What's on the bench.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

On 12/14/2023 at 2:28 PM, gee-dub said:

A bit of nostalgia.  Dad bought a new bench brush when I was in high school.  He gave me his old horsehair bench brush in 1970 . . . still going.

 

That's great! I have a very similar brush on my bench and it's one of my favorite... workshop... I don't know what to call it. Workshop Support Pieces? Let's go with that. But yeah, love it! 

[Mark J]

I also have a similar brush inherited from my father.  

[Dave H]

I have one also, mine was from an old family friend Harbor Freight it's bristles are from old synthetic fibers. I actually have two of them and never can find one when needed... now where did that damn brush go Rrrrr

[drzaius]

I have 3 of them hanging in the shop. Otherwise I'm always searching. One's a horse hair brush and is is far superior to the synthetic bristle brushes.

[gee-dub]

Finally making some progress on some remodeling. I only thought I had the area completely cleaned out and ready to go. Once work began I realized that I had forgotten to look up in the rafters so I spent some time finding a home for still more "stuff". Amongst the stuff I found an older style Rockler bandsaw fence that dad used to use on his 14" machine.

My Rikon 10-305 was bought on the cheap when the 10-306 came out. The 10-306 improved on the 305's almost useless fence.

The fence design was so poor (IMHO) I just took it off and used a clamp and a milled block of poplar which is pretty serviceable for the things one does on a 10" saw.

I chucked up a straight bit and opened up the slot on the stock fence rail a bit to fit a 1/4" t-bolt.

I will run this for a while.

If it turns out to be an improvement I will cut off some of the excess length.

[Mark J]

13 hours ago, gee-dub said:

chucked up a straight bit and opened up the slot on the stock fence rail a bit to fit a 1/4" t-bolt.

Were you milling the metal (aluminum?) piece?

[gee-dub]

On 12/17/2023 at 6:16 AM, Mark J said:

Were you milling the metal (aluminum?) piece?

Yes.  The slot needed to be widened by a fat 1/32".  Aluminum machines well with woodworking tools for small amounts of stock removal.  Care is taken to assure the material being cut is leading into the cutter and not trapped between the cutter and the fence.  The same as with wood material in similar operations.

[JohnG]

+1 the 10-305 fence is pretty miserable. Now that I have a bigger bandsaw, I mostly use the 10-305 for freehand cuts. I'd probably have to search around to find the fence.

[legenddc]

I don’t think I ever posted this. Made a bandsaw reindeer for my mom for Christmas the other day. Didn’t realize my first one was smaller. 
 

Any other bandsaw objects like the reindeer? 

[JohnG]

I had hoped to make bandsaw reindeer this year, but ran out of time. I did crank out a batch of pens over the last couple nights to give to some coworkers. 

[legenddc]

I had hoped to do a lot more for Christmas. Maybe next year. Definitely need to learn how to use the lathe that's sitting in my basement.

[legenddc]

Well I may have some plans for tomorrow now. 

[JohnG]

I retired our kids kitchen stool. It served our 3 kids well, and held up well to the level of abuse it received. 

[wtnhighlander]

Committing the stool to Valhalla, Viking-style? 

[legenddc]

[Chestnut]

The 3d premise of raindeer interests me in other shapes that could be made. I've thought about doing rubber duckys cause why not.

[legenddc]

I’m shocked there aren’t more plans for other animals. I’ve seen a couple of other reindeer and a sad looking dog. One of these days I’ll try to make other animals from scratch. 
 

My little elf and I just put a coat of danish oil on them. Nice to have a hand with that. I’m going to lay out some more while we watch the JMU game. 

[krtwood]

On 12/23/2023 at 3:39 PM, legenddc said:

II’m going to lay out some more while we watch the JMU game. 

Let me know when you get to 5000

 

14 months, 7 days a week making those little bastards.

[Coop]

On 12/23/2023 at 5:38 PM, krtwood said:

Let me know when you get to 5000

 

14 months, 7 days a week making those little bastards.

And 5or did I count 6 drill presses later! That’s amazing.

@krtwood, the upper extension on one of your spindle sanders, did you make that? That’s a neat deal!! Also, what did you do with all of them. Equally impressed with your stamp! 

[wtnhighlander]

@krtwood, that is a very good illustration of what 'production' woodworking looks like in a small home shop. Those little guys must market pretty well to justify such an extensive specialized setup.

[legenddc]

On 12/23/2023 at 6:38 PM, krtwood said:

Let me know when you get to 5000

 

14 months, 7 days a week making those little bastards.

Been following you on Intsagram. Thanks for that video, can’t wait to show my kids it tomorrow. 
 

Can you share where those ended up being sold?

I got another 10 cut out after the kids went to bed. Guess I’ll be sanding tomorrow. 

