At my other blog, I recently wrote about my fascination with the word ‘manifest’. Part of what I wrote was about a new idea improving our lives. For years, I’ve had an idea, maybe it’s not new to others, but I wanted to try it. I was thinking that if I had a really long, straight fence for my table saw; I might be able to use the saw as a jointer. Part of that process will be to extend the top plane of the table saw.
I needed to rip cut some pressure treated wood this week, so I did a temporary extension of the saw top/plane. I used 3 deck boards, supported by a couple of short posts sunk in the ground. That along with a tweak to the alignment of my saw fence (short one), I had a pleasurable time ripping all the little boards I needed for window trim on the railroad coach I’m trying to finish. The trim holds the clear plastic panes in a few of the doors. I could buy quarter round trim at the store; but it would be pricey, and it wouldn’t be pressure treated. This was simple, no router needed. The edges of decking boards are very rounded, so I just trimmed those off, and used them for this project.
Anyway, the table extension worked great. My safety and accuracy were up, stress was down. This very table saw, not one like it, cut off a previous owner’s fingertip through carelessness. It’s powerful and demands respect.
Here’s another little idea I had, and it…worked. The fence boards at the nearby horse show arena badly needed painting. So I ended up working on that project. The first picture is the fence in its needy condition. the picture doesn’t show it very well, but there are lots of old paint chips stuck on the wood.
The idea I had was for a reusable post masking device. It’s just a used sign I was given by a local sports stadium. I cut the sign in half, overlapped the two halves, and bolted them together at one edge near the middle. I also cut two rectangle slots. This idea actually worked. So many ideas seem great “on paper”, but the design overlooks a critical flaw in the plan.
