Mark V to the rescue!

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BuckeyeDennis
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Mark V to the rescue!

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

This thread is about a window-repair project that I just completed, and it's a great example of the versatility of a Shopsmith Mark V. I made some cuts that would be pretty difficult on most stand-alone machinery, and that ability saved me over two thousand dollars on window-replacement costs. Along the way, I'll be reviewing some Mark V accessories that I had never used before.

I bought a new-in-box Shaper/Drum Sander Fence Kit (555113) on eBay at a good price several years ago, but I had never used it, and was considering selling it. My tricked-out overarm pin router always stays set up, has a big 3 hp router undertable, and my router bit collection dwarfs my shaper-bit assortment. But I needed a tilting table for this project, so out came the shaper stuff. I don't recall ever seeing a shaper review on this forum ... nor even a shaping project, for that matter. So I'll share some details of my experiences with the Mark V shaper function later on in this thread.

I also used my vintage Shopsmith rotary planer (AK-2043) for only the second time, and finally got to try out my Jessem Clear-Cut Stock Guides mounted on my 520 fence. More on that later, as well.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

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And now for the ugly part! :eek:

After almost 28 years, most of the double-pane windows in my house were losing their seals, and a few were fogged so badly that you could hardly see through them. The exterior wood trim was in need of new caulk & paint as well. So the first order of business was to have the windows reglazed. The window frames are wooden, and I knew that there were a few sills with rot problems. Back in 2009, I had ground out any soft spots that I could find, filled them with epoxy putty, and repainted them. It turned out that sills were all still good underneath the operating windows, where I had been able to access them for repairs. But several windows had minor rot problems underneath the stationary sashes. A bit of scraping and putty fixed most of them, and two more had enough damage to warrant epoxy filler.

But then, the window installers pulled out the sashes in the garage window (which were to be replaced with new ones), and came running to see if I had some insecticide. Yikes!

The first photo looks especially disgusting, as I had liberally doused it with insecticide before taking pictures. But yes, that is a big fat insect larvae you see amidst the rot .. and it wasn't the only one.
Rotted sill.JPG
Rotted sill.JPG (499.94 KiB) Viewed 22477 times
Last edited by BuckeyeDennis on Mon Jun 11, 2018 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

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With the insects poisoned, the next step was to dig into the rot, and see just how extensive it was. At first, I wasn't optimistic that the window could be salvaged.
Debridement I.JPG
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I attacked the rot with old hand chisels, just using hand pressure to slice out the worst of it. The sill itself was trashed, but amazingly the 2x4 running horizontally underneath the window was unscathed.

While I was chiseling out the rot, some insects kept flying up looking for home .. you can see one of them in the photo above. With Google's help, I ID'd this one as a carpenter ant. The original problem appeared to be the rot, and then the insects had chosen the rotten wood for home. But the insecticide that I used will take care of any that might try to move back in.
Debridement II.JPG
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In the pic above, I have most of the rotted wood removed, and there's not much windowsill left. It was a two-piece design, with a glue-joint between the nose and the main sill. You can see some of that joint exposed at the far right of the sill.

At this point, the only way I could see to effect a good repair would be to remove the entire window frame, and rout the sill back to solid wood from the underside. But the installers assured me that the frame would fall apart if we tried to remove it. So then I asked about the cost of replacing the entire unit. The off-the-cuff ballpark estimate was between $2K and $4k. Gulp! On top of that, I had spent a chunk of the preceding week staining and painting replacement sashes for this very window. So I agreed that repair was the way to go, if possible.

After studying it some more, I realized that I could attach a replacement sill piece not just to the old sill, but also to that solid 2x4 underneath. Which would give more than enough strength, and also meant that a tight glue joint to the old sill wasn't necessary. I just had to get some semblance of a butt joint, and then I could attach it with epoxy and fill any gaps.
Debridement III.JPG
Debridement III.JPG (462.24 KiB) Viewed 22468 times
An oscillating multi-tool was just the ticket to trim the sill back to solid wood. I cut it back flush with the sash stops, using them for a blade guide. The remaining voids could be permanently repaired with epoxy filler. Good enough.

Actual Shopsmith work and photos to come in the next installment! :cool:
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RobertTaylor
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

Post by RobertTaylor »

so far, so good. following this story
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

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It turns out that the geometry of my window sills is quite a bit more complex than I would have imagined. The dimensioned sketch below shows the measurements that I took of the old sill. The vertical dashed line (beneath the window stop and weatherstripping) shows where I cut the old sill away. Everything to the right of that line needed to be remade.
Sill dimensions.JPG
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I don't know if this is proper terminology, but I'll refer to the two pieces as the "sill plate" and "sill nose". The "nose" is the more steeply sloped section, shown on the right side of the glue joint.

