Day 184: More Jack Work and Other Stuff

As you can imagine from past posts, the jack work continues, as do the diversions. Lately, I've been concentrating on making the jack tongues using the CNC. After laying them out in Autodesk Fusion 360, I first drilled .7 mm holes for the axles using a tiny, little bit I purchased for printed circuit board work.

Completing these cuts required a tool change to a 1/8" (3.2mm) bit so I could shape the bodies.

When cutting with a CNC, you always want to leave "tabs" between the items you're cutting so the spinning router doesn't send material flying across the room if the endmill touches it. In this case, I didn't cut quite all the way through the material, so I had to clear some of it using a razor knife.

It all worked remarkably well. The only thing I'm worried about is how to line up the axle holes with the mounting holes in the jack bodies at a later date. Owen Daly's voice is running on a loop in the back of my mind admonishing me to drill the holes with the tongue wedged into the jack tongue slot. I guess we'll see if I can pull it off.

As a means of diversion, I recently made a bookcase (a honeydo model). I only post it to partly explain the holdup in jack production. Because the Tennessee red cedar was in a pretty raw state when I purchased it from Crosscut Hardwoods in Portland, it took days longer than it should have to complete the project because I basically had to mill my own lumber to dimension.

It's a nice, little bookcase, but I'd really rather make instruments.

In a few tangentially related shop matters, I recently replaced the old radial drill press with a newer, larger, version. I must admit it was hard letting the old fella go, but I persisted.

Old Fella

New Fella

After wrestling the Tennessee red through the table saw and having visions of a horrible mishap, I replaced the crappy Grizzly aluminum table saw fence with a Delta T3. It has made all the difference and the blade now goes through wood like a hot knife through butter.

I also picked up a dial gauge to use for setting jointer blades, checking CNC wasteboards for flatness, etc. It was time I stepped up the level of accuracy at Tortuga Early Instruments Worldwide Headquarters.

Finally, as I was working on the Tennesse red, I ran across this fellow:

He surprised the heck out of me, but I went with it and he ended up part of the bookcase. Feel free to help me name him - I'm thinking something like Tennessee Red would work.

Until next time...