Al Launier
Member
- Messages
- 1,683
- Location
- Bedford, NH
Well, a few days ago I decided to cut up a couple of ~2' oak firewood logs for chuckles to see where that would take me. I made up a BS sled & cut up the ~ 8" logs into 5/8" thick slabs. The sled worked well, but with the ends already split from drying over the past year there was little yield, but it was a practice exercise.
I then planed two sides (uneven thickness - but still practice) & jointed one edge. Still have a long way to go to get good with this tool - can't seem to get the touch. Then the slabs were trimmed on the TS into (12) 5"x6"x1/2" pieces. These were glued together into a sandwich ~6" thick. The goal was to try making a small BS jewelry box for practice.
Well the BS worked well, better than me, and managed to cut the contour outline, but left a fair amount to sand. I used a 1/4"x 4 TPI blade - may get a 1/8"x 3-4 TPI blade for the future contour work. With the limited tools available for sanding, it was soon apparent that the sanding was more tedious & time consuming than anticipated; obviously left too much stock on to remove by manually filing with a rasp & sanding. Tried using a 1" & 2" spindle sanding sleeves in the drill press using the vertical spindle travel to maintain some perpendicularity while removing the extra stock. This worked better, but definitely was not the way to go if I was to pursue projects of this nature in the future.
So it was time to check out the oscillating sanders and saw the Ridgid Oscillating Spindle/Belt sander. Picked one up this morning at a local HD store along with a couple of belt & spindle sanding packages. Hope to play with this new toy later today.
The shop is getting smaller with the new toys accumulated since the beginning of the year. Looks like I may have to get serious & start making something for real.
I then planed two sides (uneven thickness - but still practice) & jointed one edge. Still have a long way to go to get good with this tool - can't seem to get the touch. Then the slabs were trimmed on the TS into (12) 5"x6"x1/2" pieces. These were glued together into a sandwich ~6" thick. The goal was to try making a small BS jewelry box for practice.
Well the BS worked well, better than me, and managed to cut the contour outline, but left a fair amount to sand. I used a 1/4"x 4 TPI blade - may get a 1/8"x 3-4 TPI blade for the future contour work. With the limited tools available for sanding, it was soon apparent that the sanding was more tedious & time consuming than anticipated; obviously left too much stock on to remove by manually filing with a rasp & sanding. Tried using a 1" & 2" spindle sanding sleeves in the drill press using the vertical spindle travel to maintain some perpendicularity while removing the extra stock. This worked better, but definitely was not the way to go if I was to pursue projects of this nature in the future.
So it was time to check out the oscillating sanders and saw the Ridgid Oscillating Spindle/Belt sander. Picked one up this morning at a local HD store along with a couple of belt & spindle sanding packages. Hope to play with this new toy later today.
The shop is getting smaller with the new toys accumulated since the beginning of the year. Looks like I may have to get serious & start making something for real.