Recent content by nateo

I picked up the cheap Amazon knockoff and it still works beautifully. It makes maintaining a chain dead easy. I'm an every-fill sharpener, too. I've gone until the saw was spitting sawdust and getting the chain back to fighting form after that takes forever. Staying on top of it means a...

Huh, I just spent a minute playing with AI search and it looks like four bolts for a big block is actually pretty reasonable. A 1/4"x20 bolt tightened by hand might put the bolt under 60-90 lbs of tension. Torque it to 5 ft-lbs (less than the spec for a grade 2 bolt) and you're looking at 1500...

In another baby step to getting stuff out of my own way, last night I hung up the 8 3' LED pluggable lights that I've been tripping over for ages. I picked them up dirt cheap on sale at Princess Auto a while back. One less pile (on top of the other piles) and a huge lighting improvement over...

Do you also need a rest platform for every so many feet of ramp? I think in my area that was part of the code. I slapped together a temporary ramp out of untreated lumber when I bought my house so my Dad (who's in a wheelchair) could visit. It's pretty close to code, though I think a bit too...

For years I've been dragging home heavy duty shelf standards from work as they've been trying to throw them away, thinking they would make great storage in the shop. Well after tripping over the latest batch for a while I suddenly realized I had a spot to use up a few in the garage. Some...

We're also living in a post-peak micro-brew world, at least where I live. 10 years ago I had 3 micro-breweries within 10 minutes of my house (half an hour outside of the nearest major urban centre). Today they're all gone.

Working on a trailer project that just kind of landed in my driveway. I think it started life as a tent trailer and changed careers to a utility trailer years ago. I stripped the old rotten decking, cut everything off the frame that I didn't immediately think might be useful, and started wire...

I feel like we can Garage Journal up this answer a bit, check out Lignoloc wooden air nails. After all, don't we all love an excuse to pick up a new tool?

My use case is completely different, so my solution obviously won't work for you. My shop is my quiet place where I go to get away from people, and it's so full of **** that fitting a second person in would probably be an exercise in frustration. My go to for sound is a set of decent noise...

And watch out for the backing, some have a thin foam layer on the back that will make them a bit too flexible for benchtop pounding. Nice on the feet, no good on the work bench.

Welcome to the slippery slope! Now we need a dedicated section for tool questions and restorations, but that will have to be split into hand tools and power tools. The hand tool purists can get all uppity when they see things that use electrons. Definitely a section for wood species...

I also enjoy this game. I replaced a frayed cord on an immersion blender for some friends while we were house sitting. Another time (for different friends) I chopped up and moved a brush pile. Now here's a reverse version. I was travelling for work to one of our remote sites where we have...

I think you've reached this conclusion already but wanted to address this. Bandsaws are rated by throat depth, i.e. a 9" bandsaw generally has 9" between the blade and the vertical frame member. The maximum height of cut is always much less. I have a cheap little 9" and it can saw something...

I'm not sure if they offer anything to adapt between battery chemistries, but I did pick up a Ridgid to Makita adapter from these guys. https://powertoolsadapters.ca/ At work we mostly run Makita tools but we picked up a Ridgid framing nailer. Rather than add to the single battery that came...

Here's a random example from Amazon. It even comes with the gaskets for a KitchenAid mixer gearbox. The colour of the wood is all natural (plus the clear wax/shellac finish I added right on the lathe). The dark spots on the back are unused coffee grounds packed into the voids and soaked with...