New tool idea -- need your opinions! (Hint: one machine instead of a planer AND A jointer)

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:42:43 -0800, Nobody scribbled:

Ok, your lightsabre is intriguing. Once you've filed your patent and it's no longer a "Nukleer Seekrit", come back and tell us about it. I'm sure we'll all be very interested and you will no doubt get a bunch of pointers.

As an economist, I can appreciate the joke. To try to do a market study at this point is a little premature: assuming a can opener won't get the can opened. Besides, this economist doesn't take canned food into the bush: too heavy for hiking and much better food can be taken along. Anyway, who ever heard of people going into the bush without a knife, which is perfectly adequate to open a can. So, show us the can and we'll tell you how to open it.

BTW, don't brag about having an MBA, it gives you no credibility with this group. :-)

Luigi Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address

[Odinn]

61464.602 here.

[charlie b]

So, if the stock isn't being moved over/under whatever is removing material and thus no feed roller and no pinch roller, than the wood is held fixed and the wood remover must move (assuming no light saber/ sabre).

There are handheld bandsaws as well as miter saw type versions. The ones I'm aware of have fixed "throats" and limited to maybe 6 inches - but that could be modified. So a small bandsaw mill set up meets some of the criteria - familiar to most woodworkers, no feed and pinch rollers, no kickback, parallel faces, no tear out, replacement cutting medium in the $20-40 range . . .

Hmmm - most furniture parts are seldom longer than four feet and boards much wider than 8 inches and pretty flat are getting hard to come by and this thing doesn't seem to require an outfeed table but will require some platform to hold the stock ...

It's the $250-450 price point.

Interesting puzzle. Will do fretboards and will handle ebony....

In Silly Cone Vally e? I'm over in the Cambrian area of san jose. If you need a beta tester at some point, my e-mail address is real.

charlie b

[Nobody]

Glad the "desert island"/can-opener reference was instantly recognized! I have an undergrad degree in economics, from which I mostly remember (a) as per Father Guido Sarducci's Five-a Minute University, "Supply and Demand" (and maybe guns-and-butter), (b) IS-LM ... ummm ... one's like ... monetary... flow-y ... things, and the other is, like ... ummm ... products and stuff?; and (c) most people who offer up their opinions on national affairs should have taken at least basic econ before so doing. >;-)

And - I wasn't meaning to brag about the MBA. It's actually sort of hanging, dusty (sawdust, of course) and unused, on my wall - I might sell it on eBay for the $60k (USD) it cost me. The point was to fend off all the "invention advice" that gets offered up at the drop of a hat whenever anyone mentions Inventions in any gathering of two or more Men Who Like To Make Things.

Especially if any of them have beards. Or still have a slide rule in a drawer, somewhere. Red Green comes to mind. ;-)

Finally -- looked at the torsion box and Galleria project. I bow to you. Andrew

[Nobody]

"Bandsaw mill" -- nice guess (as it turns out, way off base, but based on my lightsaber analogy, a pretty darn reasonable guess). The only major problem with that guess is the smooth-finish part -- even with the best blades I've bought, my bandsaw still gives me a finish that needs to go straight to the (80-grit) belt sander.

You put a cart before a horse in the first bit -- just because it doesn't use a conventional feed/pinch roller doesn't mean it doesn't have ANY feed mechanism. The light saber is fixed; the wood moves through/under it.

I don't mean to be playing cat-and-mouse -- it's just that I need to avoid publicly disclosing the actual key invention bits, but I DO want to answer folks' reasonable objections when I'm asking "hey, wouldja buy something that did X without doing Y and cost $Z?" (Otherwise, most of the responses are "well, it can't do X!")

Yep, I'm up in Belmont, about 10 miles south of SFO (right below the 92, about halfway between 280 and 101). Used to live in Los Gatos (pronounced "Lass Gaddis" by the blonde enhanced shopping-wives who live there), but the LOML works up in The City so we hadta go north.

Once I have a proof-of-concept built, I'll definitely drop you a line. My good friend, tool-making and woodworking buddy, is finally getting back from Hawaii and being assigned to Monterey (he's a keptin in the Army, so perhaps we could all get together and make dust, drink beer, and swear, sometime, if our wives let us.

Andrew

[mac davis]

Only help a little, since his major competition will also be chiwaneon and made in large quantities...

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing