What's On Your Workbench?

[Bruce Johnson]

I have a lot to get done, so of course, I procrastinate by making a new crosscut sled

View attachment 5345516

Looks good, but......Don't forget to add the safety guards. A small wooden box on the front, which covers up the blade as it comes out the front of the fence. That's really important for preserving your fingers. And some kind of blocker beam covering the blade's path through the middle of the sled.

 

[tubedude]

No tools, just a Jaguar that needed
a new nut.

 

[mapleglo]

New chuck fit perfectly and installed easily and quickly. Holds an 1/8" bit perfectly. Best $20 I've spent, and saved me at least $150. Thanks everyone for all your help and advice! Now I'm ready to drill more holes!

 

[Ripthorn]

I finished up another one of these. It's my PT2399 interpretation of the EP-3, complete with 24V jfet preamp. Sounds fantastic!

 

[eddododo]

I have a tabletop from a contractor saw (Ryobi) that’s been glumming around forever. I may use the fence for my bandsaw, and there is useful hardware and knobs to scavenge.. but the tabletop seems like there must be SOME kind of clever use for it. I’d give it back it’s fence for a good cause

who has a good idea to make use of it?

who has an amazing idea to make use of it?

 

[Lo-E]

I have a tabletop from a contractor saw (Ryobi) that’s been glumming around forever. I may use the fence for my bandsaw, and there is useful hardware and knobs to scavenge.. but the tabletop seems like there must be SOME kind of clever use for it. I’d give it back it’s fence for a good cause

who has a good idea to make use of it?

who has an amazing idea to make use of it?

Router table?

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Here's an odd job on my workbench.......A fretless guitar!

I told you about my friend Touch Singleton, who is a serious jazz guitarist and Luthier. He's retiring from Luthierie to become a full time (retired) musician in Malaysia. He sold off his entire shop to my buddy Ellis.

Anyway, he's always wanted to mess around with the idea of a fretless guitar. If anyone can play one effectively, he can. He's good. So he had a leftover neck and body and parts.....He put on a purpleheart fingerboard, and sent it over to me....to cut the nut slot and put in partial white lines.

Yes, it's a reverse headstock neck.

Here's my technique for doing the partial lines:

Here's the neck set up in my slotting saw. I've taped a scrap strip of maple down to the fingerboard, to act as a blocker bar.

The shoe beside the blade hits the maple and kicks up, stopping the slots at relatively uniform length...

Then over on the bench, I lay down a strip of masking tape as a guideline, and gently hand saw each slot up to meet the line.

Little rectangles of 0.020" white styrene plastic, cut with scissors and glued in with CA glue. Then clipped off and filed flush.

 

[Flamingo21]

The shoe beside the blade hits the maple and kicks up

What part is called the "shoe"?

 

[Bruce Johnson]

What part is called the "shoe"?

On my fret slotting saw, I've mounted a curved wooden block right next to the blade. It's cut to a radius 0.100" smaller than the radius of the saw blade. That's the Shoe. It's a depth stop. It gently slides across the surface of the fingerboard, following the radius, and limits the depth that the saw blade cuts the slot.

It has the same function as the straight strip of Lexan on the side of a straight hand slotting saw.

You can use this same method with the blocker bar to cut partial slots with a hand slotting saw. The depth stop strip on the side of the saw will lift the saw up when it hits the blocker bar.

 

[13ghosts]

Here's an odd job on my workbench.......A fretless guitar!

I told you about my friend Touch Singleton, who is a serious jazz guitarist and Luthier. He's retiring from Luthierie to become a full time (retired) musician in Malaysia. He sold off his entire shop to my buddy Ellis.

Anyway, he's always wanted to mess around with the idea of a fretless guitar. If anyone can play one effectively, he can. He's good. So he had a leftover neck and body and parts.....He put on a purpleheart fingerboard, and sent it over to me....to cut the nut slot and put in partial white lines.

Yes, it's a reverse headstock neck.

View attachment 5347559

Here's my technique for doing the partial lines:

View attachment 5347555

Here's the neck set up in my slotting saw. I've taped a scrap strip of maple down to the fingerboard, to act as a blocker bar.

View attachment 5347556

The shoe beside the blade hits the maple and kicks up, stopping the slots at relatively uniform length...

View attachment 5347557

Then over on the bench, I lay down a strip of masking tape as a guideline, and gently hand saw each slot up to meet the line.

View attachment 5347558

Little rectangles of 0.020" white styrene plastic, cut with scissors and glued in with CA glue. Then clipped off and filed flush.

Maybe I'll use this approach for the side/dots. Hmmm.... I had looked at Luminlay, but that's outrageously expensive.

 

[Beej]

Maybe I'll use this approach for the side/dots. Hmmm.... I had looked at Luminlay, but that's outrageously expensive.

Side note - a single stick of luminlay will do at least four guitars, sometimes five, depending on the dots and how short you cut them. When you break it down across instruments, it doesn't seem as pricey.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Also, you can make up your own luminescent side dots. It's not hard at all. You can buy the luminescent powder in various colors at art supply stores.

The cruder way to make the dots is to drill the holes in the neck, pour in some powder, and fill the hole with CA glue. It works, but the dots may be a little rough and uneven in brightness.

The better way is to pre-cast the dots in epoxy, in a silicone mold. Then glue them into the holes in the neck.

