I’ve always had a fascination with 3 dimensional stars. Not being able to find a computer program that would allow me to calculate the angles and cuts that I needed, I wrote my own. I also needed to build a jig that would keep my hands safe and hold down the small pieces to cut at the various compound angles that were necessary. With the program in hand and a jig built, I proceeded to build the above stars. If you’re interested, the program is available to download from my blog and the jig building and star making are covered in more detail there.

3-D Star Blog

I have developed a program to calculate cutting dimensions and angles for building 3 dimensional stars. 3-D Star Blog. Trying to cut narrow pieces for the stars at steep angles and bevels on my radial arm saw required some assistance.

I designed a simple jig that would clamp into the table in the fence joint, anywhere along the fence joint. You can make angle cuts to ~60 degrees left or right while leaving the saw carriage arm to run straight back and forth. You can bevel the saw carriage to ~70 degrees to create compound cuts on small pieces. Best of all, you can clamp down the workpiece and keep your hands way clear of the blade while your’re cutting! My normal 10” saw blade wouldn’t clear the top of the jig on bevels from about 20 degrees to 70 degrees. Changing out the blade to a 7-1/4” blade worked great.

Not wanting to cut up my jig everytime I make a cut, I use a piece of sacrificial 1/8” hardboard (Masonite) underneath the piece being cut. I used a mini-T track fastened into the wood angle arm and 1/4” x 20 hex head bolts and knobs for the hold down hardware (purchased from Peachtree Woodworking Supply). The clamps were homemade from 1” x 1/4” x 4”, 5”, or 6 “ash with 1/4” wide slots in the center. The ends of the hold downs were soft pine to reduce surface dinging of the held down wood. The pivot point bolt and the circle hold down bolt are 1/4” x 20 “elevator” bolts (flat head, ~1” dia). The jig table is MDF, the wood angle arm is ash, and the fence is pine.

Not having a table saw, I needed an adjustable jig for cutting box joints on my router table. I liked the design by Shop Notes that has been used by several others on Lumberjocks, such as Tyka's posting. The design is for use with a table saw, but with a few small modifications, it works very well with a router table.

My router table didn’t have an adequate miter T-track to use for sliding the jig, so I added 2 parallel aluminum miter T-tracks to my existing Craftsman router table and I added 2 miter T-bars to the bottom of the jig. The original design had a 3/4” thick board on the bottom of the jig to help serve as a ledge for the piece being jointed. On a router table, that increases the distance a router bit would need to extend above the table to an unacceptable height, so I eliminated the board. I purchased the miter T-track, T-bar, and knobs from Peachtree Woodworking Supply. The rest of the metal hardware was 1/2” metal L-brackets and 1/4” x 20 – hex bolts, washers, lock nuts, screw insert nuts, and flat headed “elevator” bolts. The wood was ash.

I wanted to build a Lego table for my three grandkids, but didn’t find anything on the internet that was quite what I wanted. So I designed a table that used a 3/4” X 24” X 48” piece of glued up pine from the lumber yard as the inner table insert. 3/4” plywood or MDF would have worked just as well. The table top is reversible so you can put Lego mats on one side and leave the other side plain for use with other kids projects.

I made the legs out of 2” PVC pipe with 2” PVC couplers on the bottom of the legs. There was a method to my madness for doing this. The overall height of the table is 20”, just perfect for young kids. As they get older, or if an adult wanted to use the table, it needs to be taller. Rather than making new legs, by simply cutting pieces of 2” PVC pipe that can be slipped into the bottom of the couplers, the table becomes taller very easily! The legs are fastened to the table by using 1/4” x 20 decorative bolts through the table sides, through the PVC legs and into 1/4” X 20 TEE nuts inside the PVC pipes.

I wanted some inexpensive storage for Legos, so I purchased 3 rectangular white plastic baskets at Walmart. Using 2” X 4”’s ripped to a narrower width and dadoed for the basket lips, I had simple drawer slides.

Keeping in a kids theme, I painted each of the legs a different bright color – blue, red, yellow, and green. I used double sided adhesive tape to attach 8 lego base plates to one side of the table. I located the plates for $6 each plus shipping on Amazon.com, but found them for $5 each at my local Toys R Us.

I have a small workshop with several tools that generate a lot of dust and sawdust. I wanted to build a dust collection system that wouldn’t break the bank, was small and didn’t take up a lot of room, and could be built from off the shelf components from the local lumber yard.

