how do I (what tools, price etc) cut a neat hole in a drafting table to convert to an animation desk? I am not the handiest with wood and am weighing the options of of if is cheaper and easier for me to buy the tools or hire someone else, (perhaps a cabinet maker to come by and I'dgive him 25 bucks to cut the hole.)
How to make a perfect disk hole.
By Graphiteman | Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 11:39am
#1
How to make a perfect disk hole.
Pfft.
T' heck with all that......
I just lift my glasses and use my LASER-VISION (tm) to punch a hole through that super-villainous ply-wood.
Is that how its always done???
Okay, just kidding.
You can try it yourself, probably buying a jig saw, and a couple of the same size pieces of wood to allow for mistakes........or hire the cabinet maker who will have the right tools-
The third alternative.........take your disc under your arm, get thee gone to thine local Home Depot and ask one of the folks there how to go about it. mention the things like the tolerances and the need for the disc to spin freely etc........and they can probably either show you how to do it, or do it for you.
And they have all the wood and cool tools.
( don't forget to pick up some stain and varnish)
( or get a contractor to charge you $100,000 and botch it, and then call Mike Holmes.....:rolleyes: )
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Thanks Ken.
I was also trying to figure out how much tools would cost.
I'm just going to get a skilled person to do it....without laser vision.....a little overkill, I think....or did you mean you had that corrective eye surgery? :)
muurtikaar is an ingrate and clueless. muurtikaar will never get any questions answered on this forum ever again.
Thanks also, muurtikaar.
muurtikaar is an ingrate and clueless. muurtikaar will never get any questions answered on this forum ever again.
muurtikaar is an ingrate and clueless. muurtikaar will never get any questions answered on this forum ever again.
Thanks, muurtikaar,
I have used the advice you posted and it worked like a virtual charm. I will post a picture when I tidy up. I have even jerry-rigged an old fluorescent light to a toggle swithc behind the desk so I don't have to remove the disk to turn on the light. I am very familiar with Colin Johnson's portable tables. They are excellent quality, we use them at the school at which I instruct....but I have had a nice portable desk for many years now and came across a drafting table in someone's garbage and wanted to make an animation table from it, not being the most handiest of men....(but at least I admit it; The missus need not worry about me starting renoes and never finishing:) ) . I am very familiar with the dimensions and etc; it was the woodshop that had me intimidated. So I bit the bullet and bought a "girly" jigsaw with a guide on it. Your homemade compass is genius. Instead of the utility knife suggestion which I thought even I wouldn't have the steadiest hand I used a tack in the pencil hole of the compass to score the cirlce after it was drawn. I don't know how much this reduced chipping but looking at the smooth hole from the back the best suggestion to reduce splintering and chipping would have been to saw it from the back not the top. Anyways that's minor as it's laminate particle board. Thanks again.
P.S: to give you an idea of usually inept I am at woodshop; when I was drilling the holes to place the saw blade I couldn't figure out why it was taking forever to go through and why the bit got hot and smoking.
I had the drill in reverse.
Ta-da! Voila!
Thanks all.
muurtikaar is an ingrate and clueless. muurtikaar will never get any questions answered on this forum ever again.
The disc is very old. handmade in '81 by a Sheridan student named J.A. Dyer (inscribed on back). It came with oxberry pegs that I still have somewhere. AT the time the pegs alone were about $60.00. For the past several years (not that I've been working constantly) I have used an acme pegs on stiff cardboard in the groove were the pegs slide at the bottom and at the top of the disk in picture I made my self another peg out of 3/16" dowels good for animating with Xerox's prepunched 8.5 x 11 loose leaf paper. You can see the glued crack on the right where I dropped it in a parking lot in 85. The plexiglass was originally clear so several years ago I bought that vinyl stuff you roll on windows to frost it up.
Just yer typical portable fluorescent light with a toggle that I have set to "ON" always for my purpose. I used shelving from an old entertainment centre to mount it in the back. I stripped the plug off the light to run it through a new toggle:
and I bought a household extension cord and stripped its outlet to run its end into the toggle. So I just have to reach to behind the desk edge to turn on instead of lifting the disk and using the portable light's toggle.
The hole fron the front. That top bar is not the fluorescent tube but the drafting table's bar. The light is on the lower hole.
Ever since I saw one in duck amuck I wanted that springy pencil holder. I have only worked at one place that had them but heck knows nobody knew what I was talking about so I made one out of those springy doorstops by stretching it and screwing it down.
The dope sheet clip I bought as a part of a clipboard at a thrift shop and then trashed the board.
I think I've answered everything :)
muurtikaar is an ingrate and clueless. muurtikaar will never get any questions answered on this forum ever again.
Thanks again for your interest.
AFAIK THIS is the best forum (The educator's thread) as I believe Mr. White is a mod.........isn't he? Responses can slow in the summer.
Love your whimsical toys; totally missed those on youtube. Your a living Gepetto. I really appreciate them being a toy nerd myself. Maybe one day I'll display my modest Fisher Price collection.