New Cable-Based Vise Improves Woodworking Workshop

May 25, 2015 by Rich Bremer 18 Comments

We are all aware of the typical wood shop vice, the type that is mounted underneath the workbench and takes forever to open and close by continuously spinning a large handle. These vises normally only open several inches due to the length of the operating screw. They are also not very wide because a cantilevered wide jaw would provide less force the further away it is from the center-mounted operating screw.

Wood worker [Andrew] wanted a very versatile and large vise for his shop. It needed to be wide, provide equal clamping force along the jaw and be able to hold very thick objects as well. One more thing, he wanted it to have a quick release clamping system so there would be none of that continuous handle spinning nonsense.

Spoiler Alert: [Andrew] did it! The end product is great but the interesting part is the journey he had taken along the way. There were 4 revisions to the design, each one making the vise just a bit better.

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Smarter-than-wood Saw Blade Makes Perfect Foldable Joints

May 15, 2015 by Rick Osgood 53 Comments

[Andrew Klein] knows the pain of building drawers from plywood. It can be a pain to get all of the pieces measured and cut just right. Then you have to line them up, glue them together, and clamp them perfectly. It’s time-consuming and frustrating. Then one day it hit him that he might be able to make the whole process much easier using a custom saw blade.

The the video below, [Andrew] does a great job explaining how the concept works using a piece of paper. The trick is that the plywood must be cut in a very specific shape. This shape results in the plywood just barely being held together, almost as if it’s hinged. The resulting groove can then be filled with wood glue, and the plywood is folded over on itself. This folding process leaves no gaps in the wood and results in a strong joint. Luckily this special shape can be cut with a specialized saw blade.

This new process removes the requirement of having five separate pieces for a drawer. Instead, only four cuts are needed on a single piece of square plywood. The corners are then removed with a razor blade and all four sides are folded up and into place. [Andrew] shows that his prototype blade needs a little bit of work, but he’s so hopeful that this new invention will be useful to others. Continue reading “Smarter-than-wood Saw Blade Makes Perfect Foldable Joints” →

MRRF: (not Quite) Chocolate Clock

March 21, 2015 by Kristina Panos 25 Comments

[Jason] is a woodworker. At least, he was until he saw his first 3D printer. While he may still work in wood, he particularly likes adapting scroll saw patterns for 3D printing. His clock started as a woodworking pattern for use on a scroll saw. To adapt it for 3D printing, [Jason] scanned the plotter-sized pattern pieces into Inkscape, where he was able to do things like add bevels before sending the pieces to OpenSCAD.

As you might imagine, a great deal of work went into this build, beginning with the scanning. [Jason] starting scanning last October and finished in January. Printing started January 9th, and he told me the final pieces were printed early this morning. We know you want all the details, so here goes: this build took just over six rolls of PLA at 20% infill. It’s 48″ tall and about 24″ wide. It was printed on what [Jason] referred to as his “very modified” Replicator 2. He glued the pieces together with Testor’s, and that took about 30 hours. All through the project, he kept meticulous notes in a spreadsheet of print times and filament used.

We were honored to be among the first to see [Jason]’s incredible clock build at this year’s Midwest RepRap Festival. He would like to take it on tour this year to the nearby Maker Faires. If he can figure out how transport it safely, he’d like to show it at World Maker Faire in NYC.

Using Vacuum Tubes As Immersion Heaters

March 2, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

Fellow Hackaday writer [Ethan Zonca] was doing a little bit of woodworking recently and decided to test ammonia fuming on a small piece of oak. Yes, this means discoloring wood with ammonia vapor, and it’s a real technique. [Ethan] wanted to increase the rate of evaporation of his ammonia solution and decided to make an immersion heater. Out of a vacuum tube.

This is a non-optimal solution to the problem of heating a solution of ammonia – already a bad idea unless you have a fume hood – but it gets better. The vacuum tube was slightly cracked, something easily fixed with a bit of silicone sealant. This was then immersed in an ammonia solution, wired up to a driver board and controlled by a homebrew PID controller. If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.

