Replacing My Harbor Freight Bench Top Drill Press With A Grizzly G7943 Drill Press (Update)

I have done all the repairs and modifications and used the drill press for a while on several small projects. I'm going to call this a success.

Replacement South Bend Chuck on MY Grizzly Drill Press

The chuck worked just as I had expected. It works with bits smaller than the spec sheet indicates and is much better than the chuck that came with it. So much better than I'm considering buying a larger version for my large drill press.

I got exactly what I wanted. A good drill press that would handle smaller bits. I use drill bits down to wire gauge sizes that neither my Shopsmith or larger drill press can handle. For production purposes, I didn't want to have to fool around with adapters or changing chucks.

Some of the knobs were damaged, and I replaced them with these red ball knobs I found on Amazon. They came 10 to a bag, but they cost only $7.95. I had forgotten how much better I like ball knobs on a drill press. I plan to add these to some of my other tools. The broken knobs these replaced were also plastic.

20190310_133145 Red Ball Knob Grizzly Drill Press Replacement

I also replaced this knob with a knob I bought from Amazon when I tried to lock the spindle the knob disintegrated in my hand. It was just a bot with a knob molded on to it. I could have got by without it. The knob was cheap and I got a better knob.

Grizzly Drill Press Locking Knob Replacement

The old chuck was still good, so I stuck it on the side of the drill press with a hard drive magnet. Hard drive magnets can hold a crazy amount of weight so there is little chance it will ever come off.

Grizzly Chuck Held With A Hard Drive Magnet

I also repaired the mounting bracket for the add-on light that was about to fall off. Replaced all the incandescent bulbs with daylight GE Bright Stick LEDs. I hade to pull out the internal socket and remove about 1/8-inch so the Bright Stick LED would go in far enough into the socket. To get to this, You need to remove the top of the drill press. My puller was just large enough to do the job.

The drill press worked great for my purposes and was well worth the effort. 

Converting Bitmap Patterns to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

I'm not an expert with either of the software packages discussed here. Once I know what I want to do I ask the Google oracle for help and it always provides. If you have questions, you should ask Google. There are a lot of videos on YouTube, and some books are available. The learning curve is steep. If you are only going to make one toy and don't intend to make batches or modify the patterns, it may not be worth the effort to learn about these tools.

This isn't a tutorial. It is a simple explanation of how I use Gimp and Inkscape in my toymaking.

The first step I take when making something for the first time is to convert the patterns to SVG. I load the bit map patterns into Gimp and clean them up. The bitmaps get copied into Inkscape and converted into the SVG format.

Why?

First I get sharp, precise lines when you print the patterns. When you print from bitmaps the edges of the lines are jagged and fuzzy. If you want to enlarge the pattern, it gets worse. With the SVG format, the rough edges disappear.

I can enlarge them or shrink them to the size I need with no loss of detail.

I can change the color of the pattern. Some people like to use red lines to help distinguish the blade from the line.

I can get rid of the junk that I don't need like shading, colors, grain lines and text that get in the way and sometimes confuse things or make it hard to see the pattern when I am cutting. They also waste toner.

Want to fill the page with patterns? I have made pages of Play Pals and animal cutouts that I print and get whole pages full of patterns. Perhaps 20 on a page.

One of the things I have been experimenting with is fitting the patterns to the size of the wood I have in Inkscape. I paste and arrange the patterns to fit the wood I am using and print — no more struggling with organizing patterns on my wood with glue on them.

Efficient use of what would be waste is much easier. For example, when I am making my dragon puzzles, two large corner areas are just big enough for a small car or animal cut out. In Inkscape, I paste the patterns into these corners. When I'm done cutting that piece of wood, I have a puzzle and two small toys.

Do you want thicker lines so you can see them better? Not a problem.  The same is true for wanting finer lines. I'm not too good at this yet, but I'm working on it.

An issue I have not confronted yet but plan to in the future is resizing patterns where the parts need to fit each other precisely. A simple example of this would be a puzzle where you want to make the parts from different colors of wood. Intarsia and segmented scroll saw art would be another.

Gimp and Inkscape are primary tools in my Toy Makers toolbox. Maybe they should be in yours.

Special Order For Some Play Pal Pickup Trucks

I've been working on a custom order this weekend. All ways make more than I need for the order because something might happen. I could break something or wood being what it is might split, crack or fall apart. I started this batch with 14 trucks I'm down to 10. I expect 10% or greater loss when working with this kind of pine. I once dropped a toy covered with wet paint in the dirt. If I find any defects the toy gets scrapped. I have played around with repairing them, but in most cases, it's easier and faster to toss them and make another toy. Making extra toys saves time when something goes wrong.