For the replacement parts, I took a few liberties with the geometry:
a) I made the sill plate thick enough to attach to the 2x4 underneath the window,
b) I eliminated the 0.050" deep groove atop the sill plate -- the window installers said it was unnecessary, and it seemed that it would hold any water that seeped past the weather stripping on the sashes, and
c) I left the new sill nose piece a constant 1.10" thick all the way back to the glue joint.

As for the joint between the replacement sill pieces, all I really needed was something to hold them in alignment for gluing. So a spline, some biscuits, or a tongue & groove joint would have worked just fine. But for that 9 degree slope on the nose, I needed to tilt whatever cutter relative to the table, and I had all the Shopsmith shaper stuff I needed to mill a glue joint. So I figured I might as well put it to use.
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

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To help prevent any future rot, I made the new window sill pieces from cedar 2x4's. The first order of milling business was to face-joint, edge-joint, and thickness-plane them, all done with my Shopsmith SPT's. I then ripped the pieces to width (allowing for the glue joint) on the 520, and also bevel-ripped the nose piece.

Shaping the glue joints was next. My glue-joint shaper bit had come to me along with a 10ER purchase, and was a bit dull. So I proceeded to flatten the backsides of the cutter blades with a progression of diamond homes. Fifteen minutes later, the cutting edges were reasonably sharp. Then I installed the shaper fence and featherboards on my 520. The pics below show it set up to mill the glue joint on the nose piece.
Shaper setup.JPG
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Ready to shape.JPG
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This being my first experience both with the shaper hardware and with milling a glue joint, I was basically guessing at the best way to set the infeed and outfeed fences for a glue joint. The fences were rock-solid once the adjustments were locked down, but had a bit of wiggle/play when unlocked for adjusting the depth. So I decided to set both fences co-planer, and leave just a bit of each workpiece uncut, to guide on the outfeed fence. That way, I could use a long straightedge to ensure perfect fence alignment. This worked very well for feeding the workpieces, but the glue-joint fit was less than perfect. More on that later.

The actual milling process went just swimmingly. Given the relatively low top speed of my 520 headstock, I was expecting the cut to look and feel a bit rough. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 520 made a very competent shaper. The cut felt, sounded, and looked nice and smooth. The featherboards kept the workpieces locked down tight, and the operation felt perfectly safe to me.

The pic below shows the result of the cut. Note that the slight imperfections on the edge of the smaller glue-joint ridge are not from the shaping operation. Those are saw marks from ripping in tablesaw mode; I intentionally left that edge untouched by the shaper cutter, to guide on the outfeed fence.
Pretty nice glue joint.JPG
Pretty nice glue joint.JPG (306.25 KiB) Viewed 22380 times
The next time I mill a glue joint, I'm going to try the following procedure:
1) set the in-feed fence for a full depth of cut,
2) back off the outfeed fence,
3) mill the first few inches of the workpiece and then stop the spindle,
4) dial in the outfeed fence until it just kisses the workpiece, and
5) restart the spindle and finish the cut.

I think that should be pretty idiot-proof.

Edit: I almost forgot to mention that the shaper-mode dust collection was excellent. I'd estimate that 99% of the sawdust went into my dust collector, and virtually 100% of the fine stuff.
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chapmanruss
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

Post by chapmanruss »

Your project is looking great so far. I will be waiting to see the final result.

You said
b) I eliminated the 0.050" deep groove atop the sill plate -- the window installers said it was unnecessary, and it seemed that it would hold any water that seeped past the weather stripping on the sashes,
I agree with you on doing that. It can be a water trap and cause rotting to occur faster. I replaced a sill years ago that the slope was even from the inside edge of the window sash to the outside end. The bottom of the sash was angled to match the sill's slope. All rain water flowed off the outside edge of the sill. Besides being a single window that made it a simpler project than the one you are tackling.
Russ

Mark V completely upgraded to Mark 7
Mark V 520
All SPT's & 2 Power Stations
Model 10ER S/N R64000 first one I restored on bench w/ metal ends & retractable casters.
Has Speed Changer, 4E Jointer, Jig Saw with lamp, a complete set of original accessories & much more.
Model 10E's S/N's 1076 & 1077 oldest ones I have restored. Mark 2 S/N 85959 restored. Others to be restored.
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rjent
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

Post by rjent »

Absolutely outstanding Dennis. Great work!

