What have you made/created today?

Cross bow?

 

*hint: it does use an arrow...but its not a crossbow.

 

atlatl

 

Bam! yep, I got a wood arrow out to bout 60yds with minimal effort. I need to make some carbon fiber arrows.

 

As soon as you said it does use an arrow it became super clear based off the shape.

 

How about a bird feeder made from two plastic bottles and two pieces of dowel.

 

The Guinness book of records has it at almost 300yds as the longest throw...which is amazing!

 

looks like it will work! Good re-purposing!

 

Yeah it’s pretty amazing what they can do. If you look at history, it was also a major turning point for hunting and becoming a predator instead of scavenger.

 

Im curious to how far I can get one out there, I remember in High school one of our teachers brought one in and we launched one prob close to 100yds. It stuck in the ground a good 6-8 inches. I want to get an arrow out to 100yds...

 

Who knows. I’m sure there’s also a skill involved so over time you would get even better. Personally I always wanted to build a harpoon gun out of a leaf spring. Launch a galvanized pipe 100 yards, then throw that on the castle wall!

 

Im amazed by the "primitive" technology. Even blacksmithing is a lost tech.

 

So.. this table saw I acquired recently was made in 1974. Obviously safety has come a long ways since then but despite many online searches I could not find a zero clearance table saw insert for this 9" table saw.
So after some pondering I decided to use a piece of Lexan (this is NOT plexiglass).
Luckily for me Home Depot carries a selection of Lexan and in the perfect thickness (0.93").
A quick outline from the original piece and a few minutes on the bandsaw and violà!

No it's not perfect but it's pretty close. After fitting the screws and making sure it was all smooth I plugged in the saw, turned it on and slowly raised the blade to the maximum height.


Now I have a perfectly sized hole without having to worry about small pieces falling in the large original hole and getting flung at me!
With that project done I moved on to cutting down some boards and found the Lexan was a little too flexible.. so ... Back to the band saw I went with some of the left over Lexan and a few minutes later I had a solution.

Basically I just made some support strips and then superglued them to the bottom and added a couple of cross pieces.
It's not pretty but it works and increases the safety in my Garage.

 

Looks good!

 

Thanks!

 

Nice job but what happens when you want to make an angled cut?

 

Put the original piece back in?
Not being a smart ass.. just never thought about it since I haven't made any angled cuts on the table saw.

Edit: After a quick search it would seem that I would have to build a whole new insert for say a 45° cut and then set the blade to 45° and raise it through the new piece

 

nice! Make sure you have a good fence!

 

Yup.. have the fence for it.. it's missing the measurement tape on it tho.. so that's been fun! Haha

 

Correct. You typically want separate zero clearance setups for any of your common cuts.