A customer purchased one of my Play Pal Pickup Trucks from my Etsy shop and asked for more.

Arranging Patterns To Avoid Defects

Trucks cut and ready for sanding. I started with fourteen toy trucks, and already I'm down to eleven.

Handmade Wooden Toy Trucks Toy Makers Shop Play Pal Trucks Finished with Shellac and Ready For Assembly

The first two trucks are darker because I used the dip and wipe method. I didn't like the results, so I went back to using a brush. I didn't like this method because it is messy, wastes shellac and I have to brush them anyway to get rid of drips. The dip and wipe method might work better with thinner shellac, but I didn't have a proper container on had to experiment with.

The finish is one coat of shellac hand rubbed smooth with steel wood and wax.

Wooden Toy Truck, Pickup Truck from the Play Pal Series - Complete and ready to go.

How many clamps does it take to hold a dragon?

Four for this one but he is pretty small. This one goes to Odin for testing, and the next one goes into the shop. If I cut and glued up all yen of the dragons in the set at one time, it would take 40 to 50 clamps. 

Handmade Wooden Toy Dragon In the Clamps

I made seven dinosaurs and started the dragon series this weekend. My grandson got all of the dinosaurs. Two were special orders from him but, all of the dinosaurs were tests to see how small I could make them and to develop a simple way to make different size patterns quickly. The smallest size I could easily make is a body length of 1-3/4 inches. Any smaller and I am dealing with parts that are 1/4-inch long and smaller. That is about as small as I can go without resorting to hand sanding.

Etsy Shop Listing Update - Handmade Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series with Peg Doll

Handmade Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series with Peg Doll

A hot Rod modeled after a 1927 Ford T-Bucket and made from a single block of pine wood. The toy is hand painted with non-toxic acrylic paints and amber shellac.  Wheels are made from birch hardwood.
The standard size peg doll adds an extra dimension to pretend play and is compatible with many other peg dolls. 
These are great gifts. Use them to decorate a child's room, nursery or office space. One customer used a toy car of mine for a shower cake topper.

Length: 6 inches
Height: 3 inches
Width: 2.5 Inches

These are available in almost any color you can imagine. Other types of wood are also an option. Oak, premium pine and poplar hardwoods are readily available. Other hardwoods can be ordered. Custom orders are welcome and can be placed in my Etsy Shop.

You can see other Hot Rods here.

I have many other wooden toy cars in my shop with more being added all the time.

Etsy Shop Update - Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series

Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod 1927 T-Bucket From the Hot Rod Freaky Ford Series

The body is cut from a solid piece of pine with a scroll saw, not laminated. The paint is various colors of non-toxic acrylic paint. The birch hardwood wheels are finished with amber shellac.

I made these cars with holes for peg people before by drilling the hole before I painted the body. I was never satisfied with the results.  It was hard to paint and sand inside the holes, and I did not think it looked good. The curved bottom made it a challenge to drill the hole verticle. The kids didn't care.

This time I drilled the hole after the painting was done. You need to use a good quality, very sharp, forstner or brad point bit and drill slowly with a drill press to avoid chipping the paint. A bit of blue painters tape may help with this.

I drilled these with the car fully assembled. Drilling after assembly ensures that the hole is vertical and no jigs are required. 

Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue - What glue shuld I use for toy making?

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I have been using Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue for a few weeks in a recent project I tried several different types of glue to glue the legs on toy dinosaurs. If you have ever made these you know that getting the legs to align correctly is a challenge. Leg position is critical on the dinosaurs that stand on two legs only. I had four types of glue available.

Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue

1. TiteBond II
2. Aleene's All Purpose Tacky Glue
3. Elmer's Glue-All Multi-Purpose Glue
4. Titebond No-Run, No-Drip Wood Glue

All of them were slippery but, Titebond No-Run was by far the best. It moved less and set up faster than any of the others. All I had to do was hold the legs in place with a little pressure and then add the clamps. I guess that I didn't need the clamps. However, I'm not that confident.

I have almost stopped using TiteBond II for toys because of the color. I prefer glue that cures clear for painted toys.

Aleene's All Purpose Tacky Glue isn't tacky.  I started with Aleene's but after having to disassemble a couple of toys, clean the glue off of them, sand a reassemble them I decided to try other things.

Elmer's is slippery and slides around just as bad as the first two.

While writing this, I decided that if I make more of these, I should make a template for attaching the legs.

Handmade Wooden Toy - Baby Dinosaur