It was made from antique pine I got from a neighbors barn. I bought the tins online, and used pocket joinery for the rails and stiles. I took the plans from a Sketch up model which I cut and half and adapted to a single door safe.

Many thanks to all the kind Lumberjocks that gave me advice on Sketch Up (Matt Donley & Brad Nailor!), panels (Stumpy, et. al.), and finish (Joe and everyone else!).

This was a really fun project, and I learned a lot and made my horizontal table router because of it.

I hope this inspires someone to do the same. Now my wife just has to find a place for it…. ;)

Sorry I don’t have the original hole to show you, but here is what happened after I took some of the broken know and some wood filler to the hole.

This is after planing and sanding it flat. I opted to leave the little divots and imperfections in the fill for a more natural look.

You can get the paints you need at Wally World or where ever. I think I got these at Staples.

I DO use some specialty brushes I got from Michaels.

Fortunatly, wood is imperfect. You don’t have to be either. Just mix and match your paints until you get something you like, or close to the natural wood. I find that I primarily use Brown, Black, and Red.

This knot turned out a little darker that I wanted. I’m not going to mess with it until it completely dries. I MAY lightly coat it with a yellow/white/brown mix. Most likely I’ll just leave it be and hope it fades.

Here is another structural repair. Again, a knot broke off the corner. I cut it square and glued in some like pieces, plus a tad bit of filler. After it dried I routed in the angles. Again, I painted in the color by hand. This one turned out much nicer.

Before

After

Here are both boards from a distance.

And lastly, here is another faux knot I did that turned out a lot better than the first.

I have found working with antique pine rewarding for the rich color I get, but frustrating because the boards can be more brittle to work with. But with these cosmetic repairs, I am able to use boards that would otherwise be discarded and throw to waste.

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try and help. I hope this encourages you to try and salvage that would you might otherwise throw out.

Regards,

Milo

I worked on the raised panel side of the safe. There are four of them, and I used my snazy new horizontal router to do them.

Lemmetellyasum’n. PRACTICEPRACTICEPRACTIVE with your router before you do the real doors or you’ll tear them up!!

You MUST make multiple passes and take your time, or you just make mince meat of your boards. I was farily fortunate and was able to repair most of the damage I did to my boards before the final product, but in this picture, you can see a gouge I made that I wasn’t able to smooth out…

See the dip in the wood above the knot? That kind of thing happens. I am also making a decorative repair in the knot because the router ate that too. The wood is kind of brittle. Another reason to take your time with the router.

Here is a panel in the door. I am considering lightly staining the carcase of the pie safe differently than the panels for contrast. What do you guys think? Any suggestions?

Here is another panel repair I am having to make. Poor planing decision on my part caused this. It should be ok though if I am PATIENT with the router. I will have to hand paint the colors in to make it match though. I will try to remember to post a picture of the final repair on this panel.

Here is the front door and the future top. I am pleased with how the door is turning out. The molding doesn’t look half bad, though I am going to color it so it matches better.

I’ll have more later. I hope to have the drawers done by the end of the week.

Milo

First off, I found a pie safe idea I liked on Google, in the SketchUp repository there. But I wanted to make a single door, so after getting a lot of Sketchup help from folks on Lumberjocks, I started with this…

The only measurement I had to work with was the printed length of the four side legs (4’ 10.5”). The cutlist plugin also gave me some length to work with.

The smartest thing I did was build the door first. Well, kinda, more on that later. I also cut the 6 legs also.

Messed up on the door. I didn’t make my own tin, bought it online (just don’t have the time right now!). Of course my window dimensions from the already built do didn’t match the tins I ordered. Hence the interior molding in the door windows you see.

Planning, PLANNING!

I also built the side frames. Since I knew I needed 1/8” clearance around the door, I cut the top, top bottom drawer, and bottom rails and put the frame to gather.

BUT, I made another screw up. I didn’t plan my side panels properly, and had to come up with a plan to fix this. I am going to put floating, raised panels in the sides. Hence the slot cutter rabbits that I cut into the interior of the sides. (THANKS GUYS!).

Lastly, I am using antique pine I got from a neighbors barn. It’s somewhat fragile. The knots explode in the planer with some regularity. So I am repairing them as I go along. In this case I used as much of the knot as I could as filler also. After it dried I planed it flat.

After I get done I will paint in the rest of the knot before I finish the pie safe.

More later!

Milo

Sorry it took a while to get back to this. I had some sad family business to take care of, but I got back and finished this sander.

