Puttering Around with Loose Ends
There's been a few things in my shop that I've had in the back of my head to do, things to improve my situation. So these last couple of days I've decided to tackle a few. They are not all pictured below.
[
Below] Somewhere in the past I bought this Porter Cable 8 inch, variable speed grinder. I remember during my research that one complaint about it was that the goose neck light only received power when the grinder was turned on. In other words when the light was on the grinder had to be spinning. The light has its own little switch on top for when you don't want it shining on your work. Last year I took it upon myself to remedy that. I know something about electricity.
(Gibberish may follow) The light is wired so that the power goes through the switch for the grinder. I isolated the hot wire and spiced it (with solder) to the lead direct from the plug. Turned it on and the light still didn't work. My though was that the common (ground) wire was also routed through the switch. But I didn't lose any ground. The light could still be used, just only while the grinder ran. Okay, so it's super safe at least. At that time I didn't feel like taking the bottom off and rerouting the common wire.
So today I was using the grinder to help tie up another loose end and I decided that since I had it conveniently on the work table, that now would be a good time to reroute the common so the light would work without the grinder spinning away. It makes a great task light too! I isolated the common coming from the lamp and spliced it in, with solder and tape, to the common coming from the plug. Presto! It works. Other than that I think it's a great grinder.
[
Below] These next 3 pics might be confusing. I think it's safe to say that many of our shops are not perfectly arranged. This can especially be the case when people give things to you when your space is limited. The picture shows my shop-made step stool in its new home. This is really a good place for it because often I need it in this location to get some wood off the rack or something off the shelf. In its previous location…
[
Below] The vacuum shown here is now where the step stool used to live. I inherited it from my father in law, but I've never had a good place for it. Here I can easily pull it out to use the band saw or drill press, plus I can hook it up to the band saw for (sort of) dust collection. It's also more convenient here for… um, using as a vacuum!
[
Below] This vacuum is the one I hook up alternately to my table saw and router station for (sort of) dust collection. I got it from my pastor who was throwing it away. Previously this vacuum lived on the far side of the gray post seen on the left. This is a much better location. This space previously hosted my collection of jigs. I put the two main ones, crosscut and panel sled, under the TS and the rest are piled in front of the vacuum. The space under the TS used to have a (failed) prototype of a single-step stool and an empty tool box I got at a yard sale over 15 years ago.
[
Below] One of the 'non-pictured' things I did was to change the clamping jaw on one of my clamps. The photo below shows the clamp as built. I changed the screw jaw over to a block similar to the one on my latest effort. I also stripped the paint off and improved the stop block by replacing the dowel with a carriage bolt.
[
Above] Speaking of my latest effort. I changed the handle over on this clamp to the swing style that is seen on my original bar clamps [
Below]. I also removed that extra block on the adjustable stop.
[
Below] My original swing arm grip. You'll be seeing more about these bar clamps in the future.
[
Below] The last thing I did was to do a post mortem on a sander. I bought this random orbit sander a year ago and it failed on me this week. I went out and bought a replacement, but wanted to see what the actual problem was. It looks like a plastic part responsible for the random-orbit part has worn out and broken. I may be at fault as I didn't know about the gentle guiding these sanders need to work. We'll see how the replacement lasts. Taking the sander apart, I kept the motor brushes, the cord, the sanding pad and the sealed switch. Everything else got pitched out.