"Jointapprentice Hobby a1" Saw

[charangohabsburg]

As this will be a poor man's copy of a not so cheap table top saw powered by ones own hands, I'll call it Jointapprentice Hobby a1, explicitly not alluding to mastery or professionalism, the "a" stands for attempt. So this is attempt N°1. I hope I won't have to go for more attempts...

Here, some aliens brought me this plan:



The heart of the saw will be those two wedges,



the upper one clamping firmly the Japanese Saw blade Pete Howlett recommended here for his "Fretmaster". Btw, in Australia and New Zealand you can get exactly the same blade from Carbatech, it's this one (according to Pete it's suited for fret slotting).

The lower wedge will be sled under the upper stationary wedge, lifting the latter one as needed.
The lower wedge slides on a square aluminium profile which can be angled more or less to adjust the cutting ratio of the saw blade. The pivot point is a 8mm dowel at the lower edge of the aluminium profile at the position of the first tooth of the blade.

This is the MDF base plate:



The 8mm dowel mentioned above sits in the groove of the base board, the slot is to accept the pivoting aluminium profile.



Erecting the guiding walls for the wedges:





Planing MDF :



The end of this weekend:



Each of these two pieces will accept two cheap drawer slides which will be mounted to the outer "walls" of the saw.



The sliding table of the saw will be mounted on top of the two pieces pictured.

[kiwigeo]

You cant read plans very well.......according to the plans the thing is supposed to be 30km in length.

[charangohabsburg]

I'm sorry Martin you are wrong too... It's 30 Nautic Miles!
Seeaxe gave the perfect solution in the other thread!

[kiwigeo]

I'm sorry Martin you are wrong too... It's 30 Nautic Miles!
Seeaxe gave the perfect solution in the other thread!

Well in that case...wheres the sail???

[charangohabsburg]

Well in that case...wheres the sail???

No sails attached, just some rails. The upper scale that goes only to the center of the picture is in km, the lower scale is in NM. The larger scale is useful for the bigger version of the saw which would be perfectly suited for cutting Switzerland into slices.


Today I made the grooves which will hold the inner part of the rails.

MDF eating mermaid:


Dusty mermaid:


It's still much less dust than cutting MDF (or real wood) with a router.

After cutting two narrow groves the center part gets chipped out easily with a chisel:


The rails:

[charangohabsburg]

Customised screws, approximately 3000 file strokes worth .

3000 file strokes worth

2011_D70_3159-1.jpg (92.46 KiB) Viewed 85108 times

These will serve for attaching the rails to the rest of the saw.

A picture from the catalogue :

2011_D70_3205-1.jpg (39.88 KiB) Viewed 85108 times

I am a bit behind with posting pictures of the building progress. I also hesitated to comment step by step because I constantly was (am) adding features to the saw. I found it too risky to explain those features before I was sure they will work .

But now I am over the dead point. Expect to see more pictures and also plans in the next few days!

Cheers,

[charangohabsburg]

The two wedges of the blade rising mechanism (see first post of this thread) must get held together in order the blade holding wedge does not get pulled up by the momentum induced by the wood pushing against the blade teeth. First I had thought of using springs pushing the upper wedge down but I found this would get a too flimsy mechanism with a lot of useless friction included. I ended up with some inlay work using magnets (the strong ones, 8mm diameter, 3mm thick) in down-face of the upper wedge and iron bars in up-face of the lower wedge:



As I could not find flat iron bars I mounted M8 threaded rods onto a piece of plywood and ground a flat side so the magnets will have some surface to "grab".



The blade gets clamped between the tho halves of the upper wedge. It sits in there for less then 10mm, two screws go through the blade. Those blades are pretty tough: each hole cost me one drill bit, but at least the holes were done with that). I was afraid that tightening the M4 screws directly on the MDF would just pull them through it... or at least destroy the MDF little by little when using the saw and changing blades, so I reinforced that zone with some ugly beech inlay.



Well, at least no one can complain there was no inlay on this saw...

Of course, this is not the whole story about how to hold down that blade, it got much trickier than just that but in the end I solved the problem (before starting to build). Details will follow in the next posts (another day).

