Another wood shop project.
Jun. 17th, 2022 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillWhile cleaning the living room I was annoyed AGAIN by the way the dowels I’m using to pin the back of the futon/couch in the up position stick way out to either side of the couch. When we got that couch it had pins (or at least one pin; I don’t remember for sure if it had both even then) that were the right length and diameter for the holes they went into, but one end of the dowel of the pin was imbedded in a disk of wood that gave me something bigger to grip when inserting or removing the dowel. Somewhere in our multiple moves, those pins disappeared, and I bought some 3/4 inch dowel and hacked it down to about 6 inches of length, to make it long enough to grip with my whole hand, but that makes it stick inconveniently far out of the couch.
And I remembered that disk of wood on the end of the original dowel/pin and thought “I could do that. I have hardwood scraps, and a bandsaw, and a drill press, and epoxy and sawdust; I could absolutely do that.
Now the down side is 3/4 inch dowel is just a *smidge* too large. My hunch is that this futon frame was built somewhere that used metric sizes, and the original pins were 1.75 cm in diameter. I carved down the edges of the 3/4 inch dowel and with great effort can jam it in that hole, but it doesn’t go in as far as the design length. I would like 1.75 cm dowel, or 11/16th dowel, which would be a bit thinner but not a lot. But no luck finding anything like that locally. So what I may end up doing is putting the 3/4 inch dowel in the drill press, as if it were a drill bit, and then just gently sanding it, stopping the drill press, measuring with my micrometer, checking it in the hole, rinse and repeat until I get it to the size I want. Not great but I think it will work. I will give it a try in the morning.
And in the meantime I found a bit of 1/4 inch dowel and replaced the one missing 1/4 inch pin in the quilt rack that I received from my mother-in-law when she was downsizing to move to Tulsa. I just walked past that thing just now and that one empty hole caught my eye again and I thought “I can fix that.”
Now I am off to open the windows in the shop and stick fans in them to try to take advantage of the cool evening air to cool my shop down.
And I remembered that disk of wood on the end of the original dowel/pin and thought “I could do that. I have hardwood scraps, and a bandsaw, and a drill press, and epoxy and sawdust; I could absolutely do that.
Now the down side is 3/4 inch dowel is just a *smidge* too large. My hunch is that this futon frame was built somewhere that used metric sizes, and the original pins were 1.75 cm in diameter. I carved down the edges of the 3/4 inch dowel and with great effort can jam it in that hole, but it doesn’t go in as far as the design length. I would like 1.75 cm dowel, or 11/16th dowel, which would be a bit thinner but not a lot. But no luck finding anything like that locally. So what I may end up doing is putting the 3/4 inch dowel in the drill press, as if it were a drill bit, and then just gently sanding it, stopping the drill press, measuring with my micrometer, checking it in the hole, rinse and repeat until I get it to the size I want. Not great but I think it will work. I will give it a try in the morning.
And in the meantime I found a bit of 1/4 inch dowel and replaced the one missing 1/4 inch pin in the quilt rack that I received from my mother-in-law when she was downsizing to move to Tulsa. I just walked past that thing just now and that one empty hole caught my eye again and I thought “I can fix that.”
Now I am off to open the windows in the shop and stick fans in them to try to take advantage of the cool evening air to cool my shop down.