Basically, I just built a box around the drum. It took a LOT of tweaking, primarily because I stink at design. Someone with better design skills could have measure the box height better than I did, but what the hey, it was fun figuring it out.

I routed the length of the top with a straight bit and a cove bit to get the shape.

I used some leftover rough plywood to make the box itself. I will probably remake it in the future to better specs.

I used an old tightening screw from a Shopsmith planer that went bad to hold the box in place. You can probably get one of these on ebay. I considered making the base of the box over sized so I could just use clamps.

I hope you like it. I’m feeling a little thick headed tonight as I write my description, so I know it’s not all that great. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have, so please feel free to ask. ;-)

Milo

I’ve been doing a bit of Mad Scientist routine in the workshop again. As a few of you may recall, I’ve been asking about V Drum sanders for a while now, convinced I could make one out of my Shopsmith with a minimum of effort.

Picture One

This is the tailstock with a mdf block in it. I ended up using a turned piece that projected out of the tailstock toward the about and inch.

Picture Two

Here is the flat bearing I am using with a 3/8” center. I used a 3/8” bit to bore through, then a 1 1/8” forstner bit to seat the bearing.

Picture Three

This is my drum. 1 1/4” pvc with a 3/8” threaded rod center. I drilled out 24(I think) some odd mdf plugs that are epoxied to the rod. Believe it or not, I used some leftover fiberglass to put the plugged rod in the pvc tube. It did not heat up or melt as some folks feared it would.

Pictures Four and Five

The drum attached to the Shopsmith. That board under it is what I used to try and measure the height of the box to go around the drum.

I messed up and in two places. I was going to use the gray housing of the SS to seat the box on around the drum. I measures too short on the length. I quesstimated using the drum at the key, not the length between the powerhead housing and the tailstock housing. Oops.

I also forgot the account for the extra “height” that would occur when I added the velcro and the hook & loop sandpaper. Fortunately I am still at a point I can make adjustments.

Picture Six

The velcro attached to the drum. That’s the roll of sandpaper waiting to go on.

Well, I hope you folks find this interesting. I’ll add on the box and HOPEFULLY an action shot of the sander in action.

Milo

It’s a not a TRUE Nicholson workbench, I didn’t build the in table clamp, but it’s really close. Now I just need to get rid of a couple more things from the shop and I’ll be done.

THEN WHAT WILL I DO?? ARCH! ;-)

When I get the paddle clamp put on, the clamp that is in the left leg and will go on the side, I’ll post the final pictures.

Hey everyone,

Sometime I think I am the most cluttered person on the planet. Well, maybe not up to the level of those “Hoarder” people you see on TLC, but pretty close. I’m the type that puts things down without paying attention, then spends 20 minutes looking for it. Ear plugs, pencils, rulers, Allen wrenches, etc,etc,etc. You get the picture.

Well, one of the things I wanted to get a handle on was dust control. Never had much more than a shopvac to use the for that, and when I moved into my new shop, I decided to try and do something about it. Plus the wife had read something about what dust does to woodworkers over time, and that was that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the bucks to go out a big dust collector and cyclone from so I started looking around for what I could do on my own. I lucked out soon after moving, and picked up a standard air handler from a garage sale for $50.00. It’s a small 1.5hp similar to what Delta puts out. After that I came up with two ideas of what I wanted. An overhead dust collector and blade guard and a cyclone.

I saw this blade guard idea, http://www.woodcentral.com/bparticles/blade_guard.pdf, and used to to make the guard, then went poor man/simple man for the overhead holder. It’s just a standard bolt slider directly above the blade. I adjust the guard to slightly over the height of the wood I am going to cut before I start. No floating guard. I really like it because I feel a lot more confident pushing boards through with that guard in place. I’m still needing to tweek it a bit, it’s not as stable as I’d like, but my dust mess has dropped considerably.

[IMG]http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt77/hal05154/IMG_0487.jpg[/IMG]

That orange and white thing you see in the picture above is a home-made cyclone, and it really works! Its nothing more that an orange HD bucket, a 1 gallon white bucket, a large funnel, a two inch piece of pvc (inside the white bucket) and three pieces of dust port intakes. I use this mini-cyclone with my overheard blade guard on the table saw. It’s sorta cool watching the dust go spinning around in the big funnel. ;-)

[IMG]http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt77/hal05154/IMG_0488.jpg[/IMG]

The best thing I did though was make a Thein Cyclone separator. http://www.cgallery.com/jpthien/cy.htm. I made a circle cutter our of a piece of ply and my small router. It took a little tweeking to get the measurements right (It’s actually stilll a little too big for the trash can), but as you can see from the trash can, it works GREAT. I was AMAZED with how well it worked when I planed down a set of rough boards. If you have a small shop, and want something to help with dust control, I highly recommend making one of these. Phil Thein makes his standard with 2” ports for a shopvac. I made mine with 4” ports to fit my air handler. Oh, the small cyclone has a 4” port on top. I just move the intake tube and move it back and for as I need it.