I am doing a video/pictures on my kitchen cabinet rebuild/build and will start a thread on that as you requested soon.

Can't wait to see how this come out! :cool:
Dick
1965 Mark VII S/N 407684
1951 10 ER S/N ER 44570 -- Reborn 9/16/14
1950 10 ER S/N ER 33479 Reborn July 2016
1950 10 ER S/N ER 39671
1951 jigsaw X 2
1951 !0 ER #3 in rebuild
500, Jointer, Bsaw, Bsander, Planer
2014 Mark 7 W/Lift assist - 14 4" Jointer - DC3300
And a plethora of small stuff .....

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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

Post by BuckeyeDennis »

rjent wrote:Absolutely outstanding Dennis. Great work!

I am doing a video/pictures on my kitchen cabinet rebuild/build and will start a thread on that as you requested soon.

Can't wait to see how this come out! :cool:
I'm looking forward to that kitchen cabinet thread, Dick! Beats the heck out of rotted window sills ... :rolleyes:
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BuckeyeDennis
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Re: Mark V to the rescue!

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To mill the mating glue-joint profile on the window sill plate, I set the table tilt back to zero degrees, and ran the blank past the glue-joint shaper bit upside down. The workholding was all the same, but I did adjust the bit height to get the proper (0.150")reveal of the sill plate. That's actually trickier than it sounds, as the centerline of the cutter profile is in the middle of one of the diagonal segments. The only square references are the top and bottom of the cutter profile, and those are outside of the cut.

The next step was to mill that 2.5 degree bevel atop the sill plate -- again calling for a tilting table. So back to the 520 I went. The bevel feature is a bit over an inch wide. The largest flat-bottomed router bit in my collection was just 1" in diameter, so this looked like a good chance to play with my vintage Shopsmith AK-2043 rotary planer. It's basically the same as a Wagner Safe-T-Planer, except that it sports two edges per cutter, so you can quickly rotate the three cutters to get fresh edges.
AK_2043.JPG
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The rotary planer is almost 3" in diameter, and the quill-mounted featherboard from the shaper-fence kit wouldn't clear it. So I needed an different way to hold down the workpiece for this operation. A featherboard on a tall fence extension would have worked fine, but I've never drilled my shop-made fence extension for featherboard mounting. So instead, I grabbed the Jessem Clear-Cut Stock Guides off of my router-table fence, and tried them out on the 520 fence. The wheels are angled in slightly toward the fence, so they not only hold the workpiece down, they also keep it tight to the fence when feeding. Each wheel has a one-way clutch, so they provide kickback protection as well. The featherboard in the pic below isn't really necessary, but the belt-and-suspenders approach made me feel more comfortable using a cutter this large. Note that this view is from the backside of the 520, so the feed direction as shown is from right to left.
Rotary planer.JPG
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The Jessem guides normally mount to T-track using a T-bolt, but of course you have to use the special Shopsmith T-nuts on a 520 fence. Instead of fooling around mounting threaded studs to the SS T-nuts, I just used 1/4-20 hex bolts of the appropriate length. Referring to the guide on the left in the pic above, the left-hand bolt normally locks the fence laterally, and acts as a hinge pin for elevation adjustment. Using the SS T-nuts, that bolt does not lock the fence laterally, but it still provides the hinge function. Then when you tighten the other bolt, it locks the guide down both laterally and in elevation. This worked out fine for me.

These Jessem router guides retail for $100, vs. $250 for Jessem's tablesaw guides. Mounted directly to the 520 fence as I did, the maximum stock thickness is a bit over an inch (mine in the pic is 1.1"). But it would be easy to make a carrier that raises the guides to whatever height you may need. The Jessem router guides worked great in this application, and the bevel milling went off without a hitch.

The next pic shows a test fit of the sill plate and the sill nose (orientation opposite to the earlier sketch). The 2.5 degree bevel on top of the sill plate is subtle, but discernable. The perfectionist in me was a bit disappointed in the fit of the glue joint, although it will serve just fine for it's real purpose of glue-up alignment. I believe the gaps are a result of my setup decisions, and I just didn't get the shaper cuts quite deep enough. The vertical gap at top is there only because the pieces are clamped together some distance from the end that we're viewing. But the little trapezoidal features are decidedly short. As I was on a very short time fuse, I decided to simply use gap-filling epoxy for the glue-up.
Test fit.JPG
Test fit.JPG (361.74 KiB) Viewed 22236 times
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