Help with additions to my shop

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Daniel

Daniel

Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2004
Messages
5,921
Location
Reno, NV, USA.
I have been thinking of adding a few additional pieces of equipment to my shop.
1. Buffer
2. disc/ belt sander
3. jointer

First a bit of background. When I first started putting my shop together I knew very little about a lot of the equipment. Mainly my purchases where pure price driven. I ended up with a lot of machines that where far short on the quality.
A $100 floor standing drill press that is still in use but has major quill problems. A $100 lathe that has seen enough use to average about 50 cents an hour in costs by now but has been a struggle every minute of it. A craftsman 14 inch tilting head band saw that was the tool that finally convinced me to never buy another Craftsman tool for the shop again.
A craftsman Table saw that is as big a disappointment as the Band saw was.

So far I have replaces the Band saw with a Grizzly GO555, bought two new lathes, one a mini metal lathe and a HF 34706 which is basically the same lathe as a Jet 1236. a Radial arm saw that is a dream. a scroll saw that is not top of the line but is a very good saw.

So far I am very happy with the 2nd round of buying equipment so I want to keep that track record going.

I am not looking for the most expensive name brand tools. I am of the general opinon that there is a line between low quality cheap tools and high priced name brands where the high quality mid price stuff lives. that is the sort of equipment I am looking for.

Buffer, I want a dedicated buffer since there are 3 people working in my shop at this time. The wheels need to be a common size so that they can be replaced easily and variety in wheel types available is a plus. It is likely I will use this to buff anything that can be buffed.
Basically I know squat about buffers or what features are available or which ones are desirable and which ones are not.

Disc/ Belt sander. this one I am really concerned about. it the parts cannot be set and stay where you put them. don't bother mentioning them. I don't like having to give handles that extra little bump and then wonder if they are going to hold or not. I want the tool to do the job right the first time every time. May seem a bit much over a disc sander until yo think about relying on it to put that perfect edge and angle on your work.
Again never owned one so the field is pretty much wide open on this one.

Jointer. Actually I may hold off on this one and see how much that disc sander will do for me but once again quality without paying for all the advertising of the name brands.

I like the HF knock offs of top of hte line tools and am pretty familiar with what needs to be done to tweek them. but HF has far more garbage than it does really quality machines hiding under a rough looking skin.

Thanks all in advance.
 
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Justin, I could but the old lathe has been replaced by the HF 34706. I still ownit but it is also still being used on a daily basis.
here is the basic set up with three people in the shop.
two people are on lathes. one can use the HF lathe to make a pendant form start to finish. the other must use the old lathe and the metal lathe to complete a pendant. long story but the old lathe will not work for drilling.

the third person (Me) is doing various stuff like cutting pendant blanks, trimming corners off those blanks, polishing pendants and otherwise getting in the way. I do not expect this situation of other tools already being in use so I prefer to have a dedicated machine. Plus I often have projects set up on a machine and do not want them disturbed because I an trying to get a nice mirror shine on someones pocket knife or whatever else I might find I need a buffer for. So far I am simply looking at the HF High speed 8" buffer for that machine. $69.99 at their web site.
 
Daniel said:
Justin, I could but the old lathe has been replaced by the HF 34706. I still ownit but it is also still being used on a daily basis.
here is the basic set up with three people in the shop.
two people are on lathes. one can use the HF lathe to make a pendant form start to finish. the other must use the old lathe and the metal lathe to complete a pendant. long story but the old lathe will not work for drilling.

the third person (Me) is doing various stuff like cutting pendant blanks, trimming corners off those blanks, polishing pendants and otherwise getting in the way. I do not expect this situation of other tools already being in use so I prefer to have a dedicated machine. Plus I often have projects set up on a machine and do not want them disturbed because I an trying to get a nice mirror shine on someones pocket knife or whatever else I might find I need a buffer for. So far I am simply looking at the HF High speed 8" buffer for that machine. $69.99 at their web site.
Click to expand...

Ok...I understand the picture better now. Have you checked Craigslist? The one thing I see constantly on my local Craigslist is buffers. For some reason there must be a glut of them. One was even a 5 hp 3 belt baldor grinder weighing in at over 500 lbs for a very good price.
 
Al, I am on a crappy computer right now and it is hard to see details in photo. I will have to take a second look at your link when I get home but it looks like that machine has a cast Iron table which is a biggy with me. I have never had a lot of luck with aluminum and such. I was thinking about a belt/Disc sander but also wonder how much woudl the belt part be used. for the most part this sander will be used for peppermill segments as it's largest work. I was looking through the HF stuff yesterday and not getting to excited about any of it. I did not see this one though.

OOPs just went back and read the details and it says right there it is cast Iron base but Aluminum table. Not knocking it just a bit shy of that with past experiences on other types of equipment.
 
