I was contacted by a church in the south about making kits for youth to build at their youth camp. Of course I said yes and under costed the project. It is a little more difficult to mass produce build your own projects. I didn’t have a belt sander to make everything flat and smooth.
I had a couple of small projects that I wanted to do for the garage since we moved in. Both were out of need. I have been working on using the Triton router table more. It is better than my bench top and has more functionality to it. The problem is that it is not easy to move for two reasons. The first is that all the attachments (saw and router) are underneath it and it is not mobile. The second is that it is a flat surface that is a catch all for projects and battery chargers.
I had a couple of thick pieces of “scrap” I purchased from another woodworker. The piece I used was 2” thick 8” wide and 24” long of red oak. I made a floating shelf out of the piece to hold my lawn mower batteries and the cordless system batteries. I cheated and just put a groove in the shelf instead of pocketing out the space for the wall mounting bracket.
The other project was a clamp rack for my larger clamps. I had them hanging from shelf supports. It was working but I wanted to hang them on the wall. I looked at purchasing some but I had several 2x4’s that would do the job just as well. It was a quick project but it made a huge difference in the accessibility of the clamps.
Next shop improvement project is my workbench.
I am going to try some intarsia projects this year. A lot of them will require shaping and detailing. Some of which I can do with sand paper but others I need to take a lot off. I have used the sanding drums on the Dremel and some of the carving tools that come with the Dremel. I have been watching some videos on the process and someone recommended the saburrtooth brand burs. They were a little more then I hoped, but not unreasonable after using them. The set was about $100.
I have used them on creating deeper profiles on some animated toys that I am making. These things will take material off. These look like little medieval weapons. The will not do a finish ready surface and I will say you will start at a rougher grit sand paper to get it ready. It beats the tool wear that happens on the Dremel carving tools. I would burn them up as well as the sanding drums before finishing the part.
