RE - Deacon - Woodbutcher

[a_dam]

Deacon made a thread about making picture frames (about a week ago). I've been trying to respond to that post for hours. I have a slow dial-up ISP, so my internet transactions are always painfully slow, but this site was always better than most. Now I can't get anything through.

I only have some text and 7 pics totalling 330 KB. Come on.

 

[BarelyAWake]

5 pics max per post lol - that might be the prob

 

[a_dam]

Happy New Year, Deacon.

It sounds like you plan to spend less time messin' with MB's and more time messin' with photography and frame-making (woodworking). Those are all excellent endeavours.

I made a "portable" router/saw table that sits on saw horses. The table is made from two layers of melamine-coated particle board and weighs 40 lbs. They are made of heavy steel and the pair weighs 38 lbs. With the router or saw included, the setup weighs almost a hundred pounds, so maybe it's more storable than portable. It certainly is rock solid.

In the pics you'll see steel angle attached to the table's bottom so it can be c-clamped to the saw horses. I made 2 inserts, one to fit my router, one for my circular saw, so I can swap them out easily. I found an extra-big carbide blade that just fits in the saw; I think it's 8 1/4 inches. That gives me as much depth-of-cut as possible.

That's something you have to think about if you're making your own table. If you just drill a hole in a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood and bolt a router underneath, you might lose some depth, you might not. It depends on the router design. You may still be able to raise the collet all the way up to the table surface or above. But with a circular saw, you're gonna lose some depth. My inserts are 3/4 thick, but routed out for the tool bases, so I can still cut wood over 2 inches thick.

See the photo of the router mounted in the insert. There are leveling screws in the corners of the inserts so they sit nice and flush with the table.

The fence in the picture is an aluminum "bar clamp/tool guide". It works great when using the saw. When routing, I usually use another fence made from a 2x4 with a cutout for the bit, and an adjustable outfeed spacer. The saw horses fold up very compactly.

 

[a_dam]

I'm pretty satisfied with this setup. When I made it, a halfassed router table was a good 200 bucks and could'nt switch between my router and saw like this one. My DIY table is 24x38 inches. It's any size you like when you make your own.

Nowdays, Chinese ingenuity (slave labor) might make a big, sturdy, collapsable, affordable cast iron or aluminum table with inserts, a miter gauge slot, whatever. But DIY is something money can't buy.


If I was only rabbeting, my first choice would be a saw with a dado blade. Routing out a groove or rabbet involves removing pretty much wood. Router bits are small; they quickly heat up, dull, and burn wood.
If you follow the advice of others here, be careful. Cutting rabbets in two passes on a table saw will probably have you setting the fence close to the blade, with the waste piece of wood between the fence and blade. That's asking for kickout unless you have a backup on your pushblock.
You probably know all of this. In fact, that would make for some good MTV Jackass videos; strips of wood shooting out of table saws hitting guys in the crumple zone.


I bought a cheap $25 electric planer (pic), never used it yet. It has a rabbet guide. It might cut rabbets easier than a top-heavy router.

 

[deacon]

I had a small table saw and a dado blade setup once. I flat loved it. This time I'm going for a more portable route. What I want to do is to make a setup that I can put together on a nice spring or summer day and cut a half dozen or so frames.

My family came through with a lot of used tools so I haven't had to buy anything yet. I also haven't made my table tops either. This is my plan as of now (always subject to change)
I was gifted a well used chop saw by my son in law. He bought it just to lay some hardwood floors in his house. I am going to use it to cut the 1x2 batten strips with 45 degree corners.

My brother just gifted me a router (craftsman with adjustable collar.) I am going to hang it upside down from a piece of 2x2 plywood. The longest piece going through the router for the rabbit will be about 16 inches long more or less.

I want the frames to look really old and homemade. The plan is to shoot picture of old stuff, then to age them with a few digital techniques. The frames should kind give the same feelings. I don't plan to do more than ease the edges with some sandpaper, otherwise all the imperfections of the batten boards stay with the frame. These days there are plenty of those.

I think after I get the frame made, I will just run them to the glass shop and have them cut some window pane glass for them. I would dearly love to learn how to age glass. I might just look that up on the net.


PS... my brother gave me his old pc to use for this project. Actually I am going to end up with it as my internet computer and free up all the space on my old faster one for the photo project. So I have been going crazy with it nothing seemed to work as it should. I thought it had half a gig of ram and that should be plenty for cruising the net. But every time i tried to do two things at once it just froze and made the clicking hard drive swap memory sounds.

So I'm think go with a full gig of memory. I opened the computer again to check the type ram and found that it only had 256 megs of ram. heck i'm surprised it will even get to the net with that amount. I am running dsl so it defeats the purpose of it. So I can understand your computer aggravation. I ordered more ram so I'll just have to limp along till it gets here.

I did have to do a couple things to make this one run better before I found the problem. One was to add an on demand antivirus program. It does not auto scan. I can call it up when I am going to be away from the computer and let it run. It won't just pop up and tie my computer up while I'm using it.

The other was to download the Opera browser which is a little faster than the others, but not a lot. Anyway I'm not flying the net with eagles, I'm grounded with the turkeys. I didn't mean to hijack your thread but your setup is a hundred times better than what I plan to make. Wanted to make sure you saw my answer and the praise I have for your setup. I just want mine light and easy to store. My shop runith over.

One more thing on the computer thing. You may or may not know that I am a hopeless and sometimes helpless experimenter. I once setup a computer with windows 95 just for the Internet use. That thing was blazing fast, but I just couldn't do much with it since all the programs were for new operating systems. I upgraded it but I did love that little beast just for the INTERNET. There is also a blazing fast browser but it will not work on java sites and thats about all of them. It's called offbyone, if you want to play with it.