Thank you, I'll try to show y'all the woodwork stuff especially. I just started carving with an axe and an adze for the first time today, it was really fun - so much more physically "immediate" than fine furniture type work. I need to find a source for freshly cut logs, though, that's proving to be much harder than I would've thought. Not to mention that two out of every three trees in this region seem to be white or red oak, and I'd really prefer to work with something that isn't like carving fucking stone! I just got filmed last week for a documentary about people working to connect others, if that ever actually becomes a thing I'll link that here, as well.
Just placed an order for one of these last night: https://www.ivacswitch.com/ivac-fill-level-meter/ It's a Dust Collector Fill Level Meter... mounts to the underside of your extraction container, and shows a multi-coloured LED based on how full/empty it is. My current home-brew system has a fucked up attempt at a clear section so I can theoretically see how full the bin is, but it is never clear enough or bright enough to really see, so this should help out quite a bit on that front. It'll be interesting to see how well it works.
Hm. I was going to share some of my students' midterm projects, I'm wicked proud of them. But I'm also old as dirt and apparently don't know how to use this fancy contraption - I can't just upload a bunch of pics, apparently. Where do y'all host your pics to link them here?
You should be able to upload them... they just can't be bigger than 5mb each. Just click on the "upload a file" and select the pics, or drag them into the textbox of a new post.
Hmm. Last one won't load. It's 2.2MB, but the system says it's too big. Oh, well. That's it for now, then. Those were my undergrads. They're a buncha badass little knuckleheads.
Not sure if anyone is looking to spend crazy money on tools, but thought you might want to know that there is a bit of a Special going on with Festool right now. Yes, you read that correctly... "special" and "Festool" in the same sentence. They've released a limited edition "Emerald" line to celebrate their 20 years in North America, and as such they're offering some of their tools in fancy coloured cases, but more importantly, with some free add-ons. I just picked up the router, and it got me almost $200 in free add-ons, which is nothing to sneeze at. I got my new router from Lee Valley... but I figured they'd be running the special wherever you buy Festool. https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/search?query=festool+emerald
i wished i would of known about that sander they released under another model, half price it was gone within days and they never released it again.
Been in Tokyo for a week. Just made my way to a custom chisel and saw shop. Got myself a killer framing chisel, a pull saw, and a scraper block plane. It was incredible watching the guy build stuff in the smallest show room I’ve ever seen.
My Christmas week project is to build a workbench. Anyone done it before and used some decent specs they found?
Depends on what you want to use it for. Do you want to have a chisel/carver's bench with lots of weight, vices, bench dogs? Or are you looking for more of an assembly table. Personally, I kind of built my own version of a cross-breed bench, that was on wheels, has an easily replaceable top, some t-tracks inlayed in the surface for some handy clamping, and had various drawers under it. I also had a sliding platform on one end that I keep my thickness planer on.
Probably a clamp on the end, tool peg board on the wall-side, and maybe an open shelf on the bottom. More of an all-purpose/assembly table.