Hello Everyone,
After seeing krt2's thread this morning on his 5C collet storage solution, I thought I would add my R8 version that I completed a few weeks ago.
The inspiration for mine came from Paula, who is one of the members here I believe. She posted hers on another forum a while back and as the saying goes... "Imitation is the highest form of flattery". Thanks for the great idea Paula!
The wood that I used was a cut-off of a piece of S4S hard maple that I bought to replace the wooden top of an Atlas 10F lathe that I restored back in the late 1980's. I think it should be dry by now.
I was able to salvage these two pieces from the 12" long cut-off that was 9" wide in spite of a crack that had developed over time on the end. The overall dimensions are: 1-5/8" thick x 3-1/4" wide x 11-3/8" long. I used a bandsaw to rough out the stock and machined to width with a sharp HSS facemill in the vertical mill. Hardwood such as this maple machines beautifully. To keep the dust down, I held my shop vacuum nozzle near the cutter as the milling was taking place. The overall mess was surprisingly minimal. The only dedicated woodworking machines that I have are a 10" miter saw and a hand held router that I used to put the 1/8" chamfer around the top. I used a 1" Forstner bit to bore the holes for the collets which are on 1-5/8" centers and 1-5/8" apart. The holes are 1-7/16" deep which leaves 3/16" of material at the bottom of the hole. To finish, the blocks were given a light sanding and finished with a clear Watco Danish Oil. Once dry, I attached some square adhesive backed felt pads to the bottom.
The fun part of course, was finally putting all of the tooling in the holders and freeing up all the space in the drawers and bench top that the loose tooling took up.
Thanks again Paula for a great idea!
Mike
