Category: Workshop Tooling

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Small handheld vacuum cleaner

Black & Decker Cordless Dustbuster 18V

In the workshop I have a large ‘conventional’ vacuum cleaner with a long hose and cable. It gets used for not just cleaning away the workshop mess but also as the vacuum source for my homemade vacuum table.

When you have a ‘small mess’ that you can’t be bothered to drag out the large vacuum, undo the hose and cable for what will be a two minute session, it is nice to have a quick alternative. I have settled on the Black & Decker PD1820L cordless 18V.

It has a short flexible hose which does not have to be deployed as it clicks into the body of the device. It has a couple of attachments, a brush style and a narrow ‘get into tight spots’ option. The charging plate is simple to seat the device into. All in all it is a handy convenient device that probably gets more use than its big brother.

The dust chamber has a grilled plastic pre-filter with a secondary hepa style replaceable filter insert. The general complaint is that the hepa filters need constant replacement as they do clog quickly. I have just two of these filters.

When one gets clogged I knock out the majority of the dust particles over the rubbish bin before soaking it a container (a large yoghurt pot) which has a couple of teaspoons of dishwasher powder that has been diluted in hot water. Leave to soak for a day or so and then rinse and dry on a radiator or similar. Using this method you only need to buy the one spare filter and just keep cycling the pair round.

I use a similar method for cleaning the spa filters in France. The only thing different there is that I use a ‘green’ Eco Ver dishwasher tablets. If you use a normal tablets there tends to be a residue in the filters that leads to foaming in the spa.

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Eccentric Engineering Turnado freehand turning tool

Better to have it and not need it etc

I have had an Ingram (1905) mechanical clock in for service. A simple clean and set to time which went to plan (for a change). The only niggle was one of the four tapered wooden pegs that hold the dial and movement into the wall case was missing. I could have 3D printed a tasteless replacement but my conscience would not let me stoop that low. It needed to be a wooden part with similar geometry.

Quite some time ago I had ordered a pair of Diamond Tool Holders from Eccentric Engineering in Australia and at the time Gary was doing a special deal on his Turnado hand turning tool. As I was going to be paying a significant carriage cost I decided to consolidate and offset this with the Turnado kit.

On receipt of the package I played with the Turnado but had no needing projects at that time. It is well thought out and allows freehand turning either as freeform movements or movement against a template profile or with a pantograph. Here is a link to Gary’s sales video.

In the process of considering making a 3D printed version of the peg I had dimensioned and drawn a 3D model in Fusion.

Taking the 3D model and opening it in Fusion Drawing mode gave me a 1:1, 2D PDF drawing of the peg. I cut out the 2D image and stuck this to a piece of aluminium with 3M Spray Mount and then nibbled and filed the aluminium to the peg drawing profile.

The profile template was mounted on the Turnado working table and the shape profiled into a piece of 18mm dowel using the Turnado tool on its pantagraph following my profile.

Here is a posed picture of the setup showing the Turnado tool and table with my profile plate, for effect a first attempt at the peg is sitting in the chuck between centres with the original peg (LHS) and the finished peg (RHS). Not quite a total match but more than functional.

Absolute magic. A really useful asset. I just need to remember I have it ….

As Jimmy Diresta would say “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it”

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Rotring 300 2mm clutch pencil modification

A replacement lead pusher/ sharpener button

I am a great fan of the Rotring 300 clutch pencil that takes 2mm lead. Together with Sharpie markers these make good shirt pocket workshop assets. The pencil has one weakness … the useless ‘sharpener’/ lead pusher that always keeps dropping out, rolling under something/ getting lost, all of which render the pencil frustratingly useless.

When this happens my solution is to model and make a replacement pusher albeit without the sharpener facility. I already have a Staedler Mars sharpener (#502) which is a far better sharpener.

The choice of how to make the new pusher is either a very luxurious metal replacement or a cheap and easily replaceable 3D printed one. Both work well and below are the essential dimensions. Note that these are correct for a metal replacement but for a 3D printed one you might need to tweak the 4mm and 5.5mm diameters to suit your printer accuracy (4.25mm and 5.45mm on mine).

The 3D printed version has a natural friction that retains it in place. The metal one is a bit too perfect and needs the open end slightly distorted (crushed) to help retain it.

The pencils, spare leads and the sharpener all available on Amazon.

The final shirt pocket recommendation is the twin tip Sharpie marker. These are really useful for marking out.

Sorry that wasn’t very interesting but someone somewhere might be grateful of not having to waste too much time down on their knees looking for the useless end button.

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Kindling Cracker – a safer option

Better late than never

Four weeks ago I had an argument with my wood chopping axe. . While chopping wood against a wobbly tree stump, the stump wobbled and the axe came down on my thumb end. I didn’t feel it but it took off the tip of the bone and the severed end was only hanging on by a very thin section. My wife got me to the local A&E and a very nice paramedic cleaned and strapped things together. Since then life has been fairly miserable as I battle with buttons and being unable to do much in the workshop.

The wound is now less tender and the size of the bandage is getting less bulky. I have been warned it could take months to get any sense of feel in the tip. The problem I most stuggle with is trying to ‘unsee’ the flash back image of my thumb with its end hanging off.

In the course of recounting the incident to her golfing friends my wife was told of the Kindling Cracker. This is a wood chopping gizzmo invented in New Zealand by a young lady as a school science project . There are various YouTube videos of this device on their website. It reverses the chopping process and has the axe blade stationary with the wood being impalled in it and bashed with a club hammer. A protective ring keeps flesh away from the sharp bits.

As I have been out of action in the wood chopping department, we bought a Kindling Chopper and my wife has taken over wood chopping responsibilities. She can now split wood like a check shirted lumberjack. It is a simple but elegant design. I agree it is not as quick as chopping by hand but it needs much less effort and the chore can be delegated safely to other members of the family.

The only problem is I discovered it four weeks too late and I have got a few months left to dwell on my stupidity.

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SINO SDS2MS DRO repair

It turned out to be an easy fix

The SINO SDS2MS is a relatively old DRO control and display box. The owner of the unit brought it to me for a ‘look at’ after it had suddenly died after many years of faithful service. The internals consisted of a power supply and a PCB motherboard. The feed from the power supply was a two wire connection and the PCB clearly stated this was 5V. I isolated the connection and measured the power supply in isolation which revealed the power supply was only delivering 3V. Feeding the motherboard direct from a bench power supply at 5V brought the unit back to life. Current drawn was around 1 Amp.

I had in stock a MakerHut 5V/2A power supply that would physically swap out for the original power supply. I have used a lot of the MakerHut PSUs and found them to be very reliable. So problem solved, unit back up and running.

Reading around about the SINO units, it seems the power supply is the most common mode of failure. Comparing the size of the old PSU and the replacement unit gives an indication of how technology has changed.

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