Tips and tricks thread.

Another uncle tip about sanding anything flat.take a pane of glass,wet it down and put the sand paper down.it should stick pretty well and anything sanded on it should be flat.
 
All this talk about epoxy mixing- I'll share my favorite way, that I got from another one of these threads here a while back. I just keep an old phone book on a corner of the bench, tear the top cover off, and use the pages as a series of rip-off mixing trays. The epoxy rarely soaks through and sticks to the next page, and the phone book lasts forever.

Another of my favorites is for cutting sandpaper- I found an old paper cutting table/shear at a Goodwill, although I've seen them many places, and use it to quickly, accurately, and easily batch cut sandpaper into 1" wide strips to fit my blade sanding bar.

As mentioned above, putting your sanding fluid in a contact lens solution bottle works great for applying lube while sanding. I just use straight water.

Never underestimate the usefulness of masking tape- it's great for separating different parts of the handle and fittings when applying finishes, buffing and sanding, etc. I also use it on the blade when buffing a guard face (if it needs touchup) and on the guard when detail sanding a ricasso (again, if it needs touchup.) It's very useful for work on mostly finished knives.
 
I love these threads. Half the fun of knifemaking is just goofing around with neat stuff - I mean, finding innovative ways to be efficient. :D

Family members should love anyone who works in any sort of shop, because we're easy to deal with at holidays and birthdays... there's always cool little gizmos and gadgets we want.

A wet-dry shopvac is almost mandatory. Likewise, every shop should have a jug each of vinegar, acetone and isopropyl alcohol. A machinist's square and small but accurate level are nice for checking drill press table/chuck alignment and lots of other things.

Bob Loveless once said, "If they had never invented epoxy, we'd all be in a lot of trouble." I feel the same way about blue painter's tape, pegboard, little 6" steel rules with fine gradations and a decimal chart on the back, Dykem in a spray can, digital calipers, Sharpies, electrical tape, and the little LED lights that clip on the brim of a baseball cap.

The little cabinets with lots of small drawers are great for various fasteners, small bits of mosaic pin stock, and so on. Use clear tape to attach one of whatever's in there to the front of each drawer.

I use the top drawer of an old file cabinet to keep my sandpaper organized and clean; the bottom drawer is full of tool manuals and stuff.

The free or re-purposed tips are the best, though... the milk jug ideas are awesome! Thanks, Nick and Lucy :thumbup:

I also keep a lot of stuff in ziplocks (lots of times small parts come in nice heavy ones that can be re-used after the bits/mills or whatever have been put away), sour cream tubs, pill bottles, etc. My great-grandpa used to save little baby-food jars for little stuff like screws and nuts, and screw the lids to the underside of a shelf in his garage. You can see what's in 'em, and they don't take up bench/shelf space. Just unscrew the jar from the lid, take what you need and put the jar back.

I almost never throw away a dull file. They can be ground smooth/to shape for sanding "blocks", broaches, carving tools, etc. Some people even make knives out of 'em, can you imagine that? :p

Scraps of leather are handy for lining vise jaws, "shimming" under the tip of a blade on the sanding board so it doesn't flex, and trying out new dyes.

And last but certainly not least... stickers! A tool chest or cabinet just isn't really "yours" until you tag it up with a couple stickers from your favorite knife/gun company, bands, sports team, hot-rod-part manu, etc. :thumbup:
 
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I love threads like this, thanks guys. :)

FWIW- I think the way to make a thread like this stay near the top and keep growing is to add photos. For the way my brain works, it makes all the ideas/tips much easier to grasp and hold onto. :)
 
These threads are always enlightening...................

When my wife replaces the kitchen cutting boards I grab them, clean them up and stash them. The thin, really slippery ones have a myriad of uses as mentioned above. I've used the thicker (UHMW - Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene) ones which are about 3/8" thick, to line vise jaws (using neomidium magnets on the inside to hold them in place), as precise miter sliders (cut on my router table), to make sets of spacers for setting up routers, my table saw, band saw and even as sacrificial parallels in my drill press vise.

Vise-grips have become one of my favorite go to tools, I made an easier to use folder spring compressor with one of these that saves a lot of swearing when I'm fitting a folder on a set-up board.

I tripped into a Wilton Junior 343 Pow-R-Arm at a garage sale (they obviously hadn't a clue what it was or what it costs today), mounted a small machinist vise on it, screwed it to the corner of my workbench and have very heavy duty PanaVise now.

Spotting drills are my newest favorite tool. If you don't have some you need them.

Many people have said it before but I'll repeat it: You will fall in love with a Portaband installed in a Swag Offroad V3 table if you don't have a metal cutting bandsaw. (saves a ton of space.

Safety tip: RESP-O-RATOR dust mask works like a charm and it's pretty comfortable.
 
Loving this thread! My 2 cents:

Favorite epoxy mix surface: backside of a used sanding belt (I cut 'em up anyway to save space in the trash can) - that way I can scrape ALL the mixed epoxy up with a toothpick or whatever.

