--- Go to the Opening Page of the [Baren] web site ---

Time to get moving on the design/production of the paulownia boxes. I am very quickly running out of time for this, as I have to get started on my real work, getting some prints made!

Sato-san and I have been talking to different suppliers of paulownia wood, trying to find a good source, and the first couple of sample pieces arrived the other day.

They don't look good actually. One of them is white and clean, but has clearly been bleached (or some such treatment), and has a terrible texture and feel. The other one has been poorly jointed and would make very unattractive cases. So scratching this supplier off the list was an easy decision, but anyway, this wood will serve another purpose, for helping me get the tooling and jigs ready for the project.

And that means wrestling with these junk tools ... They are worse than I expected - far worse.

The sander is already broken; I was using it (properly) when a piece of the plastic housing came a bit loose. I shrugged and ignored it for the moment, and that was a mistake because a minute later the vibration shook it free, and it dropped down onto the belt and exploded in a shower of plastic fragments. Looking on the bright side, I can now clearly see the pulley and drive belt, so will have advance warning when that starts to fail ...

The band saw turned out to have an off-center guide wheel (which is of course non-adjustable), so the blade wavers from side to side each time that wheel makes a revolution. I have brought the blade guides in as close as possible, but the blade then rubs alternately against them, left right left right ...

The table saw has a couple of major problems. First is that the motor is mounted in a permanent and non-adjustable way under the table, but is not 'quite' aligned with the table - it's at a slight angle to the guide slots. And the error is the 'wrong' way - wood coming out the back of the cut is pinched between the blade and the fence, resulting in burn marks on all the finished pieces.

Second is that when I removed the blade, measured it for dimensions, and then went to the hardware store for some more (of a different type) I learned that the 15.9 mm arbor (this is supposed to be 5/8" I guess) is unknown in Japan, and there are no blades available here, period. Japanese saws are all on a 20mm arbor. The guy in the hardware store obviously knew where I had purchased the saw (it seems he gets this all the time), and just shrugged. Thanks for the 'heads up' on this before I purchased, Amazon!

The drill press is fine. I mean, what can you do to screw up a drill press?

So I really am not sure how to take it from here. To get pro tools - even used ones - is simply not possible right now. All I can do is struggle with these to get my projects moving, and then try and replace them one by one with better ones. We'll keep a look-out on the auctions, and at some point, we should find what we need ...

In the meantime, let's press on and see if we can actually make any of this work ...

I'm going to need some fairly small parts, and this table saw has a huge space on either side of the blade.