Mortising and tenoning doors and windows

The Eureka (now Sanitaire) Mighty Mite has a rotating collar on the hose that opens a vent to adjust the suction. Does that count?

Not really. Most vacuums have some way to make a hole in the hose. Turn down the Festool and it doesn't just suck less hard, the noise level goes down as well. And it has a much wider range of adjustment than the "hole in the hose" kind.

I think there are others, no?

Variable suction, not speed. LOL

I understand the Festool sells that feature as a safety when working on a circuit that might trip should you be running an amp hungry power tool and the vac. Turning down the suction/motor speed decreases the draw on the circuit. This might very well be a good deal when working on older homes.

Who but Festool'ers would even care? ;)

nb

Sure, as I said above, I have a Crapsman 5-1/2HP (with a 16Ga cord) shop vac that has variable speed. I don't think I've used it more than once at anything but the highest setting (actually the power switch can be set to either be variable of full).

On 9/29/2016 12:24 PM, krw wrote: snip

The variable speed on the Festool vac is very helpful when using it with sanders. If the suction is too high the sander moves sluggishly across the work. The best setting is with the power turned do to just enough to capture the dust and lets the sander move freely.

Interesting phenomena.

Perhaps the sander moves sluggishly due to it being pulled into the work from too much suction. Excess suction could be relieved by redesigning/opening the vents in the sander. OTOH, prolly cheaper to add variable speeds on shop vac. ;)

nb

Wow nothing gets past you~ ;~)

Excess suction could be relieved by

The ports are on the sander pad and the sand paper, Air blows through the center/central port and is retrieved through the perimeter ports. To capture dust this is where the ports need to be.

Exactly. Just like leaning on the sander, too much vacuum also reduces the "randomness" of a random orbit sander, producing swirl marks.

Perhaps the sander moves sluggishly due to the work being pulled into the sander from too much suction.

I was going to reply to fauxrobert, but bit my tongue ... it's still bleeding. lol

Yeah. Gotta be clever cuz I can't afford Festools. ;)

nb

But, but, even with a _5-1/2_HP_ vac cranked up all the way, the sanders work fine! ;-)

;~)

Well, glued up the first storm window frame today. Lessons learned-- domino tenon can hold a _lot_ of glue. If I'm going to be producing these in any kind of quantity I need to make up a jig to keep them square. Domino does a remarkable job of keeping surfaces even--edges I need to practice on a bit. Not sure if I'm going to stick with cypress--it's softer than I remembered from making lawn furniture some years back and just from ordinary handling it gets dinged up. I hope I can get it painted this week and glaze it and put it up over the weekend and once that's done the worst-damaged window will at least have something covering it.

A key to building square frames, as I am sure you well know, is for the like/same pieces to be precisely the same length. That is the easy part, just batch cut the parts and cut the ends square.

Clamping up is another story. I have come up with a method the insures accuracy with out jigs or squares.

I'll try to explain as simply as I can.

The trick is for the rails to line up precisely with the ends of the stiles. While this does not seem like rocket science all too often after removing the clamps a rail is short or proud of the end of the stile, and that throws square out the window.

If you use 2 small clamps to clamp a strait edge scrap, longer than the rail, to the edge of the rail it establishes an indexing stop on both ends of the rail. The straight edge protrusion on each end will index to the bottom of the stiles.

Next use bar clamps to squeeze the straight edge protrusions "snug" against the ends of the stiles.

Next use clamps and tighten the stiles against the ends of the rails.

You can now remove all clamps except the two that clamp the stiles against the ends of the rails.

This picture shows the alignment clamps mentioned in the first two steps. Not shone are the final 2 clamps that will clamp the stiles against the rail ends on the top and bottom of the frame.

After those top and bottom clamps are applied tightly, all clamps in the picture can be removed while the glue dries, or not.