shtoink

Just tossing out the idea for the table top... http://picnicpark.org/keith/woodworking/workbench/ http://lumberjocks.com/projects/22183 Those links are good example of what comes to mind for the table portion of your iron-pipe-legged beast of a table. You can use a 2 part epoxy type glue and clamps to bond the 2x4's together and then attack the top with a belt sander (or whatever your favor) to flatten it all out. If you really want to go nuts, you can even cross drill through the boards and clamp them all together with fender washers, bolts, and threaded rods, but that might be just a bit of an overkill. You don't plan on moving this thing around very often, do you? After it's all said and done, the table might weight quite a bit. As an added bonus with those flanges for feet, you get the ability to level the table with them. Built in adjustability!

I can't help on the prevention end of things, but as far as clean up of oils spills go, kitty litter is very good for this. The type that clumps up is to be avoided, though. The magic is with the bentonite clay, as that is what is absorbing the oil. Just pour some on your oil, grind it around with your feet (wear shoes/boots for this), sweep up, and dispose of appropriately. That last part is at your discretion, as California has strict regulations on how oil, and oil soaked stuff can be disposed of. This was a daily routine in the motor pool for cleaning up the floors and pavement.

Holy for creepy! Just... Wow... Very impressive. Is that modeled ofter Arnold?

Greetings! Yup, the wet side of the state is right...

Not sure if the value of the tool you want to modify, speaking strictly about modifications, here's my take. It looks to be meant to account for the gaps in the jaws to mesh, so the angle of the is neither too large or too small. This means that grinding them off or filling them in will both be problematic. The best way I can see it working the way you want is to machine off the teeth, drill holes in the remain portion of the jaws, and have new faces to the jaws made up with the desired surface shape and holes drilled tapped on the back so they can replaced as needed. This isn't the easiest of tasks on a set of pliers that wide, because you still want the faces of the jaws to come together as nearly parallel as possible, the holes to mount them to line up correctly, and the mating surfaces between the jaw and the removable jaw face to be as clean as possible. It may be possible that those pliers are reasonably valuable enough to merit not modifying them, too. In that case, it might be a better option to perform the desired modifications to a set of vice-grips and keep those other pliers unaltered to maintain their value. It is totally doable, but I wanted to toss out a few ideas for you.

Lookin' sick!

While digging about internets in non-leather related places, I ran across some other folks discussing DC motor controller plans that are meant for working with those treadmill motors. It seems that these guys talk about couple different plans, but felt it was all worth adding to this thread since it was related.

The original image you posted looks sort of like a modified form of the "coptic stitch" method of book binding. It appears that the leather thong comes through the holes that sew together the signatures to attach the leather binding. I could be completely wrong, but I know that there are a few variations on it.

Those brass bits look sort of like they are meant for flaring out portion of a rivet or snap to join the halves together.

This is the sort of thing that first came to mind when I was reading the fist post. I was thinking something like a set of small clamps over o-rings to maintain the vertical alignment, but effectively the same idea. The only thing that I might add to it is having the punches machined on the sides that will be touching so that the numbers are closer together. I wouldn't grind them by hand as you risk messing up the heat treatment on the punches and the surfaces won't match up very well. Maybe take them to a machine shop and have a few tenths of an inch removed from the left and right sides of each number in a milling machine. This will yield more consistent result, won't mess up the heat treatment, be far faster, and you could even spent time to lap the surfaces when you get hem home if you wanted. Don't mess with the top or bottom (when looking at the number/letter) as to help retain some strength of the steel punch. I am assuming that these will be being used on the leather portion of the belt on not the titanium buckle, so keep that in mind. You won't be needing to bang on them with a hammer to make number shaped dents into a metal of some kind, if that's the case. The arbor press will also eliminate the need of a hammer and prolong the life of the punches. The other option is to get a dedicated punch with number/letters you require. They aren't exactly cheap, but eliminate the stuff above. Here a some random links that I found with a quick search for what I mean. http://www.whiteint.com.au/Menu/TradeIndustrial/OurBrands/Pryor/PryorManualMarking.aspx http://shortorderproducts.com/Metal_Stamping_Pages/ms_ag_Model_60/ms_ag_model_60.html http://www.artukimya.com/product_konv.html http://www.shivaarts.com/hand-rotary-numerator-machine-india.php http://www.indiamart.com/md-artengraver/mechanical-machines.html

Yes, on a new tool, the blade has a good chance of being all nicked up and dull due to the "mass production" nature of its assembly. This was the case with mine. It's common, but does not mean it's a guarantee that yours will be that way. However, It is common enough to merit pulling the blade out for inspection first, just to be on the safe side. Nothing worse than shredding up your leather trying to get it started and then finding out that was the problem from the very beginning. Unless getting a package of new blades is an issue where you are at, they tend to be cheap enough to just replace rather than spending time to resharpen. That doesn't mean that you can't resharpen them, though. The blades are a bit on the small side and can present a serious finger hazard when trying to sharpen and strop them unless you are able to hold them in some sort of fixture. I'm a little hand shy from too many errant bit a metal flying about after thinking I could just wing something. To be honest, I'm super lucky to have all my fingers and both my eyes from many such occasions. A true graduate from the School of Hard Knocks.

That's the best part about this tool. You can be making lace from nearly any leather you like, provided it doesn't fall apart when lacing with it. You can pick up scraps and cut-off from your other projects and make lace from that, or you can find a coordinating color that pleases you. Just make sure you have a fresh blade in it. I ran into an issue with a brand new one that refused to make lace right out of the package. It turned out to be dings in the blade from the shoddy assembling procedures. Replaced the blade and it made short work of my left-overs. I was even able to make some thin-ish suede into lace, too.

