Salvage

With the price of virgin material what it is, one is well advised to cultivate an eye for the beauty that resides concealed within even the roughest looking of cast off material.

Here's a shot of my workshop ceiling's salvage rack. There's a whole lot of beautiful material resident there, believe it or not.

Please bear with me while I deliver the back story to this.

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We've recently replaced wall-to-wall carpeting in our home's master bedroom with hardwood flooring. Even the closet's floor got the hardwood flooring. The closet's walls are lined with tongue-and-groove solid cedar -- a very nice touch that the previous owner of the house put in.

Once the floor had been installed, the closet needed a minimal baseboard installation; just a run of moulding to conceal what gaps there were where the floor meets the walls.

I looked around at the Home Depot for something suitable and found nothing, really. What I saw there that even came close left me reeling with sticker shock -- over ten dollars for an eight-foot length of solid pine cove molding that wouldn't have looked right. So much for that bit of shopping.

That nearest plank in the preceding photograph is solid cedar, just like the closet's lining. (It used to be baseboard in our living room until it got replaced.) It dawned on me that my table saw and router could do a credible job of turning some of that into simple moulding that would serve just fine.

I ripped a seven-foot length of cedar plank into one-inch widths, sanded it and ran it past a 1/4" radius round-over bit on the router table and voila, enough moulding to do the job at a material cost of roughly zero dollars and zero cents, with the sales tax forgiven. Here's a length of moulding with the router bit I used.

A seven-foot length of nominal 1x6 cedar plank yielded four lengths like this-- more than enough. Here's a close-up shot of the finished outcome.

It's not flawless, but it's pretty damn good for the price.

So there we are. Much good stuff is hiding inside what may look to some like trash.

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Attaching Things to Concrete or Masonry Block Walls

I'll get to the subject of the title of this piece eventually. Please bear with me while I grumble a bit.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd devote myself to disinventing the telephone; I hate the things with a passion. But, they are a fact of life and I do have to have one -- even in my workshop.

Some recent rearrangement of things in the workshop has rendered the phone's old perch inoperative, so I have to make a shelf for it. I figure the material in the following photograph is wretched enough to be fit for the cursed instrument.

Once I've built the shelf, I'll have to attach it to a masonry block wall with 3/16" Tapcons^[1]. Tapcons are excellent fasteners; I really like the results I get from the things. But any method of fastening things to concrete or masonry is fraught with peril because of the difficulty of getting holes situated with any degree of precision. You can start the hole where you please, but the drill is going to seek the path of least resistance, and concrete and masonry can present large variations in density and hardness as you proceed with a drill.

I've never seen anyone address this difficulty with any helpful information. For whatever it's worth, I'll share what I've learned about it here. If anyone knows of a surefire method for getting holes drilled in concrete exactly where they're wanted, I'd like to hear about it.

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Here's the little patch of bare wall that I had in mind for the shelf to go on. I've spotted the upper two of three Tapcon locations as carefully as I could and centre-punched them. Something I've found helpful is to pencil little circles around the punch marks. They serve as a 'target' that can help you correct any drill wander that wants to happen just as you're starting a hole.

Another thing I do is to build a bit of adjustability into the item to be mounted. That's simply a matter of drilling oversize holes for the Tapcons. If all goes well, you'll be able to adjust the item's position to compensate for slight misplacement of the Tapcons' holes.

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And as it turned out, all went well. Here's the shelf installed and dead level.

The two upper holes through the back of the shelf were 1/4" diameter for 3/16" screws. That gave me enough slop that I could level the shelf successfully, even though my Tapcon hole placements weren't exactly perfect. In the event that a Tapcon hole ends up badly misplaced, and you have to greatly enlarge a mounting hole to get an item levelled, you can use fender washers to make the installation sound.

The single Tapcon at the lower end of the shelf's back was easy to install. The hole through the shelf there was 5/32" -- the size of a Tapcon drill for 3/16" screws. That gave me a guide hole for drilling the third Tapcon hole, after I'd levelled the shelf and securely tightened the two upper screws.

Anyway, it's done. Here it is with the phone in place and on hold.

If you were wondering what the red hook in the opening photograph was for, now you know.

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Addendum -- MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2011

Well, my face is about as red as that 'hold' hook. Shortly after I'd installed the shelf, my son came by, examined the 'hold' hook, and proceeded to show me how you put one of these old phones on 'hold'. It's really simple and easy -- no hook is needed.

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Update -- THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2012

A reader kindly clued me in to the truly correct way to put an old phone on hold. It looks like this.

