Ben's Workshop » Making mistakes so you don't have to

Jan 20 2012

Notes from the Workshop: 20120120

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January 20, 2012

Click the picture to see the gallery Filling Knots with Epoxy Usually I’ll just layout a project so I don’t have to deal with knots, but in the case of this beautiful walnut board, the knots and surrounding wood are the whole point. To make the board usable, I needed to …

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Jan 07 2012

Notes from the Workshop: 20120107

Categories:

Camaru, Home Improvement, Pine, PS20

by benjamen

January 7, 2012

In this edition of Notes from the Workshop, I’ll post pictures of the prototype wooden mallet I built, talk about my new toy, explain my fear about inspections, and explain why Google is out to get my Hand Picked News Feed. Wooden Mallet Protoype After seeing Steve Schuler post his …

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Jan 03 2012

Homemade End Vise

Categories:

Circular Saw, Drill Press, Pine, Quick Clamp, Router Table, Shop, Table Saw

by benjamen

January 3, 2012

Click picture to view album* This past year it seemed like everybody was making a Moxon vise, a vise that you clamp to the top of your workbench to raise your workpiece up to a more comfortable sawing level. After seeing how simple they were to make, I got the idea to …

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Dec 20 2011

Making a Wooden Ball Joint

Categories:

Baltic Birch Plywood, Drill Press, Oscillating Sander, Poplar, Rockler, Router Table, Table Saw

by benjamen

December 20, 2011

My wife and bought an Android tablet to replace the small TV in the kitchen that was taking up so much counter space. Of course the space saving part depended on mounting the tablet under the cabinet. While there are several good tablet mounts available for $20 to $40 on …

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Dec 15 2011

New Source For Small Wooden Wheels

Categories:

Wooden Train

by benjamen

December 15, 2011

I was in Michaels a few days ago looking for wooden spheres to use in another project ,when I spotted some 3/4″ toy wheels from Lara’s Craft’s that I thought looked much better than the ones I made for my Flat Car project. They cost about $1.60 for a package …

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Nov 16 2011

Completed Flat Cars

Categories:

Drill Press, Micro-Mill, Miter Saw, Oscillating Sander, Poplar, Red Oak, Router Table, Table Saw, Wooden Train

by benjamen

November 16, 2011

Once I was satisfied with the prototype flat car, I wanted to make a whole mess of them at once — nine in fact. I decided to create a few jigs to make production go more smoothly. I built the first jig for cutting out the wheels. It solved …

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Nov 10 2011

Flat Car Prototype

Categories:

Cherry Tree Toys, Drill Press, Magnets, Miter Saw, Red Oak, Router Table, Table Saw, Wooden Train

by benjamen

November 10, 2011

One day, my son told me he didn’t have enough flat cars on his wooden railway. I figured that we could just buy him some more online, but I discovered that you can’t just buy flat cars, they only come in track sets (although I’ve been told by several people that the

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Nov 05 2011

Notes From the Workshop: 20111105

Categories:

Uncategorized

by benjamen

November 5, 2011

Recently Google dropped the shared items feature from Google Reader. Instead they integrated article sharing with Google+. This screwed up the way that I created my Hand Picked News. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get this functionality back. Yes there are new options, but they all leave something to be desired. I could …

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Permanent link to this article: http://workshop.electronsmith.com/content/notes-workshop-20111105/

Nov 04 2011

Fixing My Air Compressor

Categories:

Air Compressor

by benjamen

November 4, 2011

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my air compressor wasn’t recovering as fast as it should. It’s a two-cylinder, single-stage model and one of the cylinders was actually blowing air out of the intake instead of sucking air in. Since it was still operational, I made a note to myself …

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Oct 17 2011

Crossover Track (Curved)

Categories:

Baltic Birch Plywood, Colt Router, Jig Saw, Maple, Pin Nailer, Router Table, Wooden Train

by benjamen

October 17, 2011

Click picture for slideshow My original idea for a crossover track was to have a connecting track that curved out of one track and into another, but it took me a while to figure out how to make one, so I built the straight crossover track …

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