[charangohabsburg]

Of course, this is not the whole story about how to hold down that blade, it got much trickier than just that but in the end I solved the problem (before starting to build). Details will follow in the next posts (another day).

The next step was to find a way to hold down also the lower wedge to the aluminium profile.


Time for some more magnetic inlay:


Of course I regret to not have an iron bar handy because these magnets will not stick to an aluminium profile. The profile gets filled with a wooden bar for providing the "hinge" (= the half of a hole you can see there) and to screw things to it...


...and the wooden bar must get filled now in some way with iron. I didn't want to grind flat more threaded rods (it's just a too noisy job). So, what to do?

NUTS !!!


Lined up nuts make up a nice flat side...

Done:


More nuts:




The differently oriented nuts in the upper part of the picture above allow to screw in two rods...


...which will allow to hold down the aluminium profile to the base board (finally!),

while the flat lying nut in the lower part of the picture just lies there for it's hole...


It is where a little wedge gets attached:


This little wedge ist the counter part of a greater wedge which gets shoved under the aluminium profile to alter the rising angle of the saw blade. The gap shown here is just to demonstrate how the wedges will fit:


From outside it looks like this, with a nice scale on the wedge, one number for each millimetre the blade tip will be higher than the first saw tooth, and a mechanism to clamp the wedge in place:


The clamping mechanism is remote controlled with a looooong threaded rod. Too long?


No, it's not too long. It allows a clamp at this location:


That's it for today.

[Kim]

Brilliant Markus!

I love the way you work mate, you manage to come up with a solution to everything. You may be one of the lucky clever people who manages to find a way then and there, but if you are anything like me, you find yourself heading off to bed some nights and it is then that the mind really crank into gear...all of a sudden out of the blue the ahh haa! moment comes...I guess it does not matter either way because in the end there is always a solution

Nice work, keep it coming.

Cheers

Kim

[Nick]

You've got lots of nuts Marcus!
Been an enjoyable post, it's always interesting to see how others problem solve & come up with solutions. And as an engineer by day, it's also great to see how people without access to certain equipment tackle the task from home. I don't think you could ever replace the good old file!

[charangohabsburg]

Thanks Kim.

[...] but if you are anything like me, you find yourself heading off to bed some nights and it is then that the mind really crank into gear...all of a sudden out of the blue the ahh haa! moment comes...I guess it does not matter either way because in the end there is always a solution
[...]

Yes, I also believe it really doesn't matter. I even don't know when my ideas come - they are just there...

[...] I don't think you could ever replace the good old file!

No way! If there were no files I just had to make one or two of them!

[charangohabsburg]

[...]
The differently oriented nuts in the upper part of the picture above allow to screw in two rods...


...which will allow to hold down the aluminium profile to the base board (finally!),
[...]

This is the view of the assembled thing:


On the opposite side the aluminium bar gets held down in a similar manner:


By the way: these nice knurled wooden knobs are just centre drilled cut-offs from chequered gluing dowels.

This ugly hunk of plywood at the end of the aluminium bar has the function keeping the upper wedge (which clamps the saw blade) in it's position (horizontally). The horizontal component of the force applied to the saw teeth when pushing the wood over the saw blade gets taken on by this ply wood piece, transmits it to the aluminium bar and to the pivot point of the aluminium bar (8 mm beech dowel - remember?). For this it also provides a vertical T-slot bar - less than ten pictures will explain better what I could not even tell with 10000 words...

Blade down:


Blade up:


The T-slot bar:


Making the T-slot bar:


Assembling the plywood hunk to the wedge and aluminium bar:


The whole thing during assembly:


At the moment the glue which will hold together the parts of the saw table is hardening. I hope that I will get the saw working this weekend although a bunch of clamping accessories will be missing yet.

[Lillian]

Brilliant!

[charangohabsburg]

Brilliant!

Thanks. Are you still lusting for the Jointmaker or do you want now one like this? Well, this one will not cut compound mitres, maximum cutting height is only about 25 to 32 mm instead of the 45 mm of the Jointmaker, and the maximum cutting depth is 70 mm instead of 150 mm. I hope yet my model will still be ok for doing many more things than just cutting fret slots and kerfing linings.

