Under

Under-Bench Paper Storage:

Use your workbench for just about any task that comes up?...Bet some of these jobs can get pretty messy. Here's a tip to keep the bench top in top shape.

As you can see in the photo, I suspended a roll of heavy, brown paper from the underside of the bench top. A long dowel runs through the center of the roll and then hangs on two large hooks screwed into the bench. Simply roll out a length of paper and go to work.

Cord Keeper TIP

There's nothing more frustrating than having a power cord get jerked out of an electrical outlet in the middle of a job. Especially if I'm working on a project outside, and the power tool is plugged into a long extension cord .

To prevent this , I mount a "cord keeper" to the wall directly below the outlet, see drawing. It squeezes the cord (or cords) between two wood blocks. So even if I tug on the cord, it stays plugged into the wall outlet.....

The cords fit into two grooves

that are routed in a mounting block. I used a core box bit in a table-mounted router to cut each groove. This creates a curved bottom that allows the cord to nestle into the block. Just be sure the groove is shallow enough to allow the cord to stick up above the mounting block, see Top View. This will allow the wood cover of the cord keeper to exert pressure against it. To produce this pressure, a long slot in the cover fits over a machine screw that's installed in the mounting block. Tightening a knob on the screw holds the cover in place. Before screwing the cord keeper to the wall, I glued a short dowel into a hole in the mounting block to help align the cover. Also, gluing a couple of thin rubber strips to the cover will help improve its grip. (I cut scraps of rubber from an old bicycle inner tube.)

Knock-Down Sawhorse Plotting/Drawing/Cutting Grid

A simple cutting grid that fits over a pair of sawhorses, see drawing below. The grid is made up of interlocking strips of 3/4" plywood. The strips are all 4" wide. I cut two 8-foot long strips for the main rails and five 4-foot long strips for the cross rails. Then all the strips are notched so that they interlock to create a grid. Also notch the bottom edge of the long strips and the top edge of the sawhorses to hold the grid in place and keep it from moving.

The grid is assembled on top of the sawhorses by simply sliding the pieces together. Then I put the sheet of plywood I want to cut on top of the grid. I set the blade on my saw so that it cuts through the plywood and just barely starts to cut into the top edges of the grid. (If the rails get chewed up through use, it’s a simple matter to make some new ones.)

The nice thing about this cutting grid is that when done using it, simply disassemble it and store it out of the way of the Kids......

Spray Booth to Go

It's always been difficult to find a place to spray parts with primer. I used some cheap shelf material to screw together a 2x4' box. The grate is from a fluorescent tube fixture. The hood thingy is 1/8" fiberboard which folds flat and the exhaust fan is a surplus computer part. I just roll the assembly over to the door which has another piece of 1/8" fiberboard fitted in place. The fan matches a hole cut in the board. Does it work? Perfectly! This is one of my ideas that really sucks. And that's a good thing! Absolutely no over spray in the shop and no smell. Total cost was about $40 CAD

Homebuilt Pressure Mask

I decided that I wanted to use a positive pressure mask when I started priming. But I just couldn't afford the Hobby Air system right now. So I rigged up the arrangement you see in the photo, after discussing it with a friend who's an experienced painter.

The mask is an off-the-shelf filter mask, from Home Depot. It has two filters with integral check valves, and an exhaust check valve. When the blower is running, the mask's exhaust check valve passes the excess air (the blower produces far more than I consume). The mask has a positive pressure at all times.

For a blower, I used the motor and turbine from an old Hoover upright vacuum that I had lying around. I gave it a thorough cleaning first, considering the sort of stuff that's gone through it over the years. The turbine housing fits nicely into the end of a piece of 4" PVC drain pipe, which I also had lying around. (Sometimes it's handy to be in the middle of a house renovation while building an airplane.)

The blower is connected to the mask with 3" heater hose, also from Home Depot. I would have preferred to use vacuum hose, but the price knocked my socks off: about $5 a foot! Now that I've proven to myself that it works, I'm going to add more hose. What you see is just 8 feet of hose. Once installed in my garage it will have about 24 feet, to give me room to move around, and to allow the intake to be located far from any fumes.

The heater hose is quite thin, and tries to shoot out straight like a New Year's Tickler when the blower comes on. Another drawback is that the turbine exhausts over the motor, so if anything nasty comes from the motor it's headed my way. But I have the filter in between to take out any chunks. If the motor burns out, I'll certainly be the first to know! All-in-all, though, it seems to work quite well. And it costs as close to nothing as anything gets in the airplane-building world

Whiteboard on the Cheap

The latest addition to my workshop: a whiteboard, for planning. Actually, it’s not a real whiteboard they’re too expensive for my Scotch heart. It’s an old storm window I don’t use any more. I taped a big sheet of paper to the back side, to make the writing more legible. Dry-erase markers work perfectly on it.

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