small wood projects: almost

?I bought a vise at Harbor Freight with another 20% off coupon. Its another one of those small projects that
ended up being more work than I expected.
Its not the best one in the world but it is definitely better than no vise. I hate having no vises....

The clamping mechanism ended up being a little smaller than I expected.

I placed the vice in position and marked where the lower clamp needed to go in.

The lower mech is 1" wide so I used a 1.25" Forstner bit to make a hole.

I opened the bottom with my cordless jigsaw.

I tried to square it off with my jigsaw and then a file. I put a corded jigsaw on my Christmas list along with a dado set for my tablesaw.

This is what it looks like from the inside.

I screwed in a piece of 2x4 to brace the part where I cut and to have extra support for where I screw vice down into the top of the workbench.

I predrilled the mounting holes down into the extra 2x4 brace.

Not neccessarily my cleanest install but it will do the job.

I pre drilled the holes into the 2x4 brace but not into the the workbench itself. This bit shattered when the screw hit the workbench wood. I drilled out the remaining 3 holes into the workbench and had no more issues.

Installed and ready for use. I am debating on whether I want to mount some pieces of wood to the inside of the vice or not. I will probably end up doing it just because I get bored.

The Mallet is almost done! Finally

Jumat, 12 Februari 2016

I was finally able to work a little bit more on the mallet this past weekend.? All I need to do now is cut off the excess wood from the wedges and give it a final sanding and then apply some boiled linseed oil and it will be finished!

I made a quick jig to cut the slots for the wedges to go into.

I cut the wedges for the top of the handle at 5 degrees. Next time I think that I will try 3 or 4 degrees.
5 ended up being just a little too big.

I bought enough wood to make 2 mallets so this is the piece that I am going to
use to make the head of the 2nd mallet. It is the same species that I used for the handle of
my current mallet.

I bought a drum sander kit at Lowes to shape the handle. It is amazing what 50 grit sandpaper can do!
I shaped it with the 50 and then smoothed it with 80 and then 120.

It fits in my hand nicely!

I filed the shoulder down a little so that the head would fit snugly and then sanded everything with
the orbital sander with 120 grit sandpaper.

I glued the head onto the handle and then the wedges into the slots.

The ice chest cooler box is almost done!

Rabu, 03 Februari 2016

In the last post I had cut all the pieces to size and glued the legs and clamped the pieces up to dry. I got pretty sick so they ended up in the clamps for about 5 days and dried out pretty good. I took them out of the clamps and put a chamfer on all the sides that needed it. I sanded everything to 60 grit to lessen the chance of splinters. It was then just a matter of gluing and screwing everything together.

I love my new Craftsman router table. I am so glad that I returned that Ryobi table.