:-) Making things is fun.
My father-in-law, Stu, is a former shop teacher. He likes making things, and probably likes teaching others how to make things even more. He’s made me a fabulous workbench, and decided it was high time I learned about power tools.
Now, I’ve spent years watching Norm Abrams’s New Yankee Workhop, marveling at the things Norm can do with his keen eye, instincts, and…uh…$100k of power tools.
So, Stu had a project for us: Build some peg-boards to mount tools on. Sounds simple enough, but for a guy who’s never used a table saw, it was pretty neat!
First, we ripped 4 pine two-by-fours on the table saw to make eight 1.5" pieces, then we ran the milled edges across a joiner to even-up the edges. If you’ve never seen a joiner, imagine a steel ‘L’, only the L is 3D and about 2.5 feet long with a steel blade in the middle at the bottom of the L. The whole works reminded me of an angry beaver, trying to rip off my fingers as we used it :-)
But hey, that’s half the fun.
then lowered the blade to cut a 1/2 groove in each to hold the peg-board. We then used the radial arm to cut each piece to length
Aside: Proper use & employment of a radial arm:
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Place your right hand firmly on the handle controlling the blade assembly
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With your left hand unlock the blade assembly
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With your left hand, turn on the saw.
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Brace the wood with your left hand firmly against the fence, AWAY FROM THE BLADE
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With your right hand, guide the blade assembly out the arm and through the piece and back, completing the cut.
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Turn it off with your left hand
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Lock it back in place with your left hand
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ONLY then, remove your right hand.
Tip: DON’T TAKE YOUR RIGHT HAND OFF THE BLADE ASSEMBLY. Stu, in his quiet, instructive way, drilled that in my head. :-)
Radial arm:
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Then we learned how to make a lap joint. I was a bit ahead of the game here, having used a carpenter’s square + pencil before. Gotta get one of those myself soon. Had a few ’light bulb’ moments there. :-)
So, after everything was joined, screwed, and glued, I thought it was downhill from there. Then Stu mentioned we’d be trying out his new belt sander. Here’s one exactly like what he has–3"x21":
Things I learned about belt sanders:
1. They’re evil
2. They’re hard to use
3. Don’t ever just sit one on a worksurface with 80 GRIT SANDPAPER :-(
4. They work much better when you put them on the work, then turn them on, so you don’t rock back-and-forth.
I got much better with it as I progressed through the piece, but there is a nice dip on one corner.
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Overall, how AWESOME it was…reminded me very much of building things with dad, though we mostly did rough construction around the farm.