The 1978 Rockwell Unisaw has been performing very well. But I didn’t understand how out of date some of the design thinking was until I went to cut the drawer bottoms for the rolling shop cabinets. The smallest cabinet has drawers which are 28" wide. My JET Contractor saw has a 30" fence. The Unisaw had only a 25" fence. I had planned to delay replacing the fence but the 2-foot fence was not going to work so I placed my order for the Biesemeyer 50" Fence System. I decided "in for a penny in for a pound" so I also decided I’d replace the anemic miter gauge with an Osborne triangular "EB-3". You can see the original equipment on the left and the installed upgrades on the right.

The irony of the upgrade process (once it was shipped to the shop in a tractor trailer truck – OVER KILL), was that I needed the saw to upgrade the saw. So, I installed the fence system, cut all the parts for the extension table, and then partially disassemble the fence to install the extension table. In my case, I only attacked the top of the extension table at three points from below so I can remove / replace it when necessary without disassembling the fence again.

It will take some time to get use to the Osborne. It is very wide. Is has a series of detents on the sliding cross bar so both positive and negative standard angles are easy to reach. It also has a "stop" and extension end so repeatable cuts are easy.

The one issue is that now the magnetic starter is too far under the fence. I’ll need to extend it forward so it’s more accessible and safer to operate. It was a bit of an issue before and much worse now. What really drives me nuts is that the JET has it’s power controls on the left and the Rockwell / Delta has them on the right <ugh>.

If anyone is interested, I’ll post pics of how I built the extension table. The fence system gave simple to follow instructions and I had all the necessary materials in the shop.

I’m very happy with the upgrades. IT goes without saying that I’ve now spend more on the refurb and upgrades to the Rockwell Unisaw than I did on the table saw in the first place … but that was not really hard considering I bought it at auction for the scrap price of $17.50.

I’ve done a number of upgrades, changes, and rethinking when it comes to the workshop. The goal ? Well, I have dreams of grandeur and one day becoming a custom cabinet and furniture shop. But that is down the road. The near term is to build out the home office and the upper cabinets for the kitchen.

The past couple of weekends have been spent testing out the new shop setup and tuning up the various pieces of equipment. IT seemed the easiest way to insure everything was working was to build something and what the shop needed most was a good dose of organization. So, I decided to build some rolling shop cabinets. This would not only organize the shop better but also test out my plan for building cabinets for kitchens and offices, as well as built-in furniture for living rooms, dens, and the like.

Here are two of the three (or perhaps four)  rolling cabinets. The are 37″ tall, 32″ deep, and vary in width to fit the available space.

The larger one on the left is nearly 48″ wide. That’s very wide but I wanted to see what would happen with a cabinet that wide, especially to the drawers. The lower draw has about 100 lbs of tools and holds up fine. This cabinet is my “assembly station”. IT has the glue and screws and small nails as well as the related tools – biscuit joiner, cordless drill / screw gun, pocket screws and jig, brad and finish nail guns, etc. The top is finished with melamine and is large enough for work on doors, drawer fronts, and draw boxes.

The smaller cabinet on the far right is for “mechanicals”. This cabinet has the heavy drill, hand grinder, metal cutter, wrenches, sockets, impact wrench, screw drivers, etc. It is topped with melamine just like the rest.

• I spent a day cleaning the shop area of the farmhouse project.
• I spent a day getting building materials.
• I spent a day babysitting sub-sub-sub contractors.
• I spent today hunting through boxes for my tools and accessories. I also spent today cleaning those tools from their two year exile in storage.

Turns out even with good, dry, storage, stuff rusts. I spend more than half the day cleaning and polishing the steel tables of the table say, planer, band saw, and drill press. I don’t take that much care of my home furniture ! In defense, a clean and waxed (basic Johnson Paste Wax) does make sliding wood across the surface, much more tame and safe. I did manage to find a bit of time to start building storage and new jigs (something that didn’t travel from my own shop). the first holds nearly 250 lbs of … well …. "holders".

… who was it that said, "you can never have too many clamps" ?

I managed to bun out my nice Dremel and once I searched the Internet, I found out I was not alone. The Dremel has a very poor motor design that is prone to collecting dust. In my case, dust from the sheetrock. This kind of dust is an abrasive and VERY QUICKLY destroys the motor. I considered buying a new Dremel since I had all of the nice accessories but "just the Dremel" was the same cost as the whole kit. I also felt I would probably kill another so I thought about a different tool. Can you guess what it is … (you have three guesses and the first two don’t count).

It’s cold and rainy here on the Eastern Shore and with the sheetrocking “not quite done” on the farmhouse project, much of life is in limbo. On my last check of the project, I noticed one of the speaker wires had been covered in the ceiling so I figured, before the mudding began, now was a good time to cut the holes for the speakers. The challenge was “how”. Nearly all of my workshop – and thus my tools – is still in storage. I have a nice laminate cutter packed away somewhere which takes roto-zip bits. It would have been perfect for cutting sheetrock. Then I remembered seeing an odd attachment to my Dremel. I bought a nice unit back when I was restoring the clock.

The Dremel with a roto-zip bit installed and it’s circle cutting jig attached was nearly purpose built for the job. It was probably a little more stress on the tool‘s motor than should be applied but as this is not a task I will do day in and day out, it held up nicely.

I only had 12 holes to cut – each 8” diameter. It took a little while to located exactly where each speaker needed to be centered and a little more to build up the necessary confidence / courage to start cutting holes in my new ceiling. In the end, I only needed an hour to locate, align, and cut all of the holes for the kitchen, living room, office, wetroom, and bedroom.