Recent content by Gizmosity

When I REALLY need a bit, I buy what I can locally to me (my 'local' is about a 100 mile round trip). That's usually Freud from Menards/Home Depot or whatever a Woodcraft sells at their storefront. I will buy some random stuff at Grizzly and have used their bits for quite a few years (20+)...

+1 This stuff is gold. The last roll I used was the 5952. I was skeptical at first but now it's an answer to a lot of tight clearance and appearance areas. Amazon for like $20 for 15 feet.

The PM1150 is a great drill press. I have two. The first is an older Craftsman Industrial model with twin tables, which comes in REALLY handy. My buddy gave it to me as a wedding present of all things. (best wedding present I've ever gotten) The second is an older Delta/Rockwell that I...

I've had a half dozen Colts in my lab that are used by ham fisted college students. In my experience, the Colt is a decent machine but the collets are a little delicate. The raise/lower wheel/mechanism on all the ones we have are stripped out....again...hamfisted students so adjusting them is...

I have planned to make one of these for about 8 years but I've always managed to fumble my way into what I need without this much investment in time, which I don't think is all that much. One of these days I'm going to do a large run of hardware totes that need pretty precisely bent 1/4" rod...

I was just having a conversation about marking things the other day.....as you do. This is what I have around me all the time. For metal I usually use a double ended Sharpie with a finer point on one end but I need to buy some more. For building furniture I'm usually just using the Sharpie...

My house and shop are 100 yards away and I intended on trenching and putting CAT6 in conduit. I have bad shoulders and they have gotten worse over the last couple years and the idea of a 100 yard, 3 foot deep trench, even in the sandy soil we have made me look at other options. I would have had...

Trewax, Briwax and Renaissance are in my shop. I swipe my cast iron surfaces with a handful of wadded up wax paper I keep in an apron pocket when I think about it. I might apply an actual coat of paste wax once a year. Those three cans will likely last three of my lifetimes.

Biesemeyer made several styles with different rail dims. The lighter duty fences used a smaller tube and angle. The commercial fences used 3x2 rec tube and 3x2.5 angle. Delta bought them out years ago. I made my own rails when I bought a VSC Tools fence. They have some good info on making...

Not that I can tell. Knock on belly fat.

I just had a lecture in several CAD and Design for Production courses on this exact topic. The person who can communicate effectively on a napkin at some random lunch spot or can throw down a quick/dirty hand drawn iso view of a detail on a muddy 2x6 offcut at a jobsite wins.

Ive taught CAD for about 20 years, Autocad, Rhino but mostly Solidworks. When I'm not teaching I'd much rather use paper. I will still do a quick solid to check my proportions from different views. I've found that for design it's nice to flush out an idea from my sketchbook directly to the...

Time goes by too damn fast. I had huge plans. Huge. Gargantuan plans. And then.....I got covid, then my wife got it. Not a huge deal really, but because of my lack of a portion of a lung we have been pretty careful over the last couple of years. I felt like death for about a week but...

Carter makes one for delta/jet 14" saws. My lawn is over run with moles and deer but kid free.

Never ever released tension on older saws for 30 years. That said, the old Delta 14" tension springs were sort of notoriously compressing over years of constant tension. So much so that at least one business sprang up providing aftermarket/stiffer replacement springs. I have a newer 20"...