Glen-L.com

nice thread I have made severial home made tools throught the year but lost them all when I moved to Utah and left a allot of my shop in Ohio. And latter was all destroyed when the shop was flooded. feather broads are easy made and I make them as I need them out of sold wood by cutting the end grain on a broad after doing a angle cut then just clamp it down to the table. I have made Shapers using a router and the mounting it to a table after removing the foot covering and counter sinking the mounting screws. Drill presses can also be made into a shaper using exsiting equipment and expanding the table and adding a fence. even my wood working tool box is have made without and power tool it is 30 years old now and looking pretty ragged you will see this tool case in the back of the shop.
when I worked for the state Parks here in Utah most all my tool I used was Home crafted due to the fact I was historic cabnet make in a state park here and gave public demo's using the old 1800 style tools, including a wood lathe the was human powered

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Don't be afraid to attempt anything. You might surprise your self in the attempt.
http://www.facebook.com/Home.Made.Boat.Building
Modified Jubilee-"Wild Flower" 40' house boat
14' Mr John-Wild Flower 2
32' Supper Huck- Wild flower 3

Rod H

Here is my mobile base for my table saw. I used 2"x4"s, 4@3.5" casters, two 3.5" eye hooks, 2@24" 1/2 conduit, two conduit straps, and 4-Simpson Strong Tie bracing. I had many of the materials laying around and the Simpson ties were not really required. I used the conduit straps and eye hooks in place of some of the hardwood because I had them laying around. It has worked great. I also had a dolley that had been laying around and they provided the casters.

I got the idea from here on YouTube.com and you can make your own plans based upon the pics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3-Lzt7BFY

Way cool! Why haven't I thought of that? I've been carrying my little table saw in and out of a crowded garage every time I wanted to use it. This would be SO much easier!

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Mike
http://mikesboats.blogspot.com/
Raleigh, NC

I made my building form in to a nice, sturdy workbench. I will post pics when I get back from Vacation.

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Built the 17' Glen-L "Sea Knight"

We've discussed lots of shop made tools and this one is another 'tool' that was built to help me store, load and unload, move and handle sheets of aluminum.

At and age of "half dozen decades" and (hopefully) rising, I'm not lifting too much anymore by way of hefting sheets of aluminum around during the build. So I've had to spend some time making a 'tool' to handle sheets.

For want of any other terms I'll call it a "sheet handler", but it could be called by lots of different terms; anyway I look at this tool I'd call it long over due! You may not build regularly but even if you do; your plans to handle aluminum sheets may be one-off so that you don't need to spend lots of time to handle sheets over and over? This tool was built to allow one (old) man to unload sheets, store them, get them in and out of the shop and generally move entire sheets of 6'x25' x 1/4" aluminum without strain or risk to the old welder's carcass.


First this tool is a 20' long slightly "A" section (6' tall) truss that will store sheets of aluminum by standing them on edge. Here is the concept model in SketchUP


Here is the main truss going together in the shop. A frames were made on horses then stood up and tacked to the two bottom rails and then topped with 20's angles and finally X'ed together.



What I needed was a relatively light wt frame to hold the sheets for a boat, stacked on edge, and leaning in toward the other side, but not lying flat. I also needed to be able to stack half dozen sheets on both sides and to store extrusions of all types inside the rack.


There will eventually be cross pieces between the apexes of the truss frame that will stiffen the truss across the A frames and hold the extrusions.

This entire truss weighs less than 200 lb, the two long runners are 2"x 2" square steel tube, the cross pieces under the four A frames are all the same square stock and the uprights are thinner walled angle as are the X's (truss webbing) all 1/8" angle.

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Kevin Morin

Since the storage rack needed to move around so the sheets stored there would be available in the shop, I had to add axles.


My idea was to get a pair of old trailer axles and figure some way to make them stay under the trussed frame and for the front axle to steer the frame making this entire storage rack into a sort of trailer for the stored metal.

I also needed to add a pair of folding frames to the sides to allow sheets to be lifted into the storage stack and to be lowered off that stack and to provide a long work table for the sheets too.

this concept sketch shows the ideas that I wanted to have in the final 'sheet handler'.


Here is the handler with two axles under the frame the front axle is 'steerable' using a pipe sleeve and a very high tech bushing/bearing made of three plastic bucket lids between two steel flanges welded to the concentric steel pipes as the pivot assembly.

We'd put the 1/2" pipe cross ties in the main truss at this point as well. They will be the storage shelves for extrusions inside the A frame.

Needless to say this rig is not intended for more than walking speeds in the shop yard!


Rear axle is just a forged drop axle turned up with a pair of 1-1/2" square steel tubes as verticals. These two verticals are housed loosely in two 2" vertical downcomers that are trussed to the storage frame. Not much torsion in this suspension but then it only had to roll slowly on relatively level ground.


front axle pivot and truss assembly; the axle was reinforced by putting a 3" x 4" x 3/8" angle into the dropped bar and welded to create a pretty stiff axle that carries one end's load centrally on the axle so the pivot would work.



I also wanted the two side shelves or frames to serve as working ht benches to layout and cut the sheets that were laying on these two frames when the trailer/handler was in use to move a sheet into the shop. So the wheels and axles hold the handler up about 32" from the ground to allow a working ht bench when the side frames are folded down.

a few images left, next post.

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Kevin Morin

At this time the entire handler is not fully done but it does hold the sheets to one boat.


we've loaded one side with a couple of sheets and are getting ready to load more on the near side in this photo.

We've put plastic pipe sections along the steel truss to keep the aluminum off the steel but the small deck shelf is still just bare wood, which we'll cover when these sheets get used in the next few weeks or month.

The cross pieces inside the truss have small bore plastic pipe on them too, and that helps the extrusions to slide in and out as well as keeping the steel from interacting with the aluminum.



different end view as we load the sheet handler with more sheets and the extrusions are already inside on the cross pieces which now show up as white from the ABS we've used to cover the original 1/2" steel pipe.



Loaded with almost one entire boat (24'er, self bailing deck and walk around cabin in progress) the storage unit is ready to move in and out of the shop and sheets can be left on the trailer/handler for long term storage if needed?

next: moving it around and the two side frames.

Cheers,
Kevin Morin

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Kevin Morin

have you seen a panel carrier?
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/proje ... od_carrier

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God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

kens, I've seen something like this, made a couple out of conduit and castors to move ply into the panel saw in the old shop, useful for something small as a 4'x sheet; maybe a couple guys and three of these panel carriers would handle a 5'x20' sheet of metal?

Still, the panel carrier relies on the user's back, which is a bit of a problem for my back because its not a 'reliable fixture'.

cheers,
Kevin Morin

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Kevin Morin