good_time_charlie
New Member
First a question, for all you home do-it-yourself-ers, what brands of power tools do you favor?
I have a cheap Skil jigsaw, a cheap Ryobi mouse sander with a nice case, a cheap Black n Decker 3/8" cord drill with a nice storage bag, a rechargeable Ryobi power driver kit in a case and a WEN rotary tool kit. They all serve me well for once-in-a-blue-moon small projects. I'm no carpenter by trade.
Tips:
A jigsaw can make an occasional straight crosscut. You don't need a Skilsaw with a circular blade for small-scale stuff. A simple fence or guide for the saw can be a combination square and a bar-type wood clamp or two.
Those bar-type clamps for woodworking have plastic no-mar caps on the jaws. They are not for holding any metal parts winch may get hot as from drilling. Use only steel clamp to hold metal work piece which may get hot from friction as from cutting with a high-speed power tool. I just ruined my cheap Walmart clamp with plastic jaws. They melted while holding a metal L bracket I was drilling a hole through!
How to precisely position a center punch for a pre-drill in metal. You will have intersecting scribe lines or a small ink mark on your work piece already. You want to have plenty of bright light for this kind of work. Cover the mark on the metal with small piece of clear packing tape. Place another piece of tape over the top to make it double thick. You can see the ink mark under the clear tape layers. Take your carpenter's awl and press a small dimple while twisting the tool where the ink mark is. It is much easier to observe the sharp point of a narrow awl that the point of the thick tapered shank of a typical center punch. Now, you can easily feel the point of the center punch into the dimple you made with the awl by carefully walking the point into the dimple. You made the tape double thick to make a deeper impression in the tape that even the blunt point of the relatively-blunt center punch can easily land in like a golf ball in the cup. Now that punch is positioned, give it a smart tap with a hammer to make the dimple in the metal for starting the drill.
I have a cheap Skil jigsaw, a cheap Ryobi mouse sander with a nice case, a cheap Black n Decker 3/8" cord drill with a nice storage bag, a rechargeable Ryobi power driver kit in a case and a WEN rotary tool kit. They all serve me well for once-in-a-blue-moon small projects. I'm no carpenter by trade.
Tips:
A jigsaw can make an occasional straight crosscut. You don't need a Skilsaw with a circular blade for small-scale stuff. A simple fence or guide for the saw can be a combination square and a bar-type wood clamp or two.
Those bar-type clamps for woodworking have plastic no-mar caps on the jaws. They are not for holding any metal parts winch may get hot as from drilling. Use only steel clamp to hold metal work piece which may get hot from friction as from cutting with a high-speed power tool. I just ruined my cheap Walmart clamp with plastic jaws. They melted while holding a metal L bracket I was drilling a hole through!
How to precisely position a center punch for a pre-drill in metal. You will have intersecting scribe lines or a small ink mark on your work piece already. You want to have plenty of bright light for this kind of work. Cover the mark on the metal with small piece of clear packing tape. Place another piece of tape over the top to make it double thick. You can see the ink mark under the clear tape layers. Take your carpenter's awl and press a small dimple while twisting the tool where the ink mark is. It is much easier to observe the sharp point of a narrow awl that the point of the thick tapered shank of a typical center punch. Now, you can easily feel the point of the center punch into the dimple you made with the awl by carefully walking the point into the dimple. You made the tape double thick to make a deeper impression in the tape that even the blunt point of the relatively-blunt center punch can easily land in like a golf ball in the cup. Now that punch is positioned, give it a smart tap with a hammer to make the dimple in the metal for starting the drill.
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