One of my go-to sanding "blocks" is a square cut out of old gardening knee-pads - 3/8" thick rubber that is stiff enough but still conforms to rounded surfaces.

+1 on WD40 cologne.
 
I love the phonebook idea, that's just great for scrap paper to line anything. And the old thicker cutting board is an excellent idea for vise jaws...

For sandpaper, my wife took one of those expandable folders with pockets and labels at the top and laid em out by grit, low front back high... It makes It super quick and easy to find... She did this without telling me, and now it is one of my favorite things in my shop...

Never underestimate the value of one of those clip on desk lamps... I have two, both are the kind with the long flexible neck, and both were under $15 at walmart...

Keep em coming. Thanks to everyone who has contributed. I have already picked up about 50 things I am definitely gonna start doing or at least try :)
 
Michael Kemp said:
Loving this thread! My 2 cents:

Favorite epoxy mix surface: backside of a used sanding belt (I cut 'em up anyway to save space in the trash can) - that way I can scrape ALL the mixed epoxy up with a toothpick or whatever.

One of my go-to sanding "blocks" is a square cut out of old gardening knee-pads - 3/8" thick rubber that is stiff enough but still conforms to rounded surfaces.

+1 on WD40 cologne.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if they charged the prices they do for cologne per volume for WD-40 it would be about $5000 a gallon, lol. A real bargain...

And I probably shouldn't tell this on myself... but there I was at the shop trash can fussing and cussing about the belts I was throwing away taking up so much space and not going down in the trashcan. My FOUR year old walks by and says "Why don't you cut em up daddy?" D'oh!
 
If the mods agree... (Stacy, you reading this?) I wouldn't mind seeing where this goes for a little bit longer, then I can condense the tips into one doc and send it up for attachment in the stickies or something...
Not that any new makers apparently read the stickies.... lol...
 
Ok this isn't so much a tip or trick, and I know it has been mentioned here before, but I responded to a call that got me thinking...
If you don't already have one, and keep your forge inside or use it inside, get a carbon monoxide/explosive gas detector and put it near the forge.. Not so close that it goes off every time you crack the valve but close enough to catch an oops.
Suffice it to say someone had a home-built bbq and left their burner on. We responded to a gas odor complaint in an apartment complex with garages underneath. By the time anyone had smelled the gas it had reached the LEL (lower explosive limit) as guaged by the FD's gas sensors in the whole lower garage portion of the apartment complex. One spark would have been a bad day... By code, they had detectors in the living areas, but due to layout of the apartments they didn't cover the garages.
And have a fire extinguisher handy. Sparks can light all kinds of things on fire including you. And water won't put out every fire, so a fire extinguisher is a necessity. And make sure it is big enough to cover you. This isn't the place to skimp on gear.
 
LucyCustomKnives said:
Ok this isn't so much a tip or trick, and I know it has been mentioned here before, but I responded to a call that got me thinking...
If you don't already have one, and keep your forge inside or use it inside, get a carbon monoxide/explosive gas detector and put it near the forge.. Not so close that it goes off every time you crack the valve but close enough to catch an oops.
Suffice it to say someone had a home-built bbq and left their burner on. We responded to a gas odor complaint in an apartment complex with garages underneath. By the time anyone had smelled the gas it had reached the LEL (lower explosive limit) as guaged by the FD's gas sensors in the whole lower garage portion of the apartment complex. One spark would have been a bad day... By code, they had detectors in the living areas, but due to layout of the apartments they didn't cover the garages.
And have a fire extinguisher handy. Sparks can light all kinds of things on fire including you. And water won't put out every fire, so a fire extinguisher is a necessity. And make sure it is big enough to cover you. This isn't the place to skimp on gear.
Click to expand...

You can get a normal dry power fire extinguisher refilled with "D" class powder.
That's for metal fires if the fines catch fire.
Aluminium is especially bad
 
I too love threads like this, I used to use hobby shop tubing for precise spouts on the
many different oil cans in my shop. The veterinarian cow needles are long enough for
most thin oil containers. Dear god make them dull before even thinking about using
them. Been on a paper cutter witch hunt for years, sooner or later
Ken.
 
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LucyCustomKnives said:
For sandpaper, my wife took one of those expandable folders with pockets and labels at the top and laid em out by grit, low front back high... It makes It super quick and easy to find... She did this without telling me, and now it is one of my favorite things in my shop...
Click to expand...

This is a good idea. I have those stackable plastic trays they have in offices for papers and usually buy my sandpaper in packs of 50. Each shelf is for a different grit and you can pack quite a bit of paper in each section and I labeled each shelf for each grit
 
Thanks to everyone who posted so far... I have picked up literally over a dozen new things I will be doing in my shop.
Later this weekend I will go through and copy everything into a word doc or pdf, etc if anyone is interested in having it, and post up just the compiled document by linking to a download offsite.
Thanks again...
 
Thank you to all for sharing your tips! I am just starting out and setting up shop. These things can really help a new guy out a lot! Again,thanks a lot.
Kevin
 
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