Adam Savage Builds a Mini Tabletop Bandsaw!

hey guys Adam Savage here in my cave with one day build that involves one of my favorite tools this is a portable a portable band saw my first one was in Milwaukee I bought about 10 12 years ago and I loved that thing so much Dewalt makes one this is their big one and I love it and it's cordless I I love cutting through metal through aluminum through even wood and steel and all sorts of other stuff with this it is a fabulous tool and when I found out that Dewalt made a cordless one I got it and that's whether the corded one I have kind of two like deep storage but I was in deep storage recently and I saw this and I thought I think I can make that a useful tool and so today's one day build is I'm going to build a stand that turns this into a small upright portable bandsaw and I believe I have an idea for being able to adjust the speed control on the trigger here that's pretty neat so without further ado let's get started alright so the parameters of the build are pretty straightforward I think I'm going to support the whole upright portable bandsaw on this the table here so this is the little guide that you butt up against to cut stuff I am going to replace this with a larger chunk of some quarter-inch aluminum that I have ooh not that piece this is nice looking a little bit and I am going to then build a stand around it I still have to make the blade easily replaceable I can't build a closed box because that would mean I'd have to take the whole thing apart um ease of changing the blade is really important to me for this project that and speed control the fact is the supported bands are terrific but sometimes for really small things they can be quite difficult because you're manhandling this like pound object trying to cut a little tiny thing so having it upright is going to be a really useful addition to this shop I just have to make sure that maintaining the tool is as easy as using it so I think the first thing to do is to cut a piece of aluminum and figure out the shape it wants to be actually the other order is to figure out the shape my piece of aluminum wants to be cut it mount it and then start to build the infrastructure around I like using coordinated cardinal to figure out templates because super cheap price of failure is zilch so often when I received some super big cardboard boxes or any kind of big stuff I'll cut them apart just to have some straps in them in my material storage don't really need don't really need these flaps back here except if I make up that could go to the base and it doesn't get in the way of deaths and that's a nice secondary support to this and this and my handle for adjusting and go here and there yes much better I was just going on the wrong side of the thing sorry about that so that was here you there my whole goal is that off now let's switch on the front here for turning it on and this would be for my screwing myself that way I kind of want an unbroken table right because I don't know what I'm supposed to cut off I'm cutting something that's going right here cutting something that's going right here I never know we can try that I like the idea of speed control that's adjustable that's the table it's like this then the question is how high is the table is 9 inches high table the base is 10 and a half by ten and a half Wow really nailed that one and I think it can be literally that big with this sticking out 9ish table height okay first things first I gotta build the table mount it to this and then begin to build the base that supports the table this is gonna be a nice piece of kit I've been wanting this set up for a long time first up ten and a half inch square of aluminum as my main table base and then a ten and a half inch square of plywood now many people realize that you can quite easily cut aluminum on most table saws the blade has part my tips and it generally does pretty great it's loud you'll want to wear hearing protection but here we go all right now it's time for me to transfer my pattern to the aluminum and all right I think I got it first up I got to swap out the jaws on my vise so that they can grab this big piece of aluminum the giant vise jaws don't open up to ten and a half inches but but they do swept out so I can actually get ten and a half inches of throw out of them so one of the cool features of a good machine vise and I I recently tuned this puppy back to back to health I took it all apart put it back together cleaned everything inside adjustable persuasions it's a nice now but now that I've slip these on the outside I should be able to I should be able to grab this piece of aluminum quite easily and make the cuts I need to make on it actually part of me thinks wait a second I might have to yeah I am cuz I got it through there cool I gotta remove this Johnson put the back on the original little bits of sharp steel yes good got me right also grab it like this just to have real stability and no vibration I have come I have come to the air we go I've come to the clarity in later life about how important it is to clamp stuff really well yeah if it just makes such a difference when you clamp stuff down tightly man it is the real deal it's really it's really freaking awesome man back yeah awesome look at that um I used to avoid clamping I used to be like you I used to avoid clamping and the fact is is like when you clamp something down man life is good good salt like this just you know you don't have to hear your mill go ahead and complain your Miller really wants to tell you about how you're abusing it all right now I'm gonna make this hole for the main blade out of a inch and three-quarter OD Milwaukee hole saw a hole saw for metal you say yes I say hole saws can do all sorts of wonderful things just ask anyone who builds roll cages insides of cars you about hole saws abilities with Mills to do notching and all sorts of remarkable things as long as you are going slow on the spindle speed and using lots of cooling fluid but I'm gonna stop having you look at my pretty face and we'll get it close up on this so you can watch it