G'day from the Darliing Downs, Qld
- G'day,
- My name is Neil. I am (or was) a professional woodcarver, woodturner, furniture restorer and tutor.
- Started carving and turning in...
- Oh, no, sorry, that's someone else!
My nickname was & is Stewey, so that'll do. I live north west of Toowoomba. I've been a lurker here for a while, enjoying doing searches and reading mostly tool reviews, as well as assorted hints and things.
Fancy equipment- well, let's just say I'm a signwriter, and have 'done up' about 300 horse drawn vehicles for people in the past 30 years. By done up, I mean sometimes I just striped & scrolled them, sometimes I'd have to apply a final coat of enamel, & decorate them,, and sometimes there'd be repairs first, and sometimes I'd build them from scratch, for assorted customers. I've not yet done one up for ourselves...typical!
I have a nice bundle of router bits, all bought from Carbatec, back in the days when nothing much was under $50, and that $50 took a decent day's work to earn! & 2 HP hand-held router.
Triton Mark2 sawbench with 10" makita circ. saw. It's been a good workhorse in its day.
Assorted jigsaws & the usual angle grinders & stuff.
Qld Machinery Co thicknesser 12" x 6", with a 3 phase 5HP motor- it weighs maybe 1/2 a ton?
Antique bandsaw, takes a 13' 6" blade, and has a 28" throat. It originally belonged to Broughtons, a firm of coachbuilders in Ipswich, Qld.
Antique metal lathe, set up for woodwork. 5 ft bed. 2 hp single phase motor. Big, old, dirty, and about 3/4 of a ton- hard to move. Good for making nice fancy little brass acorn nuts and things. Also OK for turning waggon naves (hubs) but there's limited capacity to go bigger than 12" diameter.
We have a cnc router also- a 13 ft x 6 ft bed beast- also an antique, from the DOS days (pre-windows), but recently upgraded to more modern drivers & software. Great for cutting aluminium, composites, perspex, & carving 3D stuff. I've hand routed 100s of signs in time, so the cnc router wasn't really bought to shortcut that stuff. I still do plenty of signs in seasoned aussie hardwoods.
We bodgy our way through a lot of things.
The latest acquisition is an old Robinson chisel/chain mortiser. I'm going to pick it up tomorrow.it has the two separately powered direct-drive heads, (3 phase, 3 hp each), and the chain & hollow chisel sharpener (belt-driven) on the back.
The only problem, is that it is complete- MINUS the bed. No bed, no tightening wheels, no stand for the bed, no rack, pinion, levers, nothing. That was all 'accidentally' broken many years ago, and later the parts cleaned up & trashed by a well-meaning person 'tidying up'.
So, I'm not sure where to post this, but I'd love to get- a bed if anyone just happened to have one lying around they didn't need- or photos of what it used to be, close up, and/or a manual if one ever existed.
I'm anticipating having to make something up from scratch though.
Otherwise, we're kind-of permanently broke, & permanently busy & pretty happy here. Can't wait to retire & really have fun, but that's a long way off!
