Drill Press Sharpening System

  I have been wanting to buy a Work Sharp Tool Sharpener for quite some time now. I love working with sharp tools but a hate sharpening them. Because of that, I tend to use chisels and planes that are duller than they should be, at my own peril, but at $200, I have been finding it difficult to justify the cost of the Work Sharp.

  I was looking through some of my past issues of ShopNotes and when I saw the cover of Vol 18 Issue 107, I remembered that I wanted to build that some day. The tag line for the cover project was Razor Sharp in Record Time – Low Cost Sharpening Machine.

  I took the magazine to the shop and began an inventory of wood and required parts. Much to my joy, I had almost everything I needed for the entire project. The construction is straight forward and a lot of fun. I did make some modifications…it wouldn’t be a DaveTPilot project if I didn’t make some mods :)

  First, the project was designed for a full size drill press. Currently, I only own a small Harbor Freight drill press with a 4” throat. It amazes me that I have not yet acquired a full size drill press. I am constantly cursing my drill press for being too small and too anemic in the power department. A real drill press is definitely next on my wish list, but I digress. For now, I needed to modify the base slightly to fit the shallow throat of my diminutive drill press. This was as simple as drilling a half circle with my 2-1/8” Forstner bit. It was a perfect fit as you can see here: 

  Next, the author of the project recommended a drill press speed of 250 RPM. The lowest speed on my drill press is 650 RPM. Fearing that it might me a little too fast, I decided to use pulleys of different sizes to slow down the sharpening machine a bit more. Pulleys of the sizes I wanted were not readily available at the local hardware store so I figured I could just make some out of wood…and that’s what I did.

  It was really quite easy to do. First, I glued up two blocks of plywood, (3/4” and 1/2”), then cut out circles on the band saw using a shop made circle cutting jig. Then I made a jig to hold the circle over my dado blade and making several light passes, I cut the groove for the pulleys.


  The last modifications I made was in the bearings. I used a 6” Lazy Susan bearing, instead of the thrust bearing called for in the plans, which is in essence a large thrust bearing. I also used flanged ball bearings for the bottom bearings under each pulley and flanged sleeve bearings for the tops.


  I used Red Krylon Fusion Spray Paint that I had for making table saw inserts. That paint is fantastic! You can use it on wood or plastic, it dries extremely fast and you do not need primer. Great for some shop projects.

  The system work great! There are 8 disks but I only have 6 different grits of sandpaper right now. I have 80, 150, 220, 320, 400 and 600 grit. I sharpened a chisel and a plane blade today and the results were fantastic. They are literally razor sharp, I can slice paper with them, and I cut shavings thin enough to read through with my $20 Harbor Freight bench plane! The sharpening is very fast as well. It took only a few minutes to sharpening each tool. You can watch a demonstration video.

Ultimate Miter Saw Station

As with most of my shop projects, I have tried to incorporate all of the features I currently want in a miter station as well as things I might want or need in the future. They say a picture can tell a thousand words but I cannot fully demonstrate the functionality of this station with pictures alone. I guess I am going to have to make another video. :)

For now I will just list some of the features:

1. Incorporated dust collection that consists of a down draft table and a hose that picks up where the bag used to be.

I used plastic sink plumbing and old pool cleaner hose. By leaving the joint a little loose, the plumbing elbow rotates when the saw is lowered but it is still vacuum tight. Dust collection is never an exact science with a miter saw but this systems works pretty well. I also have a 4” hose at the end on hooks that plugs into my surface planer and drum sander and another attachment for various other hand held tools.


2. Extendable fences with an adjustable shop made stop.


3. Lots of storage for cutoffs


4. Drawers for storage of short cutoffs, templates, drawing tools…what ever you can think of.














5. Wheels for mobility

Shop Made Dovetail Jig

I was very intrigued by this shop made dovetail jig I found in a past ShopNotes Magazine, (Issue 43) so I just had to build one. The plans called for 1/2 inch phenolic for the fingers. (An alternative is to used hardwood.) I thought the phenolic was very cool so I went with that. I was not possible to purchase it locally in small quantaties so I went to my old standby…eBay. What a great material! Very hard and durable and easy to machine.

  

The instructions for setting up and using the jig called for using two stops, labled “A” and “B”. To be honest, I don’t understand the instructions. They are vague and ambiguous at best, IMHO. Instead, I just used the “A” stop for both sides of the board to cut the pins and then the tails in the same way. It worked great! I just really wish the setup instructions were better. I’m sure there is a good reason for the “B” stop.

In the ShopNotes plan, the author used cherry, way too precious of a species for me to use for a jig. I used 3/4 inch plywood for the base and red oak for the pressure bars and stops. I already had the red oak that purchased from Home Depot for a kitchen trim project years ago. The plywood was acutally a red oak ply that was on sale for 50% off at Lowes. I bought it 6 months ago just because it was so cheap. I also figured that plywood would be better for the base because it is so stable. It seems to me that wood movement would not be good on a precision jig.

