Table Saw

[Commander]

Hi Will, thanks for your input, I started cleaning up the joints and they do look a lot better, the frame is also very sturdy. I agree that I would rather make a mess here and learn some lessons than learning the lessons when there is more on the line.

I did actually drill out the first joint to reduce the amount of waste, but after I started getting the hang of using a nice sharp chisel I found that to work well. The marking knife rather than pencil trick will definitely make my work much more accurate.

Thinking back I'm very glad I did post this as I have received a lot of really useful tips already and I'm convinced the next set will look much better! Thanks again for all the honest comments and useful tips. Had the feedback been negative without suggestions (like it tends to be on most forums) it would have been useless, however this is the opposite, which is exactly what makes this forum great!

 

[AndyP]

What do the others think about strengthening those joints with a couple of offset dowels?

 

[Commander]

Hi Andy, I was planing on attaching the rest of the frame with dowels. Here are the preliminary CAD drawings I have come up with.


Note the mock-up of the saw and table in comparison to the trolley.


And one from the bottom.

I'm not 100% happy with it yet, I will probably make some changes still. I will also be adding casters to the bottom, so the screws should add a small amount of extra strength.

Thanks again for all the positive feedback!

 

[Commander]

I had a couple of hours available yesterday and I spent it cleaning up the frame with my small Stanley jack plane. I used the small blade since I installed a new blade in it. I was very impressed with the new blade, it works really well. I realised what a joy it was working with a well setup hand tool. After doing the majority of the work with the plane I gave it a quick once over with the belt sander and then a light scraping with a cabinet scraper. I was impressed with how smooth to the touch it came out. I then filled most of the remaining gaps with a mix of saw dust and glue. After the disaster that was the joints I think it came out pretty good, considering it will be the bottom of a trolley standing in the garage! :lol:
Will post some pics later.

 

[Wizard9999]

I commend you for sharing, it is often easier not to when something has not turned out how you want. :eusa-clap:

As another beginner I can assure you that there is some truly ugly woodwork going on in much of my shop fit out, but I was usually in such a flap doing it that pictures were not on my mind. I am also very grateful for the insulation in my walls as without it I fear next door's lad playing football in the garden would have learned a whole new vocabulary. I am actually thinking of reworking some of my earlier efforts as I think I can improve them and continue to learn.

One thing that has struck me of late is that because it is only workshop furniture I have often been buying the cheapest raw materials available, in particular I bought some really nasty ply at one point. My logic was that as I was learning I did not want to wreck expensive materials, which I still don't think is an unreasonable start point. But, On reflection this has only made my life harder, because as well as trying to learn much of the basics I have also had to fight against the imperfections in the materials. Maybe if the woodworking was second nature I could spend all my time on the additional challenges of the material, but that is not the case. Hard enough for me to make a square box for a cabinet anyway, but trying to make it out of four sides of ply that make a banana look true, well you can guess the outcome. :lol: So whilst I will not be burning a fortune on materials for upcoming workshop projects I have decided I need to help myself by investing a little more as ultimately I think I will learn more.

No idea if part of your issue is similar to the trap I feel I fell into, but I thought I would mention it.

Terry.

 

[Commander]

Hi Terry, thanks for the comment! I try and save money on materials where I can, but I think in this case I can't really blame the materials! I do agree that some of the really cheap stuff should stay out of the workshop as trying to work with it is very counter productive. I also wonder where the "saving" starts becoming too costly to be worth while. I recycle a lot of pallets and even took apart an old double bed base the other day, but I often find myself wondering if it is really worth the effort considering my very limited time. I could buy lumber that is the right size and already finished to a certain degree, which would save me a lot of time in the taking apart, preping and "making things fit" department... :eusa-think:

I have made slight progress and will upload photos as soon as I have a moment, work has been eating almost all of my time lately.

 

[RogerS]

The trouble with recycling pallets is that the wood used in their manufacture is from fast-grown timber as you have found to your cost. IIRC they remove the branches at a lower level as the tree grows which accelerates the growth upwards. The downside is that the growth rings are very far apart and the resulting wood is just about good enough for pallets. We have the same problem over here especially buying 'bananas' from the DIY sheds. I will recycle sometimes but only if I have removed a window, say, which was quite old. You can see the beautiful straight grain in the wood from windows forty + years old.

