I will say that my ceiling mounted infra-red is awesome, but I don't think it would be as effective if I didn't have the 2 big ceiling fans to help move the air/heat around a bit.
Part of me wants to avoid fans for the sake of dust moving around but I probably won't have too much stuff with dust sensitive finishes curing in that space either. Planning on installing an air filter besides the ol dust collector.
Fans do have an on/off switch... I run them almost all the time I'm in my shop, but shut them off when doing any kind of finishing.
Nett, when you put yours up, the plastic spacers pieces that go behind your main mounting screws were they the correct depth? When i went to put mine up there were about 1mm to shallow. The orange pieces still touched the wall, i had to put washers behind mine.
Anyone have any experience with poured resins? I know its not on wood but wanna make a waterfall table out of solid surface i.e. corian etc. GF owns a countertop company and I have lots of pieces to play with. I see guys pour resins in wood all the time to make rivers, lakes etc, can the same resin be used with other substrates?
What about making the "river" out of Corian? I use to love working with Corian because if you fuck up, you can just cut the mistake out and glue in a new piece and no one is the wiser.
Yeah, I have a bit of experience. Basically, don't think you can use just any resin. If the final result has any kind of thickness to it, you want a really slow curing (low temp) and "thin" resin. Especially if you want it to be clear. There's a Canadian company called ChemTec that makes good products for this that I've used. Mix the shit out of it, following their directions, and pour it, and then apply some heat to it in order to drive the air bubbles out of the mix and to the surface. Google/YouTube is your friend. First quick result I've seen: There was a ton of epoxy pouring content at a channel I follow called Canadian Woodworks, but a disgruntled employee deleted all of their (hundreds) of videos from the channel and they're realizing they didn't have good backups of the edited/uploaded videos, so they're slow in re-uploading them (and cherry picking the ones they're doing for max ROI). They used to be a huge Chill Epoxy fan/distributor until something went wrong (they had a bad batch of epoxy) and wasted a few thousand dollars of product that the company said "fuck you" with, so they stay clear of them from now on. There are more than a few similar stories around... apparently they did a big social media marketing blitz and were everywhere on YT for a while, but a bunch of problems have turned quite a few YT curators away from them. I'm a big fan of West Systems for my normal day-to-day epoxy needs (knot filling, etc), but I'm not sure I'd use it for a thicker pour.
There are two main reasons I don't wanna use Corian, first i'd like the river/waterfall to be clear. I also want to cut some pretty extravagant patterns etc in the corian using her water jet and then fill it with resin bc it seems much easier to pour the fill then it does to cut an exact match. Would also be pouring some in granite assuming it will bond to either or both. I know its done a lot with wood just haven't seen it done on solid surface or granite
The cedar table I built a few years ago for the deck, out of 4x4" cedar posts, has seen some shit. Between having deep knots that didn't fill properly, to a few winters, to finally drying out a bit, the top of the table was a bit rough... it had some voids, some rough spots where water got in and rotted things out a bit (surface only), and was in need of a refinish. I also found that I thinned the spar varnish too much the last time I did it because it didn't build up the thick coat I was expecting... it soaked into the wood grain too much and left a thin surface. So, time for a redo. Sanded it quickly with some 220, routed out the big problem areas with a portable router (about 3/8" deep), mixed up some tinted epoxy and filled the holes, and did a few minor small touch-ups with thick CA glue, and then hit it will a heavy coat of full-strength Epifanes. It's HIGH quality shit... expensive as hell, but it's the spar varnish that is used on cedar strip boats, designed to take full sun, all day long, all year long, in a marine environment. First coat is now on and drying well... and luckily there's not much breeze or shit floating around in the air to contaminate it.
Hey, y'all. Spent my summer lockdown teaching myself to carve with an axe, straight knife, and a scorp. Thought I'd share a few.
That's a good lookin' hunk a wood, my friend. The thing to remember with boat finishes is that we strip and refinish boats every couple rounds of seasons. You'll delay that by keeping the sun off as best you can - the sun is doing more damage than rain or snow. It weakens the coat and that's what allows the moisture to creep in. The Epifanes should flex better with the seasons, so that'll help A LOT.
Hey guys, could use some advice. My sister and brother in law finally bought a house and I'm building them a dining room table as their house warming gift. We've talked through the design and they've landed on a table top that's 59in wide and 90in long. I'm going to use this as an excuse to get some more tools, including clamps that will be big enough to span the width of the table. Can you guys give me some ideas of where to look for 60" bar clamps and what brands are good/crappy? I've found a few with a basic Google search, but I know you guys will be much better. Thanks!
I have a combination of Bessey clamps (pretty well the most expensive option I've run across) and whatever is on sale or in the bargain bin at Busy Bee or other woodworking stores, or what I've picked up on Craigslist. I have a ton of these: https://www.bessey.de/en-US/BESSEY-Tools-North-America/Products/Clamping-Tools/K-Body-Parallel-and-case-clamps/K-Body®-REVO™-extender-kits But I've also had great luck with simple pipe clamps... basically make your own length clamp with some cheap black pipe from Home Despot. https://www.bessey.de/en-US/BESSEY-...lamping-Tools/Pipe-clamps/Pipe-clamp,-H-style (My pipe clamps are both Bessey and no-name knock-offs, and I like the H clamp as they sit flat on the bench)
Upgraded my dust collection today. Holy shit, night and day difference, and the new one has a pretty impressive “self clean” function that cleans the filter. Old setup: New setup: Works incredibly well.