Really?! I never would have even guessed this. I wonder if this is only with the newer ones, since I would have placed my bets on the set screws being 8-32. Not 100% positive on it, but I think that's what the older ones were using. I guess it really pays to have both Metric and SAE thread pitch gauges for just such occasions.

Simply amazing work. I spent a good deal of time staring at the pictures of your work in the gallery on your site.

It's not a bad joke, I just wasn't picking up on it. I didn't realize right away that you were Norwegian right away and you Scandinavian's have a very unique sense of humor. It is one that I can follow, but I just need to pay more attention. I was also stuck on the fact that there are guys here who do like to use non-electric tools, but still have the want/need to make them a bit easier to use. Not to mention, if you travel a bit and like to bring your leather stuff with you, a sewing machine, even a Boss, is very heavy and inconvenient to lug about.

Just in case anyone was wondering on the history behind the M9 Bayonet... Some info from M9Bayonet.com More from Wikipedia It has an interesting history and right up until the contract was picked up LanCay, and later Ontario, all the M9's were either being made by Buck directly or as a subcontractor. They had plenty of revisions and such along the way, but almost all of the them are highly collectable as Buck no longer makes them and Phrobis no longer exists. I remember when you used to be able to pick up Buck's civilian version in the sporting goods stores. I kinda wish I had picked up more of them when I had the opportunity. *EDIT* I need to add that it seems that there are highly collectable versions all through the life of the M9 line. Just look through this series of pages. LOT OF PICS!

Thank you very much. Sometimes our interests lead us to the most unexpected places.

I wouldn't recommend aluminum foil due to the change of it failing prematurely. I did see some quick and dirty solutions, but they did not appear to have long term use in mind, also the bulk of them were just plain ugly. I'm thinking you still want to have this wallet look like a normal wallet and not some duct-tape monstrosity. Simply put, aluminum foil has a finite number of bending it'll handle before giving up its structural integrity. Anything you do to try to layer over it or glue it to will just add to the bulk and complexity. Not saying it isn't doable, just that there are better tools to get the job done. I think that you'd be far more successful with a copper wire mesh, tough there are some other allows that claim to get wider ranges of the EM spectrum. Just going by what I was able to glean from the pages I searched. Copper is very ductile and when made into a fabric, it'll still do the job you want without having to add much change to your assembly process of your wallet. I'd assume that it'd go between the outer most layer and some kind of lining. You could even apply it some rubber cement directly to that outer layer and then glue on a pigskin lining. These are just some idea I'm tossing out, it'll ultimately be your call. I did a quick search and here is what I found: (No particular order) http://www.stylepark.com/en/weisse-und-eschrich/copper-wire-mesh http://www.wovenwire.com/copper-wire-mesh.htm http://www.lessemf.com/fabric.html http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/03/16/faraday-bags-pouches.html It seems that the tighter the mesh, the better the results, but there is also a physical limit to the size that the wires can reach and still be useful. You also want to to still be flexible and not interfere with the wallets normal functions. I hope this points you in the right direction.

I guess the joke is over my head...

I know that there are apps that will allow you to upload from your phone, directly to the imaging hosting site. Places like Photobucket, SmugMug, flickr, and more all have apps to with their services. From there, it's a matter of organizing and getting the links to your images. This is the area that some services are better than others at. Basically it go like this: 1. Take photo with phone 2. Upload photo with app 3. Organize as needed 4. Get links for images 5. Paste links into your post This is obviously leaving out some of the finer points, but those will differ slightly based on which app and image host service you ultimately use. For what it's worth, flickr has gotten some very good reviews and photobucket recently made some major changes that I really dislike. I've actually been researching what it'll take to move to another image hosting service.

I'm really wanting to see the ball after it's all laced up. Reusing the old one is a great idea. I'm sure there are plenty of softballs with a sad and worn exteriors that would like to have a new skin. Easy donor for a pattern, too.

I could be wrong, but that pipe looks to be made from spalted maple or possibly spalted alder. I think the antlers were there to aid in supporting the various items being photographed.

There really doesn't seem to be much on the topic out there. It clearly is being done, but maybe because it doesn't differ to greatly from tie dyeing fabric that people aren't putting up tutorials on it. I did find one place that gave some general information that was leather specific, though. I hope this points you in the right direction.

This is just a stab in the dark, but I think there was supposed to be a picture that didn't make it along for the ride.

As those of you who know me, I have many interests, but few stray far from some sort of engineering related topic. I tend to geek out a little hard at times, but it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble. One of those things is learning more about becoming a better hobby machinist. I absolutely love tools, especially those that aid in making other tools. One of those tools SolidWorks. I seem to halfway decent at it and it helps me visualize things without getting lost along the way when actually building things. While searching for information on gear cutting, I came across an extremely well documented blog that had just the kind of thing I was looking for. It also had a wealth of other information, to include plans for a fly fishing reel. I needed a short-term project to gain a sense of accomplishment and modeling that reel seemed just the thing. This type of thing helps when you're mired down with working out details of another project that isn't proceeding as planned. After modeling it, I contacted the owner of the blog and showed him the work I had done and asked if he wanted a copy of the renders and subsequent files I used to render them. After a few emails and some further tweaking to the SolidWorks model, I made a series of renders to show off the reel. He was so pleased with the results that he made a blog post specifically for them. Clearly I am very excited about it and is the very reason I am sharing this with you all. If you decide to follow the links, please take the time to browse through the rest of his blog. There is a wealth of information there and it covers a wide range of interests. Whether you are looking for a superb spinning reel that is hand made by a detail obsessed engineer, want to build one yourself from his plans, or you just want to read up on some of the things that go into making a fly fishing reel, it's there for you with plenty of pictures and details along the way.