Guide Rail Storage

I recently got the Festool 3000mm guiderail during the "TS Promotion" as the TS-75 really requires that long rail to rip 8x4 sheet goods without connectors.  Now, I used two 1400s with connectors for a couple years and while it works, it actually still wasn't long enough for the TS-75 due to its larger base.  To note, if you have a TS-55, you can use the 2700 rail, but the TS-75 really needs the extra "mm"s.

So... where to store it?!  Not like an 8" wide by nearly 10' long piece of aluminum tucks away on a shelf plus dings and bends completely defeat the purpose.  My solution comes from a suggestion I read somewhere on the FOG: hang it on your garage door.

In my case, I have a 3000 and 1900 on the door with clips made of scrap.  This photo is of the one clip with just the 3000 in it.  You can see some scrap cork tile contact-cemented to the door's stile.  The vertical clips are beveled at top to make insertion easier as the fit is intentionally snug.  In both cases, the clip presses the rail into cork.

Due to the staggered heights of the clips, grabbing either rail is easy.

I chose to put the rails on the bottom segments of my door because I could easily get at them with the door closed and when the door is opened (90% of the time, I have the door open!), they are still easily accessed.  Other benefit is that the bottom-most segment angles upward even when the door is open so the rails never have a chance to slide out. With a winter like that, good thing I took the picture quickly and closed up...

Now, you'll think, "oh, 3000 rails, never exceed that!".  Well, you'd think.  First weekend with the new rails, I had to join the 3000 and 1900 to edge-joint a 12' piece of 8/4 Walnut destined to be handrailing for stairs.  Also ripped them that way since pushing that over the table saw is awkward and would require moving shop furniture to make room for the length!

Stealth Project Revealed! Figured Eucalyptus End-Table

I previously posted about a last-minute stealth project for my mom for Christmas.  It's a pretty short side table that will sit beside her lounge chair; it is short to make picking up and putting down her tea cup easier on the wrists.

The table top is figured Eucalyptus floating on brass rod on a Maple base with hand-shaped apron curves and tapered legs.

The idea came to me late Saturday and I basically got through to the finish stage by late Sunday as the weekdays would be tough even to get the finish done.  Alas, the rush on the finish spoiled part of the top (divulged below).  It isn't as nice now as it was during the build, but still not bad for a one-day marathon.
As I was rushing, I didn't take as many pictures as usual.  Use your imagination a bit.  Add bikinis where necessary.  Okay! Let's go...

I cut the leg stock from some 6/4 Maple I had around; fortunately, one edge was riff-sawn.  Squared and tapered.  Apron stock from 4/4 Maple cross-cut then bandsawn close to the curve.  The rest of the rounding was done with spokeshaves so they wouldn't be router-perfect.  Parts were Domino mortised at this point.
I neglected to take a picture, but if you look carefully at the top of the legs, they are chamfered.  This was done on the JMPv2.  If you have a sloped shooting board, you could do it with that, too, or with the stock backed on a router table. Or... well you get the idea :)

The figured Eucalyptus had a darker wave of curl on one edge.  I decided to cut the pie pieces so the dark would be in the center of the table top.  Once mitered, it was time to glue up.  Now, let me be the first to lament that despite backers, it was difficult to get the cut edges clean of chipout.

Using parts of Woodpecker's miter set helped pull in the corners.
The legs needed a 3/8" hole dead center dead plumb to receive the brass rod.  I used the DJ-1 drilling jig and CT-16 palm brace to nail it.  Wish I took a picture. You can use the DJ-1 with a power drill, but I was thinking "gentle"...

So, time to glue up the base while the top firmed up.  The weights on the top were to keep the table stable with all those long bars reaching out everywhere!  The base was all Domino joinery.
After the epoxy for the top set "enough", I re-trimmed the edges to ensure they were square then beveled what will be the underside.

I needed to cut 4 pieces of 3/8" brass rod for the stand-offs.  I knew the precise depth of the holes in the legs, thickness of top, and reveal I wanted so it was easy to mark them all off and hacksaw away.  I put a hole in a scrap of Oak to make holding the rod easier while cutting.

The rod was, well, not pretty.  Oxidation, you know.  One end of the rod was going to be epoxied into the leg and the other epoxied into the top so each end was fair game for a Jacob chuck's teeth.  I chucked the rods in the drill press one at a time and cleaned the middle with Brasso.

