Drilling Headlight Holes In the Bad Bob Motors Car Bodies Using a Shopsmith In Horizontal Boring Mode

I'm building a batch of cars with headlights and taillights made from dowels glued into holes. The holes have to be evenly spaced and aligned. They don't need to be perfect close is good enough. If I had this to do over, I would have done it differently. If I had thoroughly thought this through, I would have tried to mount the patterns so that I could have drilled multiple holes without moving anything. If everything was uniform, I could setup once and drill all the suitable headlight holes. Turn the block over, reset the stop blocks, and drill all the left headlight holes. The way it worked out, I had to realign and reclamp for every hole. If you are only making one toy, this isn't an issue. If you are making a lot of them, it can add significantly to the time it takes to make the cars. Here are the cars I'm trying to make.

Handmade Wooden Toy Cars - Bad Bob Motors - Coupe

Handmade Wooden Toy Cars - Bad Bob Motors - Tudor

My Shopsmith has a horizontal boring mode that makes it possible for me to clamp the blanks to the table and drill away. Ok, it's not exactly that simple. But it's way better than building a jig or tall fence to hold the block of wood vertically on a drill press.


The first thing I needed to do was find the center of the headlight hole.

Shopsmith Horizontal Boring - Wooden Toy Car - Drilling Headlight Holes

 Using the pattern and carefully aligning it with the bottom of the block of wood. I carefully marked the headlight locations. I drill the first headlight hole on all the blocks, then raise the table to the next location and drill all the holes for the other headlight. The procedure for the tail lights is much the same, except the bit is smaller. For this to work well, everything has to be square, and the wood must be securely clamped in place.

If I make these again, I will not use dowels for headlights. I'm not too fond of the look of them. However, I will still need to drill the holes.

Toymakers Shop Resawing Small Wood Toy Part With A Shopsmith Bandsaw - Dragon Legs

 

I cut most of my toy parts from 3/4-inch or thicker stock and then resaw them to the desired thickness. When I resaw the parts after I cut them saves me a lot of time and material.

In some cases where the parts are thin, I can get three or more parts from a single piece.

Think about resawing a board to 1/8-inch thick to cut two 1/2-inch long parts. You now have a 1/8-inch board that you may never use again.

If you resaw from a 3/4-inch board, you will have a 1/8-inch thick board and a 1/2-inch thick board minus the saw kerf that you may not need.

I am resawing the legs for a toy dragon from some hardwood cutoffs that are random thicknesses in this video. I am using a Shopsmith bandsaw equipped with a Carter Stabilizer and a 1/8-inch 14 TPI Timber Wolf bandsaw blade. I need the fine tooth blade to get as smooth a cut as possible and to be able to cut tiny parts. I can resaw parts as small as 1/4-inch long and 1/8-inch thick using this method.

Toymakers Shop Shopsmith Bandsaw Carter Stabilizer Test

 

Shopsmith Bandsaw With A Carter Stabilizer Test Cut Using A 1/8-inch 14 TPI Blade

Shopsmith Bandsaw With A Carter Stabilizer Test Cut Using A 1/8-inch 14 TPI Blade

Shopsmith bandsaws are different than most bandsaws. They do not have crowned wheels, and they do not have a tracking adjustment. The setup instructions that are shown in the Carter Products demo will not work on a Shopsmith bandsaw. Preloading the blade by pushing it forward 1/8-inch and adjusting the tracking can't be done. You can push the blade forward 1/8-inch, but there is no tracking adjustment. All it accomplishes is to move the blade out of position and make it for it to run off the wheel. A Shopsmith bandsaw has an automatic tracking system pushing it forward disables the auto track.

My solution (so far) is this. Fully retract the Carter Stabilizer and allow the bandsaw blade to track where it should, then adjust the Carter Stabilizer forward until the blade touches the bearing inside the grove.

In the test pictured above, I made the cut in this configuration. It did not cut any better or worse, but the blade was a lot less likely to come off the wheel.

Installing Blue Max Urethane Tires on a Shopsmith Bandsaw

Installing Blue Max Urethane Tires on a Shopsmith Bandsaw

 

Installing Blue Max Urethane Tires on a Shopsmith Bandsaw

My first set of tires were the orange ones. They stretched and came off. I bought a pair of blue tires, and those worked well for a while and then came off and got chewed up by the blade—my fault. Putting these on was a struggle. Both times it took a couple of hours to get them on, finally.

I purchased another set of the Blue Max belts.

