Something Old And Inexpensive

And when I say old, it was bought from a deceased estate. And when I say inexpensive, it was priced at fifty Australian dollars and a touch of a cold.

An ad for a deceased estate garage sale - which my lovely wife spotted and thought I might be interested in - seeing I'm equipping the garage (or will be the garage once we get the keys handed over) as a "bigger things" workshop. The estate of an older carpenter tradesman, and I glanced over the photos of the offering and spotted a few things I'd like to try for.  

(WRT the "or it will be" reference above, we've found that nothing happens quickly here, the landlord does things or has things done as quickly as possible but the tradies are flat-out everywhere so things take time. Also the landlord himself is doing things as fast as he can but also - after a life of hustling to make a success of himself and his family - is taking regular time out for holidays to enjoy life. Our bathroom took just a few weeks to get from investigation to taken apart to being mostly usable again and then several more for the finishing tradespeople to - well - finish.) 

Anyhow - the morning of the garage sale was cold and wet and by the time I arrived (with me exactly on time and despite the "definitely no early birds" injunction) there were 15-20 cars lined up either side of the muddy laneway leading to the garage. And did I mention that it was 9AM and raining, hence the following cold...

The little garage that the garage sale was held in was pretty chock-full already. Only one mask amongst the lot, and that was me. But I went around the space and checked out most of the items, there was a crate at one spot with about 40-50kg of machine parts, labelled $20. I spotted several things I wanted, a vise screw / turnwheel / threaded boss thing, a mount for a power drill - I didn't want the rest - where would I put it? - so I asked if I could just pay twenty bucks and they could sell the rest of the crate, which they were (of course) happy to do.

Walking around I found a huge old belt sander and a similarly hefty plunge router, more than I wanted to pay and definitely more than I'd ever use. A thicknesser but OMFSM(*) it must have weighed several hundred kilos, being built on a cast iron plinth. Loads of three phase machine extension cords, home made. Again, I would have killed for just the switches off them but didn't want 2cm diameter cables and all the other fittings. 

(* - OMFSM - Oh My Flying Spaghetti Monster)

I was walking out when a dusty mitre saw caught my eye. So did the price tag, the aforementioned fifty dollarydoos. It seemed to have not sold yet despite the pack of people in the garage. When I spotted the same person I'd been dealing with and asked about it he said yep mine for fifty bucks and then looked at the armful of bits I'd just bought. 

And I was sooo confused... Are they a Good Thing or not?

"Oh, you're the guy that could have taken that whole crate full of machine parts for $20 but only wanted those few bits and left the rest of the crate for us to resell, yeah. Tell you what - we pulled it apart to sell the plinth separately but I've got the bolts here and plinth for it there, you can have both for fifty."

So I bought the saw and accepted the stand with thanks. And despite finding those two Youtube videos side by side almost as soon as I got everything home, I've now had a chance to use the saw a few times and it has (as it's designed to do, I guess?) proven to make short work of jobs I'd had to make ramshackle jigs for and go through 57 varieties of hoops to get right. 

Anyway - Aggressive Arthur got loaded into the back of the car, his old plinth (and it was, I could even see where he'd been attached and the footprint matched perfectly, and to top it off I found Arthur in the sale pictures online and at that time it was still on top of the same table) on top, and the handful of other loot alongside. 

So - I may be about to let the cat out of the bag about the garage, and how I'm building small worktables rather than one big workbench and scaling everything to the plastic Stanley fold-up worktable I'd bought second-hand a few years back. But yep - I am.

I've made one such table already ("rough as guts" as we say here but I'm no carpenter, and as you'll see, it's not been easy to work with the gear I've had for most of my life) and made it something that I could add plywood inserts to with various machines - so a small table saw, a router, a jigsaw, etc - and converted my 6" GMC  circular saw to a table saw. It's actually there under Aggressive Arthur in the first few pictures below. But for now, having a good mitre saw is more important than a table saw, and the table I've made is better than the supplied plinth. (Which is actually going to have to be cut down a bit to fit my system anyway.)

Artie is a GMC MS256 ten inch which has been continued for a few years now. But just out of interest I looked for prices of economy 10" mitre saws and found prices for similar saws from $250 to $400ish. I'm well pleased with my price. Anyhow - I've taken it for a spin and it seems quite solid and accurate. My next bench(es) will be better and I'll find ways to make them all fit together. 

Pickup And Beauty Shots

I didn't even see this before I went, only afterwards. This is a picture from the garage sale 

Arthur was actually in the background - to the right of that grey thing with big red wheel on the front - and that's the stand he was on. 

Needless to say, that plinth the saw was on isn't the right height for my worktables so it temporarily finished up on the worktable mounted over the little table saw I'm building. 

This work table hasn't even been finished yet but it's become Arthur's temporary new plinth.

And I wanted saws in both orientations so it became important to give this saw a table of its own.

Artie's beauty shots, on a background of - background.

This was Artie still on the table saw bench. I got a day of good weather (since I still have to work on a veranda amid all our outdoor stuff) and went for it. My back's killing me but the saw's already proven to be a great investment. What had taken me a complete reset on the Stanley bench, a crappy (and very limited) jig, and a lot of swearing, took under five minutes from setup to finished product with Artie.

First cut.

While still on that bench, it made the boards for me to remake its cut-down table. The table was solid - except for the actual top which was mad of 25mm chipboard. And, at some stage, apparently, water. A LOT of water. It was so spongy in places I wasn't surprised the sellers split them apart and tried to sell them separately. 

I shortened the stand I got with the saw and reworked the top.

The stand as supplied was already a smidgen taller than my 'standard' benches, and of course that put the bed of the saw well above. And I wanted to be able to use any of my 'standard' benches as the in-and-out feed tables, so I shortened the stand by quite a lot, chucked out the chipboard and top 7cm or so of the legs, and added some new framework and put the same planks (150mm plinth board, about the cheapest lumber I can get here) on top as I'd put on my benches, and it's now perfect - just a bit taller than the benches so I can use pieces of dowel as rollers. 

This made me happy.

It's not apparent because the veranda floor is decking boards that are weathered and up to several centimetres variable in height, so the spirit level across the two isn't anywhere near level but the heights are right. And I'mn stoked.

There's not too much wrong with the (old) new from what I could tell, I should be able to use it to make any new bits for the shed and then take it apart and do a bit of a service, repack the gears with grease, etc. But for now, it's going to have a big job ahead of it. 

And so am I.

These posts are all about a week or two behind actual events. I'm getting snowed under with everything, and there are a few other posts that explain what's been going on that makes for all the workload. (I know - how did I get time to make a couple of crappy photo collages along with everything else going on? - just know that I do a lot for you, dear reader, to bring you happiness and a smile. Please read on for how you can show your appreciation and support...)

I'll keep sharing all my low-budget projects - I really want to get to the point where the projects I share are about developing easy-to-make machines for cottage industry scale recycling and the odd post about advances in vegetable gardening also on the cottage scale. (And where I say "cottage" I want to also be able to substitute "cottage and/or local community level." )

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