... other than... Actually, that' it. New and really cheap.
As I mentioned in another post the day, that day started off being a pretty good day all around. I was the owner of a new - and cheap - box of Forstner bits that arrived for the workshop, bits I'd been wishing I had for years and they've always been way too expensive to buy a set of 16 like this.
But this set has cost less than 4 brand name bits. It remains to be seen how well they'll wear but for my use they'll probably outlast me, and if I find I'm wearing out one or two particular bits I can just spot-replace them.
As you'll know from this post, I've been lucky enough to have bought and built a brand new 3x3m shed/workshop, unlucky enough to have had to pull it down and totally vandalise it to (luckily) fit it into the spot allocated by the new landlord, and then (luckily) be able to erect a 3x3m roof behind that, and now unlucky enough (again) to have to move everything in it and take it down again. But (luckily) it's due to the same landlord erecting a 2-car garage for the house we're in and therefore I've gone from around 24sqm of space to 48sqm and will have most of that space as the new shed.
It means I'll finally actually have a "workshop" that I can work in. I never even got to make a workbench, instead using a few plastic and MDF folding tables and two plastic sawhorses - great when you're making a rough surround for a raised bed of a clunky gate in the cat fence but as for anything like a cabinet, forget it. Then when I thought Location #2 would be the permanent spot I started to organise myself but there's been almost two years in between filled with other shuffle-shift-restart jobs involved with the landlords' plans, health issues, all the usual.
But a week and a bit ago I built a small workbench which has removable section where I can put my older electric circular saw upside down to make a primitive but usable table saw, my router to give myself the convenience of a router table, a jigsaw table, and more. It'll be useful (once I get the keys to said garage/shed) to build another multipurpose table to use for clamping and setting the drill press or just as a general infeed/outfeed table.
Also note that these aren't BIG workbenches. For one thing, I didn't want a bench that's too tall. I have to lift stuff onto and off of it, and I'm not my younger fitter self anymore. It's not too deep either, same sort of reason. and then also if I made them too wide, I couldn't fit many in the space I'll have. Also, all my premade workbenches are around the same dimensions. The Stanley multifunction foldable one I have was 70cm wide, 50cm deep, and around 81cm tall so that's what my workbenches are made to.
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| This collage is roughly to scale. Sorta. Kinda. |
As you can see, the gear I had was never bought for quality but for price. One of the tables on the left is over ten years old, the other about eight and bought secondhand, and believe me they are stuffed. Swollen from moisture damage, one of them has a somewhat repaired chipboard panel, and never made for accuracy.
The sawhorses on the right were bought to assemble my original 3x3 shed in 2018. And the Stanley worktable wouldn't be in my collection if we hadn't stopped in a little seaside town and visited their opp shop. It seems to be a genuine Stanley table, identical to the worktable in the centre, just a bit more beaten up. Okay - a lot more beaten up. But it's the 50x70x81cm one and it was one of the most useful so it became the standard.
The reason it was at the opp shop was that someone had broken the crosspiece that kept the front legs (to the right in that picture and hidden because of the angle of the shot) stable so I just screwed a piece of 70x35 across them and it's been in use ever since. But none of these has been what you'd call stable or conducive to making straight carpentry.
Anyway - back to these.
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| This lot cost under $25 landed in Australia. |
As you can see - they seem to be usable (I might not use them in a hand powerdrill until I've checked how they perform in a speed-controllable drill press) and should let me work out which sizes are the ones I'll tend to use most.
As I said in the photo caption they cost less than 2 or three more mainstream bits but that's also partially because I do tend to hold off and hold off and hold off until a reasonable price comes along. Call me a "hardware hodler..."
The only fly in the ointment's been the weather - yesterday the report for today mentioned 17C and a clear day so I started a load of washing. What an idiot... Of course it's barely 15C and with wind-chill feels like 10C so working (outdoors, unluckily) on the new bench to make it actually useful is not gonna happen. (For one main reason, three quarters of the conditions that have me disabled are worsened by sudden exposure to cool/cold, and secondly because I just can't work bundled up in "Kenny layers.")
So I sat with a few sheets of drawing paper and sketched wiring diagrams for the new shed when I finally get access, some possible floor layouts, etc. It's coming along. Stay tuned...
Thanks for reading along to this point. If you enjoy all these, how about a tip? Use the KoFi kup or Paypal and send me the price of a cup of coffee, or even make it a monthly thing? It would really help me with the fees and costs involved with all these projects and make me very grateful. Also, the newspaper thing lets you see my News Stand where you'll see why it would make me grateful, that being that I produce a LOT of different themed blogs, and write several posts a week, and I also make all these projects and write them up for people to try.
See you on the next post!
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