One for the Better Half

The Much Better Half asked for a little shelf/table for behind the couch.

She even went and picked out a beautiful piece of cedar by herself.

We did a bunch of tests for what color she wanted including sanding, leaving ruff, sealing, and different color stains.

After it was all said and done, she asked for clear and sanded.

Ran it through the planer to knock off all the "tests" and drilled a hole for cords.

I used a couple different sized round objects to draw out the curves and free handed the rest.  The new Festool Carvex did a wonderful job of keeping the cut nice and square.

The Festool sander made very quick work of smoothing out the cedar and edges and the new Ridgid Oscillating Sander made sanding the curves very easy.

The board ended up with two coats of a clear on it with special attention paid to getting a good amount down in any openings in the knots, etc.  Don't forget there are four kids including a hurricane and tornado living here who love to make messes.

Everything finished up and mounted with a few brackets.

Getting the Chop Saw under control

There are a lot of great ideas for controlling dust on a chop saw and I probably looked at all of them...  twice ...  maybe more.

I let those ideas mull around in the ole empty noggin' with the other nuts and bolts for a while, got frustrated with dust, forgot everything I saw, and started building.

I started with some scrap MDF and plywood laying around the shop and built the back.  The idea being to take the 6" dia dust collection pipe and turn it into a slat across the bottom of the back using a wedge or 3 slopped sides.  A wise man once told me, a hopper ALWAYS must have one flat side so I figured maybe it is the same for an inverse hopper.

I wanted to keep the open area as close to the same as possible.

Here is a picture of the opening to the "wedge" at the top where the 6" pipe will eventually go in.

Here is the slat across the bottom where the dust will hopefully enter like a greyhound after a fake rabbit:

The bottom is on and the sides are coming along.

And finally, with the saw on it, pipe routed, and 6" blast gate from Clearvue installed.

I drilled a hole in the back and added a flange for 2.5" hose which I connected to the saw port.

The result is fairly good dust collection but it could be better.  I'm going to try making the slot adjustable to be smaller and see if that improves things.

The stand is an old stand I had made and will be updated at some point.