I was wondering....are there some reasonably cheap hardwoods there? If you can get wood that more closely grained then you will find the whole experience much more gratifying.

If you get a chance check out any of Steve Maskery's videos on YouTube or get some of his DVDs. They are very good. He makes a lot of use of spacers on his table saw which gets your cuts in the right place.

 

[Commander]

Thanks for the input Roger, I'm not too sure about what woods are available at proper wood merchants, but I try to use the cheaper (or free) stuff for general projects. But I understand that there are some definite disadvantages to using the cheap stuff. I will have a look at Steve Maskery's videos, not too sure if I may have seen some of his stuff as I like spending time on youtube!

As promised, here are some of the photos I have taken over the past couple of weeks.

Here I'm starting the clean-up of the joints trimming the excess (I left this on purpose so I could trim it down to flush).


Some close-ups of one of those terrible joints before filling:



Here I filled the gaps with a mix of saw dust and wood glue.



This is what the faces look like after planing. The gaps are nice and small and the joint seems to be square, unfortunately as you can see even though the plane blade is decently sharp, there are some tool marks which I suspect is due to the factory finish blade. Once I have honed the blade the finish should be much better.



After a light sanding:


I played with the cabinet scraper and was quite impressed with the finish I was able to achieve.

I still have to clean up the glue squeeze out, hopefully I should be able to do that some where over the weekend.

 

[Commander]

I eventually found some time to start on the rest of the frame. I started by planing the rough boards and I have started cutting the various joints, but I haven't taken any photos just yet. Will upload once I have finished with cutting the joints.

 

[Tusses]

starting to look a lot better already

it doesn't matter at the moment, but one thing to make a habit of early on, is to make all sanding and scraping marks in the direction of the grain.
It's amazing how every little mark shows up when you come to put a finish on your work !

 

[Commander]

Thanks for the tip Tusses, I'm not 100% done with the finish on the frame, and somehow the camera makes it look worse than it does in person, but that's good advice none the less.

I have been able to put a small amount of work in on the rest of the frame, so here are some photos to update the thread:

After cleaning up the wood with a lot of hand planing I started cutting to length and also chopping out the joints. I did almost 95% of the job on the table saw so most of the joints fit fairly well. Not to the standard that I would like yet, but I would say better than batch 1. The joints are a bit easier than the first batch as well. I 1 major mistake was assuming all the pieces were of equal dimensions, as it turns out some of them were slightly narrower which then in turn led to me cutting the slots too deep. Some of them however fit very nicely.


Lumber all cut to size with joints cut as well.


Mock-up of the frame, just to give you a visual idea of what it should look like.


Starting assembly, I'm making extensive use of my MDF 90 deg corner clamping blocks, I actually need to make another 3...





The good joint (so far). I also inserted a dowel and flush cut it with a sharp chisel, the gluing surfaces looked a bit scant so I thought I would insert a dowel to help keep the joint strong and stiff.


And now for the bad... This one was cut too deep, fit is fair, but not on par with the other joint (I did try to swap pieces around to get the best fit, but at some point I was gonna have to bite the bullet and use this one. I added a long screw in one direction and a nail in the other to help keep the joint stiff. I'm also going to fill all the gaps to clean it up. I think that as Roger said the cheap materials led to my downfall (and making assumptions... ) in this case. After having removed the clamps it does feel stiffer than I thought it would, I'm hoping that the fixes would negate the cock-ups and that the bench will still prove to be up to the task.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Phil]

Erich, that is really coming along nicely.

The mistakes are hidden and as long as the structure is strong enough then they make very little difference.

Also using crappy SA Pine is not the greatest.

Cheers
Phil

 

[Commander]

Thanks Phil, glad to see you back!

I plan on adding some panels to increase lateral stiffness, and once that is done it should be plenty strong, probably overkill, but hey its like they say, there's no kill like overkill...

 

[Commander]

SO time for a small update, the past while has been occupied by a lot of assembly, gluing together parts and then waiting for them to dry properly. This actually suites me since that allows me to put in a quick 20 mins every now and again rather than having to find a whole day to work on the bench. here are a couple of photos of my progress:




I'm gluing the legs to the base using my right angle clamping squares, they worked really well as I could setup the whole operation before applying glue to make sure all angles are square, then loosen a couple of clamps and take the feet off to apply glue, and then put everything back together in the same position before clamping. I used the long sash clamps to make sure the joint is fully closed.





