Two Days of Favor

I didn’t blog yesterday. I started to, but I did not publish what I wrote. I will paste it here now and add today’s news.

09-25-19

I’m getting a ton of things done today. I had to quit and have some food so I didn’t get burned out.

I had to get rid of the L-shaped Corian counter in my workshop so I could have my machine tools moved here. Today was the day.

I didn’t know how to deal with Corian. I decided to try the sawzall. I cut several holes in the counter with a drill to make it easier to start a cut.

When I finally got the saw in there, I was surprised. Corian cuts very quickly even though it’s hard. I zipped through the counter in around 20 seconds. I had been under the impression that the counter was an inch and a half thick, but I learned that only the edges were that size. The rest of it was around half an inch.

While I was tearing the whole structure apart, I also took down the weird boards the previous owner had screwed into the shop walls. He put boards up, and he added strange horizontal strips of galvanized steel. There were little tabs that were bent outward into the shop, presumably for hanging tools. I never found them useful, and the boards were in the way.

Once I had the Corian out, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was too big to cut on the table saw with a miter gauge. I decided to fire up the band saw and eyeball it. I cut the ends off sort of square.

In the end, I made a sled from scrap, to force the Corian to go by the table saw blade in a straight line. I made a piece 18″ by 36″ in size, and I plan to turn it into a top for a wood lathe cart. The wood lathe used to be on the counter, so now I need a place to put it.

I may make a cutting board out of the third large piece of Corian. It seems like a good use for it, and cutting boards are ridiculously overpriced.

I got tired of woodworking, if you can call it that, so I decided to take on another project.

Long ago, I made a temporary extension table for my table saw, and of course, it worked so well I never replaced it. There was a problem with it, however. The legs on the end were not supported well. I used two small pieces of wood for struts, but they weren’t fastened reliably. I was concerned that one day someone might put something heavy on the table and the legs would kick out from under it.

I got myself a couple of strips of metal for additional struts. Today I bent them on the finger brake, drilled holes in them, and attached them to the saw table extension. I tried to arrange it so they were in tension, pulling the legs toward the saw.

The brake is not that easy to use. I made one bend that wasn’t right. There were two struts with four bent tabs, and one tab was longer than the others.

I tried to straighten it using the vise. I didn’t expect to do too well, and I was right. It had little bends in it when I was done.

I’ve been considering trying forging, and I’ve been anvil-shopping. I have a big piece of 1018 steel, and my plan has been to use it as an anvil until I get a real one I can trust. The steel is 4″ on a side and around 15″ long. Very heavy. Today I stuck it on a stump and used it to straighten the crooked steel.

I was pleasantly surprised. The hammer didn’t dent the 1018 block at all, and the bends came out of the steel in a hurry. I got everything bent the way I wanted it, and I used the “anvil” to fine-tune it.

I put some holes in the tabs, deburred them, and attached the struts. Now I know the table saw can’t collapse. I really will redo it some day, but this will prevent a disaster while I’m getting around to it.

09 26 19

I’ll tell you about my day, and you can decide whether I have God’s favor or not. I believe we are supposed to live in favor. The Bible says so in many places, so anyone who disagrees is wrong.

After I dismantled my Corian counter, I had a wood lathe sitting on the floor. I had to find something to put it on. I had been planning to make something out of the scrap lumber I removed from my workshop shelves, but I felt like it would take more time than I wanted to invest. I have a lot of things that need to get done before the shop will really function, and that makes it hard to justify spending two or three days on a lathe project. I considered getting a cart instead.

For quite a while, I’ve wanted a one-drawer Husky rolling cabinet from Home Depot. It’s an amazing bargain. For $69, you get a good-quality cabinet with casters, a locking ball-bearing drawer, locking doors, a pegboard back, and a power strip that has USB ports. You can’t beat that deal. I am on a crusade to put everything I own on wheels, and I thought this cabinet would be perfect for my 8″ bench grinder.

Yesterday I thought of the cabinet when I considered the lathe situation. I decided to go to Home Depot and see if the cabinet looked right. The lathe probably weighs 80 pounds, and the feet are about 30″ apart from side to side, so I didn’t know if the cabinet, which is 27″ wide, would work.

I walked in the store, looked to my left, and saw a product sitting by the customer service counter. It was the cabinet I wanted, with a $35 price tag on it. Someone had returned it.

I got a few things I needed. I bought casters for my heavy pedestal fan, along with some washers and nuts to use for installation. I bought a new hot glue gun. Something–I don’t recall what–had reminded me that I needed one.

