Shopsmith Forums

It seems I haven't been keeping up on posting some new stuff in my Today in the shop series.... it is not because I haven't been busy or that it has been too cold to do anything (this winter anyway). So here is a project that has been setting for a couple of months that I got to today.

This is a plastic cutting board from Sams Club, forgot the price but it is pretty cheap and pretty much just what I wanted for this project. I have two of them but so far this is the only one that has been drilled. It is fun seeing the twin tight spirals coming off the 1/2" twist bit turned by my powerpro drill press.

So lets get to some pictures. This is the results of drilling 98 holes.
No I did not let it pile up like that. Just collected the majority of the waste and piled it on for the picture. To bad I can't think of something to do with all those spirals.

I laid out the grid of 1" spaces and drilled in the pattern shown. Not all that much fun but with out a CNC it all manual labor anyway. I marked the holes to be drilled so I wouldn't mess up while drilling. I used a green masking tape that holds on at least some what to the plastic.
I still need to cut to width so it will fit where I plan to put it but at least all the holes are done.
I guess I didn't say what it was for did I? Care to guess?























Were you right?

This one is just for 1/2" bits and the next one will be just for 1/4" but will be more densely packed. Some bits will not fit due to width and some might not need to be in this rack because they are packed well in their own boxes. I have not done a bit count in a while but I do believe it is the range of 300 bits so it will be interesting to gather then in to one place and start putting them in the holes.

Ed

Cool spirals. Maybe a hairpiece for an albino Rastafarian doll? Better yet, list them for five bucks on eBay. If they sell you can ask the buyer what he/she is going to use them for.

But here's my real question. Why did you want your bit organizer to be made of plastic, rather than wood?

I made mine from "scrap" board ends with checks in them, same for my Fostner bits.

Plastic does not absorb moisture nor pass it onto the shafts.

Not if its finished with Poly first

BuckeyeDennis wrote:Cool spirals. Maybe a hairpiece for an albino Rastafarian doll? Better yet, list them for five bucks on eBay. If they sell you can ask the buyer what he/she is going to use them for.

But here's my real question. Why did you want your bit organizer to be made of plastic, rather than wood?

The selection of plastic was multi-fold. One is that it needs no finish, is not going to be effected by humidity and will not promote rust on the bits. If you buy bits in cases they have a plastic insert so even the cheapest sets think it is important enough to do so. I have never seen an all wood version even in plans. If I were to use wood I would go with over sized holes but since I wanted a nice tight fit to keep them vertical it seemed like a no brainier.

We get really humid during the summer so wood would be a problem, trying to pull a stuck bit out can be dangerous, way to sharp cutting edges then I would like to have to deal with.

I have some cheap bit and some expensive bits, all of them amount to a large investment so spending a couple of $ on the plastic is cheap protection. I looked up the plastic cutting board and it is $8.98, certainly reasonable for something that can hold that many bits.


Ed

That makes sense. Especially the part about wood swelling and grabbing bits.

I never realized that contact with wood promoted rust. Now that you mention it, though, I've removed quite a few uncoated fasteners from antique furniture, and they usually have some surface rust. I had attributed that to age, rather than wood contact.

Age doesn't cause rust, Dennis.
No, wait......maybe it does. At 75, I'm getting a bit rusty.

Gene Howe wrote:Age doesn't cause rust, Dennis.
No, wait......maybe it does. At 75, I'm getting a bit rusty.

You left off the "C".

Duplicate post deleted.