Random gibberish

After wondering for ages what to get swmbo for xmas I decided to actually make something. One thing she’s never had was a jewelry chest – and since she can never remember where she’s put her jewelry it might actually come in handy.
I had some cherry in the shop so decided to use that. Size wise I wanted this quite small – not tiny but not huge. I decided on a rough size of 200×120 (internal sizes). External sizes were going to depend a lot on how thick the wood ended up.
chose a couple of bits of wood to become the top.

Then i had a brainwave – rather than just thicknessing down to size I’d try to resaw the boards with the bandsaw. I’ve never had much luck with this. Wow, what a difference working with hardwood compared to pine. The bandsaw worked pretty well.

afterwards I was left with this lot: the plank on the right is for the drawers.
Now what sort of joints to use to fix the sides, top and bottom together. I really fancied using dovetails, so out came the saw and marking stuff. Some practice on spare bits quickly showed that I don’t have the skills to attempt that many dovetails yet – I think I’d still be trying to fix them this time next year. Fortunately Philly on UKWorkshop came to my rescue by deciding to sell his littlerat. £100 later and I had a rat in the shop.

I still couldn’t do dovetails as I only had 8mm dovetail bits and no 8mm collet for the T11 router (an insert has since been ordered) so I decided to go with finger joints. I used a half inch straight bit to create the joints and decided on an even spread.

I made the fingers oversize so I could cut them flush. This was my first attempt at something with the littlerat so I was quite chuffed with the outcome. There were a few joints with gaps in, but I reckon that just makes it look a bit more like hand cut.

sides, top, bottom clamped and glued up
Now to sort the bits for the drawers. I ended up with measurements of 35mm for each draw which left me a 1mm gap between them.
After resawing and flattening I ended up with this little lot.
The drawers are simply held together by a couple of rabbets and glue. A 3mm groove was cut into the bottom with the table saw so I could fit in the plywood bottom. Once assembled I routed in a 5mm groove to take the runners.
Unfortunately I’ve lost the photo’s of the drawers being made.
It was then I noticed I’d forgotten something. How the heck was I going to align the drawer runners one the case. The runners were just strips of cheery. Ideally I would have routed in grooves in the case as well as the drawers but I hadn’t. So to say it was a bit fiddly to get the runners in the right place would be an understatement.
Eventually I managed it and with a few dabs of CA they were held in place.

A few bits of felt on the bottom of the drawers and the assembly was finished.

Everything was sanded down to 320Grit.
Finish wise I put 3 coats of danish oil and around half a dozen coats of black bison to give it a nice sheen.

I did try to make some little knobs for the drawers but that went horribly wrong. Time ran out before xmas so some kind of knob will be added later.

There are a couple of things I want to change/improve on my TS200 table saw.
First 2 things on the list are:

zero clearence insert

extraction

guard

I’ve got some 3mm Al from fleabay for the insert – just need to get around to cutting it to size. This is likely going to mean making some changes to the riving knife – I can see no way that it’ll fit through the hole once the insert is in place.

Extraction and guard is something I need to think more about. It’s not going to change until I get the new saw station built – that’s for sure. The guard will be removed (permanently) from the riving knife. It’ll be brought in on a pole type arrangement. My first thoughts were to have the pole drop down from the roof – that way it’ll never be in the way when cutting sheets. However, since the saw station will be moveable dropping from the roof simply ain’t practical.

Well, my littlerat has arrived courtesy of philly.
Just in the process of mounting it onto the wall – pics to follow.

Added:
Had a couple of hours today to get it all mounted on the wall.
First thought was to mount the 24″x5″x2″ bit of wood directly onto the breeze blocks. But, I decided in the end to put a couple of battens up with some 1/2″ board on top then fasted the woodrat board to that. This seems to have worked well and everything is rock solid.

here you can see it all mounted with the Trend T11 on it.
Now I just need time to have a play and check it all works correctly – can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t.

The table saw I have (TS200) doesn’t quite fit correctly on my mobile station. The station was thrown together very quickly as a stop gap so it wasn’t really designed as such.

I’ve decided it’s time to do things correctly – or at least better.

Things I want/need from the station:
1. It must be mobile – ie on wheels.
2. The final height of the table saw bed should be the same as all the other benches – this would allow any bench to be used as an extension support or outfeed table.
3. There should be a draw underneath the table saw to collect the dust that tends to always get missed by the extraction system.
4. The side extension needs some support as well.

Now, under the dust draw I intend creating some shelving – just for putting odds and sods on, or perhaps various jigs.
I was contemplating putting drawers under where the extension is. But I think I’ve come up with a better use for that space – a drum sander . Now, I can’t afford to buy a 24″ drum sander, but I might be able to fabricate one. There’s nothing really complicated about a drum sander. It’s just a drum (to which is attached sand paper) with a pulley on one end. The pulley is connected to a motor. A flat board is used as the bed, it has a piano hinge at the back end and an adjuster at the front edge.

Now how hard can that be ?
I’ve a sneaky suspicion it might be a lot more difficult than I first imagined.

My drum sander will be based on this.
One thing I can’t see at the moment is how to make the actual drum itself. I can see a ‘fairly’ easy way to make the wooden bit (which the sand paper fixes to) but how to fit the wooden part to a shaft – nothing springs to mind at the moment. Hmmmm, thinking about it, does the shaft need to be round ? Fitting a square shaft would be quite easy – but then you’ve got the problem of fitting the pulley on the end.

I suppose one way would be to use a solid 1″ square Aluminium shaft, find someone with a lathe and turn the ends to the correct diameter. A bearing at one end would take care of that and a keyway in the other should take care of mounting the pulley.

Now the only question is would I really use a drum sander – that’s something I’m not sure about.

Materials:
The actual station will be made of a mixture of stuff.
I need to sit down and get an idea of what sort of amounts of wood I’ll need for the framework. Board wise will just be MDF. Currently I’ve hardly any spare MDF in the shop so I’ll probably buy in a few boards. The majority will be 12mm I think. The MDF isn’t going to be needed as for structural bits as the strength will be provided by the actual framework. I’d imagine that a single 8×4 board will be enough.