MetalworkingFun Forum

Very kind of you all, without all you fellas sharing your knowledge, the unskilled amateur status would be permanent.

Made boxes to protect some of the recent tooling I've made.

One of us has to move so we can become neighbors.

Just finished remodeling the kitchen, and had a few spare minutes in the shop before starting the next project, a rocking chair for my daughter in law (I'm going to be a grandpa in May ). In hopes of learning auto upholstery this winter, I added a line laser to my sewing machine to make it easier to get straight top stitching. I'm using a contrasting color top stitch on the French seams, so straight stitches are kind of a big deal. Anyway, I grabbed a cheap line laser and power supply off Amazon, and made a bracket to mount it on the machine and allow left and right adjustment to either put the laser on the stitch, or on the edge of the fabric. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but it does what it is supposed to do quite well, so I suspect it will be fine.

Tom

Good idea, and nice work.
Congrats on the pending Grandpa status - grandkids are awesome!! Prepare yourself for a new flavor of mental and physical exhaustion though... ;)

Steve

Thanks Steve.

I've been looking forward to it for a while now and have plenty of projects and activities planned, whether it be a boy or a girl.

Tom

Our eldest grandaughter is just over 2yo, so this Christmas was the first time she was really up to *assisting* with cookie decoration. I can say for sure that the baking process removes all trace of saliva involved in the initial stages of the decoration....
After the first few we managed to convince her that the chocolate buttons were supposed to go directly onto the cookies and not via her mouth ;)

Steve

Felt lined my storage boxes.

Wanted to put a DRO on the shaper but even the slim optical scales are too large to fit beside the clapper box. While looking I found a smoking deal from China on a 3 axis to the mill. Think it was $184 and $53 DHL shipping. The Shooting Star DRO I had on the mill used small racks and rotating optical encoders that should fit the shaper.
Installed the new one yesterday.

Other than a HUGE read out box the quality seams good, agrees dead on with the dials which the old one did as well.
The Z axis will be nice. Not sure I like the scale on the back of the table, loose some travel, the Shooting Star one was a lot slimmer. 


The base casting is rounded and tapered where I needed to mount the Z scale. Had a 11/16th counter bore with a replaceable guide. Made a guide to fit the hole I drilled to thread for the 10-32 mounting screw. Used the counterbore in the 1/2 inch drill, worked like a charm.


Now to modernize the shaper.

I had the same issue with mounting the stop limit rail on my mill for the knee power feed. I just milled a chamfer along the back side of a piece of 1/4" thick aluminum flat stock so that it cleared the radius on the casting and sat flat on the the front edge. Then mounted the limit rail over the new 'filler' piece.

I don't think you'll miss that inch behind the table really. That's why you have a movable ram.

Did you install a stop bolt on the back side of the table saddle? My mill didn't come with a DRO but it did have a stop bolt already installed. I'm glad it was there though when I finally got around to buying the DRO though.