More tools - Luthier, jeweler, fly-tying

[vossiewulf]

4 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

Thanks Welfack, some good finds! I'm going to go look at those also.

 

BTW, I'm seeing your sig graphics as broken images. This is my work laptop, but using same Chrome I use at home, will check from there.

And the sig graphics look fine on home machine, so must be something with work laptop, probably something about cross-domain files or something, our laptops are pretty highly secure.

[vossiewulf]

On 4/12/2017 at 2:09 AM, wefalck said:

- so-called separation strips. These are used to file the sides of teeth or false teeth. They are abrasive material of various grades on a backing of either Mylar or stainless steel. For the time being I got some Mylar ones, which I bought to make sanders for my filing machine and the micro hand-sander I built. I have not being able to identify an on-line source for the steel-backed ones. One may need to buy directly from the manufacturers: http://www.horico.de/en/neuigkeiten/2-uncategorised/91-alle-streifen.html. The Mylar-strips are about 5 mm wide, while the steel ones come in width down to 3 mm. As you can see in the link, Horico also makes fine-toothed steel-strips, i.e. saws.

 

- There is also one provider for something like a miniature hacksaw that uses the above steel sawblades or abrasive strips: http://www.ebay.de/itm/172605444198?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT.

I have not seen this on offer somewhere else and this offer appears to be rather pricey. Haven't tried this yet.

 

 

I found you can get these polishing/separator strips on Amazon. The stainless steel ones appear to be spring steel coated with diamond so very promising, I ordered some yesterday. The mylar ones look good also and I ordered some of them, but they're more or less flexi-i-file pieces so they might be just a better replacement for those.

[wefalck]

How much did you actually pay for these HORICO Stahlcarbo® strips ? The only Amazon-offer I saw today seems to be grossly overpriced. So far I only found suppliers that would only sell to professionals or traders, but not to private persons. May have to contact the manufacturer directly.

[druxey]

I believe that in North America these are called Lightning strips.

[vossiewulf]

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

How much did you actually pay for these HORICO Stahlcarbo® strips ? The only Amazon-offer I saw today seems to be grossly overpriced. So far I only found suppliers that would only sell to professionals or traders, but not to private persons. May have to contact the manufacturer directly.

$19.45 delivered for 12 diamond-coated stainless steel strips, and they seem to be made well and should last quite a long time. I'm disappointed they're only on .007" steel, I was hoping for a bit stiffer. But if nothing else you can make lots of really useful semi-files out of these and that's what I intend to do.

 

I might pick up some of the wider 6mm strips also. BTW all manufacturers seem to sell coarse/med/fine grit but no indication of how that maps to normal diamond sharpening stones and the like.

 

        

[wefalck]

That's the kind of price I saw on Amazon, while dental supply-houses in Germany charge around 4 to 6 € for the dozen plus shipping ... actually the 30x series is not diamond-coated, but carborundum-coated according to HORICO. The diamond ones have a different number.

 

The thin steel backing with a total thickness of 0.1 mm made them particularly interesting from my point of view, as you can widen narrow slots and the likes with them. No other file or sanding-paper is that thin.

[Kurt Johnson]

With regards to the dental abrasive strips, which coarseness is the most practical for use on wood, fine, medium or coarse?  What sandpaper grit are they similar to, 400, 600, 1000??  They sound very interesting.

 

Kurt

[vossiewulf]

8 hours ago, wefalck said:

The thin steel backing with a total thickness of 0.1 mm made them particularly interesting from my point of view, as you can widen narrow slots and the likes with them. No other file or sanding-paper is that thin.

Good point, hadn't thought of that use.

 

5 hours ago, Kurtrjohnson said:

With regards to the dental abrasive strips, which coarseness is the most practical for use on wood, fine, medium or coarse?  What sandpaper grit are they similar to, 400, 600, 1000??  They sound very interesting.

 

Kurt

As I mentioned, not really sure, but I would start with the fine grit. The medium that I tried last night was maybe 100 grit(?) and I assume the coarse is going to be more for reshaping than sanding.

[Kurt Johnson]

Thanks, That gives a point of reference, they're much coarser than I would have imagined. I thought the fine would of been too fine to be of much use. I use flexigrit now, but the metal backing should really be a plus. I'll have to give them a go.

 

Kurt

[vossiewulf]

Give me a couple days to play with them, I just had a few minutes to experiment with them this evening and I may rate the medium more like 220. But regardless I think these are going to be really handy for making various sanding/filing tools, I'm going to mount them on some brass pieces and also some spring steel pieces but you could use wood in most cases.

