Thank you! I’m really proud of that one. 
It’s not an original recipe, so I can’t take full credit for its creation, but I do love how it came together.
Pretty well, actually. You add the rice with a small amount of olive oil and let it cook in the pan for 2 minutes or so before adding anything else to it. (After sauteing the diced onion, of course.) It doesn’t sear the shrimp, but the rice gets an amazing flavor that’s almost enough by itself.
Anyone have a recommend or anti-recommend for a small bench drill press? I don’t need to go through cast iron, I mostly want it for wood and occasional aluminum, usually under 1"/25mm thickness. Mostly maple, sometimes oak or cherry, or softer (birch, poplar). Usually small (1/8"/3mm and 1/4"/6mm). I want a bench, not a floor – no room, and overkill. If I have to bolt it to the bench, I’ll live, but I’d much prefer one that I can remove if I need bench space. I’ve been using my Dremel workstation for this, but the Dremel is limited.
Serve with sangria and you’re laughing. Invite me over and I’m laughing…
I’m sorry I have no recommendation for you, mine is a 1940s Buffalo that still has the Army Air Corps inventory plate on it. I can tell you lots of folks are tempted by the harbor freight $49 specials. One, the spindles are often so wobbly you’re likely to be quite dissatisfied with the results, two they use very poor capacitors in the motor which blow frequently leaving you with a $10 repair (if you do it yourself, not hard), three they have inadequate dust shielding inside the motor so often sawdust alone kills them.
Not knowing your budget, pawnshops and craigslist might be a better option for brands such as delta, jet, older craftsman, etc.
Agree on the avoidance of Harbor Freight.
Nearly any name-brand should get you most of the way where you’re looking, and I’d make sure to get some good quality drill bits for whatever you get.
I have a dremel with an accessory bench press. I use it mainly for glass so I use diamond burrs not bits, but dremel makes bits for all materials.
If you are only using it occasionally and for thin stuff and tiny holes, it would do you ok I think?
https://www.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/tools/220-01-workstation
Harbor Freight exists solely to provide clamps, storage, and disposables like sanding discs, IMNSHO. (It’s also far out of my regular orbit.) I am stuck going online, alas - Big Orange carries one in store, and even I can see problems with It; Big Blue doesn’t carry any and Sears is welcome to attempt their Galt’s Gulchian death march, but I’m not participating in their self-destruction. (Also, even further out of orbit.) Even McGuckin doesn’t have a bench model.
Lots of HF ones on local CL.:eyeroll: I’ve got a search established in the estate sales tracker, which is probably my best bet, but what’s been coming up are floor models. I have ebay’ed a mid-century Craftsman press device that converts an electric hand drill into a press and have a corded Makita I hope I can kludge into it; otherwise, I have robot parts.
The suburban consolidation model strikes again.
My general tool preference is for Bosch, and Bosch does make a bench drill… that is not available in the US.
@MissyPants The Dremel workstation works really well for very small things, like doll furniture, and that is what it gets used for, primarily, but it tops out at 1/4"/6mm holes at 1"/25mm depth, and it refuses to do anything forstner. It’s brilliant for what it can do, but human scale furniture is beyond it, and 1/3 scale is pushing its limits.
Lots of machinists by trade lived and died in and around Detroit. We seem to find at least one good, old drill press every time we go to neighborhood garage sales in our area. I’ve so far dissuaded Mr. Kidd from acquiring one, as he’s not home enough to justify it, and I need a ring saw before I need a drill press (also for glass, but for copper foil panels rather than jewelry).
Anti-recommendation for the Ryobi 10" portable benchtop unit that they sell at Home Depot. The spindle wobbles, and changing speed requires shifting a belt which will eat your fingers if you try to do it with the thing running. (So don’t do that.) I replaced it with an old used Jet that I bought off eBay, then replaced that with an ancient floor model Porter-Cable that isn’t made anymore.
Sorry your options are so limited. @RatMan has a point about checking eBay, I’ve found two near me that I was able to go pick up and not pay shipping.