happening it's really important that you use a lot of cool including go slow instead of using the quill feed to go into the hole I was actually using the need to come up to it and each time I get chatter I slow add more cooling fluid and the fact is is when you're cutting metal right you can feel the machine curling it up and moving that metal you can feel that it's happening in the right way nice and freedom tastes of reality alright umm I don't just want to hold here I actually want a little lip because I'm going to machine a plastic insert that sits in here just like on a normal bandsaw it may even be brass so I'm gonna use this boring bar here again very slowly with lots of cooling fluid and it's going to be noisy AF in order to in order to achieve this again I'll be bringing it close and then using the z-axis down there the the knee to bring the work up to the boring bar to bring the work up to the boring bar rather than push the boring bar down into the work so locking so ivory ground this boring bar just a little bit ah and that worked I made a lip here now I am going to bring the boring bar in and clean up the inside of that whole boring bars are really unpleasant I I don't love using them they're just they're really hard to get right ah yeah there we go just a few foul that's all I'm gonna take I'm gonna tighten that up tighten that up okay and we'll bring it down and then there we go great right now I'm turning the brass insert that will fit into this hole it should be fairly quick work this is a two and a quarter inch piece of brass I need to turn it down to two point one four five one of the ways I do that and turn it down just a little bit see what that measurement is and then I zero out my dro and get it from there so two point one four five is the goal the current width is two point two four mmm 95,000 to come in yeah let's do 9b Sal see if that gets us 90 couch totally reasonable with some brass and the short tool see where rap alright so now we're yeah we're 3,000 tensou so that fits my hole right over here oh I got some burgers going on okay sorry I finished the laving off-camera because I was kind of getting frustrated but here is my brass plug and here is the hole it's gonna go into and you ready for an episode of oddly satisfying that's lovely I got to take care of a little pip but that is great so on to the next part all right I'm gonna need to actually cut the aluminum and what am I gonna use a porter ban I think you'll see why I love this thing so much let's do this yes okay that guy's most of the way there I'm gonna fix that up in the belt sander now I've got the interesting challenge that this is the effective table of the the porter band and I pulled the two screws without moving it and now what I want to do is I want to get this thing into it's very very close to final position because I want to pick up that template with my yeah with money uh sorry with my new table so I can transfer the whole pattern and that has to be really exact so I'm going to use this can't twist clamp no nothing's moved yet and if I do this correctly yes that is my whole pattern that's great good good all right so now I take some transfer punches okay those are my two holes so if I countersink them to receive these screws I should be able to mount this table in and we are like well on our way so I need a quarter inch holes in those that correct all right I drilled those holes and countersunk them on the drill press and they're doing nicely so I'm gonna drop this guy here and then I'm gonna have a whole new way of holding on to this porta band and it'll be time soon - uh nice I love it when stuff lines up you need a little portable Allen that fits that one of the nice things about having a drawer full of extra allen wrenches is that when you want to allocate one for a new tool you just can you just pull it out say yeah that's five millimeter wrench now lives with this tool oh so great and then that drops in there oh so sexy right so now let's pull some stuff off this thing shall we you don't need all this stuff on here I don't need this this handle we can get rid of that one part and then there's this stuff down here ooh oh that's torques hold on that's my answer to why I don't use torques I just like I don't want to go find the thing do I have to go find the thing every single time the Phillips there's like two sizes really okay I mean I know there's now we have right so I'm gonna next step is to make my platform with a couple of uprights so I can start to house this thing and they wrote down how tall it is right nine inch table height yes right all right you know how much I love my stapler so I'm going to assemble the base using nice stapler and some wood glue this will be the right side of this little dude all right so yeah now now I need to make some a little bit of assessment here right now before I attach that to this we need to do a little assessment make sure I'm right so this guy will live yeah this guy will live like that so now we already have a good portion of the structure of our upright porta band going but I want I want to have a mechanism for the I won't have a mechanism for my speed control and actually it looks like it looks like yeah it looks like I don't have to do anything special over here because the mechanic happens over here and that's great so what I really need here is a piece that comes up from here and two bolts that go in there yeah and I think I think I can assemble this this way I think I can do that yes I can so I'm going to a lot of woodworking lately I've been getting been finding the woodworking to be very healing the you know it's funny it took me a long it I had to become a better machinist to become a better woodworker that's the funny thing about this is like you start out by thinking that wood is a forgiving medium and I'm here to say I think what is a lot less of a forgiving medium then plywood is I think plywood forgives our petty trespasses way more than what does yeah but there's a way in which becoming a better machinist may be more precise and exacting okay so I've done a little work here