Monday, April 20, 2009

Getting Crafty

You don't have to be a clean freak to want to keep your assembly areas glue and stain free.

I saw this in a friend's shop and decided to add it to the outfeed table on my table saw.

It's just a roll of craft paper suspended on a dowel beneath the work surface but it saves clean up time whenever I glue up a project.

A small dowel pin keeps the large dowel, which can only be removed from one side, from falling out of the shallow hole in the opposite leg of the outfeed table.


And it's inexpensive, because I reuse the same area of paper until it becomes badly tattered from too many glue ups that turned into sticky situations.

9 comments:

  1. Our local newspaper (small town) sells end rolls that I have often thought would be great for this type of application. I am gona have to try this out.

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  2. I do the same thing, but with a piece of cardboard. I get the cardboard from the top of plywood bunks at a local lumber store. they save them for me when they open them. I cut them down on my table saw to fit my bench.
    Joey

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  3. And now you can open an Italian restaurant where the kids are allowed to color on the "tablecloth."

    A double victory!

    Cool post.

    Chris

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  4. Cool! Think I could adapt that to my lap? Oh, wait. Isn't that called an apron?

    Bob

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  5. I've only used my table saw for a glue up once. I had waxed paper down, and a bit of moisture must have still made it through and I ended up with a ribbon of discoloration where the squeeze out had fallen.

    Back to doing glue-ups on cardboard on my main bench.

    I couldn't see the hand-carved hand crank (for rewinding) in the photo.

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  6. Great idea, Kari. We used to have a table-covering roll of fancy paper in a biochem lab where I worked.

    Never thought of doing it in my shop but guess who has a big roll of paper doing nothing? Thanks for another great idea.

    Cheers --- Larry

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  7. Kari - I'm disappointed...that's far too organised. Next thing is you'll be having a red rose in jamjar on the paper and Manilow muzak in the 'shop at glue-up time!
    Nice idea though. I just use a the chipboard surface of my take-off table for gluing up...wonderful the goo an old scraper can remove - Rob

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  8. LOL at the comments!

    FYI: Villagio Carpentiere Ristorante will be open for business soon!

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  9. In my experience, parchment paper works better than wax paper as a backer for glue ups. Nothing sticks to it, but there's zero chance of it affecting the finish on the piece.

    As far as the original post, I've been thinking of building an art table for my daughter with a similar set up, once she gets past the age where she just eats the crayons.

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