Shopsmith Forums

I have posted several very basic beginner level subjects of late, this is the latest in a series having to do with drilling. It is meant to be basic and of course dedicated to doing things on the shopsmith. If you have or have had one of those bench top or free standing machines you may not be taking advantage of what the shopsmith has to offer drilling wise. This might be true also for those that are fresh into woodworking and the shopsmith system.

I really don't have time to go over the whole subject however from time to time I'm working on a project and take the time to post here. A recent posting was one in which I was making some "trailing hooks"
https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=8695

In this case I was making 25 of these up, maybe a life times worth. The rate of use of these is slow and making a complete jig/fixture to make them is not worth it to me. I can say that but I still needed to drill the required holes in this pile of 25.

One option would have been to mark each of the 25 with pencil cross hairs where the hole would go. That is time consuming even for a retired person, so that gets marked off the list at the get go.

Another option might be to make one of them up into a drilling template and use that to make the rest. This would work but making sure the two pieces are aligned each of the 24 more times might be harder then it sounds (experience is speaking).

So I went with another method I often use. Since this is what I did lets start with the set up. As shown before the rip fence comes in really handy to control one of the distances. Here is a photo that will help us get started.

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The yellow piece is the part that came from the manufacturer and is what we are making replacements for. The alignment is done by lowering the correct sized drill bit into the hole then adjusting the position of the rip fence. You can lock the bit in the lowered position so nothing moves while you clamp the table in place something like this:

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The green painters tape makes it easy to see where the rest of the parts need to be positioned. Next a test drilling is done to make sure everything lines up.

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As long as things are looking good with the sample it time to drill the rest of them. You simply place the work pieces in location between the tap strips and then drill. Either blow or brush/vacuum the chips away to make sure the parts are able to be placed against the fence.

With in a few minutes they are done and you can go on other projects.

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More posts coming.

Ed

I like it. I'm a little surprised (given your thoroughness in other posts) that you didn't temporarily screw down some guides to create a consistent guide for the piece. I need to make some of these for my grr-rippers, so I will give it a shot and try to remember to post photos.

I have referenced using the rip fence several time as a controlling surface several times. It really works well, and is not a standard on many drill press so since you have make use of it.

One of the thing some beginners are going to have is getting the distance from the fence to the center of the hole. We are going to talk about that next. It might not hurt to read then go to your shopsmith and give what I have shown you a try. For one you will remember it better and second you might find some questions to ask when you try it.

For this project I am building a tall fence for the 500 rip fence. The part has been cut to size and marked with the correct distance between holes and the correct height. The height is being controlled by the rip fence and we need to get that set right.

First go we will use the movement of the rip fence to adjust the distance. First step give it a guess and then lower the bit to see how far off you might be.

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Loosen the rip fence and them carefully move the fence while keeping it square, it is an acquired skill. I can normally do this with in a try or maybe sometime two. For the small movement the skill is small movements, a big shove gets you in trouble very quickly. The small nudge wins the day.

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BINGO you have it!

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This works but it is not the only option. Next we will talk about yet another shopsmith advantage.

Ed

This is what most shopsmith users would do to adjust for this drilling operation. The same rack and pinion that raises/lowers the main table also serves to move the drill press table in and out.

I'm covering this because I'm willing to bet there are one or more new users that didn't know this. We older guys tend to forget some of these "little details" because they are second nature to us.

So on to a few pictures. First you see that we are not even close to being on the line.

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Doing the same sort of operation you would do to raise or lower the table moves the table in and out in this case.

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Remember to lock it up and then recheck, it might need a little second tweak if you were not taking your time with the adjustment. As before these are visual alignments, close enough for most woodworking.

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I'm going to cover one more way in the next post. Should do that yet tonight.

Ed

We maybe introducing something you haven't seen or haven't seen in a while. It was introduced a few years back and when I saw it I knew I had to have one. This more then likely the fastest purchase decision I've ever made.

I had been waiting for years for such a thing! It might well be the best upgrade/addition they have ever introduced for under $50. We have talked about it here a few times, in my opinion not nearly enough. Can you tell I'm wired up on this?

The details, cost about $30. Item number (555937), the one the only adjustable stop collar.

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Just a few details to keep in mind. It is used to adjust the main table on your shopsmith. It has a range of something like 7/8" or was it an inch, you can check this out later. One turn = 1/16" (half turn 1/32", quarter turn 1/64"... you should get the idea that it has some fine movement possible.

This is great for adjusting depths of dado's, setting up for molding cuts, finger joints, shaping, and of course in drill press mode.

I will show a few more pictures to work you though how this works. It is mounted on the table leg, a set screw holds the fix portion of the stop collar. The turning part does just that.

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In this first case a point is established via the table/fence position and the stop is "zeroed" by sliding it along the leg until it meets the casting. I've placed a piece of tape on it so it would be easier to see for us. (The gauge is marked but rather coarsely, other templates are posted else where here at shopsmith.net.)

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Now say we wanted to move 3/16" away from the point we had established. It becomes as easy as making 3 full turns, 1/16" per turn, times 3 turns = 3/16".

The pencil points to the movement has happened.


