Flem, you should document your inventions. You have a lot of good ideas.
Dave.

Yes indeed the bales are insulation. Damn good insulation too! Also make great rodent habitat.

Thanks Dave, but most of my ideas are not inventions, only creations.

What?? Am I the only goofball who cobbles crap together?
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Well here is another creation. I made this Sled/Shooting board jig years ago to deal with some fancy grain wood that was getting washboarded going thru the drum sander. It's mostly MDF offcuts. The bed to the right of the sled, is not fixed and is shimmed for thickness. The 2 sets of 1/4" strips are placed on the inside edges of the sled for the stock removal tools to ride on. One set is tapered, the other parallel. The Al strips and other odd pieces go under the bed to shim for thickness. The bed has sandpaper glued down to keep the lams from slipping. It's very accurate, more so than machine tapered lams, in fact I true up all my lams with this jig after milling. It is slow but gets the job done. This would be a decent setup for someone who wants to make their own lams but does not have a machine sander. Couple of things to note, one is everything must be square, flat and planar. The other thing is, the rails are a wear item and need to be checked and replaced when worn. Even materials like MDF, which appear to be very uniform, have defects and need to be checked carefully to insure the accuracy of the jig

Flem you impress the chit out of me wif all your homemade tools.

Other than that I guess yer just ok:)

That is an awesome idea. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
You might get more life out of the rails if you make them out of uhmw plastic.
Dave.

 

Thats a great idea Dave! It would also reduce the friction, which I start to notice after working a dozen lams. I do try to keep all the sliding surfaces shellacked and waxed.

Something I have thought about for this jig is a mini drum that could slide along the rails. Kind of like a handheld planer.

Actually, a hand held electric plane would be a great idea. It would make short work of a set of lams.
Dave.

Speaking of electric planers, I recently bought an inexpensive one for a job I have to do in the basement. I have to flatten the osb sub floor that swelled a bit when it got wet. I'm thinking of attaching the little planer to a base to use it as a mini jointer for bamboo.
Dave.

The only hand held planers I have used were good for hogging wood. I think they would have chewed up something less than 1/8" thick.

I have an electric hand planer.  Still haven't found a job for it but maybe It could work in your jigamathing.

I don't use mine a lot. It really shines if you build doors. My Dad taught me to build doors with through mortises and wedges. Planing by hand is difficult, but a power plane does a beautiful job. I have a good one with a curved blade for this. The cheap one I just bought can be used where I would never use an expensive one. It should make a good mini jointer.
Dave.

Oh, and boat builders like them for working on planking. 😁
Dave.

In the spirit of Dave's original post, here is a cardboard shroud for my 2X 72 belt grinder (homemade also)
I have some G-10 (also homemade) to grind flat and the stuff is so nasty to deal with. The dust sticks to everything. I have a set of clothes for glass grinding only. I am hopeful the shroud with limit the dust float. I even coated all the surfaces I can get to with Top Cote, including the cardboard! Love the material, loathe the dust
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Flem, do you have plans for your grinding machine. Looks like it would be good for knife making.

Funny you should ask Pat, because thats one reason I made it. The other was I wanted an edge sander, but not a stand alone machine.
I can get by with this 2" unit, because i make straight limb bows. In the horizontal position I have 24" of platen to work on.

This is what it looks like vertically. The table comes off and gets bolted onto the upright angle iron, for horizontal use
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X2 on the grinder plans if you don't mind. I have two or three motors and I have been wanting a knife grinder.
Dave.

There are hundreds of videos and tutorials on making 2 X 72" belt grinders. I watched them all. Then I let all that stew around with my inventory of crap and waited for an idea to gel. So no plans, just knew that it had to serve multiple purposes and be from materials on hand.
It's literally made from a bizarre collection of random pieces from bins and piles. I did buy the skateboard wheels.
Here is a pic of the framework
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Flem that one looks pretty easy build