VCarved buttons

[Brian Harnett]

Nice, I have been thinking about jewelry but buttons have a function.

[scottp55]

How thick IS an onionskin on hard maple, board was .2" birdseye, so it took the pointed roundover to .19" and without going into the embarrassing details(next time belt sander as my coarsest 5" was 100G and the holes didn't match),I spent 1.5 hours releasing the little bandits. NOOO I don't have a thickness sander and have never done an onionskin before(Yes Brady I should have researched- AND yes I should have done a trial cut on the edge of the board- and yes I should have surfaced BOTH sides of the .2" panel). Live and ...........I forget the last part.

[Brady Watson]

I saw this neat little contraption @ the Ottawa camp years ago: http://stockroomsupply.ca/shop/drum-sanders.html It is a DIY drum sander kit that works really well. Nice affordable option for smaller stuff where you onion skin the parts with the intent of releasing them on the sander. Yeah I know...I linked to the same place AGAIN...but I had the site up & happened to remember.

-B

[chiloquinruss]

Brady and the group I have their 30 inch drum sander and I just love it! It works terrific. Got the notor from HF and fired it up. I cut the box on the bot and just used their basic kit (comes with the box drawings). Best part is very little dust in the air while sanding, almost entirely goes in the box with or without the DC running. Russ

[scottp55]

Thanks Brady and Russ, Ran across that seems forever ago(5 months?). Glad to know it works. WAS .01" too thick for an onion skin on hard maple? Do NOT want to do that again without using my 4" belt sander

[pappybaynes]

Scott - the buttons are awesome...not going to show my wife! Merry Christmas! Dick

[Brady Watson]

I don't think .01 is too thick - but I think that you could have left a .01 tab at the start point to keep them held in. You could also avoid the tabs with carpet tape, with a little post cut cleanup with a damp alky rag.

One trick that I use with small parts is to use the smallest diameter bit I can while cutting out the parts. This has made a huge difference for me because it exerts less force on the part than a larger tool would. This combined with very light chipload (crank that RPM up on those small tools to get the surface feet per minute up [SFM]) and most things need just one or even no tabs. Tooling geometry can be exploited too...park the upcut spiral and go with a straight flute tool that has poor chip extraction - Keep those chips in the kerf to help hold the part in place.

-B