Once that dried I added 2 19mmx90mm dowels from the bottom and used a block of wood plus the sash clamps to push them fully home. On the first set I left the dowels a bit long (or didn't clear out the holes properly) so I had to do a bit of trimming to get them flush, I was able to get a very nice cut with my small coping saw which only required a small amount of sanding to finish off.

On a side note, I have tried cutting the dowels flush with a sharp chisel, but my results (especially on the big 19mm dowels) were less than acceptable, so flush cutting with a saw and then sanding seems to yield better results.



This is after rough sanding, I'm pretty happy with the result, the grain could have been matched better though.



This should give you a rough idea of what the finished product will look like. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on the cross braces at the top, on the photo I just put them in place to make sure the uprights are parallel.

Thanks for looking!

 

[StevieB]

Looks nice and sturdy. I have always found adding a shelf extremely handy to this type of design - either 6 inches above the floor or half way up - have you thought about doing the same at all? You can never have enough storage!

Steve

 

[Commander]

Thanks Steve, I hope it will be, can't wait to have a work surface that doesn't move when I'm trying to plane something.

As for shelves, I plan on adding some storage, but I'm not 100% sure how I want to do this yet, I will probably add some drawers and shelves. I also want to add a tray under where the saw goes to catch the saw dust.

 

[Commander]

It has been a while since I have made a post, so time to catch up a bit. I have been toying with the idea of making my own fence rails from steel pipe as the saw came with mount holes, bolts and rounded spacers, but no rails. After spending much to much time on thinking about it I finally got round to buying pipe of approximately the same diameter. I carefully marked the holes and used my neighbors drill press (and extra set of hands) to drill the holes in the appropriate places. They aren't 100% correct, but with a bit of tweaking we were able to mount the rails to the saw, here is the end result:










The fence uses a 2 screw system, which isn't very quick to use and it does end up being a bit of a mission to make fine adjustments to it, but it sure beats not having a fence at all!

I may end up taking the fence apart for a bit of maintenance and adding a sacrificial fence board, but for now it works well and the saw seems to cut parallel to the fence.

 

[Commander]

I have also spent some time on the actual work bench and was able to make some of the pieces the saw will sit on, these were rather specific (I don't have that many photos unfortunately) and as such was rather fun to make and fine tune so they would fit well:


This cross brace has all kinds of notches.


Here I'm making the internal panel that will both serve as a side to the drawers and will provide additional torsional rigidity.




Here I'm installing it and due to the tight fit I'm using my clamps to pull it into alignment before adding a couple of screws to hold it in place.




I also added some lockable casters and started painting, the bench was already getting a bit unwieldy so the wheels have helped with that, it remains to be seen if the combination of weight and the locking wheels will be enough to keep the bench steady and stable, if not I will have to rethink my plan, but having wheels would be very beneficial in my tight workshop.


I also tried my hand at wood filling using filler, it may sound silly but I have never used it before, it still needs to be sanded down and painted, but if it works as advertised it should leave a nice surface.

 

[Commander]

I decided to add a drawer for catching the saw dust, and while I'm at it I may as well add some more small drawers for storage. The idea is actually to use all the clear glass jars I have saved from when my little one was eating baby food and make a couple of drawers that will fit these small bottles on their sides, this way I can be organised and see the contents of the bottles at a glance.

I saw a drawer design on YouTube where the bottom of the drawer is the actual runner, with the sides sitting on top of that, and I thought this would be ideal as the drawers don't have to be hugely strong or heavy. I have some paneling from and old garage door that would be close to ideal for this (I was thinking of ways I could reuse these panels), they are Meranti wood, so actually too nice for drawer bottoms, but since they have a profile cut into them and are rather thin I doubt I would be able to use them for too much else.

On closer inspection I found that they were too narrow for the gap I was trying to fill, so I decided to try my had at adding in a strip. I also had a hard time removing the layer upon layer of old varnish, here are some snaps:


Before and after







Clamping and gluing, I'm still busy growing my clamp collection, so I had to make due with what I have.





A close-up of the piece I added in.