Now the table is moved until it touches again, 3/16" away.

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This at the very least gives you another option to get controlled positioning.

Check here for more details and a link to a video on the subject:
http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/catalog/swd_adjustablestopcollar.htm

If my posting and the video don't get your questions cleared up we can go over this in more detail.

Ed

Thanks for another great tutorial, Ed!

I have a question, though. You stated,

"Loosen the rip fence and them carefully move the fence while keeping it square, it is an acquired skill. "

For this particular application, if you're not using the adjustable stop collar, why must the rip fence be square to the table? If the only relevant measurement is the perpendicular distance from the fence to the drill bit, it seems like the fence-to-table orientation is not critical. Sort of like the "Router Guys" clamping a straight edge to their router table for use as a fence, without worrying about relative orientation of the fence to the table.

Am I missing something? I understand that if you are using the adjustable stop collar to adjust the fence an exact distance, then the stop collar needs to be perpendicular to the fence.

Gary

Hi,

I can see why the "keeping it square" might confuse you. You are correct the fence does NOT need to be square to drill holes an equal distance from the fence. The issue comes in when you tighten the fence it will attempt to square itself. When it does that it will likely as not change the dimension from the fence to place you want to drill. I think if you give it a try then you will see what I mean.

Here is an example I just ran out and did. I moved the fence by pushing it towards the far end, a worse case condition I would guess.

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I then tighten the fence and the result is shown here.

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Like I said it is often best to go out and set up your machine and give things a try. This is also a lesson for those that set up to do ripping and wonder why the cut is off.

Hope this makes since, and glad you ask the question, it was a good one.

Ed

greitz wrote:Thanks for another great tutorial, Ed!

I have a question, though. You stated,

"Loosen the rip fence and them carefully move the fence while keeping it square, it is an acquired skill. "

For this particular application, if you're not using the adjustable stop collar, why must the rip fence be square to the table? If the only relevant measurement is the perpendicular distance from the fence to the drill bit, it seems like the fence-to-table orientation is not critical. Sort of like the "Router Guys" clamping a straight edge to their router table for use as a fence, without worrying about relative orientation of the fence to the table.

Am I missing something? I understand that if you are using the adjustable stop collar to adjust the fence an exact distance, then the stop collar needs to be perpendicular to the fence.

Gary

greitz wrote:Thanks for another great tutorial, Ed!

I have a question, though. You stated,

"Loosen the rip fence and them carefully move the fence while keeping it square, it is an acquired skill. "

For this particular application, if you're not using the adjustable stop collar, why must the rip fence be square to the table? If the only relevant measurement is the perpendicular distance from the fence to the drill bit, it seems like the fence-to-table orientation is not critical. Sort of like the "Router Guys" clamping a straight edge to their router table for use as a fence, without worrying about relative orientation of the fence to the table.

Am I missing something? I understand that if you are using the adjustable stop collar to adjust the fence an exact distance, then the stop collar needs to be perpendicular to the fence. <<<<<You just contradicted(sorta) the previous 'blue' sentence. The adjustable collar will move an out of square fence the same distance from the bit as one that is square. In the unsquare case the distance moved is along a line not perpendicular to the fence.

Gary

Sorta! If the observed 'error' is 1/16" and you move the fence 1/16", but do not maintain the squared up condition, then the distance will change as you retighten the fence since it will resquare itself as you do so.

Moving it 'squarely' minimizes the need to 'do it again'.

Created this and neglected to 'submit' it. Ed has done a better job of explaining with pix!

greitz wrote:Am I missing something? I understand that if you are using the adjustable stop collar to adjust the fence an exact distance, then the stop collar needs to be perpendicular to the fence.

Gary

The adjustable stop collar is used to set depth of a cut only.

Sir you have observed well, I am a big fan of setting up guides when I do projects, and yes it is not uncommon for me to make temporary jigs even for simple jobs like this.

In this case I was almost ready to tack a strip down on one side to control the other surface. But I don't always do that. The drilling here could be say a 1/16" off and things would still work. This is almost within visual only drilling or use of a simple pencil line. The tape just makes it easier to see, adding to both sides makes the task even easier. I would say this would get you well within 1/32".

Having said that I just went out and dumped my bag of parts out and selected 10 of them at random. Stuck/stacked them on the drill bit I used for drilling. Looking for those that looked like the most off from each other.

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From observation I select what looked to be the two taller pieces and the two shorter pieces (meaning the bit was not centered). Not a large sample and no attempt was to made to check the actual width of the pieces which could effect where the holes ended up.

I then simply measured the difference between the pairs of tall/short pieces and recorded the numbers.

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Keep in mind this is only a sample so it is worth nothing but one set had a difference of .003(4) the other .006.

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Without getting into this too far remember that 1/16" = .0625, 1/32" = .03125.

Not bad for some tape stuck on the table, I'd say. Even better then I'd hoped for. And again I'm happy they turned out that close but it wasn't really needed.

Ed

damagi wrote:I like it. I'm a little surprised (given your thoroughness in other posts) that you didn't temporarily screw down some guides to create a consistent guide for the piece. I need to make some of these for my grr-rippers, so I will give it a shot and try to remember to post photos.