Wood Project Ideas

Once my metal chip bin met with crushing failure, I immediately scrapped it and set about re-building the dust collection bin. I first looked into buying a metal 55 gallon drum, but found them to be prohibitively expensive. I then found a plastic 55 gallon drum that had seen better days and was suffering from a cracked edge. As the bin was plastic I was able to simply cut off the cracked top section with my jig saw. After the cut I was left with a workable +/- 48 gallon drum with a gaping hole at its top.

rough fitting the mounted top section.

In order to mount the Dust Deputy to the plastic drum I initially thought of making a round lid out of MDF that would rest on the top of the drum and be sealed with weather stripping. In order to do this, I began flattening the cut edge of the drum. I then flattened it some more, and some more after that. Then I ran out of patience. It dawned on me that if I made a new top for the drum out of sheet goods, I could permanently mount and seal that to the drum and then cut a removable top sized to perfectly fit the mounted one. In order to make the mounted and removable tops exactly the same size I screwed them together and then cut them to size on the table saw as a single piece. Being lazy, I made the top square, rather then cut of the corners to make it a space savings octagon. I attached a lip of 3/4" baltic birch plywood scraps around the edge of the removable top to better gasket them and chamfered the inside edge of the lip to make tops easier to set on one another.

I rubbed in and let the glue on the cleats on the mounted base dry before flipping the unit over and screwing into them.

In order to mount the mounted top I glued and screwed cleats to the top. I used a jig saw to cut the middle of the mounted to out and then screwed the plastic drum to the cleats. I sealed the screws and the drum to the mounted top with M-1, a fantastic sealant we use at work.

The mounted top, sealed to the plastic drum.

I was at this stage in the construction when I heard that MDF was porous and might not provide an air tight top. To combat this, I sealed the top surface of the mounted top and the bottom surface of the removable top with shellac. If this doesnt prove to be enough Ill glue an EPDM gasket to the mounted top.

The completed Dust Deputy setup.

With the top mounted and air sealed (hopefully) it was quick work to install the Dust Deputy and previously built elbow assembly. I connected the CT22 and turned the knob all the way to the rabbit. It sucked and sucked and didnt crush.

The wheels make it so much easier to move.

As a final convenience I mounted castors to the bottom and handles on the side of the plastic drum. This lets me easily move it around the shop and will hopefully let me easily empty it (though I fear its emptying frequency will be based more on weight than on capacity).

Now my shop sucks with the best of them. How does your shop suck?

That Giant Sucking (& Crushing) Sound - Part I

I gave some thought to making another till for my bench saws, or maybe some kind of cabinet, but in the end I decided to stick with the hanging panel idea. One thing I really like about tool holding panels is how easy it is to see and get at everything. Plus, I like how it looks; a kind of "shop art".

The new panel would hang from the French cleat system I use in my shop. Basically, this works by having two boards, each with 45° angles, that interlock. One board is attached to the wall, and the other is attached to the back of whatever you are hanging. In my shop, I have a continuous cleat running along the walls. This makes it very easy to hang and rearrange all sorts of things: panels, tills, shelving units, miter boxes, postdrills etc.

One thing that needs to be addressed is how to attach the corresponding cleat to the unit being hung. Most things hung in my shop simply have the cleat glued and screwed to the back of the frame at the top. This is long grain to long grain, and therefore wood movement is not an issue. Sometimes the cleat must be attached cross grain, and here wood movement could be a problem. On relatively narrow cross grain joints, such as the single 1x12 panel that holds my braces, I dont worry too much about it. I just screw it on and only glue it in the middle. Larger cross grain joints, such as the one on this new saw panel, are a different story.

To get the width I wanted for the new panel, it would be made from three 1x10 boards. If I used glued butt joints to join the boards into a single 27 inch wide slab, movement could become fairly significant. If I then just screwed the cleat across the back, the board would most likely split as it tried to move. I could have used slotted holes for the screws, but instead I decided to just use unglued T&G (tongue & groove) joints and attach each board to the cleat separately. This way, each board is free to expand and contract independently, while the T&G joints keep everything aligned and looking good - i.e. no wall visible through gaps between the boards.

The first step was to joint the edges so that they would be nice and straight. This picture might be a little confusing. I jointed the boards on edge, and then lay them flat to see how they fit. I wasnt using the #8 jointer to plane the faces (although I could have if I wanted to - "Breaking the law! Breaking the law!").


To make the T&G joints I used my Stanley #49. It has an eccentric swinging fence that allows it to cut both the tongue and the groove. Originally, it would have come with an extra wide iron for use on thicker boards. This would allow it to remove all the wood to the right of the tongue. I dont have that, so the extra "tongue" will have to be removed next. I wanted the tongue offset to the backside of the board thickness to allow room for forming a bead along the edge.


To remove the leftover wood, I used my small rabbet plane. I set it for a thicker shaving to speed things up.


Then it was time to make the side beads:


After that, I cleaned up the show faces with my #3 smoother. Its amazing how much better the wood looks after the scalloped machine planing marks are removed.


As a side note, it was while using those last four planes that I shot the images for the Planes and Shavings post.

This next sequence shows how I make my French cleats. Its funny, but I remember how much of a challenge this was the first time I had to do this after getting rid of all my power tools. I just didnt have my "hand tool brain" going strong yet. Really, its quite simple and rather easy.

First, with a marking gauge set to the thickness of the board, I scribed a line down one face of the board. I also put pencil marks across the top to make it easier to see the bevel as it develops.


Then I remove the bulk of the waste with a drawknife. You could also do this with a scrub plane, or even a jack plane; but they would both be slower than the drawknife.


Finally, I cleaned things up with a jack plane. The secret is to keep the bevel developing evenly as you go. Its not hard once you get the knack, and you could do any bevel angle you want the same way.


After the bevel was complete, I attached the cleat to the top rear of the panel. I chose to use finish screws near the center of each board. I used a 1/4 inch forstner bit in my hand drill to create the counterbore (which I later plugged).


After boring pilot holes with another hand drill I drove the screws with a 6" swing brace. I love using these small braces for driving screws. They provide plenty of torque, are the original "variable speed" driver, and have a great sense of feedback that beats any cordless drills clutch feature. The smaller size allows for quicker driving.

One problem I ran into was sinking the screws too deep for the driver bit to reach. I had to get creative. In the end, I filed off the tang on a triangular file until it matched the square driver hole in the screws, and then used a pair of Vise-Grips as a 90° handle. Worked great.


And heres the new panel in place; looking spiffy - but empty:


I spent the next few weeks making various holders for the saws. Nothing tricky, just a lot of finicky work getting the fit just right.


And heres the panel with the saws:



I quite like it - makes me happy every time I look at it. Im also happy to be finished. It took a lot longer than I was planning.

Well, its mostly finished anyway. I saved one spot next to the Lie-Nielsen dovetail saw for an old Disston dovetail saw I am going to finish fixing at some point. I started working on it over a year ago, but it turned into a disaster of saw plate flattening: "Just one more tap of the hammer... tap... hmm... maybe... tap... No!... Arrgh!" Its hopeless, and Ill need to completely replace the saw plate - later.