So I was all set to write a smug little self congratulatory post about how I’m a galaxy brain for never throwing anything away and oh would you look at that, something I’ve kept for years finally came in useful but actually, as it happens, the thing I was going to write about wasn’t as useful as I originally thought.
But you know what? It’s fine. It’s not a complete loss after all, I reckon.
You see, back in 2018 or 2019 I dumpster dived the stand from a set of halogen work lights. The lights had been taken off but the rest of the stand was in old but not terrible condition. I thought I might be able to get some LED lights and make my own pair of working lights and so the stand sat in the back shed for 6 years.
Recently I had to clean out the garage and I finally made the decision to throw the stand away, reasoning that I wouldn’t end up using it after all. I took it out of the shed and left it near the back door ready for stripping down and discarding.
Then Mum wanted a new shelf unit for upstairs and I got to designing and building it. After making the legs I got to the shelves themselves and I needed to rip some 600 x 1200mm shelving panels. I have a very small and elderly table saw and managing a cut of that kind is difficult. I thought, what I need is one of those rolly stands so the timber can be supported and that’s when I remembered the light stand.
I retrieved it from outside and quickly decided to not bother with installing a roller but went with a length of PVC conduit screwed on the t-piece. The stand was held together with screws so it was very easy to remove the handle and I used the existing holes for the screws to attach the conduit. I was feeling very pleased with myself.
So I marked out the cut and started to set up the reverse fence, by which I mean the way I set up big cuts is to clamp a guide to the underside of the work piece that slides against the edge of the saw table and maintains the width of the cut according to the marked line. It’s a bit fiddly to set up and probably highly dangerous but done with care I can cut large pieces with a good degree of accuracy.
Well that’s when my great idea came apart. The stand didn’t really work well with the guide and clamp but worse, the work piece proved too heavy for the height adjustment clamps on the stand and it sank floorwards. I tried a couple of different configurations but it was as much of a hindrance as a help. I think I can print an accessory clamp to provide some extra holding power to stop the stand from collapsing. I don’t know how useful the stand will be when sawing wide pieces of timber. I can see it being useful when sawing long pieces that I can use the actual fence with so we’ll see.
The moral of the story is okay, sure, don’t throw anything away but also don’t expect life to be all roses just because you found a use for that bit of garbage you held on for, because sometimes in finding a solution to a problem you might end up with an entirely new set of problems.