The knobs were made from some hard maple and cherry I had left over from another project. It was already glued up in that alternating pattern. (I would not have gone through that much trouble for shop made knobs.) I cut the hexagon pattern using the method I posted in Tips and Tricks. Then I drilled a counter bore with a forstner bit a little smaller than the nut and a through hole for the threaded rod. I hammered the nut in place for a very tight fit. (This method does not work well with red oak, it split the knob in half.)

Cube Storage Case

 This project was a request from the bride. Our little boy, (3 years old next month), has many little toys that are perfect for the little cube bins you can buy at Target, Wal-mart…etc. My wife wanted one that could sit inconspicuously in the living room and serve as a bench for the little one to sit on. My wife is going to pick up some lighter colored cubes for the black case.

Construction

The case is made from 3/4" birch plywood. The edging is 1/8" strips of poplar that I cut using my shop-made thin strip cutting jig on the table saw. The side and divider are set into dadoes cut in the top and bottom. I used Titebond II for the whole assembly, no mechanical fasteners.

Finish

The finish is General Finishes Ebony Water Based Dye Stain. I wiped on the first coat then decided to shoot the next two coats with my HVLP Sprayer. It is an absolute pleasure working with the dye stain. It spreads and sprays nicely, dries quickly and it even has a pleasant scent.

Top Coat
I had never used lacquer before and was anxious to try it on something. This project seemed like the perfect guinea pig. :) I read a lot of articles about spraying lacquer but I was a little paranoid to try it. Living in Florida, trying to find the right combination of temperature and humidity is a little difficult. So I thought I’d try Watco Semi-Gloss Clear Lacquer, the brush on formula. The first coat came out great. The second coat, not so much. There was a lot of orange peel.

I tried a trick I read about online. I sprayed the whole case several times with straight lacquer thinner with the HVLP sprayer. It worked! It was a nice 70 degree low humidity February day so I thinned out the lacquer, loaded up the sprayer again and shot 3 wet coats. It dried in minutes and looked really good. I am now in love with lacquer! Now I just have to figure out how to set up an air conditioned spray booth to defeat the Florida humidity.

This was a quick and fun project. I will be building a few more of these in various configurations. I want to try milk paint on the next one.

Pots and Pans Rack

I was in the middle of making a 1×2 cube storage when my wife, Sarah, popped into the shop and asked if I could make a quick rack to hang pots and pans. I looked around the shop to see what I had available. I found a piece of red oak left over from another project. It was already cut to the length I wanted and sanded! I also had some Shaker Pegs for a not yet completed towel rack. The heads of the pegs were too big to fit through the pan handles so I had to cut them. 

I cut the heads off on the band saw. I have some 60 grit sandpaper glued to a short 2×2 that I use like a rasp on many projects. That made quick work of evening up the band saw cuts. A quick smoothing with some 120 grit and they were ready.

I marked out the hole locations and drilled them with a 1/2” Forstner bit on the drill press. I cut the back side at a 10° angle so the pegs would angle up slightly. (As it turns out, the wall was already angled a few degrees so the pegs are angled slightly more than I intended but it works just fine.)

A little glue on each peg and I drove them home with a dead blow mallet. Finish was not important, Sarah wanted to use this immediately, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hang a raw wood project in my kitchen. I applied one heavy coat of Golden Oak Watco Danish Oil and wiped it dry with a shop towel.

The pictures were taken less than 1 hour after I started the project.

Modular Gun Rack

My 11-year-old son wanted a gun rack for his Airsoft Guns. He has multiple sizes so I wanted the rack to be adaptable. He also wanted to be able to hang handguns as well. I used the French cleat system with “hooks” and dowels. I cut the hook shapes on the band saw and my son shaped them on the spindle sander.

This was a fun project and working in the shop with my boy is always great fun!

Automatic Dust Collector Switch

Here is the schematic for my Automatic Dust Collector Switch. The schematic is copyrighted and I reserve all rights to its content. You are free to use the information for personal use, however, commercial use, copying and/or distribution is prohibited.

WARNING

User accepts all risk and responsibility for use of this design concept. It is highly recommended that you hire a qualified electrician to install any electrical devices in your home or workshop and comply with all local codes. I am not responsible for any errors or omissions.

To download the pdf file, click on the icon as depicted by the red arrow. This will open the file in a new window. Click FILE and DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL.

Keepsake Boxes

These keepsake boxes made great Christmas gifts this year. The secret locking pin really showcases your skills. 
The top is cherry with purple heart accent corners. The bottom is hard maple. You can make the top and bottom from the same species but I like the contrast to detail the sliding dovetail joint.
The designs on the tops were made using the Router Design Inlay Kit by Milescraft. I painted the design with black acrylic paint using a small brush. Sanding with 220 grit cleans up any paint you get out of the lines. A quick shot of compressed air and the design pops!
Be sure to sand the top with the corners in place up to 180 or 220 before routing the design.
I used Arm-R-Seal gloss for the finish.