[Lillian]

Actually I think it will cut compound miters. You just haven't built the fixtures yet.

One like that would be fantastic. I'm still trying to get my head around what you've done. And I will eventually. Right now things are a bit fuzzy here. The plague has descended the household in a big way. We have been sitting home and watching movies most of the week. I was able to put down the cough syrup and actually go to work. Fran seems to be enamored with this bug. She's not letting go, or its not letting go of her.

You didn't happen to take measurements and make notes while you were putting this together, perchance?

[charangohabsburg]

The problem with doing compound miters using jigs would be good clamping which seems to be essential for using such a saw successfully. Probably on a miniature basis (up to 10 x 10 mm sticks, and not too long), sawing compound miters with shallow passes will render acceptable results.

When I'm done I'll draw detailed plans of that bugger and hope it will be better understandable with them.

[charangohabsburg]

As this is supposed to become a table saw showing the table is overdue. What seams to be two pieces of perforated plywood in reality I managed to build much more complicated. I don't trust in stability of plywood. Of course, plywood is strong but I have not seen many pieces of ply which have not warped over time. I have not a nice stock of seasoned ply, so I thought MDF which I never have seen warping would again be the material of my choice, this time for the table.

Here the hightech table, not just plywood:



Bottom side and top side of it's interior in construction (at more or less the same moment) :


...and a little bit later:


Bottom side after the building stage above:


I have glued in all this precious inlay with epoxy. Epoxy which will be the most expensive part of the whole saw!

After transferring the hole positions to the the rail carrier I cut the semi finished table apart, right through the middle:


...planed two nice bevels an the edges towards the blade:


And glued a 2mm plywood on top of the MDF/beech/aluminium composite, and a 1mm ply on it's bottom (one after another, using slow curing epoxy and steel needles as locating pins) :


The locating pins came out easily by heating them a bit up with a lighter (no picture).

This is what the table looked like after gluing on the plywood:


One of the basic clamping mechanisms will be screws getting stuck through those slots in the table (top side and bottom side) :


I covered the bottom side of the screw guides with a perforated plywood which will let fall down the saw dust but not let the screws lower than the guides when mounting them:


Of course, the table will get screwed onto the rail carrier. Screwing into the plywood parts is not an issue. But screwing into MFD is virtually impossible - well, of course I could, but it would not hold much stronger than a screw in a newspaper. So I embedded some 15mm beech dowels fitted with M4 drive-in nuts:

[charangohabsburg]

Some pictures of the crank construction which is basically the same I used when building my swivel vice

The wheel between the crank and the wooden bearing block is a counter nut.




The whole thing:


With the wedges etc. mounted:






This Sunday (European time) will be mounting and inauguration day

[Kim]

Incredible stuff Markus, the table is a work of art.

Cheers

Kim

[charangohabsburg]

[...] the table is a work of art.

It has a nice tap tone.

[charangohabsburg]

Finally.

A few minutes before midnight I managed to make my first few centimetres of jiggle wood.


This is the finished saw:


The first big problem was NOISE! ...of the crank! I had forgotten to lubricate the gear.

I also made first improvements before assembling the saw the first time. I beefed up the flimsy wooden blocks at the rear (which hold the nuts which retain the the bar from unwanted pivoting when moving the table backwards) :


And I also incorporated the first "dust control device" - it prevents the sawdust from falling into the T-slot:


There will be two more sawdust covers to protect the rotating gear and the sliding surface of the wedges. Fortunately the drawer slides never will see a single shaving. Clever design, isn't it? Oh well, I think this one was just beginner's luck.

[seeaxe]

Crikey! Markus,

As this obviously is actually part of the LHC, where do the mesons and bozons come out?

Seriously though, I admire your patience and its nice to see other people use wood for engineering things, everyone else I know would have used (or tried to use) metal for most of the bits and pieces.

Look forward to seeing lots more wiggle wood and watch out for your fingers!

Cheers

[Lillian]

Seriously, it's phenomenal. It's a fantastic feat of engineering. And considering you were using less than ideal material. What you have created is just brilliant. And add in the fact you have shared it all with us just speaks volumes about you and about this forum.

