Monday, May 17, 2010

Handiest Bandsaw Thingy

I'm vocabularily challenged tonight.  Many things are thingies.

In the absolutely waning hours of Safety Week (yes, technically it ended 3 hours ago, but I haven't gone to bed yet), I post this addition.  Behold, the handiest bandsaw thingy (oak version):


At the bandsaw, I find this scrap of oak more useful than many things I actually paid for.  The nub sticking out is a 5mm Domino.  You could use a piece of dowel.  I don't glue it in so I can replace it when it looks even worse than it does right now :)

The distance from the front of the thingy to the front of the Domino is a hair less than then distance from the front of the bandsaw table to the blade.
This nub lets you hook it onto the front of the table. I do this often with my featherboard stack since it doesn't quite make it when I'm dealing with thin stock.  It also has the advantage that the featherboard pressure is evenly distributed over the oak board and I find it handles slightly bowed stock better.  The nub keeps the thingy from advancing as you push the stock.
 Here it is in action when I resawed a "stile"-sized piece of walnut into 6 strips for inlaying.
 Lastly, I often use it as a pushstick when resawing.  Note how I can use it on the side of the stock and the nub pushes the stock through. If the nub hits the blade and loses, pull it out and pop in a new Domino.
If you look carefully, there's a corner seriously dented on the thingy.  Yup, you can use it as a Howard Cosell Brick and hurl it to blow off steam... it's only scrap.

5 comments:

  • Anonymous said...
     

    Hi Paul, I like your stuff! It's not clear to me what's actually happening in photo #3. I don't understand what it doing what "in action". Can you help?

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    Picture #3 is a top-view of picture #2 to show what you end up with. Basically the block won't advance because of the Domino sticking out the bottom, but I sometimes prefer this configuration to just the stack of feather boards because you can back-off the stock a bit if necessary, allows me to use thinner stock (my commercial feather board stack doesn't reach far enough for thin stock cases...)

    Hope that helps!

  • Unknown said...
     

    Thank you for your response. I must have the brain of a hockey puck because I don't yet see any stock in photo #3. Is this item a "fence shortener"? Does it go against the fence so that it becomes a substitute fence which ends just before the blade so when the stock is pushed beyond it the blade meets the stock without a fence touching it?

  • Anonymous said...
     

    Hi Paul, could you clarify for me how this is used. I apologize for not being able to figure it out on my own. Old and feeble, I guess.

  • HalfInchShy said...
     

    @rgeaston1: sorry to have missed your comment... you could use it as a fence shortener; I have a separate spacer I use for doing what you suggested, but this one would work for that if it was a bit longer.

    There is no stock in picture #3, but the stock would go between the aluminum fence and the oak block. The oak block is pushed against your stock by the featherboard stack. The oak then presses more uniformly but also lets you retract the stock unlike the feather boards.

    @Anonymous: the last photo is the 99% case of how I use it... press it against the stock with the Domino key sticking out to push the stock through. You are able to press flatly better near the end of your cut, which is when you lose that good registration surface and get wonky cuts. It also keeps your fingers off the stock and definitely out of the line of the cut since the key is pushing the stock, not your fingers.