Spackle & Sawdust

Over the last couple months things in the shop have been fairly quiet…mainly due to things in the house being more noisy! Of course, our now 5-month-old son Nathan’s an absolute joy and easily the least-demanding baby of the three. This weekend I snuck away for a bit to put the finishing touches on my new hide-away blade storage rack.

Hidden Blade Storage

When I originally designed the shop cabinets, I kept the drawer sizes and placements open figuring I’d work the final dimensions out during the build, letting their ultimate contents dictate their sizes. This worked very well, with one notable exception: two tall and narrow openings on either side of the RAS base cabinet. Early on I was thinking that I might mount some narrow drawers for router bits in this location…but the RAS counter overhang made that impractical and they wouldn’t be in a terribly good location for these frequently-accessed accessoies. Early on these holes began attracting my table saw blades and accessories. So I hit upon the idea of a tuck-away blade storage rack. And here it is….

The design is based on this one I found online from Wood magazine. That plan calls for a 60-degree angle, which looks fine in their photos of 7-1/4″ blades/dado chippers, but wouldn’t work in my cabinet as 10″ blades at that angle take up more width than I had (8″). I built mine at 80-degrees — and, even if you don’t need the “tighter” arrangement, if you plan on storing 10″ blades, I’d advise an angle closer to mine. I’ve uploaded my Google SketchUp sketch for my version in case you’re interested. The article also suggests cutting the slots with a bandsaw or jigsaw. I made a quick jig for the router table and cut them with an 1/8″ straight bit…which made for much straighter, smoother and more consistent cuts than you’d ever get by these other means.

Roll-away Jointer

From the beginning I designed my jointer to “tuck” underneath the shared RAS/CMS counter. This was definitely a good decision, but walking the jointer in and out of its cubby was a bit awkward. A few months back I built a mobile base for it based again on plans I found online…this time from a fellow lumberjock. Instead of swivel casters, I mounted rigid ones on my version that would help track the based appropriately. The early version of this used a simple outrigger in the back with a “pin” that rode in a track in the floor. Unfortunately, this was unsatisfactory as the pin would frequently hang up on the floor at any high point — which meant it required more force to  more the tool than I’d originally envisioned. A couple weeks ago I set out to remedy the situation. I wound up replacing the pin with a small caster. This did the trick, and I can position the jointer with one hand.

Over the years I’ve made many bone-headed mistakes.

Cut a piece too short because I “knew” the measure and didn’t feel the need to consult the drawings I spent hours preparing. Put a dado at the wrong height, the wrong length, or worse, the wrong side! Glue a part on backwards. I’m not quite old enough to say “I’ve made them all,” but by now I’ve definitely made my fair share of them. And while I tend to make fewer and fewer mistakes as time goes by…and thankfully don’t typically make the same mistake more than once (OK…maybe a couple times)…there’s usually at least something that requires special attention (repair, “design-around” or re-do) in just about every project.

This one’s unfortunately no exception.

A few months back, while visiting my folks in Florida, I read a magazine review for something I just had to have. I was so concerned I’d forget about this miracle device that I immediately went online and surrendered $40. It’s called the Wixey Digital Angle Gauge. This is incredibly cool – due to both it’s utility and utter simplicity. Place it on the tool’s table, zero out the measure and then place it on the blade to verify/adjust the angle. Quick, easy, AWESOME! That is, when you actually use it.

This past Saturday I began my day in the shop (after helping my wife with the kids’ breakfast, of course) by cutting out the various parts for the new 22′ long cabinets/work bench/miter saw fence for the shop. After lunch, it was time for assembly. I had cut dadoes for the cabinet bottoms and tops and was looking forward to the satisfaction of dry-assembling the pieces and lightly “banging them home” with a mallet. Things were going swimmingly until I went to attach the top supports. The top was nearly 1″ wider than the bottom!

How could this be???

After some choice words and a bit of grumbling I decided to have a closer look at my tools…and noticed the blade on the table saw read some 2-3 degrees off 90…which led to cabinet bottoms angling the walls a bit beyond their intended target. With the glue already curing and available time short, I decided to basically force the sides square and call it a bench. Truthfully, as mistakes go this one’s not too awful — there’s enough play in the dadoes to allow for the readjustment — but hopefully this will serve as a reminder to verify the dang blade angle before starting a new project; even when it looks 90 degrees.

Oh, and by the way…I also managed to assemble the right-most cabinet mirror-image to the design with the wider drawer compartment closest to the right-hand wall. No matter…I’ll just tell people I planned it that way.