Origin Shaper

[Leon]

So my wife has full access to our upstairs for her quilting studio. We have laminate flooring in that area and she has a main sewing desk with two sewing machines which is eight feet long and five feet wide in the center, To save the laminate floor we have a 5x5 sheet of 1/2" Baltic birch plywood under and out from the middle of the desk.

Well, she keeps driving her chairs off of the 5x5 when she scoots over to the drawer area on both sides to the desk.

So I decided to add wings to both sides of the 5x5 sheet.

Well, she decided for me.

Yet a new job for the Shaper Origin.

To add the wings on both sides of the 5x5 sheet I decided to use bow ties to hold the wings in place. This meant carrying the 5x5 sown stairs and out into the shop. We both hate this task as it requires attention not to go tumbling down the stairs. But we managed.

I decided to rip the 5x5 in half and use some of those bow ties to rejoin the two halves and no the two half sheets are much easier to carry up and down stairs by one person, me.

So here are the bow ties, 6 of them for the task. I finally received the Shaper Work Station, a jig for holding small parts and it really works well for cutting/milling small parts. The bow ties are 40mm x 100mm.

One of the bow ties and a trial run of the mating halves.

And the trial fit of the parts.

And finally the results of where all of this was going.

FWIW the receiving/female halves of the joints in the upper trial fit links were cut exact. I had to tap the bow ties in place, and this was much too tight for this application. I wanted to easily disassemble for future moves.

The last picture, showing the end result, were with the pocket halves of the joint, were cut .009" over sized so that the wings could be easily lifted and removed from the bow ties.

As a side note, I clamped both the mating panels together and cut all female halves of the joints in one step to insure proper registration.

My wife is happy!

[krw]

The bottom of the bowtie cut is a waste backer? IOW, its not undercut in any way.

Did you put felt or some other backing on the plywood to prevent it, or abrasives caught between, from scratching the floor?

Since I' working at home much of the time (increasing more soon), I have a similar problem. My floor is carpeted so when I roll off the plastic chair mat it's rather like driving off the road into a corn field. I replaced the cheap plastic wheels with 3" wheels on much better swivels but even the chair mat creates divots the chair doesn't want to climb out of. I was thinking about one of the glass ones but at >500, I stopped thinking.

In the end, that's all that counts.

[Leon]

That is correct. However one of the test cuts, the one with the relatively flat bottom, was just a pocket. I thought I was going to have bottoms on the female side of the joints but later decided to go all the way through.

No. This area is mostly an area that only gets thread all over the floor. FWIW the original 5x5 piece has been up there for about 6 years with no issues of anything getting under there. She runs a robot vac up there periodically.

Yeah! The Baltic birch does not really blend well in appearance but it holds up very well with plastic and rubber swivel wheels and foot traffic. Actually better than I expected. I thought it would wear through in spots but not at all after 6 years.

I will add that I did finish with General Finishes Arm-R-Coat followed with a coat of Briwax wax.

More points going into my bank! ;!)

[Leon]

FWIW this new tool/machine has about as close to a ZERO learning curve as it gets.

So far all of my test cuts on the 4 projects that I have done with this tool have been pretty much spot on.

Just saying. ;~)

[Leon]

FWIW this new tool/machine has about as close to a ZERO learning curve as it gets.

So far all of my test cuts on the 4 projects that I have done with this tool have been pretty much spot on.

Just saying. ;~)

[Scott Lurndal]

I replaced the second plastic chair mat that my chair destroyed with a home-made mat made from a box of inexpensive laminate flooring I picked up from CostCo for $30. A simple stained frame made from scrap doug fir held it together.

[Leon]

Good Idea! How long have you been using it? I have left overs from when our laminate floor was installed but thought, If the flooring company advised against rolling chairs on the laminate the scraps might not hold up either.

[Scott Lurndal]

I glued the laminate down to 3/8" plywood, and framed it with the doug fir; 1/2" DF handplaned to match the laminate height;

so far so good after almost a year of full-time WFH.

[krw]

Considering.