Alright, so before I get into some of the cooler stuff I have been working on, I’d like to show some of my hardships.
I struggled a lot with calibrations. Thickness of materials, locked files, and just pure ignorance impeded my best intentions for a while. Then I noticed that my gantry was loose, and it would literally move with (or against) the bit.
This is what my wasteboard looked like after multiple attempts at trying to figure things out. That is 3/4" mdf, and it is cut right through.
I disassembled everything, tightened it all, reassembled and recalibrated. I did a couple of test cuts, and things were much better.
The next project that I wanted to try was a mortise and tenon shelf that I found on the internet. The file was locked, and intended for half inch plywood, and all I had was 5/8 so I went ahead and cut it anyway.
So of course I had to finish the cuts off with the jigsaw again (including every single tenon), and this time there were 48 mortises to enlarge. This was turning out to be a lot of work.
I used a 1/8 solid carbide bit on my dremel to cut the pieces out and bore the holes. A lot of extra effort, but I was determined to make it work.
Finally I wisened up and used a 1/8 bit in my hand held router, which took care of things much quicker.
Finally managed to make everything fit and got it assembled.
I do really like this mortise and tenon design. I’m just going to need to reproduce it so that I can make them in different sizes.
