Mobile Base / Storage Cart for Contractor Table Saw

I have a Delta contractor type table saw.  I added a plate to the bottom to catch dust and chips years ago, but now it's time to build a proper cabinet for it.  I got four locking casters from Woodcraft, and a sheet of 3/4" cabinet plywood from Home Depot.  A couple hours with a circular saw and table saw, and I've got a box to set the saw on, with storage and dust collection underneath.

I've been using it for a while now, and I really like the dust collection.  I installed a piece of melamine-faced particleboard directly under the saw.  It slopes down toward the back of the cabinet, where there's a 5" wide cavity for the chips to drop into.  In that cabinet is another piece of melamine-faced hardboard, sloping toward one side, where a piece of 4" ABS plumbing pipe connects to my dust collector hose.  You can see the configuration of these dust-directing ramps in the photo below.  I also packed foam scraps from an old mattress pad up under the cast iron top, to limit air leakage.

View of the unfinished box from the rear, showing the melamine ramps that direct dust
to the port at the lower right side of the cabinet.

The rest of the cabinet is pretty much just a plywood box.  I put locking casters under each corner, and they work fine to hold the saw steady, at least for the way I use it.  They lock the wheel and prevent rotation of the caster assembly with one foot press.  I rarely load up big pieces of sheet goods or timbers on the table saw.  It's more for precision cuts on mid-size workpieces in my shop, so I don't need it to be totally immobilized.

I still need to fit the storage, but here's the saw mounted and usable,
with the old stock steel legs sitting on top.

EZ Deadman for the Workbench

I needed to joint the edges of some long lumber a few years ago, so I tacked together this support from some scraps.  It's been serving me (almost) perfectly ever since.  It's ugly and crappy, but it works well, and I've come to appreciate the flexibility of a standalone appliance instead of a sliding deadman fixed to the bench rails, or some other elegant, dare I say sexy alternative.

It's a scrap of 3/4" plywood, about 12" x 8", with a 2x6 post attached via some long screws through the bottom of the plywood.  I cut the post so the top is just below the edge of my workbench, and I clamp various fixtures to it to support my work.

Home-made Bicycle Work Stand

I'm my own bike mechanic.  Shocking.  Yes, and for years (decades?!) I've been mostly either just leaning the bike against something, or flipping it upside down on the handlebars and seat to work on it.  I've looked at the commercial clamps a few times, but they're just a little too much for me to justify.  I looked at DIY work stands on the web, and saw some ok ones, but mostly they looked kind of kludgy and like more hassle than they are worth.

Well, I bought a new bike last weekend to replace one that was stolen a few months ago.  First order of business is a set of fenders and a rack, but I also took a look at the work stand they were using in the store.  The mechanic was nice enough to let me take a photo of the clamp head, even.  It looked like such a simple, straightforward design...

Efficient Velo Tools bike workstand clamp

So my new bike sat in a corner in the basement all day on Sunday while I put this together.  It works great, and it only cost me about $10.  It's two pieces of oak scrap I had, about 7/8" thick, 1-3/4" x 12".  I clamped a ~1/2" scrap of cedar between them and used a 1-1/8" forstner bit in the drill press to bore a hole down the middle.  That made the two halves of the clamping saddle.  I glued some thin leather to the inside of the clamping part with silicone, to improve the grip and prevent marring on the bike.

A thin piece of cedar between the oak arms makes it easy to form a perfect pair of curved jaws with a Forstner bit

Then I screwed a block to the back of the clamp, to provide a fulcrum point, and tied a small piece of elastic bungee cord into a loop to hold the back together.  The clamping mechanism is just a 3/8" x 4-1/2" carriage bolt installed through the clamp halves 4-1/2" from the saddle end.  I reamed out the hole through one side by rocking the drill back and forth, to provide clearance for the bolt when the clamp halves pivot apart.  I used a 1/2" flat washer to spread the load at the head of the carriage bolt, and a 5/8" dia. spring in between the two clamp halves to move it open when I loosen the nut.  On the outside, I used a long 3/8" coupling nut to tighten the clamp, and got fancy with a turned handwheel made of poplar.  I cut a drilled hole into a hex shape in the handwheel hub with a chisel, and then epoxied it onto the coupling nut.  Having the long nut stick out of the handwheel is really handy, because you can pinch it and spin the assembly quickly into position when there's little force on the clamp, and then use the large diameter of the handwheel to torque it down.  Go easy, don't clamp any aluminum frame parts or anything carbon.  Aluminum seat tubes are cheap to replace, and pretty beefy anyway.

The seatpost is the safest place to clamp

To mount this clamp head, I drilled a couple of small holes and attached one arm to a 12" piece of 3/4" iron pipe with two 1/4" carriage bolts, lock washers, and nuts.  I made a couple of oak saddles for the pipe, by drilling a 1" hole in the middle of a small block of wood, and then cutting that in half.

