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Almost didn't post this one, but figured what the heck it's nice to have a little rough and ready work shown every now and then to in addition to all the fancy stuff. Not everything needs to be museum quality
Recently bought a little wire bender jig for another project. Cute little unit but it needed to be screwed down to something to be used and came with four little loose posts that I was sure I'd loose as soon as I took my eye off of them. Decided to quickly solve both problems by screwing it to a piece of oak scrap that I can clamp in the vice and making a little trap door box in one end of the oak chunk to store the posts.
Nothing fancy used an old 4 1/2 plane to square the piece up more or less, two chisels (one would have worked, but one smaller one got into the edges easier) to cut the box hollow out and slope the sides where the lid goes (and my pocket knife to clean out the corners). A handsaw to cut the scrap to length (and cut off the slip for the lid) and a small razor saw to make the relief cuts on either side of the "catch" for the lid.
Here's the bender jig
Box open, the lid rides in a 45d bevel cut into the inside of the box opening.
Underside of the lid showing the catch. To make that i just cut the lid a bit fat at the one end, then shaved away the unwanted bits with a chisel to get to a consistent thickness except where the bump is. There are razor saw curd on either side of the bump and the relief cut behind it allows it to bend up and pop over the edge of the box (I rounded the lip of the box opening a smidge as well).
That's about it, no measuring just done by eyeball, a few simple tools and real quick and functional. Unfinished but I did give it a rub with some canning wax to allow the moving parts to slide easier.
How did the wire bender work you ask? Don't know, it ended up being laughably undersized for the project I intended it for (another risk of buying online sight unseen when you have no idea what you're doing) so I just bent the rod in the vice. I have it all in one place now anyway if I ever need to bend some small stuff, at least it was cheap
Recently bought a little wire bender jig for another project. Cute little unit but it needed to be screwed down to something to be used and came with four little loose posts that I was sure I'd loose as soon as I took my eye off of them. Decided to quickly solve both problems by screwing it to a piece of oak scrap that I can clamp in the vice and making a little trap door box in one end of the oak chunk to store the posts.
Nothing fancy used an old 4 1/2 plane to square the piece up more or less, two chisels (one would have worked, but one smaller one got into the edges easier) to cut the box hollow out and slope the sides where the lid goes (and my pocket knife to clean out the corners). A handsaw to cut the scrap to length (and cut off the slip for the lid) and a small razor saw to make the relief cuts on either side of the "catch" for the lid.
Here's the bender jig
Box open, the lid rides in a 45d bevel cut into the inside of the box opening.
Underside of the lid showing the catch. To make that i just cut the lid a bit fat at the one end, then shaved away the unwanted bits with a chisel to get to a consistent thickness except where the bump is. There are razor saw curd on either side of the bump and the relief cut behind it allows it to bend up and pop over the edge of the box (I rounded the lip of the box opening a smidge as well).
That's about it, no measuring just done by eyeball, a few simple tools and real quick and functional. Unfinished but I did give it a rub with some canning wax to allow the moving parts to slide easier.
How did the wire bender work you ask? Don't know, it ended up being laughably undersized for the project I intended it for (another risk of buying online sight unseen when you have no idea what you're doing) so I just bent the rod in the vice. I have it all in one place now anyway if I ever need to bend some small stuff, at least it was cheap