Cyclone Dust Collection Upgrade
- Read Time: 7 mins
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Collecting Dust or at least preventing the distribution of dust in the workshop has been an active topic among woodworkers for a long, long time and I expect it will continue to be as new information, changes in the industry and new methods continue to evolve.
The one thing that hasn't changed is that we all pretty confident that wood dust is not good for us to inhale. We seem to be at odds about how much is safe and which dusts are worse than others, but the safe rule of thumb is NO dust is good and ALL dust should not be inhaled. I think every woodworking shop I have been in has some amount of dust in the air, what we all do is strive to reduce this dust as best we can. One way of reducing dust is with dust collectors.
For smaller shops like mine, a typical dust collector is often a 1.5 and up to a 3 horsepower electric fan that draws dust from our machinery and deposits the dust it into a plastic bag while using an upper cloth bag or composite canister to filter the small particles of dust and return fresh air to the room. These are often not the best, but for many of us they are best we can afford and install, and in recent years they are actually doing a pretty good job. These units with collect and expel dust in one unit are called Single Stage Dust Collectors ...
Making a File Drawer Storage Compainion Box
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I can't image how many unique and custom woodworking projects there must be in this world, millions probably, and now I am going to add one more to that list. I made this because I have never seen anything like this ever displayed or listed for sale anywhere, which mean it's a new design (at least for me).
We seem to spend a lot of our time making storage and organizational things and this is yet another item to add to that list. This particular box is what I am calling a drop box because to put anything into it you have to drop it in from the top and it also includes an upper tray for easy access to things you want quicker and easier access to. Other items for more long term storage are underneath the upper tray that just lifts out. The whole concept of this box is that if fits in any file drawer that also accommodates one of the standard metal or plastic hanging file folder stands. Often these can be purchased as single units or "half" units which leaves the other half of the file drawer empty, which of course means the single is free to slide and move around, plus there a big waste of space that could be otherwise better utilized.
There are no particular features of this box that need further explanation that the video does not already explain. For this unit I used 1/8" plywood for the sides and bottoms, then 1/2" natural wood for the ends. The only word or caution I need to pass along, some file drawers have more room in height than others so you may need to watch the height of your handle, it is possible to make it to high so that the drawer does not close ... otherwise it's another fun, easy to make and super useful little storage box you will use for many, many years.
Copyright Colin Knecht
Woodworkweb.com
Make a Peekaboo Shelf Unit
- Read Time: 4 mins
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Shelving units are very popular, and for good reason, they are a great place to display special items that we have and in so doing they also add a lot to the decor of a room. Many shelving units have backs that make them appear stronger, and perhaps some are, but in most cases they are only holding smaller items so strength is not always needed.
In this build we are build something called a peekaboo shelf unit, probably so named because it is "backless". A very nice design that makes it appear a bit lighter and some even say "airey". What I particularly liked about this shelving unit is the cleat system that not only has a solid locking mechanism to keep it hanging firmly on the wall, the unit is easy to take down and the clean helps to add to the strength of the shelving unit.
For this unit I used standard 3/4" wide wood for everything except the partition between the drawers. I felt that 1/2 inch wide spacers looked better and fit the project a bit better.
How to Make a Pizza Peel
- Read Time: 5 mins
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Making kitchen accessories in your workshop is both fun and rewarding because you can frequently make these items for a fraction of what they cost to purchase and they often last much longer, not to mention they can be made to be far more attractive than the run-of-the-mill commercial versions. For many woodworkers making these kitchen and dining accessories can turn into at least a part time and sometimes even a full time job in making these and selling them at craft fairs, swap meets and farmers markets.
Everyone loves pizza, which is why the Pizza Peel is such a popular item. It's especially valuable if you have younger children or for people who have limited mobility as the peel is a much safer and easier way of removing a pizza from a hot oven. The one I made had a little bit wider handle especially suited for this cause.
In my case I wanted to make mine look a bit more appealing than just using plain wood. I also wanted to laminate my to help make it a little bit stronger. The woods I selected ..
The Lost Art of Fuming Wood for Color
- Read Time: 7 mins
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We are in an age when changing or enhancing the color of wood simply means using one of the fine stains or dyes are readily available. It wasn't all that long ago that the to change or enhance the color of wood was something called Fuming. It's the same thing that mother nature uses, oxidization.
Mother nature does it naturally with oxygen, but we don't have decades to wait, so we can speed up the process with ammonia. The benefits of fuming wood is that you always get a consistent color, no need to worry about dye lots or color names on the can, and the coloring can penetrate the wood up to an eighth of an inch deep for a rich permanent coloration (not longer fuming is required for deeper wood penetration). The disadvantage is that different hues and tones are difficult to control because of differing wood types and length of fuming time and even colors withing the same woods, but we can see these with stains and dyes too.
To fume wood you only need four things, ammonia (more on this later), a plastic or glass (NOT metal) container (with a lid) for the ammonia to aerate from, and some sort of a sealed plastic tent or container in which to fume the wood.
Brushless Drill (Milwaukee) Overview
- Read Time: 5 mins
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For the purposes of this article, there are basically 2 kinds of electric motors, "brushed" and "brushless". Brushed motors have been around for about 150 years, but vast improvements in the early 1900 have left them almost unchanged since then, and for what they are, they are an excellent, efficient motors.
With the invention of the transistors in the 1960s, motor development took another step forward with the invention of the brushless motors. It is only because of higher technologies that these motors can work in a high enough efficiency to make the commercially viable because instant internal switching needs to occur.
Milwaukee of course have taken some of the early steps in this field by producing a series of brushless drills, Impact Wrenches and Hammer Drills.
In Brushed motors, there are something called brushes that make contact with a specific part of the armature of the motor, the part that spins. In a brushless motor there are no brushes, the spinning is done by using permanent magnets and and switching poles internally in the motor in order to make it spin. Here is a great video from Learn Engineering that explains in detail how this works and compares it with brushed motor ....
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