Some shop tips

Tom Lewis

Tom Lewis

Joined
Feb 24, 2000
Messages
1,951
Have you ever had your safety glasses fog up? I have, and it's a pain. I have tried spitting on them like skin divers do with their masks, hot water, glass spray that claims to stop fogging, but nothing I have tried worked very well. The other day my glasses were fogging up, and it was warm in my shop. I hooked up a portable fan so the air was blowing on me, and like magic, the fogging stopped. I have since used the fan and it has always worked to stop the fogging.

Second tip; I really like Norax belts,and they seem to last forever. The problem is the number on the back of the belt disappears after several uses. I now write the grit number on the back of the belt with a magic marker, and that lasts.

Third tip. When using something like Tru-Oil, when the bottle is half full the air in the bottle starts causing the oil to harden. Some put marbles in the bottle to keep the air out, but you can also store the bottle upside down. That way if the oil hardens it will be at the bottom of the bottle, not the top.
 
I like the magic marker tip.. Have been some directional belts and I have been putting an arrow on them in magic marker because of the same issue.
 
Constantly moving air with something like a little box fan will also greatly reduce the moisture in your shop.

Temp changes this time of year will cause rust. Warm days, cold nights . .

Also adding a 24X24 cheap pleated filter to the back of that box fan will catch a lot of dust.
 
Mark, concerning directional belts, I was talking with the Klingspor Representative at one of the blade shows and he told me that it didn't make any difference which direction the belt went. I have tried them both ways and don't see any difference.
 
sdemars said:
Constantly moving air with something like a little box fan will also greatly reduce the moisture in your shop.

Temp changes this time of year will cause rust. Warm days, cold nights . .

Also adding a 24X24 cheap pleated filter to the back of that box fan will catch a lot of dust.
Click to expand...

Thats the cheapest way to make an air cleaner. Put some angle iron around three sides and find a filter that fits the fan. I had one on a timer when I had my large enclosed shop that I would use during the day and then would come on in the middle of the night to clean more dust out of the air.
 
Tom Lewis said:
Mark, concerning directional belts, I was talking with the Klingspor Representative at one of the blade shows and he told me that it didn't make any difference which direction the belt went. I have tried them both ways and don't see any difference.
Click to expand...

Those are the belts the Klinspor and the VSM . I never could tell if I had them running the "right" way or not. Just figured they had their reasons . Thanks Tom
 
I'm an amateur at best honestly. Though, I think there are great advantages of taking a razor (or one of your knives :) ) and slicing the tip of a sharpie at an angle, to a very very fine point, to where you can write with it like a pencil, for drawing finer, more accurate markings on your blanks or what have you.

Also, I am taking this all step by step. Right now I am just glueing my handles on rather then using pins (soon enough..). I find that when using glue, your wood will slide around on the knife handle when you start to apply pressure, obviously you want it the the exact place you set it to... So I have started glueing my handles to the steel, then wrapping them tight with the green tape so it cannot move, then I put it in the vice and the pressure no longer causes sliding and when it's cured my knife handle is exactly where I meant it to be.

PS. I have seen so much talk of angle grinders being to dangerous for this, and not proper tool and such. I have to call bullshit on that. I have been working in a shop for 8 years now where angle grinders are used daily. If you use a new, clean, proper sized and rated cutoff wheel on it, use a guide to make sure you are making absolute straight passes, and go over the line 4 or 5 times even to cut through 1/8 inch steel, rather then digging in and doing it in one pass, I think it highly unlikely the disk will shatter and hurt you like I have heard here so many times. Obviously, you won't be tracing out your entire curvy knife blank with it like a jigsaw, that would be stupid. However, marking straight lines at different angles on all the extra material and then simply cutting it off, you can get pretty close to your shape. Honestly, the cutoff wheel saves me like 25 minutes I would have spent at the bench grinder to remove that extra material.
 
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I too resharpen sharpie markers with a razor blade. Also, I mix my epoxy in the corner of a plastic sandwich bag. It is easy to mix very well by kneading it and then cut off a small tip of the corner and squeeze it out. It is an easy way to fill the cavity in a hidden tang handle.
 
I would have problems getting the G flex to flow into the shallow holes drilled into the tang and knife scales. Use a heat gun and carefully and gently go over the epoxy which will heat it up and become less viscous and also allow the air bubbles to come up to the top. Likely a good way to get the air bubbles out of your tinted epoxy if you are making mosaic pins.
 
Some good tips so far.

If needed I tint my epoxy black with graphite powder that is commonly found at hardware stores in the key cutting section. It is sold in small quantities as lock lubricant. A little bit goes a long way in your epoxy.
 
I go over epoxy with a hot air gun before mixing. It flows more and mixes better
 
I made a belt holder very easily using only one long 1"x6" board about 4ft long and a 6ft 1/4in diameter wooden dowel. All I did was drill a bunch of staggered 1/4in holes in the board and then cut a few 10in sections of the dowel and then pushed them through the holes in the board. You might need to file the inside of the holes a little for the dowels to fit. I leave 5in on either side and put new belts on one side and used ones on the other. The only thing I would change is to use 1/2in dowels and possibly make the sections longer. My shop is in my basement so all I did was drive a few nails into one of the support beams on the ceiling and mount it through the existing drilled holes. I'll try and take a pic.
 
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