Shopsmith Forums

When I started I was trying to recreate a favorite opener that I lost. I was cutting and grinding blanks from "Speed Openers" I bought on-line. But this was tedious and expensive in metal cutting blades. I finally had the blanks manufactured to my specs out of 0.10" thick stainless.

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The ones I am working on are ebony on one side and mahogany on the other. The pins don't go all the way through. They will be embellished with mandolin frets, and come out like this:

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These are rosewood

Happy New Year! Thanks for the comments, I signed up for the Yahoo group but I haven't had a chance to visit yet. Here's some pics of work in progress:

Shape the "scales" to approximate finished size
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Glue one scale to the opener blank, I use two part epoxy
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Variable speed drive, I didn't even know what it was till last week, I still don't know how to use it. I have been using whatever exotic woods I can get my hands on for my openers. These are: "tiger" maple, cork from a flooring sample, ebony, cocobollo, lignum vitae, red something and stabilized ...

Hey. I'm very happy to have found this group, I've been going it alone for so long! My ER10 came into my life well over 25 years ago. It was left behind in a house I bought. I recognize it's shortcomings, but there is no way I would have acquired all the separate tools that the ER comes with. Here's ...