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I've got a friend at church who owns 2 very successful businesses, one of which is woodworking related. Consequently, he's got quite a bit of nice equipment. He approached me after church one day to see if I had need for a Shop Fox edge sander. I, of course, told him I did, so I went to his house yesterday and brought this home.



It's never been set up or turned on and still had the plastic on it. The best part? He GAVE it to me. For FREE!
I told him there's no way I could thank him enough. He said he just wanted to bless me with it and hopes that I get good use out of it.

So I got it put together last night and figured I'd try to assemble a fretboard radius jig today. I kept looking at the Grizzly unit, but it wouldn't mount to this machine. And besides, $300 is quite a bit of money for me at the moment. Being the tinkerer I am, I spent 2 hours and $65 at Lowe's and came up with this:

-- 1/2" black pipe (which they cut into two 24" sections and two 6" sections)
-- 2 floor flanges
-- 1.5" square tubing
-- 1/2"-13 x 36" all-thread
-- two 1/4" x 2.5" eye bolts
-- six 1/2" nuts
-- two 1/2" PVC compression T fittings



First I screwed the 24" pipe into the floor flanges.


And screwed the 6" pipe into the T section of the compression fittings.


In order for the compression fittings to slide onto the 24" section of pipe, I needed to thin the rubber bushings.





And then I put the compression fittings back together and slid them onto the pipe.





Then I drilled 1/4" holes in the 6" sections of pipe.


And inserted the eye bolts.





Then I cut my square tubing to proper length - 24"


And inserted the all-thread with a bolt in either side.





Then I attached everything to a base. I inserted the top of the all-thread into the eye bolts and secured with 1/2" nuts. I still need 2 more, though, so I can have 1 nut on both sides of the eye bolts to lock everything together.



Now I loosen the compression fittings and slide each side to the appropriate radius, then attach the fretboard to the bottom side of the tubing and swing to sand. This should take me about 30 seconds as opposed to 4 hrs. I'm pretty pumped.

Man o man! Nice thing to happen to you.

Sweet!

Btw, what is NTD? Sure it's an acronym for something

New Tool Day...

I was wondering about that myself.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Is that dust that I can see on the base in the first photograph? I would send it back

No kiddin'. He was incredibly generous.







Yep, you got it.


I thought about it, but it's so danged heavy, and I just hated to have to load it back into the van

I took it for the maiden spin yesterday, and I'm pretty happy with the radius jig. I need to do a few tweaks, but it's going to be a great time-saver for me.

I'm digging the ball holder things in the corner.
So, I reckon the two ends swinging in different arcs lets you do a compound radius?
That's quite clever, Roger!

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