 

Also, this brand is definitely diamond But a bit more expensive at $12 for 5 pieces. But still used on wood they should last almost forever so I think either the Horico ones or these are going to be good purchases.

 

[wefalck]

At this link you can see the whole range of HORICO strips, both diamond and carborundum: http://www.horico.de/en/praxis/separierstreifen/2-uncategorised/91-alle-streifen.html

[Kurt Johnson]

I ordered some of the medium ones to play with, they sound like they'll be quite useful. This kind of thing keeps reminding me how slim the chance of stumbling onto something like this would've been in the dinosaur preinternet days. How lucky we are.

 

Kurt

[wefalck]

Send them an email last nigth, enquiring, whether they could deliver directly to a non-professional. They called me up this morning, curious what I was going to use them for. I had to 'confess' that it was for modelling purposes. We then had a nice chat about the applications and needs. In fact, HORICO did offer the strips and other tools from their range to a modelling supplier, but somehow it did not catch on. They realised that they would need some sort of holder for the strips. I gather, they are thinking about this market. Their carbide rotary tools seem to be of good quality, but rather expensive for us modellers - even when you consider that these burrs my last a modeller's life, there is always the risk that you break a small 25 € tool ... That is probably, why they could not sell to our market.

In any case, exceptionally they will send me my strips

[Kurt Johnson]

I received a set of the medium strips, I'd say they're like 600 grit maybe finer. I think the coarse might be more useful over all.

Kurt

[vossiewulf]

Anyone looking for a good reasonable-cost, general-purpose modeling knife, this is $25 from Japan Woodworker. I have two of them, one I reground pretty significantly into a curved edge, this basic knife can be ground into multiple useful knives if you're comfortable grinding heat-treated steel without burning the temper.

 

This is a typical Japanese knife where a central piece of high-carbon steel is cladded by soft low-carbon steel, doing so allows them to have edge hardness much higher than is typical in western knives where the material and tempering are consistent throughout - they can't go much above Rc61 without the whole thing being too brittle.

 

These edges are Rc63-64 and this knife can be sharpened well into holy **** that's sharp territory and that's a great tool to have. Only thing you want to avoid is twisting cuts, the edge may snap on an Rc63 knife if you do that and you have lots of grinding to get it back.

 

I also ground off the little projections at the end of the blade, not sure why they're there but I am sure they get in the way, so I turned them into metal filings.

[vossiewulf]

On 4/28/2017 at 2:45 PM, Kurtrjohnson said:

I received a set of the medium strips, I'd say they're like 600 grit maybe finer. I think the coarse might be more useful over all.

Kurt

I finally ended up estimating 325-400. But I think you're right, coarse is what we mostly need and I'm waiting on some coarse ones to be delivered.

[vossiewulf]

And while we're at it, if there are people who don't yet know how to sharpen edges, DO something about it  I actually really enjoy sharpening, it can be a very meditative thing to do. And more importantly it's not hard to do, you just have to learn a few things and get the right sharpening tools. Use disposable blades for what they're for, jobs like cutting through glue and material you don't want to use your good knives on, and have super-sharp knives, much sharper than X-acto or even scalpels, waiting on your bench for where it does count. The difference between ok average sharp and really sharp is much more than people think in terms of the quality of the resulting work.

 

This is the only book you need: The Perfect Edge by Ron Hock. Very clear and straightforward and I am very much an adherent of his no-secondary bevel philosophy.

 

[ctclock]

vossiewulf - I am intrigued as to where you got this ruler from.

For what I want, it looks perfect. Love the holes and slots for marking

[vossiewulf]

That is an Incra ruler, made by the same Incra company that started with miter gauges. I have a 6", a 12", a T-rule and protractor. So yes I like them too

 

[cwboland]

CT if you're in North America, they can be had at Lee Valley. I think they may be under their Veritas brand. You could also check your local Amazon. 

[thibaultron]

Ebay has the Horico dental sanding strips

[Jack12477]

17 hours ago, ctclock said:

vossiewulf - I am intrigued as to where you got this ruler from.

