The handles on my mill, have been slowly getting squeaker and squeaker over the last year or so. About 2 weeks back, I had become so fed up with the situation that I decided to design some new and hopefully quieter handles. My requirements in order of priority were as follows:
- as quiet as possible
- no modifications to the stock wheel
- not expensive
- better ergonomics if possible
The design shown below is what I came up with and it checked off everything on the list. The shoulder bolts are off the shelf items that you can get almost anywhere. The aluminum bar stock and MDS impregnated Nylon used to make handle body and bushings, is also readily available from several online retailers if you can’t get it locally. Making them ended up being a really fun project.
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One of the issues with using a DSLR to shoot video, is that to get really good audio you need a few accessories. Those accessories can get unwieldy at times, so most people get a cage to mount their camera in and their accessories to. I personally don’t like cages, because they don’t allow you to quickly take your camera out of them. Thus, I decided to make a custom cheese plate that would mount to the top of my pre-amp. The cheese plate allows me to use an Arca-Swiss style quick release plate which allows me to access my camera very quickly.
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On Sunday I knocked out another one of my long overdue projects. The Handle for my burnisher, was poorly designed, so I finally replace it with one that feels better in my hand. I made the handle from 100+ year old apple that had been harvested from a Michigan orchard. As I mention in the video, I’m not a very experience turner, if you want to learn turning please see the links below.
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One of the many benefits of having tools, is being able to fix something you broke. I’m usually pretty careful with my tools but the other night i knocked one of my Noga bases of the bench and broke the head. Since replacement heads are fairly expensive, I fixed the old one last night.
I don’t know what it is, but every winter between Christmas and Valentines day my shop time always seems to go to almost zero. It’s like a perfect storm of holiday gatherings, office parties, and family visits. This year I embraced the storm and decided to try and knock out several of the little shop improvement projects that always seem to get put off the rest of the year.
After my last big project, I decided it was time to finally address the issues with my carriage stop. Originally I planed to use thumb screws to secure everything, but as I mentioned in the last video of the series, they didn’t provide enough clamping force. Since I was in a hurry to press the stop into service, I used set screws and a bolt instead. While this worked fine, it meant I always had to have an Allen key and wrench close by. So, shorty after Christmas I ordered some adjustable handles and modified them to fit the stop.
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