Just Puttering
The last few weeks, around the holidays, I've just been puttering around the workshop. Before Christmas I was on a roll with the radiator cover, but once the tree went up, I had to leave it. But, I do think we found a nice way to display the Christmas cards for the season!
Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
So, with the radiator cover on hold, I just puttered around and used some scrap wood to make a few things for the workshop. Back in September I posted about some scrap wood projects I had done over the years, so this is kind of a continuation of that post. As silly as it sounds, the first thing I did was make a push shoe for the table saw. I have I nice one I bought at least 10 years ago, but it's made of hard plastic and has a very shallow heel, (I guess that's a good thing for thinner stock).
It's perfectly fine, and look at all the things it can do! But the fact is, for at least 10 years I've only ever used it to push wood through the table saw. So, I thought I'd make one with a thicker heel, based on my trusty ol' Vermont American.
And of course I applied a couple coats of my old favorite - amber shellac.
Then I built a vise for the drill press. I used a threaded rod I've had laying around for years, and the end of some old stick for a handle.
But, after using it I realized a couple things: the vise was pretty deep, making it difficult to use on smaller pieces, and the nut in the first board needed to be more secure.
So, I built another, lower-profile vise, this time using a t-nut, drilling some holes in the face of the nut and fixing it to the stationary board:
I didn't have any small cotter pins, so I used a small finish nail instead:
On the underside of the moving jaw on both vises, I added a guide to keep the jaw from wriggling all around. It actually worked out pretty well and made clamping much firmer.
Here you can see the difference in the sizes of the vises:
And here's the large vise all stained - I wasn't going to stain them but then thought - why not?
And the lower-profile vise:
Good grief! Looks like a glamour shot! Anyway, I had one more scrap wood gadget to do - I made a couple bench dogs for making simple crosscuts or other times I need to do something that needs some stability!
There, just a few gadgets while tinkering. Now, back to the radiator cover!!