VCarved buttons

[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

[scottp55]

Using a .32" pointed roundover to "cut out with skin layer" I agree Brady wasn't the swiftest move I've ever made. After finishing them I think I should have added a cut-out line at the centerpoint of the PRO's cut and cut that out on the line(with 2 tabs-chicken) with my 1/8 straight like Brady said. Would have left me a .02" thick thick edge that would have beefed it up and made it a ton easier to sand/oil. Dick, smart move not showing the wife(2 guys with desktops already have-and I think it will interrupt production schedules ). Brady, Thanks for the tips, made me rethink a lot of thin stuff in the pipeline. Oh, well. My Mom loved them-so it was worth it. She did make one comment as she left"Scott, Your brother has a ton of money(family car is Yukon(winter),blue Lotus sedan(summer)), but where could he buy buttons like these, and how much would they cost?". Merry Xmas all.

[Brady Watson]

... but where could he buy buttons like these, and how much would they cost?

"Not available in any store. Call now to order. Operators are standing by."

-B

[scottp55]

Brady, You forgot my other 2 products. Custom poker chips with value determined by wood species and my wooden Maine nickels

[chiloquinruss]

Another trick is one I learned from the scrollers, I use put down masking tape on my spoil board, then two sided tape and then put another piece of masking tape on the underside of the piece I'm cutting. I then stick the piece to the two sided tape already on the spoilboard. VERY easy cleanup afterwards. In a lot of cases, no tabs, and no onion skin, just sticky tape. Russ

[scottp55]

Thanks Russ, good to know for future. This piece though was a test cut(band saw had died in middle of resawing 30 pieces for bookcases) on the unisaw and besides it being cupped the saw kerf was off by .02". Started being .27" thick and used screws in the middle of the cup to pull it down, after one side flat,only had .2" thickness left so I went for it. Need vac hold down to go into production and make my third million after Brady puts me on the home shopping network

[Brady Watson]

Russ & Scott,
The 'marriage' of the 2 tape technique & vacuum is what I called 'The Vacuum Film Technique'. You can hold down just about anything with that method.

-B