We covered the process in some thread here not too long ago.....If I remember right.....

 

[Flamingo21]

Some glue ups are difficult to clamp, because of odd shapes. So you weight them instead. Here's an old hand plane weighting a part of a marble track.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Also, you can make up your own luminescent side dots. It's not hard at all. You can buy the luminescent powder in various colors at art supply stores.

The cruder way to make the dots is to drill the holes in the neck, pour in some powder, and fill the hole with CA glue. It works, but the dots may be a little rough and uneven in brightness.

The better way is to pre-cast the dots in epoxy, in a silicone mold. Then glue them into the holes in the neck.

We covered the process in some thread here not too long ago.....If I remember right.....

So I've tried that in the past and I had a lot of trouble keeping the powder out of the surrounding wood grain. Any tips on preventing that? Other than "pour steadier"?

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I had a lot of trouble keeping the powder out of the surrounding wood grain.

Precast in a mold as Bruce suggested there, or precast into sections of tubing (and leave the tubing in place.)

Either way a glue (no sharp point) applicator syringe would likely prove helpful. I don't expect it would solve the issue if you don't precast and harden the epoxy/glowy matrix before putting in the neck. But it would be very handy for getting that mostly in the tubes or molds as opposed to all over the place.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

So I've tried that in the past and I had a lot of trouble keeping the powder out of the surrounding wood grain. Any tips on preventing that? Other than "pour steadier"?

Like T_Bone said, that's the reason for pre-casting the luminescent powder into neat little cylinders of resin..

My late Luthier friend Mike Lipe tried the pour-in-place technique for a while, using the powder and CA glue. One trick he did was to lightly pre-coat the walls of the hole with CA glue and let it dry first. Then, pour in the powder, dust off any spilled powder around the rim, and carefully drip the CA glue down into the hole. No Activator, let the CA glue cure at its own speed. That was the best technique we worked out for pour-in-place. But the dots were still misshapen and fuzzy looking.

I helped him work out the pre-cast method. I made up a silicone rubber mold with a row of little cylindrical pockets. We'd pour the powder into each pocket, about halfway full. Drip in some West Systems epoxy and let it cure. Pulled out of the mold, they were nice uniform dimensions and an even mix of the powder in the resin. They were installed in the neck just like normal plastic or pearl dots; set into a hole with CA glue. The dots were very precise and round and looked great. And they were usually a little brighter than the Lumilays. Mike and I put them in at least a hundred of his guitars. They were a really popular thing for a while. He usually had me cast up the dots.

Edit: I should mention that some enterprising individual could make up and sell those pre-cast luminescent side dots as a hobby business. They are very easy to make.

 

[rojo412]

It's not on my bench, but it's near it...

I honestly don't know what it is, as generations of Shopsmiths go. And I definitely think it's missing a lot of attachments. But it was free!

 

[TerribleTim68]

It's not on my bench, but it's near it...

View attachment 5351261 View attachment 5351262

I honestly don't know what it is, as generations of Shopsmiths go. And I definitely think it's missing a lot of attachments. But it was free!

Judging from the tables, it's a Mark V 500. Those are the earlier versions, they went into production in 1953 and were eventually replaced by the 510 in 1985. The 510 has a larger table and a better fence/guiderail system. You clearly have the band saw, it would have come with a 12" disk sander as well.
judging from the finish on it, I'd hazard a guess that it's one of the models introduced around 1962, which also included an upgraded motor boasting 1-1/8 hp over the older 3/4 hp motors. It's basically the same power head that is on my 510, you just have a smaller table and a "less good" fence system.
It'll work as a drill press, and actually does quite well in that mode. It can be a lathe, but it's probably the worst lathe I've ever turned on. Of course, it can be a table saw, but I refuse to use it for beveled cuts. It can be a horizontal boring machine, which is basically using it as a drill press without tilting it in the upright position. And if you had the 12" disk sander, that would be your "5th" operation of the "Mark V".
I have an older 500 just like that, that I also got for free, and my plan is to just convert it to a permanent drill press -

However, any ShopSmith "SPT" (special purpose tool) such as the 6" belt sander, 4" jointer, bandsaw, strip sander, scroll saw, jigsaw and 12" thickness planer will couple to yours, so if you run across something, it'll work.

If you want to dive way too far into the YouTube ShopSmith world, check out "My Growth Rings", he used to work for ShopSmith and has a ton of info on them -
https://www.youtube.com/@MyGrowthRings

 

[Lo-E]

Here's an old hand plane weighting a part of a marble track.

View attachment 5350805

Oh, man... clean the rust off of that, tune it up and use it! Such a nice, old tool.

Just yesterday I was using that big, wooden jointer plane that I showed here a few months ago as I was making a new tote for it. It's a workout to use that thing but it's just so quiet and the cleanup is so easy.... I think it's really the quiet that draws me to hand tools.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

It's not a greenie, so not the earliest of the Mark V series (1953-6?) And it's not a brownie, so not the later ones.

Without going hog-wild on buying attachments I don't see, they make a decent drill press, and significantly also a horizontal boring machine. Also a great drive for a Beall buff set.

Always return the speed to slow while running before stopping - and don't adjust while stationary. The Reeves drive is easy to break if you try to do the latter. If power goes out or whatever, turn by hand while slowly dialing the speed down. Mechanically it's not over-fond of starting in high speed range.