Uplifting

Frequent perusers of this Blog will have realised some time ago that in some areas I'm just a tad parsimonious, having pockets that tend to be on the shallow side.  In this fiscally stretched time I suspect that many of us are in same bateau, so killing two oiseaus's with one pebble seemed like a good idea...or so I thought.

I'm referring here to my big T11 router, which is permanently set up in a table.  One of the features of this machine is that it has a 'through the table' height adjuster...a very desirable feature for a table router.

Except that it doesn't work very well.  I was hoping that a little twiddle with a suitable twiddly tool would raise and lower the machine smoooooooothly and accurately.  In actual fact it doesn't...the machine lurches reluctantly up and down in small increments as the adjuster's turned...even the application of a squirt of dry lube doesn't make any noticeable difference.

It's so bad, that as the router bit goes up and down it moves a few degrees away from the vertical!

Whilst there's nothing wrong with the router, the 'upy and downy' mechanism is about as useful as a chocolate bloody teapot, so I've decided that the recent acquisition of fundage from F&C will enable me to splash out on a state-of-the-art router raiser, which ought (fingers crossed) to be a vast improvement.

At the same time, there's been an issue in the 'shop that I ought to have dealt with, but haven't...timber moisture content (MC).  When I make stuff, I generally use air dried timber (if I can get hold of it) which ought to have a finished MC of around 20%...too high really, for use in a centrally heated house. My regime has been to cut material oversize and then to further condition it 'in-stick' in the 'shop for another period of time...anything up to six months, when hopefully the MC will have dropped to around sub-10% but I've had no way of checking it.

As the 'shop is now quite warm and permanently de-humidified (a machine runs 365/24/7) it doesn't take too long for the MC to drop but I'm still never quite sure how dry the timber is...until now.  That's because I've also order a moisture meter which ought to take the guess work out of deciding just when the right time is to start on a new project.

Unfortunately, both these items are out of stock of the moment.

Bugger!