04/06/2018 More Equipment, More Practice

I added a few more items to my garage in the last couple days, such as a bench grinder, a back riveting plate and a bandsaw.

Bench Grinder

I  bought a Ryobi bench grinder from Home Depot that costs just under $50. I already have one Scotch Brite wheel from my Isham kit so all I have to do is replacing one original wheel of the Scotch Brite. Well, a slightly more complicated than that. After removing the guards and taking off the existing wheel, I found out that the arbor size of my grinder is 1/2” but the Scotch Brite wheel has a 1” hole. So I had to find a reducing bushing adapter on Amazon before I can continue. Once I get the adapter it’s very straight forward to install and use the new wheel.

Back Riveting Plate

I decided to embed my back riveting plate in MDF board so that I have a bigger supporting surface for large piece of aluminum later in the build process. The riveting plate is 3/8 inch thick, so I bought a 1/2 inch thick 2*2 ft MDF and a 1/4 inch thick 2*2 ft MDF to work with.

First I marked the riveting plate at the center of the 1/2 inch thick board and use electric drill, handsaw and reciprocating saw to make the big hole.

Then I glued the 1/4 inch thick board to the bottom of the board that has the hole.

At last I used pieces of paper to shim the bottom of the hole(to add 1/8 in of height), then poured in more wood glue into the hole and put the riveting plate into the hole. I clamped the plate into the board tightly for at least two days to make sure the glue is fully cured.

Bandsaw

It seems that there are basically two kinds of bandsaws, the cheap bandsaws that are designed to cut woods and only has one speed, and the expensive bandsaws that have more capabilities. I bought a cheap bandsaw. I did follow the suggestion from other builders and books to order an additional metal saw blade that has 18TPI (teeth per inch) when I order the bandsaw. So with the new blade the first thing I need to do is disassembling the bandsaw and replace the blade. The steps to setup the bandsaw is not complicated, but I absolutely hate the uncleared instruction in the manual that says something like “adjust proper tension. Don’t make it too tight and don’t make it too loose”, but does not specify what is considered proper. I made an incorrect guess of the proper tension and ended up spending two hours to adjust alignment of the saw blade on the wheels. It turned out that my “proper tension” is considered “a little too tight” by the factory and it’s messing up the alignment. Once I figured out the tension on the blade, I was able to setup my bandsaw without much problem.

Practice

I continue practicing on my aluminum sheets, and drilling technique is much improved now that I won’t drift off the center when I start drilling. I did punch many smileys on the round head rivets when I was not paying attention. But over all I can see the quality improving.