The pipe is mounted into a 2x4, and fixed with a C-clamp for now.  I drilled a 1-1/8" hole near the top of the 2x4, and then cut a slit about 12" down the center of the board, splitting the hole in half.  The C-clamp at the top squeezes the two halves of the board together and tightens the pipe in the hole.  It's a solid connection, but it allows me to rotate the clamp head to any angle by loosening the clamp.  The 2x4 is also the weakest part of the whole assembly.  With a bike mounted in the clamp, the 2x4 will twist under pressure and allow the bike to wiggle - which is fine, for the most part.  If things are too solid, you could bend the bike, so I'd rather have the weakest section in the stand somewhere.  That said, I do want to improve the support post and clamp to make it easier to use.  Plus I need my C-clamp for other things.  Update:  I used a 3/8" x 5" carriage bolt, some washers, and another coupling nut through a 7/16" hole through the top of the 2x4 to replace the C-clamp.  It's basically the same mechanism that tightens the seatpost clamp.  It works great.  Much more powerful than the C-clamp, because of the finer pitch threads.

Pipe clamp is essentially the same as the seatpost clamp mechanism

In use, I clamp the 2x4 post into the big vise in my work bench, so I don't need a separate stand, but it would be pretty trivial to make one out of either steel pipe (especially if you don't care about the rotation clamp) or wood.  Now, time to install some crap on my bike.

Bike clamp in use

Home-made Hollowing Tool

We're putting up a Christmas Tree for the first time in nearly a decade, and I thought it would be fun to make a couple of turned ornaments on the lathe.  I like the ones that are a globe with a finial beneath and a hanger button at the top made out of contrasting wood.  So I made a practice globe out of a piece of cherry firewood, and realized I really needed to hollow it out to prevent it from cracking, and also to reduce the weight so it would hang on the tree nicely.

I drilled a 1/2" hole down the center and used a small spindle gouge to remove as much material as I could reach.  It kind of worked.  I couldn't get to a lot of material just inside the opening with the end of the straight tool.  So I picked up a 5/16" steel rod stock and some brazing rods at the orange borg a couple of days ago, and made a hollowing tool for under $10.

I bent the last few inches of the rod about 20 degrees in a vise.  Then I got an old 3/16" drill bit ("black oxide" no mention of the alloy used) and ground a flat on both the steel rod and the drill bit so they would mate together.  I wrapped a bit of thin steel wire around the assembly to hold it while I brazed them together, which I did with a common propane torch.  I've never brazed before, but it's pretty much the same as soldering, which I've done plenty of.  I didn't use any flux paste, just the stuff that was on the outside of the rod.

I cut the drill bit off about 1/2" long, shaped the tip into a scraper, and did some general cleanup on the grinder.  Then I turned a quick handle out of a scrap of alder and a 1/2" copper plumbing coupler, and epoxied it all together.  I gave it a very quick test-drive, and it seems to work well enough for my purposes.

Quick-n-dirty Home Made Hollower

Failed Braze Joint

Update:  I put it to the test tonight, and it started working well, but the braze failed and the cutting tip fell off after a few minutes.  I can see that the brazing alloy only stuck to a very small part of the joint, which I think is due to the tiny amount of flux used.  Basically, whatever melted off the rod when I was heating the joint is all there was.  I'll get a can of paste flux and try again.

Brazing is pretty easy (2nd time around)

Update 2:  I picked up a can of Harris Stay-Silv flux at a local welding shop and tried again.  That braze seems to be much more thorough.  I successfully hollowed out the previously unreachable spots on a little globe, although my cutter could use a little tuning on the grinder.  I'm a little torn on this brazed construction method, because I could also buy some carbide tips, drill and tap the end of the rod, and have interchangeable cutters that last forever anyway.  I could also drill a 3/16" hole in the end of the rod, insert my cutter, and fix it in by brazing or with a little set screw.

Hollowed Globe for a Christmas Tree Ornament, ~2" dia.

Filling Surface Defects With 5-minute Epoxy

I'm working on a tabletop right now.  It's Bigleaf Maple, and it's got a few surface defects like small cracks in knots, and beetle tunnels.  These are part of the natural beauty of the material, but on a dining table, little holes will just fill with gunk.

So I filled them with clear 5-minute epoxy, which was really easy and preserves the look.  The finish on this top is simple: a couple of coats of Watco Natural to pop the figure and bring out depth, followed by a topcoat of oil-based polyurethane varnish for durability.  I was concerned that the epoxy might fill the pores around the defects and change the way the finish looked, so I tested doing the Watco first, then the epoxy, then re-applying the Watco where I scraped and sanded around the repair.  I also tested simply putting the epoxy on the raw wood before even doing my final surface prep.