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Note:

[1]Here's the Tapcon website. I have no financial interest in promoting their products, I'm just trying to be informative here.

The Tapcon screws work as advertised. They're widely available. Use their drills in a hammer drill and follow their instructions, and you'll be pleased with the results.

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Pumice Stone Brush Repair

The loose pumice stone in the following photograph is not atypical; I've had to deal with this sort of thing before. Some makers of mass-produced goods are uninterested in making anything that actually works right; they're only interested in making facsimiles of stuff that might cause money to change hands in their direction. So, it comes as no surprise that my wife's newly-purchased pumice stone brush came apart.

Clear silicone sealant is ideal as an adhesive here. The sealant 'flows' into the stone's pores, and really gets a grip on it. The key to a permanent repair is to fully coat both mating surfaces with sealant before assembling the pieces. Here they are coated and ready for assembly.

And here it is back together, with what little squeeze-out there was wiped away.

And here it is set up with a gravity clamp while the sealant cures.

The hard-copy, bound book is not dead yet, not by a long shot.

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Twist Drill Shank Modifications

I'm on record as having praised K&S Engineering's telescoping brass tubing product to the sky for its usefulness and versatility, so I feel obliged to exhibit new uses that I find for it. There's one example of a use here, where I used it to sleeve an oversize bore in a barbeque's valve knobs that I was repairing. Following is an example of the converse, where the tubing serves to increase a diameter rather than decrease it. Here's a photograph that explains a lot.

Pictured is my elderly Craftsman 3/8" drill, with a modified 1/16" drill in its chuck. There was a little problem with chucking a 1/16" drill in this drill's chuck -- the chuck is worn and will no longer close down to 1/16". (I needed to drill a lot of small pilot holes for 1 1/2" finishing nails to do a problematic baseboard installation job -- long story.)

Brass tubing to the rescue.

A short length of 3/32" outside diameter tubing (just over 1/16" inside diameter) glued onto the shank of a 1/16" twist drill with CA adhesive gave me a means of chucking the drill securely in the worn chuck. The arrangement worked nicely and got the job done.

A variation on this sort of drill modification can be helpful when what you need is not so much a longer than normal drill, but a drill with a longer than normal reach. You do the same as what I did to make the 1/16" drill fit the worn chuck, but you use a longer length of tubing. Here's an example of a 'lengthened' 3/32" drill.

The tubing's outside diameter here was 1/8"; hence, its inside diameter is a slip fit over a 3/32" drill shank.

The tubing and the glue bond are entirely strong enough for the drilling of small diameter holes in wood. But if a more robust extended-reach drill is needed, one can be made by using steel rod instead of tubing. here's an example of an extended 1/8" drill.

That's 6mm diameter rod salvaged from an old laser printer. These are easy to make if you have a lathe. Just use the drill that you mean to extend to bore a hole in the end of a length of rod, degrease the parts with lacquer thinner and assemble with CA adhesive. The adhesive bond will likely take anything you can dish out.

Should you ever want to take one of these apart, just heat the glue joint gently with a propane torch. CA adhesive is not all that heat resistant. It will soften and let go.

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An Unorthodox Tee-Nut Application

A typical tee-nut is a threaded barrel with a big spiky flange at one end of it. Tee-nuts are great for installing steel female threads in wood for fastening things together; but there are other ways they can be put to use. Here's an example.

I needed a nut plate recently to span a 1 1/8" diameter hole in the back of a piece of furniture, so I could secure an ill-fitting lamp cord grommet. On the face of it, such a thing can be easily made -- just drill and tap a hole in a suitable length of 1/8" thick mild steel flat and there's your nut plate. But tapping even mild steel with a small diameter tap like 6-32 is fraught with peril, and I avoid doing it if there's a reasonably elegant alternative. Here's a way to make a nut plate using a tee-nut. The resulting part is actually superior to one with a tapped thread.

Pictured below are the ingredients.

At the left is an unmodified 6-32 tee-nut. Beside it to the right is an identical nut that's had its spikes broken off, and the resulting rough spots filed. At the very right is a two-inch length of 1/2" wide, 1/8" thick steel flat that's been prepared to accept the modified tee-nut. Note the countersink to partially accept the radius at the base of the tee-nut's barrel.

There are two ways you can go about this. That hole in the steel flat can be drilled for a slip fit, or for an interference fit for the tee-nut's barrel.

In this case, the tee-nut I'm using has a barrel diameter of 3/16". So, for a slip fit in the steel rectangle you'd use a 3/16" (0.1875") drill. A No. 13 (0.185") drill gives an interference fit. Either case requires press-fitting in the vise to mash the radius at the base of the nut's barrel into the countersink. Here's a shot of the parts in the vise being pressed together using a 5mm socket wrench as a pressing 'anvil'.