For what I want, it looks perfect. Love the holes and slots for marking

CT you can also get them from Woodcraft https://www.woodcraft.com/search?q=incra+rules&button=search

 

I have 3 of them - 2 T-bar rules and one flat

[ctclock]

Thanks all - I have found them

 

Will have to order though - South Africa is a tad far from the States  - some days I wish I could take some lotto earnings and visit all these nice shops and suppliers in the States

 

You guys are spoilt for choice

[Jack12477]

Jeremy, I have to mail order from them also, no stores nearby

[vossiewulf]

9 hours ago, thibaultron said:

Ebay has the Horico dental sanding strips

Thanks Ron, another good source.

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, ctclock said:

Thanks all - I have found them

 

Will have to order though - South Africa is a tad far from the States  - some days I wish I could take some lotto earnings and visit all these nice shops and suppliers in the States

 

You guys are spoilt for choice

Jeremy:

 

Otto Frei

Lee Valley

Stewart McDonald

Woodcraft

Artco Tools (professional rotary tools)

DA Medical (where I've bought most surgical tools, EBay store- buy used German tools you'll be very happy)

 

You want to look through pretty much everything each of them have, and as far as I know they all ship global. Probably 90% of my out-of-control tool collection comes from one of those.

 

Here was my benchtop when I laid everything out to reorganize because my acquisitions had completely overwhelmed my existing tool holders. This is what happens when a tool nut is twice divorced and is left totally unmonitored: shrink-tube color-coded needle file arrays. And this is just the stuff ON my bench you're not seeing the 22 other drawers and the built-in cabinets etc.

Little better now. Try not to notice there is yet ANOTHER needle file set in the holder.

[ctclock]

Many thanks for the links vossiewulf - certainly some cool pieces on those links.

 

Much appreciated - now to start the budget towards an order

 

I can attest to "out-of-control tool collection" - I have the same problem 

 

[John Allen]

I have a great contact for a therapist

[vossiewulf]

9 hours ago, ctclock said:

Many thanks for the links vossiewulf - certainly some cool pieces on those links.

 

Much appreciated - now to start the budget towards an order

 

I can attest to "out-of-control tool collection" - I have the same problem 

Welcome. Obviously I am somebody who trolls the intertubes trying to find some new professional or industrial supply house that has cool tools that either fill gaps or do something better than the tools I have, and I count finding those things as victories at the end of trudging through dozens of useless sites selling crap. 

 

So I also really want to help people who have less time than me to search endlessly for new tools due to family responsibilities, cutting out all the legwork and fruitless searching by pointing them to the things I know they'd find useful. OTOH it can also be a frustrating thing of leading the horses to cool super-delicious vitamin-infused perfect water and they still won't drink. And then you have to watch them being disappointed with results when god himself couldn't do any better with the tools they're using.

 

I actually am seriously considering producing a line of tools just for higher-end modelers, not just ship modelers but for all the people who are serious about their hobby. I have good designs that could be brought in at reasonable price points (considering they're intended for serious modelers, reasonable means $25 for a replacement Xacto knife with changeable blades from Ron Hock that are Rc62 and can be made much sharper than Xacto blades, and are fully intended to be resharpenable. And another design for combo small pliers/tweezers with changeable tips borrowing heavily from my experience with surgical tools, and several other hybrid tools. I think they're sell reasonably well but how I'm supposed to find time I don't know. We had another work crisis starting Thursday where something went seriously wrong for 24 days post-April release before anyone noticed and my team has been working 24 hours since, tag-teaming between the North America teams and the Bangalore group, I had four meetings yesterday with the SVPs to brief them on the latest status, I'm not only responsible for coordinating incident response and driving mitigation/resolution, but I'm also on point to translate the technical details and the response options into something the senior business execs can understand so they can make informed decisions.

 

And I got paged at midnight for a different issue. So, it's a somewhat intense job (cough) and as such completely screws my ability to plan and execute something like getting a cottage manufacturing company off the ground. Even so I might still give it a run, I'd like to see people have good tool options WITHOUT having to peruse the entire catalogs of supply houses from 6 different industries.

[vossiewulf]

3 hours ago, John Allen said:

I have a great contact for a therapist

Why?  I'm enjoying the hell out of being an out-of-control tool collector. Besides kitchen, bedroom, and living room, all others are being or are fully converted into building facilities  My woodworking area workbench you see above is in what was allegedly my dining room. The built-in cabinets were perfect for main storage for a woodworking and luthier-work area.

 

Ex-wife #2 visits and stays for a month or two each year (complicated) and of course rolls her eyes and frowns but I just remind her that she's the one who left in the first place and as such abdicated the rights to input on this matter