Yes, I didn’t only stock up on resin, but also on tools, though admittedly I’d have bought them anyway.
The first one is a tiny foldable workbench. I still don’t have a workshop and if this lasts long enough for us to clean up the cellar we’ll also be busy digging up the garden and planting potatoes. Anyway, shaping resin mechanically makes a hell lot of dirt, so I prefer doing it outside anyway.
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The top plates can be moved together or apart and the little plastic thingies are cramps you can use to hold your stuff.
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Works surprisingly well. For the next part I removed the cramps and unpacked item #2: a plate to fix the jigsaw to:
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Oops, it looked better in the thumbnail. But you get the principle. This is so I can cut some larger pieces of resin. In the end I will get a bandsaw some day, but for now this will have to do. First object: a wannabe dragon egg.
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It’s got a piece of burl at the bottom and some gold flakes in the resin. As a container I reappropriated a milk box.
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I figured that every bit of resin I could remove with a saw would safe a lot of sanding later and girl was I right. It worked OK. As expected the vibrations were bad, especially when the angle at which I cut got small and of course holding the piece with two hands was not always possible. I will also add that I’ve got a very, very good jigsaw and the blade was new. Still a success.
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Today I unpacked another toy, eh tool, a plate grinder. I only have a belt grinder that is meant to be handheld and therefore a pain in the ass. This is something completely different and seriously makes sanding so. much. easier.
So here’s the remaining pieces before and after sanding:
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©Giliell, all rights reserved “Old something” and nails
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BTW, if you ever want to ruin some sanding paper quickly, try having hot glue on your work piece:
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And, finally:
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The eggs aren’t perfect, but I’m happy with them. The one with the nails was hell to sand because they would heat up and burn your fingers on the other side of the piece…
Now for my favourite (cough, cough) part: sanding and polishing…
That work bench is really neat! What a clever idea.
My grinder is a wheel mounted on the shaft of a motor. They’re tricky the first time you use them but you get used to it.
That blue dragon egg is going to be super cool!
That bench is what we’d call a Workmate in the UK, it was a trademark of Black and Decker, but it became the name for them whoever makes them. The guy that invented them was called Ron Hickman, he invented it because he was doing some home wood working and cut the leg off a chair he was using as a saw horse. Hickman spent over a decade selling the design himself because he couldn’t get anyone interested in them, but eventually B&D came on board and they have since sold 100 million of various designs. Hickman got a 50p royalty on everyone so he did ok out of his invention. They are extremely useful for all sorts of making, the version Paul owns has a foot rest, handy to hold the whole thing steady if you are working on something like one end of a long piece of wood.
I want to know what’s hidden in the purple disc.
Good on you, you should have proper tools and equipment for your art. I can’t wait to see what you create next!
I’m sorry for having to disappoint you, but that’s just a completely ruined sanding disc.
I did not know that hot glue is such a sandin-paper-killer. Good to know for future projects, I did not have much use for hotglue yet, but I might.
I am looking forward to seeing your results. Thumbs up.
Nothing can prevent glue from wrecking sandpaper, unfortunately. For anything else (paint, sticky wood, etc) you can clean sanding surfaces by rubbing them with a block of crepe rubber. Of course if you’re cleaning bog oak out of a 36 grit sanding belt then you wind up with sticky melted crepe rubber flying all over the place.
I go through so much abrasive it isn’t even funny.