The finished article! It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it, I'm glad I'm able to practice on something that won't be visible.

And now for the kicker, after making the rails and trimming the drawer bottom to fit perfectly, it is actually slightly smaller than the board I began with :? and I only found this out after cutting up 4 panels in preparation for making the bottoms of the 4 drawers... On the up side it did give me some practice on joining boards like this, (I did do a second panel before I measured the first one) and I have come up with another use for all the cut up pieces...

Thanks for looking!

 

[Tusses]

good progress

one thing I noticed .. it is good practice to have at least one clamp on the other side of the panel.
It makes for a flatter panel

 

[Commander]

Thanks for the tip Tusses, I will do so in future!

 

[Doug]

Just catching up on your build Erich it's coming along nicely, I do like your right angle clamping blocks they given me a couple of ideas for an up coming project, thanks for sharing.

 

[Phil]

Erich, that is really coming along nicely.
You have done a lot of work since I saw it last time.

Like the very long fence rails, makes it easier for sawing wider boards.

Adding extra boards to the fence is a good idea. I have three of various heights and lengths that screw on with wing nuts.

Looking forward to seeing the saw mounted in the cabinet.

Cheers
Phil

 

[Commander]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Doug, i actually copied the design from one of the other members (can't remember who though), and they work brilliantly, I could do with another 3 at least! It always amazes me how you can make a tool or a jig and then in short order you can't imagine how you ever got anything done without it. :lol:

Thanks Phil, I should actually be able to mount the saw fairly soon, but I'm always second guessing myself and wondering if I shouldn't perhaps wait a while and just finish one or 2 more things...

I was able to make the dust drawer and mount the rails for it (will post pics when I have a chance) and I have also started work on a small side project that I need to finish fairly soon.

 

[9fingers]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Doug, i actually copied the design from one of the other members (can't remember who though), and they work brilliantly, I could do with another 3 at least! It always amazes me how you can make a tool or a jig and then in short order you can't imagine how you ever got anything done without it. :lol:

It might have been me viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1152&p=13831#p13773

But I'd seen it somewhere before so no claim of patent infringement by me :lol:

Bob

 

[Commander]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Doug, i actually copied the design from one of the other members (can't remember who though), and they work brilliantly, I could do with another 3 at least! It always amazes me how you can make a tool or a jig and then in short order you can't imagine how you ever got anything done without it. :lol:

It might have been me http://thewoodhaven2.co.uk/viewtopic.ph ... 831#p13773

But I'd seen it somewhere before so no claim of patent infringement by me :lol:

Bob

Ah yes, those are the ones Bob, I think mine are a bit smaller which is why the holes ended up interlinking. Still a very useful bit of kit!

 

[Commander]

I was able to make a little more progress with the drawer, so here are a few pics of the construction:





This is the basic box, as you can see it sits on the drawer base which then acts as the drawer side runner. Pretty simple and easy to construct. The screws through the bottom don't look that great (and its not an idea I would use for proper furniture) but for this purpose they work great and should keep together nicely.




Here are the runners and the drawer sitting inside the runners. Everything is made from recycled wood (pallets, old garage doors etc.) hence all the old nail holes.



And here is the final product (sans a handle, which I'm still trying to decide on how I want to make). The movement is fairly smooth, there is a bit of stickiness when the drawer is fully pushed in but nothing too mayor, especially since it won't be opened regularly.

Thanks for looking!

 

[AndyP]

A bit of wax on the drawer might help it slide easier.

 

[Commander]

Thanks Andy, I will give it a try!

 

[Phil]

A bit of wax on the drawer might help it slide easier.

:text-+1:

Erich, coming on nicely. Good use of the garage door panels.

 

[Commander]

My time has been very much taken up with other things close to year end, I have since made some more drawers (or more accurately, the drawers are in various states of assembly). I have been in two minds about whether or not to finish the whole trolley before installing the saw (easier access, can flip it over etc.) or installing the saw and then doing the rest as time allows.

I have been rather busy with work on the "magic mirror" project and there is a slight possibility that there will be a production run of sorts, for this to at all be possible I need to have a nice working area, so over the past weekend I decided to clean up the shop and mount the saw on its new base.

