2015 POTD Thread Archive

[chevydyl]

Your right dan, I made mine just cause it was a fun project to do, and when I need it, I have it. Although I haven't made any clamps yet for it lol

 

[uncle harry]

My nemesis was an 8" table saw from Montgomery Wards. When a teenager, my younger brother asked me to make a cage for his pet chameleon and I was ripping some strips. The power switch was mounted on the motor behind and below the saw. I reached over to shut it off and caught the blade with my right hand. A neighbor lady drove me to the edge of town but she wouldn't go further because she didn't have a drivers license so she left me at a filling station. It happened to be the first day of gun deer season and a hunter pulled in with his buck. He kindly offered to drive me to the hospital. When we got to admissions, the clerk took one look at the blood soaked towel wrapped around my hand and the blood cover clothes of the successful deer hunter and let out a gasp. I explained that it wasn't a hunting accident and we set about scheduling a session in the ER. Forty stitches and some bandages later and I was ready to go home.

Fortunately, the blade only had about an 1/8" exposed or it could have much worse. As it turned out, I ended up with one thumb shorter than the other by an 1/8" and a bit of numbness in two finger tips. The one good thing that happened as a result was that my freshman English teacher took pity on my bandaged right hand and excused me from writing a term paper. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was left handed.

To this day, I have a healthy respect for table saw, particularly when ripping. I have a 10" hybrid cabinet saw now and whenever I am ripping, I make it a point to hook two or more fingers over the rip fence as a safeguard against inadvertently slipping into the blade. Two years ago, our 86 year old next door neighbor sawed off his little finger on his table saw while making Christmas presents for his family. (he drover himself to the ER and the successfully reattached it)

I have had a radial arm saw for almost fifty years and likewise make it a point to consciously place my fingers well away from the blade path. I have had the blade bite in the work but the saw just stalls and I release the trigger and back it. I prefer it for cross cutting long pieces of lumber. Somehow, trimming the end on a 10' 2x4 with a table saw is just not appealing.

The worst one by far though is the large circular saws used in these parts for cutting firewood. With a 30" blade and no guard, they are death and/or dismemberment personified. Usual operation involved one person feeding the log on a carriage into the blade and another grabbing the piece of firewood as it was sawed off. If the the blade hit a knot, the whole There used to be a lot of farmers with the nickname "Stumpy" or "Lefty".

Bob

I still have my Buzz Saw, flat belted. Not a chance in Hades that I'll ever use it again. No bad experiences but I know fully well that they are dangerous. (Buzz saw refers to the firewood saw).

 

[chevydyl]

New end mill day
Here's the part, still trying to figure out how to program my corner round tool so I don't ruin it before I can flip it and cut the back off.
Aren't they beautifully Ferocious..... and thanks CGS for that gorgeous finish.
So the dovetail on the jaws is .085 deep, parts get prepped to .075 deep, that way it draws the part down to the top of the jaws, it doesn't move. Even with the high helix end mills and all their upwards force.

 

[RJSakowski]

I still have my Buzz Saw, flat belted. Not a chance in Hades that I'll ever use it again. No bad experiences but I know fully well that they are dangerous. (Buzz saw refers to the firewood saw).

Mine has not run in more than thirty years.

My saw was powered by a 50hp VW engine driving a gear belt at a 2:1 reduction. It had an electronic governor and would run at around 2,000 rpm. Spinning a 30" blade, that's moving. Those blades were prone to losing teeth every so often. Another reason for the full guard.

My neighbor who cut his finger off had used his buzz saw most of his life. He never had an incident. It was the little table saw that bit him.

 

[Franko]

All of my table saws have scared the crap out of me. I'll not tempt fate by mentioning how many fingers I still have.

 

[FOMOGO]

Very high tech fix today. My trusty 20 yr old Dremel died on me last week and I finally got around to fixing it. I did chuck up the armature in the lathe to clean up the commutator, but duct tape was the real hero here. Some how I misplaced one of the brush retainers so I substituted two nylon washers and some duct tape to replace it.Works like new. Pretty sexy looking, no? Mike

 

[chevydyl]

This part is the monitor arm bracket will Bolt to the ram, and the swivel from the monitor arm shown previously will Bolt to this bracket. I somewhat fingered out how to get my radius cutter to work, although on Mach3 was unable to get my cutter comp to work so I had to change some numbers on the laptop to get the program to push the tool farther away from the part, not 100% happy about that part of it but the bracket did come out nicely.

 

[Franko]

Very high tech fix today. My trusty 20 yr old Dremel died on me last week and I finally got around to fixing it. I did chuck up the armature in the lathe to clean up the commutator, but duct tape was the real hero here. Some how I misplaced one of the brush retainers so I substituted two nylon washers and some duct tape to replace it.Works like new. Pretty sexy looking, no? Mike

Great job of fixing an old friend, Mike. I always feel smarter doing something like that than when I make something new and shiny.

 

[Franko]

This part is the monitor arm bracket will Bolt to the ram, and the swivel from the monitor arm shown previously will Bolt to this bracket.

The part looks great, Chevy. Not having CNC, any part like that looks to me like it was made with magic.

 

[Franko]

Pallets are one of those tools that depend a lot on what type of work you are doing. If you do a lot of small or thin stuff, they are probably incredibly useful, if you are doing a bunch of large stuff, probably not.

I mostly make small parts. It looks like a mini-palet is going to be in my future.