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The best bet is a second hand booth; but like you I don't have enough room, and as a result have done a lot of research. A good home made and fold away design can be found at the web site of the US dealer Highland Woodorking's info section. Mine is based on this. The airflow over the whole face...

Also anything by Bob (Robert) Wearing.

"good" workshop and industrial vacs have "bypass" motors, which have separate fan/ducting for motor cooling, and thus don't overheat when main input is blocked. Some items like the minimach may be supplied with a deliberate built in leak so some air always flows, to protect vacs with non bypass...

fine-tools.com from Germany do the full Famag range, I think Rutland only carry the carbon steel variety, but Fine Tools also have them in HSS (all metric of course) . Rutland also looked a bit dear to me, at least before Euro rose against £. Fine-Tools also carry the only metric (Famag) lip &...

We have a sub direct with Taunton for FWW, and agree, it's good, but not what it was (we've issues 87 to date on the shelf) The first "Best of FWW" series was also excellent if you lack the earlier copies. For more recent FWW readers, these "Best of" series (now 3 in all?) of softcover books...

Gross wt. including lead pallet? Huge 100Kg table?Mixup with one of the other new industrial machines, surely. I've got one of the original 5300 (all white) which weighs under 200kg.

I was at school until the early 1960's. Imperial only in the juniors, and cgs system (cm, gramme, second) came in in chemistry and physics, so I'm "ambidextrous". MKS is now the scientific standard, I think. I have worked in metric since metric tools/tooling became available, as I find it...

It would be interesting to hear from a pro engineer about lapping. I was under the impression that machine lapping was usally done wet, presumably to flush away swarf, although not if you use a hand lapping plate. Presumably the matrix of grooves in the hand plate prevents a build up? There's...

Try bearingboys.co.uk for motors, the prices look quite reasonable for 'real' motors. Machine Mart single phase motors are of a type with little starting torque and will quite probably stall if starting a bandsaw fitted with a stiff blade.

Please don't spend any money or do any work till you have bought a humidity meter. A battery job reads to +/- 5% and will cost about 15 quid, maybe less. It will save your tools! Steel will rust when the relative humidity is 70%+ (the meter reads relative humidiy in %, no need for...

For US books try alibris.co.uk. I think they're international - anyway post from US with them is very reasonable, and their 2nd hand books are about £2.75 from anywhere

Glad to be of use. The figs given will be OK for most 1 man workshops, provided they're not long and thin, with black walls, or 5m high. Remember, too little light and yer can't see to do the job; too much light and you just waste a bit of electric till yer eyes get dim like mine! Perhaps not...

I wish I could use a new blade for every cut....until then I'll continue double cutting, back at 3mm to score, and forward at full depth. You do need a retractable riving knife for this though. To get a really straight edge (factory edges are often mms out) run a guide bearing router bit along...

If the bed of the plane is tilted sideways with respect to sole you may not be able to file this error out. You will have to sharpen at a bit less than 90 deg to blade side to get the edge even with sole. (Shoulder planes often have this fault.) If this description sounds puzzling, imagine a...

This may be of some help in estimating what fittings you need to get a well lit workshop. The degree of illumination is called illuminance, and it's measured in lux (that's lumens per sq M). Fortunately the eye can accomodate to a wide range of illuminance, as daylight provides about 100,000...

According to the catalogue, a 200W incandescent produces about about 3x the light of one current 20W "energy saver" style plug in fluorescent. A single 5 ft tube (60 to 80W according to detail) produces about 1.5 times more light than your 200W gls bulb. Initially at least, using small tubed...

Steve, what's supposed to happen (I should try this with dial gauge) is that a single piece of work going in, passes under infeed roller, so table moves down a few thou on that side, levelling up when work is under both rollers, and then tilting slightly to the outfeed side when work leaves the...

There's no doubt a No. 9 makes the job easier. I am continually amazed at the end grain shavings it produces (with a ~10 deg back bevel sharpened at about 32 deg) and how long it keeps producing them beween sharpeings. Other low angle planes would also do the trick if sides supportive enough...

I believe the 2 Trend (and other, like CMT) DW 625 lookalikes are all made in the same Italian factory, and are more or less identical apart from colour, or what's in the box etc., except for Trend's modified router table version which includes above table adjustment, (and a bigger 'ole in the...

This may be one of those cases when everybody is right, although each discussing slightly different aspects. Certainly the work can exert leverage and unwantedly lift a feed roller if not supported. The work might also not be completely flat, and be feeding concave side up. The feed roller...