I later did the same, but with Meguire's.

Purdy :)  I remember realizing at this point that I hadn't eaten anything all day.  Glue was setting so it was a food break (sorry, no picture ;)

Some clean up on the table base then the first coat of General Finishes' Polyacrylic.  I love this stuff.  Seriously, I buy it flowers.  The brass rod was just for a preview...

I ended the night applying CPES to the table top as it would take all night to cure.  Why CPES?  Well, I want to greatly limit the moisture exposure of this top; those are 9" miters in solid wood.  Too much moisture movement that the adhesive can't compensate for and things open.  I realize this is a test and it might fail.  If it does, I'll post-mortem it and make her a new table :)
The next day would be mounting the top followed by the rest of the finishing schedule.  Yes, I should have started a week earlier.

So, I have CPES's warm forumla because normally it is bloody hot around here.  That week, the garage was at 50º at night, which would benefit from CPES's cold formula.  The schedule stated it would take 4 days to cure.  For each 18º increase in temperature, the time halved.  So I built this tent and put a ceramic heater underneath it with the thermostat set to around 90º.

That would have it cured by lunchtime the next day.  Just before my bedtime, I dropped the 4 brass rods into the top of the legs with an ample amount of thickened West System epoxy.  Nite nite...
Now I needed the top applied.  The brass rods show through to the top.  I think this is classy, but time consuming.  I have a better way for the next table ;)

To place the holes accurately, I took the scrap of Oak with a 3/8" hole used to cut the rods and split the hole in two.  This is going to be my hole-placement jig (and it only took 1 cut!).
I set the base onto the top so the rods were on the miter cuts and same distance into the bevel (I wanted them on the bevel, not the flat as I thought they would look more elegant).

This requires some explanation.  First I placed the jig block on the rod and used the horizontal clamp to ensure the rod was always set in the jig's recess.  Next, I clamped the jig tight to the top.

Next, I removed the horizontal clamp.  (After I took the picture, I realized I had moved the base while monkeying with the clamps for the picture; it was placed on the miter.)

Now, remove the table and place a 3/8" brad-point bit in the jig's recess then tap it with a hammer to mark the location with the brad's spur.  Take it to the drill press and drill it plumb.  That's one hole.  Repeat 3 more times.  Each time you position the base, ensure existing holes have a tiny bit of its mating rod seated.  This worked exceptionally well, actually.
Slather epoxy on the ends of the brass rods and some in the holes and tap home the table base.  I went until each rod was proud by as little as at all possible.

To flush the ends of the rods, I wrapped blue tape on a mill file except for a small region in the middle.  That's what I took swipes against the rod with.  The tape kept the file from marking the table top.  Tedious.  Cue up long songs.

Sand the whole top... P180, P220, P320.

Finish polishing the brass with a bit of wet/dry paper on the end of an eraser.  I used 600, 1200, 1500, 2000.

Alrighty.  Build and a large part of the finish was done.  I now needed some Arm-R-Seal on the top to even out the sheen as the sheen of CPES is not so purdy. I put the table on my couch with a drop cloth and pointed a radiant heater to the top.  I didn't want to bake it, but wanted it warm to set faster and let me get three coat to the top.
And it was done for Christmas!  Delivered stealth-like into the reading room without her noticing; just put a bow on the door.  Easier to wrap that way.

So what was the mistake that spoiled the top?  Well, I wanted to apply a couple more coats of Arm-R-Seal so I asked for the table back the next week while she was busy with company.  When I got it home, I noticed some sanding marks I missed in my hurry.  No problem, sand through the finish, get it smooth, and reapply the finish.  When I got down to bare wood, I decided it would be smart to hit it with CPES again since I may have sanded through the original sealing layer of CPES.  Built the tent.  Accidentally did something to the thermostat that it ran high all night.  Oh, it was cured.  I'm not sure what the thermal expansion ratios are for figured Eucalyptus, but I can assure you that they open 9" miters.  It wasn't horrible, but nothing like the top you see in the build pictures.  I was actually happy with that top; not at all happy with this one.  I applied cynoacrylate glue to the part that opened partly to glue it up but mostly to have a clear glue in there to help mask the gap.  That gap shows, but honestly even before with the figure and all, it was obvious where the miter lines were.
Moral?  Don't rush.  And start a week early :)

