Own your errors - or the creation of the the blessed K5

With the end of my term as faculty senate president (and the reprieve from endless meetings)and opting out of teaching summer classes, I decided to upgrade my old Kreg K2000 pocket hole jig(which I do like) with a new K5. I guess I didn't get the the stop collar completely tightened down on the bit. The pocket holes keep getting deeper, until...

the Holy K5
Attachment 411388Attachment 411389
Note the extra hole. :eek:

:)

The project did come out ok though. Just some shop storage. Still trying to figure out the arrangements of stuff on the shelves. I did figure out a cheap source for decent casters. Northern tools have their moving dollies on sale pretty frequency for about $7.49 (or was is $7.99?). They also often have additional off coupons. The dollies are 1000 lb, so the casters are 250 lb each.

Attachment 411393Attachment 411394


Nice to get back into the shop :D


John

I have bought about 7-8 moving dollies from HF and taken the castors off and used them on other projects. Works great at about $7.50 per dollie on sale.... Been doing this for years now. Randy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Randall J Cox

I have bought about 7-8 moving dollies from HF ... . Randy

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Use caution with the casters from HF dollies. They are fine for shop use, but they have a hard internal ridge/disc that left very visible 1/4"-wide grooves in my solid oak living room floors. Totally unexpected from "rubber" wheels.

[QUOTE=John Stankus;2933831]With the end of my term as faculty senate president (and the reprieve from endless meetings)and opting out of teaching summer
Nice to get back into the shop :D

/QUOTE]

Alfred Kahn related being Dean in the following manner: “dean is to faculty as fire hydrant is to dogs.” Glad you are able to have a respite.

The casters on the HF Dollies are basically barely worth free. I bought more than 20 HF Dollies to use to get a bunch of furniture mobile so that we could continue to use it in place but move it quickly into the next building when we were ready to vacate that suite.
After using them once, they were pretty poor. Several of them were loaned to others and came back broken. I saved a bunch but after a few uses, threw them away. NOT worth the $7.99 on sale.
The heavier pieces were moved on custom made Dollies built with decent casters. They work fine. Basically, a $15 caster is worth $20 more than the ones on HF Dollies.

I know this thread got off topic talking about casters so I'll add my experience. I've bought hundreds of casters over the years and this is the one I use the most as long as the requirement is within the 175 lb/per load rating. It is the best value for the money that I have found. It's a 3" dual locking polyurethane caster. And best of all, my orange BORG always has them in stock.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt...45EB/203672194

First, thank you all for focusing on the casters and not my drilling a hole through my new jig :o

I have had such mixed results with casters, with many blowouts of the wheels on my ShopFox mobile bases, that I figured go with cheap Northern Tool pulls from their moving dollies. If they fail then swap for something "better". Now I did use casters from the Northern Tool moving dollies, rather than Harbor Freight, though I don't know if that is much of a distinction. Seems ok for now (and the ones I used on an under the extension wing cabinet seem to be holding up).

John

About that K5. I am sure it will work just fine with the added ventilation feature.

I have the forerunner K3, as well as an older one, and have found the front operated clamp to be really handy. Not for rails and stiles or 12" wide storage, but when making any shelf or cabinet parts wider than 12", where you have to reach over or around the workpiece to clamp with the old style jigs.

Love my K3.

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Originally Posted by John Stankus

Note the extra hole. :eek:

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Ahhh, that's a popular aftermarket modification. I made mine while showing off the jig to a friend. Needless to say he was not as impressed as he should have been. :)

I made that modification in my K4 shortly after I got it. It never affected the performance.

I've since upgraded to the K5 for the front-reach clamp. Much easier when drilling panels. I gave the K4 to a friend and he's been using it with no issues. He didn't even notice the vent hole until I pointed it out to him.