Things are Starting to Happen

Finally getting a few things done around the shop.

House nearby being torn down and McMansion-ized, I managed to mill up some of the big beech that was in the back yard. This was the biggest tree in the neighbourhood by far, such a shame it was mowed down.

Couple weeks later down to the local log dump, scored some more beech, and some cherry.

Beech is one of the few local woods that I had not seem much of to mill (the other notable one being ash), now I have bucket  loads of it! Well, I will have in a few years after it dries.  Funny how I have gone years with little beech, then twice in a row - beech!

48x48x3" slab of beech

The cyclone silencing project continues slowly. Next step will be to finish insulatng the inside of the shed it is in with acoustic tile, and then to build a muffler for it.

In the shop, I have finally started on a long desired upgrade to my Hammond Glider sliding table saw. Since it was orignally built to be used in the printing industry, it is set up to measure cuts in units called 'pica', which are annoyingly not related to either Imperial or Metric units of measurement! So basically I need to replace an Acme rod, the nut it runs in, and the ruler scale. Seems easy, but of course these things never are.

The picture might be a bit confusing if you are not familiar with a Hammond Glider tablesaw, but basically it only does crosscutting, and the portion of the table to the left of the blade slides. The piece being cut is held against a built in crosscut fence, which contains a threaded Acme rod used to locate a crosscut stop. Picture form the bottom up shows the new threaded rod in place in the crosscut fence, the old ruler, the old rod, and the future new ruler. Note the blade at the top with its unique holding arrangement! The hard part of this project will be making a new Acme nut for the crosscut stop, I am hoping I can simply modify the old one.

Of course while I was at it I thought it would be a good time to address the fact that the blade is not straight to the table, and there is a bit more wobble in it than I would like to see. So, the start of another project while many others are already on the go!