Wiring the SawStop and Router Wing

I previously gave a tour of my router table installed in the right extension wing of the SawStop PCS.  Also showed how I made the overhead dust collection pipe with a light.  Thing is, between the saw, router, and light, that makes for a lot of power cords going to the machine.  Anyone who knows me knows I don't like cords or cables since I can be amazingly clumsy around them.
I recently took a couple weekends to install conduit in my shop in order to drop a number of 110V and 220V circuits; yes! finally I can run my drum sander without a long extension going into the living room.  I'm not kidding.
One goal of that wiring job was to consolidate the power cords going to the SawStop, router, and light into a single feed.  I'll walk you through what I did in case you find it useful for your situation.  Note that this doesn't presume a SawStop saw; any 220V saw could use this setup.

I'm not an electrician, though I'm comfortable wiring plugs and sockets like this. I'm explaining what I did. If you like the idea, feel free to research it further or hire someone to do similar wiring for you. If you blow something up, well, then, that's a bad start to your day. And it's also not my fault.
Okay, with that out of the way...

Shown here is the drop for the SawStop/Router/Light that we'll now refer to as shtuff.  The drop has 4 wires: ground, neutral (white) and 2 hots (red).  These come from the subpanel I just installed (and will document!).  The two hots come from the two hot buses of the subpanel, neutral from the neutral bus, and ground from the grounding strap.  Even if you are coming from a main panel (not a sub panel), you will need all 4 wires.  The reason I am specifying this is that people may read that a main panel ties ground and neutral together.  You might therefore conclude that you can just run one wire for both.  That assumption would lead to you having a bad (possibly short) day.  In my forthcoming posting about wiring the shop, I'll explain that in much further detail.

The image to the left was actually meticulously drawn on the computer then run through a filter to look like I scribbled it on paper then scanned it.  What this shows is how you form a 110V circuit or a 220V circuit from the two hot and one neutral bus in a panel.  For a 110V circuit, you take a wire from either hot bus and the neutral (neutral goes to the wide blade of a socket; hot to the narrow blade).  For a 220V circuit, you take wires from both hot buses; there is no neutral involved.  Naturally, all receptacles require ground.
The fourth plug configuration in image shows the configuration we are interested in.  Basically all 4 possible wires from a panel are brought to the receptacle.  In the drawing, I showed the plug configuration for a 30A circuit although I ended up using a 20A twistlock format you'll see next...

The 20A twistlock socket is shown to the left with the plug to the right.  I also bought 10' of 4-conductor stranded 12ga wire.  I need 12ga for the current load; four conductors for the four wires (yes, ground should never conduct but "extension cord" wire is ordered this way); stranded because it is more flexible for making this pigtail.

The socket has 4 screw attachments for wiring.  This first side shows a brass screw and a silver screw.  Brass always gets a hot so I'll wire a red hot wire here (either one).  Silver always gets a neutral (think of silver as whitish so it gets the white).  I'll wire the white neutral here.

The other side has the other brass screw for the other red hot wire as well as the ground, which is always green.

Here's a wiring diagram from Ugly's Electrical Reference.  The pencil points to the L14-20R configuration that is the twistlock shown earlier.  I wired the twistlock socket according to the screw colors discussed previously.

Now, on to the pigtail for the shtuff.  The idea is to have the one cable go to the saw and break out our power requirements.  I stripped the insulation from the 4-conductor cable per the plug specs (read the box to know how much insulation to strip and how much to strip from each wire).  Push the wires through and screw them to the correct plug blades.  The plug comes with documentation.  As a hint, that "hot to brass; neutral to silver" storyline comes into play.

The other end of the pigtail goes to a metal 2-gang box.  One side of the box will have a 20A GFCI 110V duplex socket.  The other side, a 20A 220V socket.  The shtuff will plug directly into this box mounted to the router's dust box.  Here you can see the box wired up.  I should have taken more step-by-steps of producing that, so here's some narrative: the GFCI plug is wired with one hot to its brass screw, neutral to the silver screw, and ground to the green grounding lug.  The 220V socket gets a hot to each of its brass screws and ground to the grounding lug.  Notice that I'm not naming wire colors.  The four conductor "extension cord" has a white, black, red, and green "conductor" inside.  I wired neutral to white, ground to green, one hot to red, and the other hot to black.  Likely this will be your case as well, but it is also possible to get other combinations; keep track.  Note that red or black wires are assumed hot unless otherwise labeled in household wiring.

