Over years I’ve used almost every type of bench grinder dresser on the market, But I’ve never been completely happy with any of them. Star wheels do a good job of opening up the grinding wheel but don’t always produce a flat cutting surface. Carborundum sticks do an okay job of opening the pores, but they too don’t always yield a flat surface. T-handle diamond dressers produce a very flay face in my experience, but have a tendency to dull the wheel. The only type of Dresser I haven’t use is the single point type, mainly because the few that are commercially available wouldn’t work well with any of the grinders I’ve owned.
Back before Christmas, I decided it was finally time to give a single point dresser a try, so I sat down and designed one, that would work with my current grinder. The following video shows making the small parts associated with it.
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One of the things about my lathe that has always made me feel a little iffy was the QCTP stud. From the factory, it was a very anemic M8, that I’ve broken several times over the years. While taking some heavy cuts during a recent project, it looked almost as if the tool was tipping down because the stud was stretching under the load. I’ve learned from past experiences that I usually have another project or two before the stud gives up the ghost. This time around I decided to upgrade the stud to something with more longevity, instead of turning a replica of the inferior original.
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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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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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This started out as what i though would be a long custom build, but because of a design flaw in my original project I took a completely different direction to save time and Money. In the video, I show how to rig up some simple articulating camera arms for use in the workshop. In a small or tightly packed shops camera arms can be of great benifit, as they allow you to do away with tripods that always seem to be in your way, or just not capable of getting the exact shots you want.
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