I've added some countersunk holes around the perimeter so that I may attach this guy to this guy I know that they are one and true and that's the next thing I'm gonna do is that pre-drill those and get them in once I get this we're gonna be like most of the way there for structure and then it's just wiring and this is celebrating okay so let's see let's get this one in first nice and straight wait wait I forgot to drill the thing that could good to the blanket get enemas like cut that order of operations man is everything order of operations like I wish someone had said that to me in the beginning of my career my order of operations mattered so much to so many different factors just like you're gonna cut up swings order of operations is just almost never dutiful you know what I'm saying now I want this cut to be fairly straight see if I can achieve that now at the same time I'm doing this I should technically pop this guy in and cut it as well let's try some of this waterproof tape you see it that doesn't help us by holding it all together I am pulling that right yeah I am so I'm gonna pull past Center all right I gotta be pleased with that before I do the final assembly on this I'm actually gonna spend some time with some sandpaper cleaning this guy up a little bit making it look nice I don't need this thing to be machine flat but I mean to be realistic to be realistic I don't need this thing to be machined flat but it's really nice scotch-brite weird on the streets I'm getting a new workbench soon it's not gonna rattle around like this I'm very excited about this I mean we're still not you know it's still a little bit far from being done but once I get this attached to this and I put the blade in and show that I can actually remove take out and utilize the blade out of here yep all right actually before I put it on the rest of screws let's make sure I can change blade that was nice ladies germs it's powered sky up all right what I didn't know there was a light that is so cool all right let's see here tracking nicely you deserve a close-up of this all right I like it but I still have a little bit of movement here so I'm going to add in some support right here and I'm gonna use these I gotta figure out what screws those are marked them across here drill some holes put this in screwed in and then I'll staple it from the bottom once it's screwed in and then I've got a perfect position mm five screws it's not ironic let's do this alright they were they were metric screws and I found some and I got some washers for them it is you don't have to have a full storehouse of metric screws but you should buy one of those assortments from you know these and germs there we go so let's and it's gorgeous lovely so happy so happy let's put some rubber feet on it shall we or my take rubber feet off of something it goes into this container yeah it's great you can never have too many rubber feet in your shop YUM okay so now we are in business that is great all right now I need this somehow yeah I need to wire this so it has a sweater I think I want to put it mmm where should the switch go I kind of don't want to put it prow to the outside of the machine because if this stores into a corner and switch gets beaten up so it's kind of like it's almost like I kind of want a a little a little doohickey like this I can still I mean I don't mind seeing the mechanics of this ah let me see what switches I've got I have a few place for switches in my shop nice one of the more weird switches I got so I can go with a big toggle like that but I'm more inclined radius I'm more inclined to go with something a little lower profile these rockers are I don't mind them but I have to offset them intercept them rather not feeling kind of lazy today that's that's not bad I mean certainly feels authentic and it'll feel like a power tool switch those are all right whatever this is it's got a handle 120 volts some of this is over four I suppose I could use one of these guys yeah ah yeah I get embedded in an aluminum plate yeah well let me take a look at my other switch location it's like a whip and a chair with the lion I've got to turn it off one of the other switch locations I have are some of my electronic doors I've got a nice one right here oh you can't see that let's try this there we go everything is a big fat open toggle these guys are great do they take I don't know if they can handle 121 switches to the secret okay let's see here that's the one look at that there's a bunch of you already there this is great lights up and everything low-profile 120 volts because I've already replaced one of my power tools for his wit and now I could drill a hole and put this onto my scroll saw and cut out that square nice and neat I am not feeling that ambitious so I am going to simply put this on my bandsaw and make a cut all the way in from here cut this out and I'll hide all of this by putting it behind hi I'm Emily make sure it's first alright yeah that's lovely let's put it in a few weeks ago I did an electronics project where I didn't use any solder I specifically only used wire lugs and I'm gonna do the same thing here I'm gonna do a fairly straightforward straightforward construction but I'm gonna run the wiring through yeah through this guy so let's get yeah oh that's nice I really like that cool let's get some money glue on there oh I'm gonna soften this up how many of you my pin nailer to put this piece in so I don't end up with big steeple crap sticking out the force fit come on those went through I can cut them off so like I said I'm gonna wire this up which means right one of this this plug remains this plug that's dead but I'm gonna chop it right here yeah ooh I can't even get a bigger go come on some room make sure you boys got enough room to actually work with the cords that you're doing the first thing to do is to strip off the outer insulation and hopefully without nicking the wires underneath really it's best if you don't we have three leads coming out hot ground and neutral I would say see so it switches in between no one's ever quite explained that to me okay so