I had an old 2 1/2 inch Sears Wet Dry Vacuum system that was great as a vacuum, but clogged up way too easily to use around dust and sawdust. I’d seen reviews of the Dust Deputy by Oneida. It’s an inexpensive ($40) cyclone separator for dust and sawdust. I bought one and tried it and it worked great! In a test, I picked up piles of sawdust that were deposited in the cyclone separator container leaving the vacuum filter completey clean This, connected between the old Sears Wet Dry Vac and the piping for my new dust collection system, became the work horse of the shop. Building it into a simple dust separator was very easy, using a 5 gallon bucket, a couple of pieces of 3/4 ” plywood cut into two circles (inside bucket diameter and 2” larger than the bucket diameter), six bolts, and a little silicone sealant.

I found very quickly that when a company gives you a dimension for something, say 2 1/2 inches, that’s really not the dimension you probably need. It may be the inside dimension, outside dimension, nominal dimension, dimension of the adapter on the hose or the inside or outside dimension of the hose itself!! Trying to understand what’s available on the market and what hose fits what adapter was a nightmare. My Wet Dry Vac had a hose adapter that was classed as 2 1/2 ” because of the outside diameter of the fitting on the hose. The hose itself had an ID of 2”. I decided to use 2” PVC from the local Lowes – Home Depot because it and it’s associated fittings were readily available and very inexpensive (~$6 for a 10 ft length). Plastic 2” conduit hangers were also inexpensive and readily available there as well. Since dust moving through plastic generates a tremendous static charge that will knock you on your keister, I devised a very simple static dissipation system. I used 2” foil tape (like that used in heating and air conditioning duct installation) and ran it along the length of the PVC pipe collection system. At each blast gate, I installed a #12 machine screw through the tape and into the PVC. These became clipping points to which I attached grounding wires from the various collection hoses. One of the screws became the attachment point between the foil system and the electrical ground of a 110V outlet.

There are a number of distributors that sell blast gates (the open/shutoff between individual tools and the dust collection system). Unfortunately, they don’t give you actual dimensions of the valve. A 2” valve doesn’t necessarily connect to 2” PVC (which is 2” ID). Rather than taking a chance (and probably being wrong), I decided to build my own valves where I knew they would be the right size. I built them out of 3/16 Masonite (hard board). I cut short pieces of 2” PVC pipe and glued them to the outside pieces of the blast valve body. This way they would fit directly into the 2” PVC TEE’s or elbows for each tool hookup. The blast valve shutoff slides are 3/16” Masonite also, sanded down a little to fit into the opening and slide smoothly.

For connection hoses I decided to use two sizes 2 1/2” and 1 1/4”. I ordered two 13 ft lengths of 2 1/2” hose from Sears (~$19 ea) thinking they would match up nicely with the old 2 1/2” hose from the Vac. —NOT—They don’t have the embedded wire coils in them like the old hose, they’re NOT right hand spiral wound (they’re concentric circles of plastic), and they’re not the same size as the old hose. I had purchased some 2 1/2” hose adapters through the internet. They fit the old hose perfectly, but were the wrong size for the new hose. What did work great however were 2” PVC FITTINGS. The new hose was a perfect interference fit into 2” PVC fittings (like a 2” PVC coupling which would then attach directly to the blast gate). At Lowes, they had some 1 1/4” flex hose that they sold by the foot. It was quite expensive at $2.68/ft. While getting ready to purchase several feet of it, I ran across the same size hose in black called well discharge hose. It was in a package 24 ft long, over by the well and septic system supplies, and only cost $10!. 1” PVC pipe fit into the hose very well as a connector only requiring a hose clamp to finish the connection. I used braided picture frame wire that I ran down the inside of each flexible hose. I brought the wire out at each end of the hose leaving several inches free. At each end I attached a small alligator clip clip that could be used to attach to the grounding bolt at the blast gate or to the tool itself. These supplied continuity for the static dissipation system.

• 3/4 ——- 1.050 ——- 0.824
• 1 ———- 1.315 ——- 1.049
• 1 1/4 —- 1.660 ——- 1.088
• 1 1/2 —- 1.900 ——- 1.610
• 2 ———- 2.375 ——- 2.067
• 2 1/2 —- 2.875 ——- 2.469
• 3 ———- 3.500 ——- 3.068
• 4 ———- 4.500 ——- 4.026
• 5 ———- 5.563 ——- 5.047
• 6 ———- 6.625 ——- 6.065
• 8 ———- 8.625 ——- 7.981