OT Cheep shop-vac

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Tom Peters<tpeters at mixcom.com> wrote: I've seen those. To me, it's fixing the symptom instead of the problem. Also, they still vary in thickness. So even with the undersized router bit, you still may end up with a sloppy fit. If the dado is too wide for the plywood thickness, it's not a big deal because it's so close that it probably doesn't matter. But it might be too narrow for the plywood to fit, which is a headache. My solution was a dial-a-width stacked dado set in the table saw. There's also a technique where you cut a <3/4" dado in two passes with a 1/2" router bit. On the second pass, you use a scrap of the plywood in question to control the width. Perfect fit every time regardless of the plywood thickness. Plywood is not lumber. It's not been planed or dimensioned at all, just sanded sometimes. But that's just for surface quality. It's pressed into large sheets glued together with heat-activated glue. They can easily control the thickness and choose to make it thinner. If the plywood is coming from china, I can understand if it's a metric/imperial thing, which it is in that case. But the stuff here is just thinner because they can get away with it. I bet the missing thickness is lost to thinner veneers. Baltic birch plywood on the other hand (sometimes also called apple ply, not to be confused with the birch stuff at home depot) is great stuff though. It's sold in 5'x5' sheets so it's easy to spot. It comes in metric thicknesses that approximate 1/2 or 3/4 or whatever. It's not as bad as it sounds. If you buy oak boards from home depot and try to glue them up yourself, you'll get mediocre results. The wood they stock is over-priced and so-so quality. It's also been planed down to (actual) 3/4" already, but still likely to be cupped or twisted. The right way to do it is to buy rough lumber from a place like this: http://kmhardwoods.com/hardwood.php If you buy what's called 4/4 (four quarter) boards, you can plane them down to whatever thickness you want. Of course, you need a jointer and a planer, which aren't cheap. But if you keep doing this over the years, you can easily recoup the money saved over shopping at home depot, end up with higher quality wood, any thickness you want instead of what they stock, and your boards will be flat with invisible glue lines. I realize it's not for your average person though. I've been collecting shop tools for 10 years, and I'm only just now feeling like I have a complete shop. I guess I'm also valuing my time more now. I'd rather spend an extra $100 on a piece of furniture I'm making and use real wood if I'm going to spend the time on it. To get us back on topic, :-) Once I get the shop back together over the next few weeks, I'm planning to make a few monitor stands, an interesting design with dovetails and computer-carved edge banding. I'm also planning a custom baltic birch plywood and plexi case for my amiga 1200 motherboard, something with a lot of interior lighting that I can hang on the wall in my computer room and still use. I've thought about making some other wood computer cases as well, like something for the amiga 2000. And also, to my wife's dismay, I've found myself wanting an old console television like the one my parents had back in the 70s. It would be fun to play colecovision or intellivision games on it. I considered making one as a piece of furniture and putting a flatscreen in it. I think it deserves a tube though. :-) Maybe I can find a large tube tv on craigslist for free and build a new case for it. brian