need tool advice

[preacher]

Chris,

I can offer you the best MALE to MALE advice there is to offer when in doubt.

Build bigger workshop . . . Buy more tools . . .

Repeat as often as needed.

[Pogo]

I've seen a variety of weights being used in shops I've been in over the years, and they can really be handy. I visited one woodshop where the owner had amassed a collection of a couple dozen flatirons, those old-timey solid metal ones with handles that used to be heated on a stove for pressing clothes, now commonly used as cutesy-painted doorstops. They made most excellent shop weights. I've always wanted a shelf full of them for myself, but antique stores want $20 apiece for 'em, and they rust here on the gulf coast.

When laminating heavy telescope components out of 3/4" plywood, I made a wooden "clamping fixture" where the lower half went on the driveway, the workpieces went in the middle, then the top half, then I parked the truck on top of the stack overnight. Worked perfectly, and easy as pie.

Man, I've never thought much about how much I use weights: I also keep a butter tub full of fishing weights, both round and triangle, in the 5 oz range. These come in handy so often they never get dusty, usually as paper weights to hold thin sheet goods like paper patterns or fiberglass in place, keeps an errant breeze from makin' off with the goods. I've got a few other lead ingots that weigh a pound to five pounds apiece, which seldom ever see dust either.