Assembled my Woodworker Finally

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I finally found the time to assemble my 1F Woodworker, and thought I would share my experience in the hope it may help others waiting on or contemplating one of these. I also ordered the QCW secure from beneath and the the rolling stand option. I will start by saying that all the videos and forum posts do not do this machine justice, it is a BEAST! Everything is solid as can be and pretty heavy. The QCW and rolling folding cart are equally impressive. The machine goes together as easy as they say. My advice on cutting the wasteboard is to get yourself a track for your circular saw, I used this one and it worked perfectly Bora Clamp Edge My jobsite table saw would have been too difficult to do these cuts on.

The suckit dust boot brush was a real pain in the neck to get into that slot, you really do need some patience to get this in. It is probably the only part of the design that I think needs to be re-thought out.

I am not using a touchscreen, I attached a 22" monitor with a built in USB hub that works nicely for tranferring files. I also attached a trackball mouse, and it looks like it will work nicely.

Your dust collection needs to be planned out before you start flattening your wasteboard (which I have not done yet). I looked at the Rowdy Roman one, but since I have a 3D printer, I found something very close on Thingiverse and made my own. I paid $8 for my aluminum pipe and a few more for a Dust Deputy.

I created my flattening file and grid file, so I hope to get that done this weekend. Also found a cheap easy SVG on Etsy I will use for my first project. I will report back on Monday with all the things I messed up on!

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Well I have a few jobs under my belt, and have learned some lessons the hard way. I strted with a resurfacing job on my spoilboard and that was quite uneventfull, but the gridline toolpath gave me some fits. I noticed that my absolute limits were 32.126" in bot X and Y, so I thought, sure, lets put my grids in that exact space. I quickly learned that working at the extreme limits of this machine is going to just piss you off. So I decided to modify my toolpath in VCarve and created an offset square that went in .127" and then deleted all vectors outside of that line. That gave me a perfect grid pattern and a sense of confidence that would soon be shattered on my first project. My first project was a simple sign for the laundry room I found on Etsy. I created my toolpaths, but forgot to check my pass depth and I burried an endmill right through my project board and into my spoilboard! So I looked at my son, and said “well, the best lessons are the ones you pay for”. I was certain I trashed my bit, but it was fine as I was working with soft cedar. I think I need to create a checklist, you know, like the ones a 747 pilot uses before take off. On a side note, I played with the box gadget in VCarve and was very impressed how that made a 4x4 box out of .2" stock. I am going to put a piece of foam in it and use it to drop bits into as I loosen the collet on the router.

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