A hot glue gun is a phenomenal tool. Imagine glue that sets in 5 seconds, provides a lasting hold, and can be loosened and removed from most things later with little or no damage. That’s hot glue. Now that I think about it, woodturners use it a lot. They fasten blanks to lathe plates with it so they don’t have to use screws.

I got my stuff and went to the customer service area to ask about the cart. The lady who helped me said the buyer had brought it back because there were no keys to the lock. She saw that I was not happy about that, so she added that they could take a little more off the price because of it. I thought about it. There had to be someone on Ebay selling replacement locks for $5. I decided to take a chance.

When I got home, I opened the cabinet and checked it over. Everything looked fine, except something was hanging from the rear of the drawer, inside the cabinet. It looked like fishing line. That looked familiar. The last time I had seen that in a tool cabinet, it had been attached to something. It had been attached to a set of keys.

I pulled the line loose, and a set of keys fell into my hand.

Not bad.

On the way home, I stopped by the grocery. I needed vegetables for breakfast. They had Ben & Jerry’s on sale for 50% off. Last time they did this, my favorite favor got cleaned out before I got there. Not this time! I bought two pints.

I went home to work on the lathe project.

The cabinet had to have a new, wider top in order to support the lathe, and I already had it. The 36″ slab of Corian was waiting for me.

I fired up the router table and put a 1/4″ radius on every upper edge of the Corian so it would be pleasant to lean on and so on. Then I tried to figure out how to attach it to the cabinet.

My big table saw is working now, because I have 250V power. I also had scrap wood. I decided to make several strips of wood of just the right thickness and attach them to the underside of the Corian. The upper surface of the cabinet is like a tray with a lip on three sides, so my plan was to situate three strips so they anchored the top against the tray and kept it exactly where it should be. I also intended to put a fourth strip on it under the front, where there was no metal lip.

How do you attach things to Corian? I got on the web and looked around. I considered wood screws, but Corian is brittle, so it sounded like a bad idea. I considered tapping it for metal screws, but that also sounded risky. Then I remembered something.

I had a brand-new hot glue gun.

I situated the top on the cabinet very accurately and sprayed the underside with Dykem metal blue. This showed me where the top touched the cabinet. When I took the top off and rolled it over, I had Dykem lines to use for measurements.

Using a caliper and the table saw, I cut four strips of wood very precisely, and I stuck them to the Corian. It worked great. I rolled it over, put it on the cabinet, and verified that it was correct. I used denatured alcohol to take the Dykem off the cart, and I was done.

The top and lathe are not attached to the cart. They just rest on it. They are confined on three sides by the cart’s upper lip, and I have faith that the lathe will not suddenly violate the laws of physics and jump in the 4th direction and into my lap. I can always glue or bolt the top in later.

Here is the cart. Not bad for $30. It holds the lathe and all my chisels. The big area in the bottom is large enough to hold a shop vacuum converted to collect dust. You can imagine what I’m thinking. Run a hose out of the cabinet to a dust scoop over the lathe. I already found the product. Rockler sells them.

I guess I’ll also put a cheap LED light on the lathe. I already have one. It’s a sewing light with a magnetic base. I used to use it for welding, but I got a better one. The cabinet’s power strip gives me a good place to plug it in.

Some people criticize little Chinese lathes, but the truth is that they’re very good tools. They’re just small. You can make a lot of very useful things on one. If you want a giant salad bowl, a baseball bat, or a bedpost, you need something bigger, but what percentage of your projects are that long?

I can make tool handles, mallets, and many other useful and ornamental things on this lathe. If I need more length, I can use my big metal lathe. I made a woodturning tool rest for it.

There are woodturners out there bragging about their $7000 lathes with 2-HP motors. Well, my metal lathe weighs 4000 pounds and has a 7.5-HP motor, and in terms of rigidity, it makes an expensive wood lathe look like a limp noodle.

I think I have the bases covered, if I ever decide to turn anything. Which I might, now that I don’t have to huddle in a filthy corner of the shop.

I’m very close to moving my machine tools here. I just need to clear out one side of the shop I might be able to finish by the end of the week. After that, all I need are a couple more outlets. That’s a quick job.

I might pour a little slab and put my compressor in its own tiny shed, just outside the workshop. That would kill most of the noise and save me some floor space.

I think I’ve had a remarkable day and that God is behind it. It’s not his job to be my genie and make everything cushy for me, but he is good to his children because that’s how good fathers are.

I expect to be back at the job of establishing my workshop tomorrow.