The latter is much easier, and worked fine for me.  At least with these finishes, and, more importantly, on this smooth, closed grain wood, the epoxy is too thick to really soak in and cause problems.  If I were working in oak or something similar with a lot of big pores, I'd probably do a prefinish step.  This process also becomes much more difficult if you're going to stain and want the defects to blend in.  In that case, you can try coloring the epoxy with a small amount of dye or paint pigment (go darker than you think) or try pre-staining and filling over it.

Here's what I did.  I got a tube of 5-minute epoxy at the hardware store.  Common stuff.  Squirt out a bit into a plastic cup or onto a piece of scrap, and mix it slowly but thoroughly.  Try not to get many air bubbles, because they'll show up in the filled hole.  You can see a few in the second photo after I scraped it down.  Dab the epoxy into the voids, working it down with a toothpick or similar so it makes good contact with the inside surfaces, and leave it very proud of the surface everywhere.  You don't want to have to try to come back and fill a little shallow depression because you didn't use enough.  Work quick.  If you mix it right, it will start getting thick and stringy in...  (spoiler alert!) about five minutes.

Overfill the holes.  It's easy to scrape off later.

Let it cure for at least a few hours.  It shouldn't feel sticky or leave any dent when you press on it.  Now it's time to shave it down to the surface.  I usually start with a sharp block plane, but you can use a chisel if you're careful.  Just shave off thin slices.  Don't try to remove the whole bump at once, or you might just pop the entire patch out of the hole, especially if you applied an oily finish first.  Once you get it down pretty close, get the card scraper out and continue gently shaving until you've removed all the excess and are just biting into the wood all around the patch.  You can also try a stiff sanding block, but a flat scraper does a much better job because the epoxy is inevitably tougher than the wood and you run the risk of sanding a divot around the patch trying to get the last bits of epoxy off.

A flat card scraper is the best tool to make the patch perfectly flush.

Then I do my final surface prep.  In this case, I used a random-orbit disc sander and some 150 grit paper over the entire top before applying the Watco.

The Anarchist's Litterbox

With apologies to Chris Schwarz.  Or maybe not.  Do anarchists apologize?

The Anarchist's Litterbox

It's just a plywood box with poplar bracket feet and trim, built in a similar style to his "Anarchist's Tool Chest" except with a 8" x 10" feline access portal in one end.  With the exception of the plywood panels, everything was cut, shaped, and joined by hand, which was a lot of fun.  I didn't dovetail the trim because this chest won't get much physical abuse, and I didn't want any more chances to screw up, but I did glue up an acrylic tray for the bottom, to fend off the inevitable splatter of cat wizz.

Inside view - it holds all the feline sanitary accoutrements,
including a minimal but sufficient tool set and a box of fresh
litter below the sliding tray

The hinges are crap from the borg, stripped of the ugly zinc plating by an overnight bath in white vinegar.  There's a sliding till in the top, made of reclaimed old-growth Douglas Fir, dovetailed by hand (badly) and riding on waxed rails of quartersawn white oak.  I carefully considered each tool stored in this till, and for a few bucks I'll send you a DVD with a video where I go through them.  Ha ha.

Look at those authentic iron stains
from olde timey construction methods

The inside is finished with shellac, because I hear it's a good barrier to objectionable odors.  The outside is interior latex house paint.

The Overly-Complicated Through Tenon

I'm helping my friend Lori with her maple dining table project.  It's a trestle design, with a single stretcher, through-tenoned into the trestle legs.  It's intended to be a knock-down design with tusk wedges holding the tenons.  The stock was only 4/4, so the finished stretcher is only about 7/8" thick, which means the mortise and tusk would only be a little over 1/4" thick if the joinery is done vertically.  That would probably work ok with a tough wood, but I feel like there's a small risk of racking forces splitting the leg with that narrow pressure point, and the proportions just aren't right in the context of the piece.  The easy solution is to put the tusk tenon through sideways, but then it's just pinned and you lose the beautiful gravity-assisted wedge action that keeps the joint tight as the wood moves with the seasons.

So I came up with this.  It's got a cross piece horizontally through the end of the through tenon.  That cross piece is relieved in the back so that wedges can be put in to pull the joint tight.  I did a quick prototype last night and Lori likes it.  I think the madrone cross bar with walnut wedges looks nice.  If it turns out ugly or fiddly, I can always just cut a single horizontal pin and do it that way.

Through Tenon, Pinned and Wedged - this is just a mockup using some blocks

Update:  This turned out great.  The maple and madrone came out remarkably close in tone after a coat of Watco "natural" so I lost the coloring, but the physical aspects of the joint are solid.  I did the joint the same way for the bench that goes with the table.  The only trick I have to share is in fitting the wedges.  I cut them really long (~16") with a tapering jig at the table saw.  Then I tapped them into place, with all the rest of the parts cut, and marked where to cut them to length.  That way I don't have to worry if one side is a bit tighter than the other.