I Can Make Stuff Now

I’m still getting new stuff for the workshop.

There are a few things that really liberate a person who uses tools. I can list them: welder, drill press, mill, lathe, serious belt grinder, plasma cutter, large air compressor, lift table, hydraulic press, finger brake, and angle grinder COLLECTION. One angle grinder won’t do it. You need a bunch.

I’m just talking about metal right now. For wood, you really, really want a large vertical band saw. I would not settle for less than 17″. You also need a DeWalt 13″ planer.

If you have a belt grinder, you will never really need a bench grinder. There are things a bench grinder is handy for, but a belt grinder will do almost everything–perhaps everything–better and much faster.

Over the last week, I worked on a brace for my tractor’s frond end loader, and it involved cutting steel tubing. This experience taught me that it was time to order angle grinder number…4, I think.

Cutting metal is one of the hardest jobs in the shop. The sad truth is that, while small grinding and cutting tools (including files) can do nearly anything big tools can do, you have to be crazy to rely on them. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Using a 4-1/2″ angle grinder, I can make a 12″ cut through 1/4″ steel in maybe 45 minutes. The plasma cutter takes maybe 60 seconds.

What if you’re trying to make a 12″ square from a scrap piece of 1/4″ plate? Forget the angle grinder. Bring your lunch and put your phone on mute. Buy several new cutoff disks, too, because you will go through more than one.

I have other tools for cutting metal. I can use my 14″ dry cut saw. It’s very nice, but it won’t do long cuts. I have a really bad 4×6 Chinese horizontal bandsaw. The capacity is small, and it’s impossible to make it reliable. Plasma is a different ball game. Not only is it fast; you can go up to 5/8″ steel with mine. I think. Maybe it’s 3/4″.

I’m getting another angle grinder, primarily for cutting metal.

You can’t get by with one angle grinder unless constantly changing disks and wheels is acceptable procedure for you. To get good use from the tool, you need grinding wheels, cutoff disks, wire knot wheels, flap wheels, and an adaptor that allows you to use die grinder tools. I listed 5 different things there, and I’m probably forgetting some.

Another interesting thing: grinders for the same diameter wheel come in different sizes and amperage ratings. It doesn’t take much grunt to run a knot wheel, so a low-amperage grinder will work fine, and it will probably be a lot smaller and lighter than a powerful grinder. I have a little Bosch which works great. It’s much quieter than a strong grinder, and it’s so quiet you don’t really need ear plugs.

The other day, I saw a video of a guy using a 6″ grinder to cut large metal tubes for welding. The speed was amazing. It was better than a band saw. You need to see it to understand. I ordered myself one, along with a package of cutoff wheels from Walter.

Why do I want a grinder when I have plasma? The plasma cutter is a pain to set up, and I can only use it when I’m pretty close to a 250V socket. I can grab a grinder and be done with a job faster than I can set up the plasma cutter.

I might blow $20 on a couple of small Harbor Freight grinders, too. There will be times when I will want more than 4 tools ready to go, and I don’t know if I want to keep buying $80 grinders for very limited use. It’s hard to argue with $10 for a grinder.

I can already see how the new things I’m getting will open up possibilities. Example: I decided to look at propane forges. A good one costs $700. Then I thought about it. I will have a finger brake in a few days. Here’s how you make a forge with a finger brake: cut metal sheets with plasma. Deburr with grinder or belt grinder. Drill holes with drill press. Bend into needed shapes with finger brake. Weld and screw together.

I can get a sheet of stainless and slap a forge together in a hurry. Even for me, it should be a two-day job, once the parts are on hand. It’s just a box with a door and feet. I’ve already done something like it. I made a fire box for my smoker. Same basic thing. Total cost: zero, except maybe for a few bolts.

I would have to get fire brick and one or more burners, but they would cost a lot less than $700. And I would have a stainless forge, so it wouldn’t be rusty, flaky, and nasty.

I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have a big compressor on wheels. Now I can do it. Cut two long pieces of thick steel bar. Bend upward at ends to form areas where casters can attach. Drill holes for casters. Attach casters. Attach bars to compressor through existing holes. Done.

The bars would only have to resist 150 pounds of flexing force at each end. I’m pretty sure 1/2″ bar would be fine.

I can actually check and find out what will work, because I have a new book: Design of Weldments. You can have a copy shipped to you for $27.50. The name is deceptive. It’s about machine design.

I heard about the book from a guy named Jeremy Fielding. He has a Youtube channel. Apparently, he was some kind of nondescript entrepreneur, and he wanted to get into tinkering. A mechanical engineer gave him the book and told him to read it. Now he designs machinery for a living.

He’s not even a math guy. I have something like 8 semesters of calculus, not including physics courses. If he can understand it, so can I.

The book will tell you how to design metal machinery for different purposes. It’s an engineering text, even though the title makes it sound like a welding handbook.

I think it would be hard for a person with no tech background to get through the book. My physics background is extremely helpful, but because engineers are wrong about everything…I mean because engineers use terms I’m familiar with in very unfamiliar ways…I still have to look things up.

A finger brake is an astonishing tool. There are a lot of problems a piece of bent metal can solve, but almost no end user has the ability to do the bending. A finger brake gives you that power.

The brake I’m building is especially good, because it will bend very thick metal for extremely strong projects. If you spend a thousand dollars on a brake right now, you’ll find that it only works on thin sheet metal, which is relatively useless. Try making a base for a 2000-pound machine with one. Forget it.

The grinder I ordered is a Metabo 6″ job with a brake and a rat tail handle. The brake makes it stop faster so you’re less nervous about putting it down. The rat tail handle gives you more control. The large size and high amperage make it rip through steel way faster than my grinders ever could.

I’ll probably put five or six grand into new stuff before I rest. I don’t care. It’s reasonable for what I’m getting. I don’t go on vacations. I don’t play golf or own a boat. I don’t buy new cars. I don’t have a girlfriend extracting money from me. It’s okay to spend a little money on something I really love.

Life is short. What are you going to do? Dream of getting a useful tool until you’re 75, buy it, and die two weeks later with it still in the crate?

Speaking of love, I would love to have a hydraulic lift table. It would make working on heavy things way easier. Imagine I want to work on my 1500-pound lawnmower. I would just drive it onto the table, jack it up to waist height, and get to it. That really beats rolling around on the floor in the filth.

A lift table would also pick up cars and motorcycles. It wouldn’t lift a car over my head, but it would make brake jobs and so on very quick.

It wouldn’t lift my Dodge Cummins, but it’s so high off the ground already, I don’t need a lift. It would actually be nice to have a table that lowered it.

Harbor Freight sells a hydraulic lift table for around $1700. It works, but they beat the snot out of it in shipping. Bendpak charges a lot more, but presumably, they would stand behind their shippers and get you something that wasn’t dented up.

You can put a motorcycle on one of these tables if you modify it, but you end up with a long reach to one side of the bike, because the table is wide.

Youtube has some cheaper options. You can buy a high-lift pallet truck. This is a combination pallet jack and scissor lift. You can lift things 4 feet in the air. It comes with forks, but if you put a board on it, you have a table. Very nice.

Only weighs maybe 450 pounds, so not portable unless you’re determined.

It would not hold my lawn tractor, which is exactly 7 feet long.

The new stuff will raise my horizons considerably, and I look forward to seeing the results.