[IMG]http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt77/hal05154/IMG_0486.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt77/hal05154/IMG_0491.jpg[/IMG]

I use the small cyclone on my dedicated dado and router table. It works well for general clean up also.

The best part it I don’t think I have $150.00 – $200.00 in all of this. Including the dust handler, you could by everything you need at HD or Lowes. You may need to order the hoses and connector somewhere else. You could do all of this with shopvac supplies and get it all at a big box store, and use pvc connectors of the cyclone lids.

If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer.

Milo

I’ve had this 6 inch craftsman brand jointer for a while now. For the longest time I wasn’t albe to work on it. I actually didn’t really UNDERSTAND the workings of the jointers. Mechanism wise. Well, today I jumped in with both feet and learned a couple things.

I knew that the screw mechanism raised and lowered the table sides, and I had also been told recently to just flip the jointer over to see the jointers workings. I started out by lowering the table as far as I could. It jammed up several times. Achems razor declaired the best bet was that there was something jamming the main screw. So I thought I would worry it back and forth, applying oil to loosen it was I went.

Suddenly there was a loud clank in the tub I was using to catch shavings.

I found this doo-hick laying on the ground. Ugh oh…. So, I took of the fence, the motor, and horsed the jointer upside down. Thank goodness the feet didn’t slip as I was lowering it. Thing weighs a ton…

Looking at the underside… epiphany! (My joiner must be so embaressed to show it’s privates…)

The set bolt goes on the main screw. It must have worked itself loose, and my ministrations to the screw must have worked it loose. VERY luck for me, because if the set bolt hadn’t fallen off, I may not have flipped the jointer. It was nothing to screw the bolt back in place, and I used the one on the other table screw to judge where it went.

Afterwards I flipped the jointer back up. My back and elbow still hurt. Of course, this time the feet slid. Ouch. Low and behold though, the infeed table now raised and lowered now, smooth as silk. I can even get the tables level now, something that was impossible before I started.

I’m pretty sure I got the outfeed table set right.

Here’s the rough pine I tested the jointer one. Turned out pretty well!

As another LumberJock always says, “If sawdust (or in this case shavings) where gold…”

Lastly, and this is actually almost the most important thing I learned today, USE PUSH PADS WITH A JOINTER!! Not only is there the safety factor, but MAN, I can JOINT WOOD! It ACTUALLLY WORKED! I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this jointer. NOT ANYMORE! I was doing one pass flattening at the end. WOW… :-)

Here’s was I was using…

Don’t fear the jointer, man!

Here are a couple shop pictures. Yeah, it’s still a mess…

Tablesaw

And finally, can’t you see what a great Workbench I have???

More later…

Milo

————————————————————————————————————————

Went to the Woodcraft bandsaw class last night at my semi-local Woodcraft store in Knoxville, TN. It was on bandsaw maintanance. The bandsaw used was a Jet 14”, about what I would consider standard for the average woodworking hobbiest like me.

I never realized just how ignorant I was about bandsaws, in particular the guides. The instructor, Robert, did an excellent job of going over the maintanance of the fence, without overloading us with a lot of additional info just to fill up the time. Since the class was just two people, we ended a little early, and where able to do hands on work, as well as ask a lot of general questions about various of wood working subjects and machines.

A very worthwhile class.

I look forward to my next class at Woodcraft, and I would recommend them to others who want to brush up on woodworking subjects also. I’m going to a dovertail jig class in the near future.

Dell

ARGH. Too many projects, but what to do first?

Here are some of the projects I have planned, and the order I was thinking of doing them in.

1) Workbench (duh), Modified Nicholson design.
2) Sharkguard (I plan on making my own)

2) Super Sled crosscut sled
3) Miter Saw Cart w/ extension
4) Plywood mover
5) Cyclone – shop made
6) Clamp rack
7) SOMEPLACE TO PUT MY Radial Arm Saw

9) Router fence

This is all I can remember at the moment…

Please don’t be shy ! If there something you think I ABSOLUTELY need to do first, fire away and let me know.

Any organizing tips would be appreciate too.

Milo