New Toys

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post in that time frame I've had to run all new electrical circuits in my garage to handle some of my new toys.

It all started the week before Easter. I got my bonus from work which finally allowed me to get a new tablesaw and dust collector that I'd been dreaming of for over a year. I had already picked out a the tablesaw and dust collector - both from Grizzly Industrial Inc. I didn't want to buy without seeing and if I drove down I might as well buy the stuff and bring it home. After considering several options we finally did the math and realized that if we were to buy a trailer hitch and drive down with a U-Haul trailer we would be able to make the trip and bring home the equipment. I bought a hitch from etrailer.com and put it on the mini-van. We managed to drive up on Friday evening and back on Saturday evening.

Both the new tablesaw and the dust collector both required 220v circuits of which I had none in the garage. So two weeks ago I pulled an electrical permit and proceeded to install 2 new 20amp 220v circuits with 2 outlets on each circuit. The tablesaw draws about 12.8amps and the dust collector about 12 amps. The jointer that I bought last summer (old Craftsman from the 1960's) was originally 220v but I changed it to 110v so I figured that I'll eventually convert it back to 220v. Eventually I'd like to put a 1.5 hp motor on my bandsaw (currently 3/4hp) and run it on 220v as well. Yesterday the new circuits were inspected and passed by the electrical inspector making it possible to actually use my new toys.

I've been extremely busy at work the last few weeks, so putting in the circuits and putting together new equipment has dragged on over about 3 weeks. I still have some work to do on some upgrades I purchased for my bandsaw, but I got the dust collector and tablesaw functional.

Earlier this spring we attended "The Woodworking Show" in Fredericksburg, VA and a couple of weeks ago we went to the same show in Chantilly, VA. Normally I wouldn't have attended both shows but I needed to exchange the Carter bandsaw blade conversion kit that I bought at the Fredericksburg show with the one that could be used with a riser block that I bought a few weeks later. We also bought the Kreg fence for the bandsaw after a year of using a home made fence that was clamped to the table and constantly coming loose.

Tomorrow I hope to make some progress on Shae's bed for a few hours. I really need to kick that project into high gear. I also need to spend the better part of the day and probably all day on Sunday at work as well. I have a major deadline rapidly approaching and a ton of work to do.

Making a Sign Blank

A friend of mine paints and makes vinyl decals for signs. He had a project that required making a sign out of some form of polyurethane or foam board. The material was about 1-1/2" thick. He had drawn the outline of sign but didn't have the equipment to cut out the shape he wanted so he asked me to cut it out for him. My main concern was that I wanted to make sure the sign was perfectly uniform - a mirror image from side to side but I didn't really want to use a quarter sheet of plywood on making a single template. Instead I made two templates - one with half the top pattern on it and the other with the entire side.

I got a bit ahead of myself in that I cut the rough shape following the outline using my jigsaw before I created the templaes. When I laid out the templates on the outline I realized that the original outline sketch was not a perfect match side to side. It was close enough that in the end I managed to get the completed blank cut with mirror images side to side while staying within a 1/32" from his original sketch lines at the points where the lines came closest to the template. Lesson learned, always create the templates and validate the layout side to side before cutting. Using the templates I cleaned up the shape using a 2" edge trim bit in my router. The material cut very easily though it left a sand like residue on everything. I finished off the sign blank using a 1/4" round over bit to ease the edges. My friend requested this as apparently the paint won't stick as well to sharp edges.

The photos below shows the finished sign blank - I even splurged, I hired a super model to hold the sign while I took the picture. I don't think the super model was impressed with the gig though, but she at least smiled for the second photo. From start to finish it probably took about 3hrs. The bulk was in drawing the shapes onto the templates and then cutting and refining the templates so they had smooth curves. I'm pretty pleased with the way the sign blank came, it really looks good.