An interference-fitted version will be ready for use right out of the vise. A slip-fitted version needs to be glued together with CA adhesive.

Here are finished examples of both versions.

The upper one is a glued, slip-fitted nut plate. The lower one is the press-fitted version. Either one will work fine.

Here's a shot of the glued, slip-fitted item on the job.

A very strong nut plate, and no tap got broken or dulled to make it. ('Sorry about the glary photo. I still have much to learn about photography.)

This technique is an inexpensive alternative to Rivet Nuts in any situation where the back of the material is accessible.

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Half-Inch Nails up the Wazoo

If you take up wall-to-wall carpeting from a floor, you end up with quite a supply of these spiky little strips from the perimeter of the floor. They're 1/4" poplar plywood with lots of 1/2" nails driven through them at an angle to grip the edges of the carpeting that's stretched over them.



My son did me the favour recently of taking up the carpeting from the master bedroom in our home, in preparation for the installation of a hardwood floor. I have a box full of the stuff now. If I take the time to pull all those little nails, I'll be a half-inch nail tycoon. Plus, I'll have some nice kindling for the fireplace.

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And the better part of two hours later, here we are. I have an excellent little heap of half-inch common nails, and a smaller heap of 3/4" ringed nails. (The 3/4" ringed nails were used to fasten the strips to the floor.) Not a bad deal for the price. I won't be writing "half-inch nails" on my list of stuff to buy at Canadian Tire anytime soon.

And here's my kindling.

I've made out like a bandit here.

I won't be counting the nails; that's management's job, and there ain't no management around here, only labour.

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A Spray-Painting Lathe

I'm making a new standpipe for an ornamental lawn sprinkler. When it's done and ready, I'll need to clear-coat it, and that prospect left me a bit apprehensive.

I'm pretty good at spray-painting, but I'm not a talented 'natural' at it, and I wanted to improve the odds of ending up with a flawless outcome. That led me to construct this crude prototype of a spray-painting lathe.^[1] Here's the headstock end.

And here's the tailstock end.

The standpipe is not ready for clear-coating yet, but I did have an immediate requirement to repaint three square-tubing side table legs. I made up a suitable mandrel for them and tried it out. I'm very pleased with how it went. Here are photos of a side table leg readied for painting.



I plugged in the rotisserie's motor, painted a leg and found that the equipment and the method work beautifully. That barbeque rotisserie motor/gearbox has an output speed of about 5 1/2 rpm. I got the hang of it very quickly and got flawless results. I wish all of my ideas would turn out as well as this has.

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The woodworking part of constructing this was strictly crude, simple and utilitarian -- I just wanted a framework that would do the job.

Adapting the drive unit called for a bit of machining work on my metal lathe, but nothing difficult. Pictured below are the items I needed to fabricate.

The square drive adapter was made from 8mm square rod salvaged from the tractor-feed assembly of an old dot-matrix printer. It's 4 5/16" long overall, with a pointy end turned at one end, and a 3/4" long round 'land' turned at the other end to take a short length of 5/16" I.D. rubber tubing as a flexible coupling. Needless to say, this is the sort of thing that calls for a four-jaw chuck.

At the upper right is one end of the mandrel for the sprinkler standpipe shown in the first two photos above. It's a 40" length of 10mm diameter steel rod, with one end turned down to fit the flexible coupling. At its tailstock end, it's simply borne directly in a round-bottomed notch in the tailstock upright. At the lower right is one end of the mandrel for the square table legs. It's a 29 1/2" length of 1/4" diameter steel rod. I built up its drive coupling end with brass tubing and CA adhesive. A short length each of 9/32" and 5/16" diameter tubing glued in place did the job there.

Front and centre is a bearing I made up from odds and ends to bear the tailstock end of the 1/4" rod. It just slips into place in the notch in the tailstock.

When I first tried this out with the square table legs, the rotation speed seemed a little fast, but as I said, I got the hang of it very quickly and now I'd say that it runs at about a perfect speed for the application. As a means of spray-painting long skinny objects, this lathe can't be beat. You'd have to be trying to botch a job on it.

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[1] My son and I had a slight disagreement about how loosely/broadly the word 'lathe' can be defined/applied. He maintained that a lathe is for shaping things on. I maintained that any machine that spins things horizontally for any purpose can be called a 'lathe'.

I'm not certain that I'm right, but I'm older so 'spray-painting lathe' it is.

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