At this point, the wiring is done.  Reverify.  After turning on the breaker for the twistlock receptacle, I used a multimeter to verify all the voltages were correct.  After wiring the pigtail, I verified continuity from the plug blades to where that current should go; I also verified that all the other places did not have continuity.  The multimeter shown here is a $4 meter from Harbor Freight; for continuity, it works well.  It isn't a Fluke, but if you screw up and burn it out, it's basically a Venti Soy Latté out of your pocket.

Lastly, I needed a cover and the configuration with a rectangle and a round isn't typical.  I took a plate with a rectangle and an old-style flip switch opening (small rectangle) and drilled a hole for the round.  This picture is from me doing it to a different cover for elsewhere, but gives the idea.  I screwed a single cover with a round to the cover to drill then used that hole to place a 35mm hole (Euro-hinge Forstner bit) right where I needed it.  Couple seconds of filing to get a perfect fit.

Here's the box surface mounted to the dust box in the router extension wing.  The 110V GFCI receptacle has the router and light powered while the 220V receptacle has the SawStop powered.  All cords are strapped and tucked away under the rear fence rail so nothing for me to trip over!
While this whole process may see long and laborious, it really isn't.  Whenever you run a 220V line for your saw, run a neutral as well and you can easily do this wiring.  Also, this wiring isn't some freak of nature: this is how older dryer drops were wired and how generators are wired.  That I broke it off into separate receptacles on the saw itself is likely the only unique thing.

Here's a way you can save money and time doing this.  For the pigtail, I bought a twistlock plug and the 4-conductor "extension" cord from a commercial electrical supply house.  It was, ahem, pricy.  For half the price and a third the effort, you can buy a 12ga 25' generator extension cable from Harbor Freight shown here.  Cut the cable however many feet you need from the plug-end of the cable.  This is molded cable so stripping the outer insulation back is tricky work with a cutter, but I've done it to literally a dozen extensions.  Once the inner insulated wires are revealed, you just run them to the box on the saw.  I actually would have preferred this route had I realized it first because I like their yellow/black extensions (highly visible); molded insulation like that doesn't get twists in it so easily; the plug is molded onto the wires... no screws and half the size.  Oh, and I paid double for just 10'!
The picture also shows the cover of Ugly's Electrical Reference.  Definitely recommended, but only if you need a reference; it isn't a how-to.

D'uh!-Moment to Improve Dust Collection

Last night, I was edge jointing and ripping 8/4 Walnut to make several handrails; these are rough dimensioning cuts.
I know the TS-75 saw has better dust collection with the D-36 hose vs the usual D-27 "tool" hose due to better air flow, but I had a d'uh moment after the first pass.  That pass left a lot of dust behind and the saw seemed starved for power.
Normally I plug the TS-75 into the CT-22 dust extractor for the automatic turn-on function when starting a tool.  Works great.  Except in this situation, that saw was working much harder than usual with a 12' run of 8/4 Walnut.  With the saw plugged into the extractor, the extractor limits total amperes to 15A.  With the extractor on high and the saw working hard, I was needing 21-22A, but it was still limiting.
Easy solution was to plug the saw into its own source and manually turn on the extractor.  Night and day difference on these passes.  There was literally nothing to clean after ripping the 10" wide by 12' long Walnut into 3 rails.
So, moral is, if your saw (or router) is going to be working much harder than usual, give it its own source!

Renewing a Zero-Clearance Insert

With the New Years weekend, I spent some time in the shop. Wahoo! I have an ugly spot in the laundry room that needs a maple cabinet so that's today's fun along with some handrails.
The cabinet is made of maple ply and hardwood.  For the ply, I really need the zero-clearance insert to keep the cuts clean.  My insert has some chatter marks around the blade opening from who-knows-what and those make for fuzzy cuts.

To remedy this, I taped over the existing cut...

...flipped the insert, loaded the cut with Bondo, and let it cure.  The next day, ran a new kerf through.

While you can't see a lot of Bondo from the top, the cuts are noticeably cleaner.