Depending on the size of the foot plate and your enthusiasm with a sawzall, a floor model can be turned into a bench top…
Side note, when doing traditional lacquer finishes I’ve had contamination issues from hf sandpaper. I won’t touch the stuff anyone.
Thanks. That’s what I suspected when I looked at it. It looks… poorly designed. It would probably drill straighter holes than me, with a hand drill, on hole 22 of 48, but that’s not actually saying much.
@IronEdithKidd – it’s all about location. I live in what started as a farming community during the “rain follows the plow” theory of Manifest Destiny, which then spent a few decades as a coal mining town until the state militia massacred a strike in the 20s, went back to farming, and has mostly been a bedroom community since the 1960s. Denver Metro has always had a weird relationship with manufacturing, so what’s available on the secondary market is hobbyist level at best, when available at all, and there’s not a lot of pro-stuff ever.
@Pogo… This is not a necessarily bad idea…
I knit on a circular loom, dreadfully named the “Knifty Knitter”.
How are those working out? A friend gave me a rectangular loom – haven’t got to it much yet because I’ve got projects on needles to do already.
I find loom knitting’s popularity fascinating, because it always gets marketed as new, yet it’s the oldest known form of knitting. Somewhere I’ve got a photo of a sock loom from the Middle East that’s… 800 years old, if I remember right? Anyway, they pre-date knitting needles.
There is a category on Craigslist for tools. Lots of people get rid of great stuff at good prices.
Yep. Been there. Denver CL has a LOT of Harbor Freight stuff, or antiques that need a full rebuild. Or hopeful scammers trying to sell the same HF craptacular object for 3x what HF charges. Or the typical CL problems of no response or ad not removed after sale.
The antiques would be a great project if I wanted that project right now, but I have projects. For which I would prefer to just have a working press. There’s one at an estate sale tomorrow and I’ve got nothing pressing on the morning schedule, so I’ll go check it out, and if not, I’ll bite the bullet and trek to the last standing Sears in the metro.
Good Luck!
Don’t forget to take a long bit you can chuck up and check for spindle wobble.
ETA, ever check pawn shops?
Thanks – I put one in the car. Good reminder!
No, I don’t do pawn shops. Maybe it was growing up with a gambling addict (and so experiencing all of the insecurities of poverty) or just my discomfort with the secondary gun market, but I just can’t convince myself that it’s a business model I want to participate in. I don’t want to profit on other people’s misery. At least with an estate sale, I can assume that the heirs have made decisions about the property and are disposing of what they don’t want or need.
I’ve made hats, scarves, tubular things, and I have something on the loom that I’m not sure what it’s going to be. I’m like that, lol. But it’s super-easy.
I mentioned we were tearing out the carpet out of our living room and laying down luxury vinyl planks. We’re getting really close to the end of the project – the hallway is the weirdest area for cuts and there are a lot of transitions to other floor heights/types to deal with. The worst is a really poorly placed air return vent which is under the doorway to the office, taking up about 2/3 of its width (and I don’t particularly recommend stepping on the vent or its edges if you can help it either). We’re keeping the carpet in the office, but plan to cut out a rectangle around the door and then set up our transition a few inches past the vent, so it can sit level on the same floor surface. I predict it’s going to be a pain.
But tonight I got the first transition done, from basement stairs to hallway. I was tempted to remove the carpet from the stairs and just leave the hardwood in whatever condition it may be in – the basement isn’t finished anyway so we’re not too concerned about looks once the door is closed – but my spouse pointed out that pulling out the tack strips and staples from it was going to be a hell of a lot of awkward work, so we opted for this instead.
In-laws are visiting in a week from Saturday, and we need to prioritize getting everything else back into some semblance of order after having been shifted around to work on the floor (and assemble bookcases to replace the crappy ones we broke when moving them). But I still expect I’ll get the hard floor transitions down and put down planks as far as I can without tearing out more carpet.
Nice!
I love the colour you choose for the planks – do you mind sharing the details? I’m getting ready to redo my bedroom floor (read: throwing out as much stuff as I can so there’s less to rearrange), and researching in the meantime.
