Maine Yankee's Projects

Some tools you buy thinking that they will be the answer to your problems, then you use them twice and they just gather dust thereafter. Other tools are truly indispensable. I have three mitering tools. I bought the mini miter box with high hopes, but it has been a problem child from the get go. First I had to get a deeper saw blade, then I had to work out holding jigs to keep the parts steady, then it was still hard to use.

Next I bought an Easy Cutter and things did get easier. It cuts small stuff very quickly and can do odd angles like 30% or 22.5% as needed. However, it is really only for the small stuff. Anything more than an inch wide or a quarter inch thick does not cut well, if at all. And stay away from hard wood completely.

So then I finally broke down and bought a Miter Rite. This is definitely the right tool for most of my mitering jobs. The saw has very fine teeth and makes a clean cut, cleaner than the Easy Cutter, which ofter splits small or detailed molding. The angles a perfect and it has fine adjust and secure setting. Depth is still limited, but I seldom cut anything thicker than a half inch. The tiny teeth may take a few extra strokes to get through your trim pieces, but the cut hardly needs any sanding at all, which saves the time you lose, and then some.

The Dremel Workstation was a good investment because it is many tools in one: drill press, stand while using the flex shaft, vise, holder for the Dremel while buffing, shaping, etc. However, I don't really use it that often. Worth the money, but sometimes I envy the space it takes up, bolted to the work bench.

The Shaper / Router Table went the opposite way. I knew I would need to use a router from time to time, but I did not realize how handy the table would be for grinding, shaping, drum sanding, joinery, etc. So this silly little thing has some prime real estate on the front corner of the work bench and my old Dremel stays mounted in it full time.

This last tool on the list is nothing short of amazing in both value and usefulness. It is a magnetic holding jig and I use it constantly for assembly and gluing. It helps me keep things square and tight while the glue sets. It also serves duty holding plans and patterns flat and is a great surface for painting and staining, since it has a baked enamel finish that cleans up easily.

The base is a steel door skin from an old workshop cabinet. I purchased four very strong, bare, rectangular magnets to get me started. I also have a couple of scraps of square, brass stock that are heavy and straight, so can be used for holding or for aligning. Later I bought a set of eight square magnets from Micro-Mark, the ones that go with the jig they sell. I thought theirs was a bit small and pricey. Mine is bigger makes a great backdrop for my blog pictures :)

One of Steve Harvey's customers wanted a finished room box and I offered this one. She jumped at it and off it went to a happy home. I had no future plans for it, plus I intend to build one of Steve's 16" singles this winter.

The little Christmas Tree room is on display again. This is it's third year at FHC, Inc. for the month of December. Last February it made the trek to the Whitefield Lions annual show in Augusta, too. The happy little room gets around :-)

Somewhere in the southern US there is a very happy little girl. Her grandmother purchased my second LL Bean log cabin. Seems the grandmother's house burn and took her cabin with it. Grandma promised to replace the dollhouse before realizing how hard it would be. A web search brought her to me and her story convinced me to sell.

Will there ever be another?

The little lighthouse art gallery is currently on display at FHC, Inc. through Christmas Eve. Sitting on top of the piano in the employee bistro it will have a few dozen admirers... which is more than it was getting sitting on top of my bookshelf :-/

You'll notice that there has been a gap of many months in this blog. And with good reason, since I have been working on programming projects, which aren't near as much fun to blog about! That being said...

Soon I will be back doing several mini projects and blogging as I go. There are some furniture items to build, a new roombox to finish, and I'll be starting on the rebuild of the Pierce. I'll also have a couple of new tools to blog about as of Christmas day :)

One more thing I wanted to mention. Maybe I should have a section of the blog just about miniatures web sites. Over the past 12 months I have built a fan resource web site all about The House of Miniatures furniture kits. It contains a catalog of kits, PDFs of ads and mail order catalogs, a history of the brand and other information. You can have a look at the site from this link.

Another new web project is the Miniature & Scale Wiki at zooplies.org. I'm sponsoring and building the Miniature Furniture section of the wiki. It aims to be a repository of project, how-to, link, history, biography, and general library of everything scale and miniature. Drop in an have a look. Better yet, start contributing articles, links, images, etc. :)