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Out where Im at you ant give away a jointer. they can be had for 50 bucks. I have two delta belt/disc sanders 1-1in belt and 8in disk 1-4x36 belt with a 5 or 6 in disc and a Ridgid oscillating 4in belt /drum sander. All three of the work well, I use the Ridgid more for shaping than anything else but its the first one I go to when I need sanding done. I have 3 buffers I buy 1hp 3450rpm dual shaft motors at garage sales/flea market wherever and put tapered adapter on them. ONe of my set ups has 2 motors mounted on plywood with a lazy susan bearing plate under it and a board between them. pull a pin and rotate to a different buffer. This lets me set up 4 buffing wheels using different componds on different buffers. I have a buffer for rouges, one for white diamond and one for tripoli. the tapered adapters let me change buffing wheels quickly. This is the set up I used when operating a Jewelry repair business out at the local flea market. I have an 8in jointer that is used more often as a work table than a Jointer.
 
Daniel,
I have a Rikon 6" disc and 4" belt sander. Got it for a good price. It's footprint isn't too big and it is a workhorse. Everything stays where it is set without having to adjust things due to vibration. I use it a lot and it runs nicely. They do make a bigger size, but my shop space is limited and this does everything that I need it to do. The only thing that I have changed is I put a better miter gauge on it. I use it to square blanks, and other things.
I use a 6" Delta grinder for a buffer. The wheels are common size, there are only two wheels, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. Until I got the grinder I used dedicated cotton wheels in my cordless drill and that has also worked real well and I still do it that way also.
 
Thanks Cindy, I was most concerned about the quality of hte sander than anything. I didn't go quite as top of the lines as Rikon.
I went to HF and looked at what they had. nothing there was even close so i picked up a 6" buffer for $40 while there. I also looked through the compounds there and they seem to have some sort of funky system that is all color coded. they did have one other brand that had tripoli and another compound. I never did find white diamond.
From there I want to Home Depot and got a Ryobi 4X36 belt 6" disc sander for just over $100.00 with all the extras like spare buffing wheels belts and discs I spent right at $200. I will see if the compounds I got will do a decent job on corian at least. I need to get an education on what compounds are for what though.

At the moment I am thinking I use the tripoli on the stitched wheel and the other compound on the flap wheel??? Correct?
 
Daniel,
I have been looking into some of the same things as you. I have been trying to decide between the Rigid sander and the Ryobi sander. Unfortunately the local HD's do not have any on display out of the box, so I am stuck with pictures and a lot of conjecture. Since you got the Ryobi, how happy are you with it? Is the miter slot standard (3/4 x 3/8) or is it one of the funky t-slots?

Dave
 
Daniel, I was lucky to find a S/H 8" grinder (2850 RPM) which was missing everything normally on a grinder, just the bare bones motor and spindle sticking out each side, picked it up for $40.

Bought a RH and a LH tapered spindle (16mm) and then some polishing mops, mainly 6", but I also still had some 4" ones that I used to use on the lathe.

With White Diamond buffing compound it does a great job.

In fact most of the time my final buff is with just a loose leaf 6" calico mop and I do this on both acrylic and wood with CA.

So, just get yourself a decent 8" grinder and a couple of tapered spindles and you're in business.

I also have a generic Chines 9" disk/ 6" belt sander, have had it for years and couldn't do without it, use this with a jig in preference to a pen mill (can't remember the last time I used my pen mills)
 
Dave, The worktable has a 5/8" slot but it is not T-bar. the table is actually really good with jsut a tad of flex movement. you would not want heavy pieces on it. The miter gauge is a mega cheapy plastic thing but was accurate right out of the box. the table tilt gauge needed just a slight tweak to be accurate to the gauge. You still want to use an angle finder for accurate set up of the table but for small pieces like pens it will then hold that angle. I cut a couple of blanks to 45 degree angles and sanded them and got an air tight fit. So this tool will work well enough for what I want at the moment. For larger peppermills I will need a bigger machine but hopefully I will not be making a lot of those to soon. If you start looking at the larger ones take a good look at HF http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=6852
for twice the money it looks like a really good one. My only issue with it was the table support system but if someting could be done to make that more ridgid it is a promising piece of equipment. Just keep in mind I have not done a lot fo shopping around to see how that price compares to others.
 
A bit of an update, The buffer works just great but I still need to find white diamond compound. What I have on hand is working jsut fine but turns out to be a stainless steel compound.
The sander is a different story, it got boxed up and is going back to Home Depot. I was sanding some pen blanks last night just to get the grain to show up better and the belt broke after about 10 blanks. less than 10 minutes use and it is already down. I am taking it back and going to go get the $200 floor standing one at HF.

Note to Dave. You might have better luck with the Ridgid sander from Home Depot but I defenitly do not recommend the Ryobi. a 4 inch wide sanding belt could not be driven to sand a 1" wide blank without the drive belt giving up. I am looking for jsut a bit more gusto than that lol.
 
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