Thanks. Now have a cold one on us.

[charangohabsburg]

Thanks for all your kind comments.

As this obviously is actually part of the LHC, where do the mesons and bozons come out?

Ah, you mean the beer.. Just walk over to the fridge

Seriously though, [...]

...well, I think I still have to build the Heineken interface

I admire your patience and its nice to see other people use wood for engineering things, everyone else I know would have used (or tried to use) metal for most of the bits and pieces.

I just don't have the metalworking skills and tools. It surely had gotten a bit smaller making it out of metal, and I would have cranked out 10 or 12 millimetres more maximum cutting height (which does not sound like much but would be 50% more).

and watch out for your fingers!

Normally I cut my fingers with an asparagus peeler or another not sharp enough kitchen tool. Seriously, this saw is less dangerous than a hand held Japanese or not Japanese saw. At a rough estimate it would take at least 5 passes to cut a finger off, and I had to clamp it into position because the slightest change in position from one pass to the next leads to binding.

One of the best things of this type of saw ist that there's really nothing like slipping as the cutting process is totally effortless, with no distracting noise, and the blade can't grab the finger like a powered blade can.

[...] And considering you were using less than ideal material.

When starting this project, in spite of knowing of bandsaws made of plywood etc. I also thought that MDF and plywood would not be the ideal materials. As I already mentioned, making it of metal would have opened more possibilities. But on the other hand, MDF does not distort (just as metal), and plywood is strong. A mix of both (plus some real wood and a few metal parts) was inevitable. The big plus on this MDF-plywood composite is it's high damping properties. I believe that this saw is even quieter than the original Jointmaker! It doesn't sound any louder than dragging a heavy book over the dining table, and any snoring person makes more noise. Maybe my choice of material was more than ideal but I really didn't know it when I started, I just thought it must be possible like that and jumped in.

[charangohabsburg]

A surrealistic - meditative journey along a kerfed lining:


youtu.be/

Here my YouTube-text:

A surrealistic - meditative journey along a kerfed lining.

If your meditation is good, after some time you will hear beautiful music arranged and played by the Bolivian musician Paúl Paulino López, recorded on his 2001 Swiss concert tour with William Ernesto Centellas in Zürich. More info on this at www.centellas.com

The manual table saw is a shop made copy of the patented and pricey Jointmaker Pro v2 from Bridge City Tool Works (hence my saw's nickname "Jointapprentice Hobby a1 - where "a" stands for "attempt" ). No commercialization of the original Jointmaker idea allowed until the patent expires (which will be the case in 20 to 25 years after patenting). More info on the original at http://www.bridgecitytools.com/default/ ... r-pro.html

The patent features some good drawings of the original Jointmaker. Unfortunately I discovered them too late, I gathered all the information from the Jointmaker videos on YouTube.
Here is the patent with it's drawings.

My own, home made version is mainly made of MDF and plywood, the "heart" of the tool is a Japanese sawblade which does the perfect kerf for the frets on an instrument's fingerboard (my thanks for this hint go to Pete Howlett, www.petehowlettukulele.co.uk), while the "lung" of the tool are two pairs of drawer slides (those cheapos with the flimsy linear ball bearings).

The capabilities of the my copy does not include combined mitre cuts (unless very tiny ones and if you make a jig for this task) and it's cuts are limited to a maximum height of approximately 23 - 32 millimetres (this depends on the blade's rising angle) compared to ca. 40 mm on the original. Workpieces can be up to 73 mm deep, when cheating (= not using the whole blade) up to ca. 170 mm. Maximum cutting height at one stroke (with very soft woods only) is 12 mm.

The gizmo for feeding the lining I made after an idea I have from the Italian world class luthier Luca Waldner ( www.lucawaldner.com), back in the times when he had the guts to run an own Internet forum and had some really useful hints online.

You can find details and lot's of pictures about the building process on the ANZLF (Australian New Zealand Luthiers Forum, viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3128 [this thread])

Any questions about the saw or the music and the musician are welcome.

Any intelligent comments are welcome.

Keep all stupid comments for yourself unless you are a well respected ANZLF member.

Thanks for watching, listening, reading and for your patience!