Interrupted Shop Project: Now With Pictures

[I finally “fixed” some technical issues. In keeping with “pics or it didn’t happen” I’m adding photos. They should have been in the original post.]

Behold the wheeled tower of milk crates.

From chaos… order! This phot0 is annotated, how awesome is that? I’d already sorted into single cups, double cups, and cups with Milwaukee “add-ons”. Then I added cups with 3d printed “add-ons”. I think my add-ons look way cooler because of a completely unplanned two tone effect. It’s easy to start navel gazing about whether simple PLA is adequate or one needs the tougher PETG. But lets not go too far in the weeds; it started in coffee cans and plastic baggies. (Incidentally, I spent way too much time trying to draw arrows in GIMP and they still suck. Drawing arrows in GIMP is like crop dusting with a B52.)

Donor plexiglass. It might be 30 years old or more.

Marking and cutting. The white stuff is paint left over from when it was painted as part of a rotting garage door.

I think it looks pretty slick.

This tool is about the handiest thing ever. It’s usually used for “post-processing” 3d prints. The blade is replaceable and on a swivel. I had to look it up, it’s called a “deburring tool“.

Whatever it is, it works slicker than snot on both 3d prints AND old plexiglass. The one I bought, only a few months ago, is no longer listed in Amazon. The link goes to what looks like the equivalent and appears to cost about the same. I’d hazard a guess it came straight from the same Chinese factory but under a dozen different random corporate names. 

Unfortunately, I broke the blade on my bandsaw. Was it “bad” to cut plexiglass or was it just a 20 year old blade? I have no idea.

It never would have occurred to me that I had the user’s manual at hand. But there it was, in a plastic bag taped to the saw. I’m so old I can remember the following:

• Sears was once a “quality brand”.
• You’d find a Sears at a shopping mall; which were gleaming futuristic places. It was glorious place to be when you’re of the Beavis and Butthead generation. Malls still exist but they’ve gone so far downhill as to seem sketchy and pathetic.
• Craftsman was once good stuff. It was only a few years after this saw was made that I experienced it as a hollowed out nameplate that Sears was slapping on cheap, Walmart level, shit. YMMV. Craftsman lives on, and so does Sears… but they feel like “names” glued on the same shit you’d find on any other Chinese crap. Maybe better than Harbor Freight, maybe worse than Dewalt. However you define it, the enshitification of Sears/Craftsman feels pretty complete by now.

Check it out. I found the receipt. What a piece of history! This is what things were like the very last moments before computers took over everything (you can see some dot matrix print at the top so computers were already “a thing”). Hand written items and prices and stock numbers. A stamp that says “delivered”.

Compared to 2025, it might as well have been written with a quill pen on a rolled up scroll.

What’s this? The dreaded extended warranty!

I observe this all with a bit of nostalgia. I’m using this saw as “nothing special” in a cold drafty workshop. Yet, it’s 37 years old and still going strong. How much of what you’ve purchased in 2025 will be still functioning in 2062?

As if to underscore the awesomeness of a 37 year old machine running fine, I already have it running again. It only took four days for Amazon to deliver a two pack of blades . I’ve never heard of a company called Ayao. it’s probably one of dozens. Regardless, it was cheap, fit correctly, and it cuts wall (I’ve already used it).

What an odd world we inhabit. I have nostalgia for Craftsman of 1988 even as I think their stuff is shit in 2025. I don’t know if the company selling replacement blades, Ayao, is anything other than a database fiction and I don’t care. It may be replaced by Oaya in a fortnight. I’ve no idea if Amazon, a monopolist in 2025 will still exist in 2062.

Maybe I need to buy a Studebaker?

Just as I traversed backcountry trails in Wyoming last year with the unspeakably obsolete idea of paper maps, I mounted the blades with the help of a printed manual. Part of being Gen X is having one foot in two worlds. A modern person is as likely to use a paper manual as a cavemen is to run a blog. (BTW: I needed the manual. Nothing was obvious to me!)

Everything is a success. Total cost? About $8 a blade.

Happy workshop projects y’all.

A.C.