[krtwood]

On 12/23/2023 at 8:17 PM, wtnhighlander said:

@krtwood, that is a very good illustration of what 'production' woodworking looks like in a small home shop. Those little guys must market pretty well to justify such an extensive specialized setup.

On 12/23/2023 at 9:44 PM, legenddc said:

Can you share where those ended up being sold?

I was making them for the League of NH Craftsmen.  They have an Annual Ornament that they have been doing since the late 80s where juried members can submit entries and they select one to be made.  All I had to do was make them, deliver them, and cash the checks.  The last delivery was sold out before I even delivered it.  You can look at the history here:

https://nhcrafts.org/annual-ornament/

Not a lot of wood to be found.  

It started out with the first test production run in December 2021 to get an idea of whether that kind of volume was feasible in the timeframe.  I had entered an ornament the two previous years and I really wasn't expecting to get picked for this year either.  I have one ornament that sells really well at the annual 9 day craft fair and I was looking for another design.  I was expecting this production run of 200 or so to be that.  Well come July I got the word that it would be me, as long as I was willing to tie ribbon bows on them.  I thought something along the lines of "It takes 10 seconds to tie my shoes, sure no problem." 

I say something in the video about this not being as easy as I am making it look when I tie the bow.  It was down to around 40 seconds average at the end.  The first ones were around 5 minutes.  I was in the 2 minute range for a long time.  Those bows ended up being a month of full time work that was completely unplanned and not part of the pricing.  Lesson learned.  I had already bid at the top of what they expected so there wasn't really room to go up anyway.  But considering they sold out early, we both had room to go up.  Easy to say after the fact.  

In January 2023, they asked to increase the quantity from 5000 to 5400, based on the sales from the previous year.  I said okay, but it might cause some slight delays at the end of the year.  I did not appreciate the ribbon problem at this stage as the first delivery wasn't until May and I had only tied 20 bows at this point.  So that was nearly another month of work that got added on.  Well, more than a normal full time month of work.  Somewhere around Oct/Nov they asked about increasing the number again.  We didn't get to what number they were looking for.  I shut that right down.  I told them I would finish whatever extra blanks I had and that was all they were getting. 

Another problem I had was that back in 2021 the plan was to go around to different Lowes and buy all the PC floor standing drill presses I needed in a day for $300 each.  By the time it came to actually acquiring the drill presses in August 2022, those were on perpetual backorder and the price of everything else available had doubled.  So I turned to the used market, which is great when you have plenty of time and don't actually need anything.  But when you need it now and have to take what you can get, well I ended up learning a lot about how to rebuild drill presses after driving to every corner of the state down god forsaken dirt roads to get them in the first place.  That blue painted Atlas came with the taper the chuck mounts on so completely mangled I ended up having to send the spindle out to have the taper turned down by a machinist.  The Clausing got a new motor pulley, then a new motor, then new spindle bearings before it finally ran without vibrating.  I still haven't figured out why it gets stuck if you bring the quill down more than 2 inches.  The unused PC that I managed to pick up developed a bad spindle bearing half way through the job and drilling 3000 more holes didn't improve it.  My original PC now has one of the handles falling out and the chuck is a little damaged.  The only ones that came out of it unscathed were the damn cheap Wen I got in desperation of not being able to find anything else and that POS Ryobi.

The main reason I presented the video in real time (other than not having time to edit video) was I wanted to really show how long all the other stuff besides the interesting part really takes.  A third of the way through the video it's already in the final shape.  The next third is sanding.  The last third is all the stuff that had to happen after I was already "done".  That first third is what I think of as "woodworking" and what my mind is thinking about when I'm thinking how long the thing is going to take to make.  But when you get down to something simple you can only optimize the process so much and there's still all this other stuff that has to get done that might be a small part of a complex project.  But you take that 10 minutes or so of work that is just always going to be there and multiply it by 5000 and it's an enormous quantity of work that has to get done.

 

[wtnhighlander]

On 12/23/2023 at 2:39 PM, legenddc said:

I’m shocked there aren’t more plans for other animals. I’ve seen a couple of other reindeer and a sad looking dog. 

Some shapes don't lend themselves to the 2-sided bandsaw methids very well, but this guy had some success:

 

[JohnG]

My wife filled up the first thread storage shelf I made, so I made another one. Slightly different design this time, made it up as I went. Cherry case and walnut shelves. I went with a lighter look this time, first was ~5/8” case and this one is ~3/8”.

Many of you will notice my mistake(s).

 

[Chestnut]

Case looks awesome i love the light look and the walnut and cherry. It's so simple and effective as my woodworking expands simple and effective gets more and more attractive.

On 1/19/2024 at 6:54 PM, JohnG said:

Many of you will notice my mistake(s).

The only "mistake" I see is not showing off the handcut dovetails by putting the pins on the top and bottom board. And that's only a woodworker grip no one else will notice.