brevort's Blog at LumberJocks.com http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog Mon, 29 Oct 2012 01:15:43 GMT Poor man's mortising machine http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/32712 Here is a poor man’s mortising machine. I bought a mortising kit from Grizzly and I can say that I am not sure I would recommend this kit. If it is in your budget I would look at a mortising machine. The only thing that wasn’t reworked on this kit was the chisels….. I am happy to say they cut an accurate pocket but the fence was way out of square. If you were to use this tool right out of the box your mortises would be at an angle. The hold down foot was about 1/16” out of parallel to the work surface…. it was just about unusable. If you have access to a milling machine and you like to make tools this may be the kit for you. I modified the tool for my first project and was happy with the performance. But setup time using a drill press as a mortising machine is time consuming compared to a real mortising machine. So I spent some time looking through boxes of scrap stock that I had in my shop. Then I built this poor man’s mortising machine. I had two table tops for my drill press so I sacrificed one for this project. The new table slides on two 1” diameter dowels which have ball bearing sleeves so movement is easy and very accurate. Switching from drill press to mortising machine is fast and easy…. and after squaring up the chisel to the fence you can move the table and have the confidence that everything is still square and repeatable.

]]> Mon, 29 Oct 2012 01:15:43 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/32712 brevort brevort New shop tool http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/32665 My Craigslist find….. I have been thinking about getting a 6” Jointer for sometime now. My little 1950’s 4” Craftsman just is not big enough to do the job at times. I didn’t think a new jointer would be in my budget this year…. but maybe I could get a good used one. So I started looking on Craigslist and I found this Central machine 6” jointer for $150.00. I called the guy and he said that he bought it new with the intention of getting into wood working but never got around to it. When I got to his house I was very excited to see that it was a new machine… I guess when he said he never got around to it, he meant he never used it at all. The Jointer still had cosmoline on it from when it was shipped to him. I cleaned it up and got my dial indicator out, adjusted the cutter head and out-feed table. Oh boy….. nice machine for 150.00.

]]> Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:02:39 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/32665 brevort brevort Dust Collector http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/30864 A big thanks to all my LumberJocks friends. I have finally gotten around to spending my prize money from this winter’s LumberJocks contest. Here it is, a Grizzly G0548Z 2Hp dust collector. I have modified it with a 14” Chinese Wok to imitate the Jet Vortex DC1100.

]]> Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:13:33 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/30864 brevort brevort Home made router table http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/27810 Here is a router table I made from an old table saw top. I wanted to have a router table that was solid and accurate when making cuts. I found this table saw top in my dad’s garage one day and I knew just what I was going to do with it. Using an end mill in my router, I carefully routered a flat pocket in the back side of the top just big enough to mount the router to it. Then I purchased a piece of gage stock to replace the blade insert plate. To get the right shape I needed to cut the gage stock. I did this with a jeweler’s saw. Then with the router mounted in place and the new blade insert plate in place, I drilled a pilot hole into the plate. Now the challenge was to get a hole that was large enough and dead center which would hold my router bushings. There have been other times when I have had to modify some of my tools to do the job at hand. Before I retired my profession was “model making” and I had access to machinery such as mills and lathes, so this job would have been easy if I still had that luxury.

I mounted a cross-slide on my wood lathe and a bigger pulley to slow the spindle down. Now this works well for cutting steel but I needed a boring machine, not a lathe, for this job. So, I mounted the plate on the cross-slide and put a boring head in the lathe chuck. It worked great. It bored a hole that was right on. As you can see the router table no longer looks like a saw table, and being cast iron, it is solid. I also built my router lift which is a must have if you are doing a lot of woodworking. I will blog about the lift at another time and post some pictures.



]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:40:01 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/27810 brevort brevort Garage Sale Deals http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/27663 This summer my son….. aka javajake and I…. being the loving husbands we are, took our wives out to the garage sales. Although we had not intended to find anything for ourselves, we both came home with several tools. My son found a Sears drill press from the 50’s (which I expect to see him blog about in the near future). My find shown below, is a 1970 Sears 10” radial saw. While I already had a radial saw in my shop, it was not cast iron like this one, and at $100 I just could not resist. It came with a planer attachment, drill chuck, sanding disk, and several 10” blades. The saw had a little rust but not too bad and it needed a new top. As you can see, it cleaned up pretty good. It also came with the cabinet you see under it too. The cabinet was an option that year. Oh by the way, our wives came home with nothing. Lol



]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:15:20 GMT http://lumberjocks.com/brevort/blog/27663 brevort brevort