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New Tool What's it For?

New Tool What's it For?

Thicknessing sides, backs & tops.

And nicely done I must add....Don Williams38580.8910763889

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I agree with Don, it must be for planing/thicknessing

Looks great! Simple and straight forward. Does it work as good as it looks?

Too busy to try it. Needs bumper blocks to keep it from going off the track. Then some type of hold downs and it's set. Easy as pie to make. Thanks Shane Neifer for the revelation that a regular bandsaw blade cuts aluminum like crazy. It really does.

Materials: some flat stock 1/8" aluminum, cut with bandsaw, then hole saw a 1 1/2" hole in the middle, remove plastic base, duplicate hole pattern, screw onto router.

The rails are 1 inch by 1/8" aluminum L stock, 48" cut in half, so 24 long. The rollers are patio door rollers with ballbearings. The aluminum base is 8" square, and the side angles are 8" long too. All nuts are sealed with CA after tightening.

The base is a formica covered particle board cabinet top leftover. Then the sides are four" by 1/2" thick spacers. Bolts are 1/4" by 20 by 2", (8) The rollers fit down nicely over the top of the 1/8" angle. Weight seems to be good, for not climbing out of the setup. We'll see, more later.Dickey38580.9299074074

Wow, great idea Bruce! If that really works as good as it looks, you could make a bundle from hobby builders like myself who only build 2-3 a year. I'd seriously consider skipping the drum sander for a tool like that if it works well.

Cheers!

John

A copy of a copy, may not work as well as Greven's, but better maybe than the one that rides on round rods. Don't know yet. Maybe in a few days the dust will settle and I'll get to try it.

I made close to the same thing awhile back. My version has another set of tracks running perpendicular to the bottom ones so you can cover more surface area before having to reposition the workpiece. Works pretty well. I made mine out of the material at hand in my shop- maple slats about 3/8" thick. You`re right about hold downs. I used wedges on the sides and tapped them into place (tight, but not so tight as to bow the workpiece. Just had to really be on my toes to make sure things didn`t shift on me. Drawback-sloow, and you have to watch runout and make climbing cuts.

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Thanks for sharing that, Bruce. Very helpful.

Wow Bruce!! As I say to my wife everytime I finish off one of these little jigs, etc. "Vinney better look out cause the Tuttles (Sp) may be getting a new fabricator! (American Chopper)." Then my wife always informs me that Vinney is in no danger from me!! She knows how to hurt a guy! But here is the kind of things you can do with common woodworking tools, table saw, chopsaw, router table, drill press, bandsaw, oh ya and a tap and die set:





By day I am a mild mannered safety guy so I have a couple of things to say about working with aluminum. First a word on grinding it....DON'T!!! Aluminum is a non-ferrous metal and most grinding wheels are not designed to grind these metals. The aluminum will clog the wheel causing it to over heat with high potential for the stone flying apart at 5,000 rpm. We have a couple of serious injuries a year from this in British Columbia and every once in while someone gets hit in the wrong spot and dies. Use your belt sander, you will get much better results, much faster and much safer. All of your carbide tools will cut aluminum, just take it slow and hold things tight. It makes a horrible racket when you are used to cutting wood but everything will turn out great. When routing slots, like on the dremel jig above, just do a series of small passes and use stop blocks on your router table. Making these jigs is a lot of fun and you can actually make very high accuracy tools with a bit of imagination and all of the tools you probably already have! Thanks Bruce for keeping everyone going on these things.

Shane

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Canada

Shane, that's some nice work with aluminum. When you shared that with me, I saw immediate possibilities. Nice looking tool.

A problem with the circle cutters is micro adjustment. I want to make one with a built in dial caliper, so micro adjustments will be a snap to get perfect cuts.
Your tool above should be put into Jigs and Tools section of the OLF so others can see the idea of shaping aluminum with a bandsaw.

Evidently you use tablesaw and router too on aluminum? Is that right?

Note on operation: This router/planer is intended to be used on only one half a back or side at a time. It's purpose is to relieve the excess wood from oily woods like cocobolo or resinous Indian.

You can ruin $26 dollars of new abrasive on a drum sander in twenty seconds. This is the impetus for making it. So it's not intended for finaly thicknessing, just excess material removal. Then over to the drum sander. Greven goes from here to a DA sander to get rid of the router marks, so I've heard.

Wood will slip under the rails and be repositioned with each pass of the router. You might have to cycle over and back so it cuts only on the first pass in the right direction.Dickey38581.385775463

DA sander?... sorry my brain is not in high gear yet today.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

dual action-orbital and rotary

Dual Action

Oops, Brad beat me to it.

Don Williams38581.4051388889

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Question - what keeps the router bit from grabbing the wood and flinging it across the room?

Hey Bruce,

I thought of a dial guage, I saw that someone did that, maybe in tools and jigs section. But I found that I can index off the square edge at the front of the router base and the sliding thingy (getting technical now, hold on!). So once I have my first dimension set I can measue with my digital calipers, then zero them on that measurement and add the bit that I have left to do. I have only used it once so far but found that I could get within .002" without any mucking around. Close enough for the girls that will dance with me.

As for other tools, yup, any carbide cutter will standup to aluminum (the machinests around this forum will porbably tell us that any tool steel will, but I only have experience with carbide). I actually have a table saw blade designed to cut non-ferrous metals. But on occasion, when I have one of my not so nice saw blades on the saw and only have one or two aluminum cuts to make I just use a regular combination blade on the table saw.

Hey Bruce,

On your jig do you have something that holds the wood down adjacent to the cutter? Like some sort of hold down cleats or something?

Shane

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Canada

No hold downs currently. I will add some though, just makes good sense. Someone said Greven just holds his down with his hand as he pushes it through the device. I'd like to add some pinch rollers like a drum sander or something like the roller hold downs for table saws. Someone posted those the other day.

[QUOTE=Dickey] I'd like to add some pinch rollers like a drum sander or something like the roller hold downs for table saws. [/QUOTE]

Sounds like a perfect job for a vacuum hold-down of some sort.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

So Bruce... What kind of bit will you be using??
Spiral???

Gary

Gary, nothing yet, but probably a carbide with a square cutter side and bottom, maybe 1/2 inch or so wide, maybe larger cause you only use 1/2 the width of the cutter anyway. So a one inch cutter head might be just right. Just thinking out loud, but we seem to have a lack of experience. Stay tuned.

RLabbe, hopefully you got a hold on the darn thing. one axis is covered by the walnut rub blocks, another is actually covered by the downward force of the router backed by the bottom of the cavity. The third axis should be addressed for sure. Or it just might get flung across the shop into a guitar or some body.... ? Yikes!

I considered a feed mechanism, but it appeared to complicate the design quite a bit. I love the conveyor on a drum sander, something like that would be great.

Dave, a vacuum hold down would have to be released after each pass, so you could feed it in. but it would clamp it down wouldn't it.