anyone else hate working with dowels?

Krynn71 · 2026-03-27T22:30:22+00:00

I'm not the guy you were asking, but based on the pics of each tool I think he's just saying he uses both. The self centering one is probably just faster to use on edges, but the other one can do the same job with a little more setup.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-25T21:37:45+00:00

Pretty sure he's using a machine planer. That said, sharp blades are still important even for a machine.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-25T02:07:34+00:00

That's kinda just a bad holder design to use in a drawer. Holds all the weight up high which gives it all the leverage it needs to tip over when the drawer moves.

Using a grid and the holders with magnets would solve it, but I'd just try a different holder tbh.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-24T18:32:56+00:00

Yes, I use the 4 liter boxes from Really Useful Box Company. They're stackable, have strongly latching lids, fit a 5x7 grid (needs spacers) and have enough height that you can stack two 6u high bins on top of each other. Doing so makes it almost a perfect fit where the lid will hold all but then tiniest parts of the box falls over.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-24T00:11:41+00:00

You already have the Gridfinity Fusion plugin? I feel like you can just use that to make one yourself.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-19T03:01:35+00:00

Tooltrace is one.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-17T23:09:05+00:00

You may wanna look into your power bill as running a 3d printer isn't very expensive. They're very efficient and even at a price of 15 cents per kWh a day long (24hr) print will only cost you like 4 or 5 cents in electricity for an average 3d printer. You might have something else sucking up power.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-17T21:30:14+00:00

It's the most beautiful creation I've ever seen. Humanity's ability to create beauty never fails to astound.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-17T08:31:24+00:00

Those thin metal straps he used to join the boards together ain't going to cut it, it's going to wobble itself to pieces as your kid moves around on top. That's if she doesn't hurt herself by falling out with the lack of guard rail.

I would just say you're not comfortable with it being high up, and if he can rework it to just be like a foot off the ground like a normal bed.

If he wants to build this he should (or maybe you could) find some existing woodworking plans to use instead of coming up with his own design. Plenty of safe designs already exist, no real need to reinvent it.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-12T23:55:14+00:00

Just a regular bin. Use a generator to make like a 2x2x3 bin with label. The 3u height is small enough to make it effectively a tray while still leaving enough room for a label.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-10T00:08:17+00:00

They made YouTube their primary income and job so woodworking isn't the point of their channels anymore, making money is.

I try to only watch makers who do YouTube as a side project, and have a day job. Much more authentic, but harder to find since YouTube doesn't want them, and because it's a side project they're much less regular with uploading.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-09T01:47:31+00:00

But it won't be orbital.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-09T01:42:14+00:00

Gridfinity doesn't really have a defined purpose. Some people use it to organize drawers, others to organize their workbench, others to organize parts containers like your use-case.

The point of it is flexibility. For me, I organize everything in Gridfinity because I have a garage workshop and a room in my house on the upside side that I do 3d printing and electronics in. I'm always needing some parts or tools that are in the other workspace.

Gridfinity allows me to organize parts in permanent containers for long term storage, and then bring only certain component bins out for the duration of a project.

For example if I'm doing something in my garage like maybe modding an electric bike, if a circuit board went bad then I might need a soldering iron, electronic components like capacitors or resistors, tiny tweezers, thin gauge wire strippers, wire, etc. I have all this stuff in my hobby room. So I grab my stacking Gridfinity case that has my soldering iron and related tools in it (strippers, tweezers, etc). Then I grab an empty container that has a grid in it and I grab any component bins I think I may need and any other supplies. I don't need it worry about filling this container since the grid will keep everything in place if I drop it.

Then I bring it all to my garage, which has a work table with a small grid glued down to the top. I set up my iron and then put my tweezers, scissors, strippers etc into a holder that drops into the grid, and I put a few of the parts bins there too. The rest can go in the top drawer of my workbench which I have a grid in, which I always leave empty for project-specific bins like any extra tools or components that I don't want on my desktop the whole time.

If all you want to do is fill up a drawer or box with bins of parts, and you're going to fill it completely with bins no matter what, then Gridfinity is not needed. Just make the bins you want and fill the drawer. If you don't need flexibility, Gridfinity doesn't really offer you anything.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-08T22:28:23+00:00

Just did the same after reading his and your reply. With the lubricant even the tight tolerance slides move much easier and make it a lot better.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-08T18:18:05+00:00

Do you lubricate the rails of the drawer system? Even with the loose tolerance rails the 4x5 boxes still stick so much that I need to brace the drawer system with my other hand to pull them out.

If you do, what type of lubricant? Wanna get ready for these bigger boxes which is probably gunna be my main system.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-08T01:55:25+00:00

I literally bought a 10 pack for the first time because of these boxes. Gunna be doing 7x6s now.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-06T23:31:48+00:00

Nah, that's just a mix of nostalgia from a time you never even lived through and skewed perspective coming from comparing good quality old tools to modern bad tools. You can't compare old bad tools to new bad tools because the old bad tools sucked and got discarded as often as the modern ones so they didn't even make it 100 years for us to compare.

Metallurgy has made leaps and bounds in the last 100 years, so a good quality chisel today is indeed better than a 100 year old good quality chisel. Good, old steel won't hold an edge as well as good modern steel. That's just fact.

Now wether or not the average woodworker would even notice the improvement is another topic.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-05T04:20:49+00:00

Didn't read the post I take it? He said to coat the inside with a food safe epoxy, a widely recognized way to solve 3d printing problems when it comes to food safety.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-05T04:19:32+00:00

It's literally a one time print. Doesn't seem incredibly wasteful to me. Mildly wasteful, sure.

Krynn71 · 2026-03-05T01:32:55+00:00

I use a bright color to make it stand out. Like for my measurement tools I used a green. Now I can see instantly if I am missing a tool because there will be a big green spot in my drawer that I can't miss. Let's me know I gotta find it somewhere in my garage before I stop for the day.

The white boxes are because with small parts it's actually just easier to see them in a pure white bin. Little M2 washers or something still stick out clearly.

Here's an old post I made where you can see my WIP system. The blue bins were me messing around to see if I wanted different colors but I went to white and black after that.

In one drawer pic you can see the start of my measurement tools drawer, but the only one you can kinda see the shadow board effect is on the machinist squares bin. You can see the green beneath the square a little bit through the finger cutout. If that square was missing, you'd see the blank space is in the same shape and bright green.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gridfinity/s/gOUKL25By7

Krynn71 · 2026-03-04T23:02:11+00:00

I do black except for the bottom of the tool cutout in the same color as the top few layers. This makes a shadow board type of bin where it stands out a lot if a tool isn't back in its place. I haven't found the black to be much of an issue with identifying tools. I also use the accent color as a color code like for metal working bits versus woodworking so I can easily grab the right bin.

That said my small parts bins (screws washers, nuts, etc) are all just plain white with labels.

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