Official Luthiers Forum!

Yes...yes I did. I apparently have to carry it with me everywhere I go until I can find the time post-holidays to jump on the Peloton and vigorously ride a few thousand miles in search of an open Returns and Exchanges desk.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

You are very welcome - and early happy birthday wishes to you.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

I got this as an early Xmas present to myself, a shiny new Quangsheng No. 8 Bedrock Pattern Plane and a spare blade/cap iron.

Also bought a vacuum pump with everything I need for laminating sides.

And a CNC'd tight light cylindrical radius dish for some experimenting with compression back bracing.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

FUNNY!!

@ Colin - That bracing is very interesting. What is it made from? Is it an idea you applied to your own build or did it exist prior? Certainly looks neat.

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

Here is a late report on this gift, because I wanted to set it up in the right spot so that I would be more likely to use it, and I only now had time:



It's the Festool Rotex 90 sander and the Festool CT SYS dust extractor, with my old Festool ETS 125 EQ sander on top of the extractor, acting as a "lady in waiting." I figure that, if the sander and the extractor are hanging there, ready to be fired up within 10 seconds of needing to sand something, I will use it more. We'll see how that works out. It's a dandy sander, and the dust extractor is awesome!

Don I love how you set this up in your shop out of the way with the fixture, very clever and I want one too for my home shop with limited floor space for the vac.

Glad you find the idea useful, Hesh! A few details might help with implementation:

1. The CT SYS is the smallest dust extractor Festool makes. It comes with the nice, fabric exterior hose, and it has the outlet that turns on the extractor when you power up the sander. The one feature it doesn’t have is variable suction. So, I bought the plastic doodad you see sticking out. It comes from Home Depot, and it has a bleeder valve under that red piece. Rotate the red piece, and it opens up a hole to bleed off some suction. It fits perfectly between the extractor and the hose.

2. Most Systainers (including the CT SYS, which is cleverly built into a Systainer) have mounting brackets built in. You have to figure out the best way to use them. For me, 12mm Baltic Birch scraps, doubled up, worked great as hold-downs.

3. The hose clips are available on Etsy. People 3D print them, I think.

4. The wooden hangers for the hose and sander are just plywood, screwed to the backer board via Kreg pocket hole joinery.

Thanks to the recent thread, the Rotex 90 bubbled up to the top again. I have looked at it off and on for quite a while because I wanted a smaller diameter ROS for certain tasks and I thought the triangle detail sander would be useful too. I hesitated because it's so darn expensive but my Festool 125 and vacuum work so well I decided what the heck and gave myself one for Christmas. Turns out it is an very nice sander and does everything I hoped it would do. The triangular detail pad works very well too. Only disadvantage I can see is some of the sanding discs that I like to use don't come in the 3 1/2" size, fortunately the Festool paper that I got works great so that shouldn't be a problem. Mine sits on my downdraft table with the 125 so it's always ready to go. Guess it's time to sell my Mirka 5" ROS, it's a really good sander too but I just always pick up the Festools now. No photos because my downdraft table top looks like a pigpen, maybe after I spend a day cleaning and reorganizing

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Steve--

If you want more grits than what Festool offers, you might want to look at Klingspor. Their search engine leaves a lot to be desired, so you really have to be tenacious about it. A person could look on their website (looking hard) and still not find many of the abrasives they offer. Here are SKU numbers for two choices, and from there, you should be able to find the rest of the grits you might be interested in:

220 grit round: VD92316
220 grit triangle: RT31011

Thanks Don!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"