Unfortunately while tipping the saw over to remove the old base I misjudged the shift in center of mass and the lack of grip offered by the steel feet, so I dropped the saw, not an overly hard hit, but still enough to move the blade out of alignment... I need to spend some time on fixing that now,however I did manage to get the saw on the new base and screw it down. I'm pretty happy with the results!







Screwed directly into the wooden base with wood screws and large washers through the existing holes.



I had to add some spacers to allow the motor to go to full droop, clearance is now perfect no matter where the blade sits. This will also allow me to easily add a small block of wood under the motor to take slack off of the drive belt when not in use.



Net step would be to add the top cross beams and then fit the top (after fixing alignment...). I should be able to add spacers/washers to make sure the level of the top is as close to the level of the table as possible. I will probably aim to leave the top about 1mm lower than the table just to try and stop the work piece getting caught on the top.

 

[Tusses]

Good to see progress

I have my outfeed level with the TS top . and slightly chamfered the leading edge, to stop anything getting caught.

is the bottom of your saw open ?

if so a useful addition would be a drawer underneath, to catch the sawdust, and make it easy to empty.
or even just a hole and shelf, and shove a plastic storage/toy box under it.

 

[Commander]

Good to see progress

I have my outfeed level with the TS top . and slightly chamfered the leading edge, to stop anything getting caught.

is the bottom of your saw open ?

if so a useful addition would be a drawer underneath, to catch the sawdust, and make it easy to empty.
or even just a hole and shelf, and shove a plastic storage/toy box under it.

Yup that is exactly what the top drawer is for, I plan on adding some cardboard "ramps" to the inside of the saw to help all the saw dust fall into the drawer and not get stuck inside the saw as is currently happening. I filled a fairly large plastic bin with shavings and saw dust when I cleaned up on Saturday, I was rather amazed at how much it turned out to be!

The champfer idea may just be the ticket, I would like to get the alignment as close to perfect as possible.

Thanks for the positive comments! bscene-drinkingcheers:

 

[Tusses]

I wouldn't bother with the ramps inside the saw .. when the dust builds up, it will make it's own ramp... and shouldn't get any worse. just leave it to get it's own equilibrium the rest will fall through to the drawer.

and yes .. each cut makes 3.2mm of saw dust ! .. lots !!!

 

[Commander]

After about 2 hours of fiddling yesterday evening I have now managed to get the alignment of the saw spot on (maybe even better than it was since I am now better at doing it than I was last time around), unfortunately this has led to the motor hanging off at the back end shifting and not putting its full weight on the belt any more, so I now have to either change the spacers or modify the frame a little. I'm not yet sure which one of the 2 options would be best...

I have also had a bit of an unfortunate incident where the high winds and storms we have been experiencing lately has blown a corner tile off of the first floor roof which then ended up falling through my garage roof leaving a gaping hole. Since the garage is not attached I only saw this yesterday morning when I happened to go put some rags down in the garage (no space for the car so I don't go into the garage unless I need to do some work...).





I emailed the body corporate for them to send out a repairman, but I'm still waiting for his call... It looked like rain yesterday so I ended up removing a tile from the bottom row to tuck it in where the broken one was so as to at least get the garage water tight again (no photos of this unfortunately).

After finishing this I had a closer look and saw that the table under the hole was literally soaked along with all the tools I put on it Saturday while cleaning up... I poured some water out of the power tools and set them to one side to dry properly, the MDF corner clamps look like they are toast as they seem to have taken on a bit of water, and the hand planes are in a shocking state...

 

[AndyP]

That's rotten luck Erich. Although it will take some elbow grease that can only be surface rust on those planes, surely?

 

[TrimTheKing]

That looks like very heavy rust for a short exposure...

Mark

 

[Rod]

You must have very nasty rain?
A rub with some wire wool and light oil should remove most of it.
If it's gone deep, then some Restore rust remover or equivalent.

Rod

 

[Commander]

I'm sure it looks worse than it is, however I was shocked at how bad it got in such a short amount of time. Once I have a free moment I will start cleaning them up and see how it goes. Even the wooden front handle took a beating, so that will need attention as well.

 

[Phil]

Erich, that's quite bad losing a tile on the garage roof. Does lots of damage.

We had the same storm winds driving through, but no damage in our area.
In the estate next to us (Meadows) a lot of houses lost their barge boards.
There were also a lot of uprooted trees in both estates.