I had been dreaming about a “real” CNC for the shop for years and recently say a post on the Inventables Forum on the parts to buy to convert the 500mm X-Carve to a full 100cm version. The instructions seemed complete, the BoM (Bill of Material) was fully populated, and the cost was right, so I jumped in and order the parts. While waiting for my new toys to arrive, I started designing the “perfect” table for the X-Carve in the shop. I decided on a combination stand/tablesaw outfield table because space is NOT limitless in my shop. I spent weeks working out the details – steel frame, wood frame, dimensions, storage, castors or not, and so forth. Then, while minding my own business and with my mind 100miles away from the shop and projects (I was actually thinking politics) as I strolled through my local Walgreens… BLAM! There it was right on the cover of Popular Woodworking – the exact thing I was designing already done for me. In glossy color. I felt the hand of Karma and bought the magazine.

Fast forward a FEW months (OK, 11…) and I started the project after tweaking and changing the plans just a little to suit my shop space and my own aesthetic. David Lyell’s plans are really good and I have zero bad things to say about them on the whole. There are a couple of typos , but I am the king of typos, so I am not judging. My tweaks are for my use and are in no way a commentary on the Mr. Lyell’s inventiveness. I will Include the original plans and my comments/notes/scribbles/doodles as well.

Part II of this build will cover drawer construction, finish, and the 1st run of my newly upgraded machine. I will also include a real drawing of my exact build, my BoM, final costing, and cut list with Part II.

X-Carve: https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve

Popular WoodWorking: https://www.popularwoodworking.com/article/cnc-outfeed-table/

PDF of David Lyell’s PW plans with my markups and design changes (Real drawings linked in Part II of this build): http://mattofmanytrades.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/xcarve-outfeed-build-markups-2-2020.pdf

Upgrading your X-Carve – First Steps: https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve-upgrade-kit/questions

X-Carve Forum: https://discuss.inventables.com

I have a lot of hats. No, a LOT of hats! I am follicly challenged and hats are part of that reality. They end up everywhere – all over the house. My wife finds them and makes grumpy noises. I was assigned a task to build proper hat storage. I procrastinated. My wife made louder grumpy noises. I persisted in my procrastination. My sweet wife started sharpening mental knives – I could see it in her eyes… I built some hat storage for our master bedroom closet. Wife happy now.

This is the build video of that process including at least 2 huge screw-ups and my fixes for them – SHOW YOUR MISTAKES!

I was using my Marples mortising chisel and my hand caught a sharp edge. I looked and the brass ferrule was cracked – full thickness and along the whole length. Well, that wouldn’t do!! I grabbed a small piece of one inch left over brass round stock and turned a new thicker, better ferrule on my metal lathe and made the chisel better than new.

The whole project took about an hour – from me noticing the issue until the repaired chisel went back in the roll. SO Happy to have a metal Lathe and a tiny bit of skill with it.

My wife requested some additional bookshelves for her studio. I put together a set earlier this year, but as mentioned then, she has a LOT of costume, pattern, and fashion books – piles of books and reference material. Her shelves are made of Grade 2 (full of knots) Big Box Lumber Store white pine, with popular face frames, and it took about two hours to cut out all the parts, cut the dados, and an hour to put them together. I had some of the materials and supplies, bringing the total cost of the shelves to about $50.

My wife is planning on putting two coats of yellow milk paint on them and then two coats of satin spar varnish, sanding lightly between coats, so that these shelves match her previous ones. Originally, she wanted a set of flat panel doors that closed in the bottom shelf, but as I was gluing the first one together, she had a change of heart and there will be no doors…. I will hopefully use the door parts on another project soon.

The addition of these will give her around thirty liner feet of shelf space in the attic and will house some of the large books and design binders. I added the link below for the measured drawings for the original design of these shelves, the design with the doors and the final design that she settled on. There is a cut list for each option. If you build a version, please let me know.

I just had an exceptional customer service experience and I need to talk about it.  Last week I bought a bag of 5/16” screwmount nuts for the upgraded X-Carve CNC/table-saw out-feed table I am currently building.  I needed them to install the leveling feet.  I THOUGHT that the feet I had were 5/16”-18 and was stoked the McMaster-Carr had exactly what I needed.  I ordered late one night on-line and waiting two days for them to arrive. 

Last night, I went into the shop to install them and quickly found that the feet were 3/8”-16.  Damn.  I recovered, changed my plans for the evening and moved on to another part of the project.

This morning I called McMaster-Carr (MM-C) and spoke to a sales rep named Brian, explaining the issue, what parts I needed to swap out, and that this error was completely my fault.  He was great:  Offered to take the 5/16” parts back without a restock fee, credit the original price, charged the original card for the difference in parts, and said that they would be shipped out today.  No fuss or BS, just a smooth transaction. 

I am not a huge customer for them.  I am a tiny percent of a negative fraction of their sales  – I doubt that your calculator has enough places to calculate my percentage of contribution.  Regardless of this, today I felt like I was an important customer, that they valued my business, and got off the phone and was actually happy.  Made my morning.

MM-C has saved my butt and saved me cash for years!  They are my go-to for hardware and parts.  I have a copy of their paper catalog in the shop and will use it to quickly find a needed part before I go on-line.  Additionally, I use Fusion360 as one of my 3D CAD tools and the MMC online catalog is linked to that tool.  You can get part drawing .stp files and import them directly into your drawing. They are automatically added to your BOM, and you can roll up costing as you design.  It is a super slick interface and I use it all the time (the MM-C Toolbox for Solidworks functions similarly).

For this and so many other reasons, I will continue to use McMaster-Carr for everything that I can.

I had a good honey harvest this year. It was not a record breaking great one, but it was decent. I have only posted one other bee video this year, back in May, and this one is a conclusion to that story.

Out of a total of six hives I was keeping and 2.5 that I was assisting with, I lost one to chemicals and one to foul brood – in the same bee yard unfortunately. One that I helped with also had a chemical exposure and once again (see previous post), my “Russian Survivor Bees” from Vashion Island were crap. They are still super mean, are not producing honey, and even the split from the first hive is behaving exactly the same way.

I sourced some sweet little glass honey-bear jars and I had some custom labels printed this year instead of using the generic “HONEY!” labels. I went through Sticker Mule and I need to say that they were perfect!! The artwork was spot on, the size and tolerance was just right, they were fast, and they were the cheapest source I found for that size and quantity in two colors. Their customer service in excellent and they have my business for all my stickers and labels from now on.

After almost three years, I finally installed a cast iron General router table wing on my SawStop table saw. It was not an exact fit and I had to make some serious modifications.  SawStop now makes a counter table wing and router lift that bolts right in, but they didn’t when I bought both the saw and wing. That said, the do-it-yourself option with the General or similar wing and lift is less than 1/2 the cost of the SawStop option.

I documented the whole overbuilt process in a 2-part YouTube Video series and in part 1 I went over the steps I took getting the wing installed and mounted correctly and the installation of the router lift, plus a few tips. For the second of two videos I detailed the fence installation, the vacuum box and dust collection, and the steps I took in making an over-built cherry and walnut “cutting board” tail piece.