now I strip off some of the internal insulation using an automatic wire strippers and I won't have to do the same this guy oh and I think I actually have some strain relief that this goes through so let me cut off the insulation here it's actually not it takes a little bit of a feel but it's not that hard to not break to not Nick the wires from your cutting insulation at first when someone tells you it's got to be done that way you're like would how is that possible but later on you figured out it's it's not that difficult it's not as difficult as the first blush would lead you to believe okay so if you leave a little wire on the end it means you can twist the wire thing that you're pulling out it didn't quite work it didn't quite work sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't okay so it turns out I had strain relief so good when you have what you need what I've got here is yes hmmm not gonna be possible well let's see that goes into there I gotta get this mounted in here somehow and that's gonna be a little bit tricky but I have all the hopes so let's get a Forstner bit in here I actually did it hang on I'll show you what I did here so I drilled the I drilled the hole to fit the strain relief but the wood was too thick and it wouldn't have allowed this shallow neck to actually engage so from the other side I drilled a larger hole there you can see it yeah it's ugly it's totally ugly yeah it's really ugly but it'll fit this neck and that's my strain relief I guess you can watch me do it oh great now I could put the block in here here my phone's been running out of power every day at the end of the day and I've been thinking lately huh I'm certainly seemed to be like my screen time averages seem to be really high and I don't feel like I'm checking a ton of the news and I'm not it's this stuff ooh whoops okay so now we need to wire this up to the switch that usually means we'll wire two things together and then we're gonna add some Spade lugs to the remaining two so we can route them through the switch once we figure out what the switches polarity is and we also gotta do up the ground often when I do this kind of work with wire nuts I then add a little string relief with a with a zip tie just to make sure you can't pull them apart that'll turn nicely back there yep now I need some lugs on there to go to the switch everything I touch gets messy on a project Center ooh wow that was totally the worst possible job that was that was horrendous that was awful I actually went so far in I went past so now I'm now I'm really like how much how much a triage do I now do kind of undo this dumb mistake I've just made without having looked there we go so you want to see the wire in there see how you can see the maybe you can't but you want to see the wire peeking out and then you want to crimp your lug to make sure you've got good contact you want to not do what I just did which was impatiently hope that you got it closed and then just pull the trigger because dude a fix always takes more time than the time savings laziness there we go now I can see it that looks great okay now it's time to try and find out what that's so now all I need to do is connect these up to two of the lugs on the switches to two of these connectors on the switch this is um what's called a double pole double throw so the way this switch works is either I'm connecting this this connector to here and when I put the switch here I'm connecting these two and these two but they're on a separate channel same thing here when I move when I move the switch this way I'm connecting these two and these two but on two separate channels so I can power two totally different powered machines using totally different amounts of power between this one switch and I can connect on both sides some switches just connect two leads or unconnect two leads this one is always connecting something in whatever position you put it in so I think I think actually if I want it to be that red is on and orange is off yeah red is on so let's try these two and let's just plug it in and see if we get operation oh that's operation great okay so let's unplug this before I go it's live bugs again ooh okay ah I just pulled it all the way out ah nice and satisfyingly solid yeah and then I'll get this guy here get the lugs in yep okay so operational test operational test or hot yeah that is fabulous all right there we go my new portable bandsaw with a moveable bandsaw insert ladies and gentlemen I'm super shocked about this shall we try cutting some let's try cutting this piece of aluminum yeah why not here we go Oh there was a hole in my life but now it is filled oh I've got to take care of the metal shavings that are falling on the live electrical thing so I'll have to go a little housing for that yeah that's not safe let me give you some close-ups there you go everybody a tool I've been meeting for a long time and finally I've got it set up in the shop I'm really happy with how this came out thanks for joining me on this one day build I'll see you next time wait don't go anywhere I know I said it was done and I'm really really pleased with how this turned out its fit and finishes is is really an improvement on my standard tool modification program but there's still some stuff to do and I'm going to it's now this next day I'm gonna take some time to do those things and here's what I am gonna do actually that'll be in the next shot

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 676,732

Rating: 4.9240322 out of 5

Keywords: tested, adam savage, one day builds, one day build, bandsaw, shop, workshop, tool build, mini bandsaw, adam savage one day build, how to, workshop organization tips, shop organization project, tool organization ideas for garage, tool organization ideas diy, tool organization garage, workshop ideas, portable bandsaw, portaband, portaband table diy, portaband table mount, portaband stand, portaband stand diy, portaband stand harbor freight, tested one day build, bandsaw projects

Id: BYqDBC0efj4

Length: 62min 17sec (3737 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020