After getting the ammonia solution up to 30° C, a noxious cloud of ammonia seeped into a piece of oak. This was left overnight, and the result is something that looks like old barn wood, and looks great after some linseed oil is rubbed into it. This is only a test run for fuming an entire desktop this spring, and while that’s a project that will require a real heater (and doing it outside), it’s still a great demonstration of lateral thinking and great woodworking techniques.

A wood router with automated height adjustment

A Router Table With Height Control

February 10, 2015 by Eric Evenchick 17 Comments

The wood router is a versatile power tool which can be picked up at a low price. Nicer router setups are mounted underneath a table, with the cutting head poking through. This makes it easier and safer to work with the tool.

[Paul] combined his interest in electronics and woodworking by making a router table with automated controls [translation]. The neat part of this build is the automated height control, which ensures accurate cutting depth.

The router is mounted to a threaded rod, which allows it to be moved up and down by a motor. A low cost L298 motor driver provides the power to the motor, which is controlled by an Arduino Uno. A VCNL4020 based sensor board is used to measure distance and accurately set the router height. This tiny proximity sensor looks like a nifty chip, providing distance measurements up to 200 mm and an ambient light sensor in one package.

The routing table has an LCD display and buttons, allowing the user to dial in their desired height. The entire thing was built using recycled bits and well under $100 in new parts.

Wood-Only Kart Race Inspires Fancy Wooden Bearings

January 12, 2015 by Matt Freund 47 Comments

The mountainous Italian town of Artena holds an annual soap box derby for wood vehicles – and they mean 100% wood, not a speck of anything else. Fierce competition led [Alessio] to engineering and CNC fabricating these gorgeous wooden roller bearings for the wheels to give him an edge.

Thousands in costume attend the renaissance faire known as “Palio delle contrade di Artena”, and the popular wood-only race is called “La Carettella.” The karts are operated by a two-man team: one in front who brakes, the other in the rear who hops on and off to push as needed throughout the course. There appears to be no steering from the wheels** so turning is also a two-man effort. The wooden levers dragging on the pavement provide some steering from the “driver”, and the push-man often manhandles the entire rear end, drifting where necessary.
The course also includes full-width obstacles like hay bales. Teams are divided by community or “contrada”, and it was [Alessio]’s team captain who came to him with the special request of roller bearings. Unable to find evidence of other wooden bearings, [Alessio] knew he would have to invent them himself – so he did.

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An Expanding Wooden Table

December 7, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

A few years ago, the world of fine woodworking was presented with the Fletcher Capstan table. It’s a round table, able to expand its diameter merely by rotating the top. A gloriously engineered bit of mechanics move the leaves of the tables out while simultaneously raising the inner part of the table. It’s a seriously cool table, very expensive, and something that will probably be found in museums 100 years from now.

[Scott Rumschlag] thought his woodworking skills were up to the task of creating one of these expanding tables and managed to build one in his workshop. Like the Fletcher Capstan table, it’s a table that increases its diameter simply by rotating the table top. Unlike the commercial offering, this one doesn’t cost as much as a car, and you can actually see the internal mechanism inside this table.

The top of [Scott]’s table is made of three pieces. The quarter-circle pieces are the only thing showing when the table is in its minimum position, and are arranged on the top of the ‘leaf stack’. When the table expands, four additional leaves move up from beneath with the help of a linear bearing made of wood and a roller that slides along the base of this mechanical contraption.

The center of the table – the star – is a bit more difficult to design. While the leaves move up the stack of table tops with the help of a ramp, this is an impractical solution for something so close to the center of the table. Instead of a ramp, [Scott] is using a lifting lever and metal hinge that brings the star of the table up to the right level. Even though it’s a crazy amount of woodworking and fine tuning to get everything right, it’s not too terribly difficult to get your head around.

Videos, including one of the assembly of the table, below.

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