I changed the tires on my bandsaw yesterday for the third time. I finally figured out how to do it. I did not heat the tire or any of that nonsense. I discovered that you have to keep the wheel from moving and hold the belt in place. I have tried every sort of clamp you can imagine, only to have the clamp pop off and go flying across the shop.

It finally dawned on me to try hand screw clamps. Hand screws are made of wood, so no worries about damaging the wheel. You can apply a lot of pressure with these clamps. Not only did they hold the belt very well, but I managed to stretch the tire onto the wheel the first try.

I used spring clamps on the bottom wheel to stop the wheel from moving when I pulled down on the tire. I didn't do this on the top wheel, and it was a bit more complicated.

#odinstoyfactory #shopsmith #bandsaw #bluemax #tools

 

 

Installing Bandsaw Tires On A Shopsmith Bandsaw

Installing Bandsaw Tires On A Shopsmith Bandsaw

 

Installing Bandsaw Tires On A Shopsmith Bandsaw

 

My first set of tires were the orange ones. They stretched and came off. I bought a pair of blue tires, and those worked well for a while and then came off and got chewed up by the blade—my fault. Putting these on was a struggle. Both times it took a couple of hours to get them on, finally.

I purchased another set of the Blue Max belts.

I changed the tires on my bandsaw yesterday for the third time. I finally figured out how to do it. I did not heat the tire or any of that nonsense. I discovered that you have to keep the wheel from moving and hold the belt in place. I have tried every sort of clamp you can imagine, only to have them pop off and go flying across the shop.

It finally dawned on me to try hand screw clamps. Hand screws are made of wood, so no worries about damaging the wheel. You can apply a lot of pressure with these clamps. Not only did they hold the belt very well, but I managed to stretch the tire onto the wheel the first try.

I used spring clamps on the bottom wheel to stop the wheel from moving when I pulled down on the tire. I didn't do this on the top wheel, and it was a bit more complicated.

Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Handmade Wooden Toy Car Bodies Completed

Bad Bob's Custom Motors - Handmade Wooden Car Bodies - Coupe & Sedan

Most of the sanding was done with belt sanders. Delta Model 31-340 1x48-inch Belt Sander and my Shopsmith 6x48-inch belt sander. I consider belt sanders essential to a toy makers shop.


Before sanding, I rounded over the corners with a clean, sharp 1/8-inch radius round over bit paying very close attention to grain direction to prevent as much tear out as I can. It's ok to back route when doing this because the cut is so small. You can do the round over by hand with sandpaper but the router is more consistent and faster.


The rest of the sanding was done by hand using various sanding tools I have made and fingernail file scraps.

Delta Model 31-340 1x48 inch belt & 8 Inch Disk Sander

Shopsmith - 6x48" Belt Sander

Resawing Small Irregular Shaped Parts - Can it be done?

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bobs Custom Motors Coupe

Handmade Wooden Toy Car - Bad Bobs Custom Motors Sedan

I started making these before the "official plans were released. I only had drawings and no final dimensions. I made some assumptions and one of them turned out to be wrong. I made the fenders to thick.  Now I had a pile of fenders the wrong size.

I needed to remove 1/2 inch or make new fenders.

I could sand them to size on a belt sander but the weather is miserable and I sure don't want to do that kind of sanding in my garage.

Scrollsaw? No way I could hold it straight enough and they would likely break.

Use the table saw. Forget it. I could have nightmares from thinking about it.

I tried every hand saw I have that I thought had a chance of working. I have a Dozuki saw that would have done it if it had bee just a bit wider. The back kept the saw from cutting all the way through.

I have a Shopsmith bandsaw with a Carter guide and a 1/8 inch blade. It's not really designed for resawing. and I have been putting it through some pretty tight turns so I wasn't sure it would cut straight enough to do this. Plus, I was a bit afraid it would break the fenders. They are quite fragile. It only broke one.

Shopsmith Band Saw with Carter Guide and 1/8 inch blade set up to resaw fenders.

Shopsmith Band Saw with Carter Guide and 1/8 inch blade set up to resaw fenders.

Shopsmith Band Saw and a pile of pieces of fenders resawn on this saw.

A pile of resawn wooden toy fenders next to my favorite hand saw.

I set up everything to hold the fenders snug against the fence and cut slowly letting the blade do the work. It worked like a charm.

You may have noticed that I don't use a fancy resaw fence. I have two band saws and neither of them requires any kind of tracking adjustment. I was concerned about this one because it was so thin and had been twisted a lot. No need to worry it tracked straight and true all the way through. I use Wolf Blades and Cater guides on both Shopsmith band saws. One band saw has a 1/8 inch blade and the other has 1/2 inch.