolled surface. To make stainless look good you have two options: polish or grain. Polish involved tons of sanding through ever smaller grit sizes and then buffing through more grades. It's a lot of work as stainless is hard stuff. Graining is done with either sand paper or scotch-brits (the brand name of the green scrubbing pad in your kitchen sink) but if the surface is already good then scotch-brite is all you need to get a nice shiny brushed surface.
The various colors are different grits but I like green as it's very unlikely to remove much material and is very gentle compared to sandpaper. Being a woven pad it also conforms to the surface. I chuck up the unwelded lengths in the lathe and turn them at a medium speed and just squeeze them in a piece of scotch-brite and travel the length of the rod until it shines.
A shout out here to the
Fastcap tape measure which is both english and metric and probably partly responsible for my comfort in dealing with two systems. The other nice thing is that it has a blank face that you can write your measurements on. It's nice if you're like me and you measure three things and then walk back to the saw chanting, "640, 660, 804... 640, 660, 804... " until you get to the saw and pass through the force field that surrounds all cutting equipment and erases all memory of whatever it was you were just chanting. Hate that.
I love my drilled welding table. Using the mill style hold downs is incredibly useful and I use it to hold my length of rod at 90 degrees as checked by my little machinists square.
I then put the square on it's side and use it to hold the smaller, threaded rod at 90 in the other direction for the first tack.
Tacking stainless is basically getting the torch very close and then stomping on the pedal to give it a bunch of amps very fast.
Then it's into my scrap bin of baltic birch to make a small jig to position the first hole for the drawer pull. I make all the pulls 100mm less than the drawer so the inset is 50mm on each side and 50mm from the top so the jig is able to be used on both sides by flipping it.
Since each pull is individually welded they can vary by a couple mm either way and if you just used the jig to drill the holes you might end up with something that doesn't match. Don't ask how I know. I use the
Kreg Multi-mark a lot and for this sort of thing it's super useful. I set a 50mm off set and mark a line from the top and then, with the one side already screwed in, I simply transfer the center of the pulls base across to the first line and I'm pretty good. Sometimes I may have to put a little pressure on the pull but they've all lined up.
Oh, that's the photo I mentioned - the grain is just apparent but still very smooth. That's two coats.
And there is one of three sets done and dusted.
In looking at the photo I decided to make a thin strip to flush in the dishwasher a little bit so that's on the menu tomorrow. Also, the trim ended up crowding the last set of drawers which I suspected might happen so I'm going to do the second set (sink) and then check, measure and trim the last set to fit so they'll have to be edged, stained and polled on one edge which is a pain but they'll fit perfectly.
After that I'm going to make a new kick and then trim it out. If it starts to rain again I'll dive in on the tile for the backsplash.
So, small progress but it's progress.
Gregor
