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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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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When I started making YouTube videos regularly last year I really wanted to deliver in 4k, but my 2010 vintage computer (custom build), wasn’t up to the task. Thus, in July of last year i set out to rectify that issue. The Machine I came up with was able to burn through 4k content, with one small issue, it quickly ran out of space to store it. fast forward to today, and I now have the storage space issue fixed.
Jillian and I just moved into a new house, so I knew it was going to be a while till I could get the shop back up and running. With plenty of times on my hands I sat down and researched how much more space & speed I would need to do what I wanted. What i untimely settled on is as follows: Continue Reading…
