Craig's Crafts

Wooden Toy Trains

woodworker — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:22:27 +0000

I was cruising the Internet the other night and did that thing where you start off on one topic and gradually wander off onto something completely different. I was looking up rail guns, just out of curiosity, and ended up on wooden toy trains. Most of the links were sales pages about Brio, Thomas the [...]

The Winter Doldrums

woodworker — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:16:43 +0000

I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t done a thing in my shop since November, unless you count the “Christmas tree” I made. We don’t have any kids in the house to nag us to death about getting a tree and our dogs aren’t any help in motivating us to get one. They always seem surprised [...]

8 Steps to a Better Project

woodworker — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:53:30 +0000

After producing a prototype for anything I’m working on, I debrief myself on the problems I encountered. I take the notes I’ve made, usually right on a copy of the plans and/or cutlist, and give them a little organization. I put circled numbers on those notes to indicate the sequence I’ve made them. I use [...]

Winterizing my shop

woodworker — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:53:36 +0000

My workshop was converted from a 2-car garage, with some space reserved for a washer/dryer, the “All Refrigerator” and a small freezer, and a set of shelves holding garden tools. I insulated the walls last year, and as the weather got colder, added an overhead quartz heater. Radiant heat only warms objects, not the air, [...]

I need to get a face shield

woodworker — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:00:29 +0000

I finally got a chance to try our my Jet mini-lathe the other day. I chucked a short piece of holly culled from my woodpile. All I was trying to do was put those hours of watching Woodturning Basics on the DIY Network to some use. I had safety glasses on, the kind that fit [...]

The spammers have found me

woodworker — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:08:59 +0000

I went on-line to check my stats, and found Akismet had stopped 14 spam comments for me. Apparently my blog has become popular enough that it is worth spamming. Popularity has its price, I guess. If you run a WordPress blog, I hope you have this turned on. If not, get with the program.

Radial Arm Saw Dust Collector completed

woodworker — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:39:49 +0000

Here’s a couple of pictures of the final version. Basically it’s just a box, measured and cut to fit directly behind the blade. The left side, looking from the front, extends about 4″ down past the frame of the saw. A single plastic knob and bolt with a piece of wood beneath the knob that [...]

It’s just a 15 minute job

woodworker — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 19:44:11 +0000

So I started to build my dust collector for my radial-arm saw (RAS), and began to get together the materials to build it. This shouldn’t take long, after all, it was just a small box with a hole cut in it. The wood was no problem, and I had plenty of 4″ hose to make [...]

D-I-Y Shop Air Cleaner

woodworker — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:50:55 +0000

This guy did a great job, but to build it you need a furnace fan. D-I-Y Shop Air Cleaner

Portable Air Cleaner made from Box Fan

woodworker — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:29:13 +0000

Before I started on the Radial-arm Saw Dust Collector, I decided I needed to do something about cleaning up my shop’s air. On of my woodworking magazines recently did a test of dust collectors, and as a basic comparison, or perhaps as a joke, they duct-taped a high-effencency furnace filter to a box fan and included [...]