Search Results for: label/uses for used tires/page/46/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

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Measuring With a Shaft Key

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Design
...ft keys between 1/8″ and 1/2″. You can buy a whole set for mere dollars. I used a sharpie to mark the dimensions of my set of shaft keys. I use them mostly for setting the depth of my router and table saw. Using your sense of touch, aided by a shaft key, is much more accurate than using your eyeballs and a ruler. But I also found them handy for assembling a new fence over the weekend. I wanted 1/4 inch gaps between the fence slats and used a shaft...

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A Brief History of Secret Drawers

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Design
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...nt of papers with mysterious writing and symbols. At some point their maid used around half of the papers to bake some pies before the couple decided to put the papers back in the chest. Some years later when the great fire of London broke out Susannah, now a widow, had the sense to take the papers with her. It turned out that those papers were John Dee’s account of his conferences with angels. Secret compartments like this used to be a common fea...

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Our Rocket Stove

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Preparedness, Rocket Stove
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...e iconic palm trees that line our old L.A. street. Here’s the materials we used: 36 bricks 4-inch galvanized steel stove pipe elbow 4-inch stove pipe ash (scavenged from park BBQs) 1 tin can 50 pound bag of premixed concrete for the base mortar mix grill (scavenged) The first step was to make a small foundation for the rocket stove. We fashioned a 18 by 18-inch by 4-inch slab with 2 x 4 lumber and a bag of premixed cement. Folks in cold places wil...

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On Sharpening Tools

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Domesticus
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...to start with a grinding wheel or a really coarse abrasive. Nagura stone (used for maintaining whetstones). Economical Sharpening In terms of price and versatility, it’s hard to beat a Japanese whetstone. With a set of whetstones you can polish everything from kitchen knives to chisels and planes. After the sharpening class I picked up a double sided 800/4,000 grit whetstone and few additional accessories: a sharpening stone holder, a honing guid...

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Cutting Dovetail Joints With a Router Jig

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Design
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...lf-blind dovetails: Image: Wikipedia. Since I’m working on faced drawers I used through dovetails. I hope to make some furniture soon that will make use of half blind dovetails. To cut my dovetails I used a router and jig both made by Porter Cable. There are some other jigs on the market that work just as well but, judging from the reviews, I’d avoid the cheap models. Setting up a dovetail jig is a time intensive process and somewhat confusing in...

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