Month: December 2014

Watchmaker estates have some great deals on specialty hand tools for working with small parts. I recently picked up some 4” pliers with various shaped heads for manipulating small parts off ebay. Today’s thing, thing number 17, is a rack for those pliers to live on top of my assembly bench.

Again, the construction is fairly simple, and following a pattern I used before. Cut boards to length, use a coping saw to cut a matching curve into the top of the boards, partially drill through the boards holes for 3/8in oak dowels, and then glue and press fit together.

So its really easy to make, but insanely useful for keeping the tools stored neatly but still immediately at hand.

So a screwdriver rack is quick to build, and provides a huge improvement in workflow. This one was made from scrap and tool all of 10 minutes to build. Just cut 3 pieces of wood, glue and tack nail them into an arch, and then drill holes for the screwdrivers when done.

While you can buy screw driver racks of various types, I find that the store bought ones – by virtue of trying to be economical with space and material pack the screwdrivers too close together. When working I want to be able to reach out and snag a screwdriver, or drop it back in its place, and not have to stop and thing about threading a path back through the other screwdriver. I find that for me an optimal spacing seems to be a 1.75” grid for small tools, and 2” grid for larger ones, with the tools staggered by half grid spacing.

By making the rack myself I can both ensure optimal spacing, and design them to tuck away into convenient spaces, like between the support 2x4s on the soldering bench in the garage.

Thing 13, 14 and 15 are drawer liners for the watchmakers workbench. Basically you make a framework of interlocking wood pieces that precisely fits inside the drawer. The framework makes it easy to add dividers and custom storage later on.

The corners are held together with slot and tab fastening. I’m using 8th inch thick stock – so dovetails are out. You don’t want to glue the pieces together since the whole point is being able to take it apart and modify it down the road.

Liners don’t really show dividends right away. Over time though they let you make all sorts of custom tool holders and storage. So I have had about 30 liners I have wanted to make for ages, but they are about the lowest priority project in the shop. So – pretty perfect for the thing a day spring-cleaning of projects.

For larger drawers liners can really clean things up, as you can see in this before and after picture.

I still need to add another half height divider, marked out by that board on the left. On the half height board will sit a small lift out till living inside the pull out drawer. Having things cleaned up in has already noticeably started saving time on projects.

I liked some of the designs that used a funnel to direct the wire coming off a spool from the area covering the spool down to a very narrow area to feed to the tensioner. I also liked the use of felt pressing against the wire to provide back tension on the wire feeding off the spool. This was my attempt to combine those two ideas.

The printed channel both forms the funnel, and allows for a top pad to press the wire into the felt. I need to make a custom jig to hold the magnets while winding to really put it through its paces, but it seems to work.

When I mounted thing #10, I added extra cleat for hanging other things. For thing # 11 I mounted some old tool storage bins my dad got rid of during summer cleaning. I’m still cleaning all the drawers since they were in the garage for 3 decades. Ironically when cleaning them the one I wanted for storing resistors in, still had some drawers with hand written labels of resistor values from when I was 12. So its come full circle.

The nice part about hanging storage bins like this on cleats, is that you can easily lift them off the wall when needed and carry them over to where you are working.

For thing number 9 I dusted off an old coil winder I designed. I need to wind some coils with very fine wire – so while I am re-designing it to add a tensioner mechanism and wire guides.

I guess this isn’t really a thing per se – it is my first fast nock together of the new design. When redesigning a machine / mechanism I like to put a mockup together so I can work on / add pats to a physical model to test out things that are hard to get a feel for on screen.

Thing number 8 is a narrow workbench / table for the lab. The idea I am currently testing out needs more dedicated assembly space than I currently have at hand. When I’m done it also gives my nephew his own workbench in the lab.