Rust bucket
I had a leak I didn’t know about that, in a circuitous Rube Goldbergian way, made its way to my jointer. I just found it, and although I’m not happy…
I had a leak I didn’t know about that, in a circuitous Rube Goldbergian way, made its way to my jointer. I just found it, and although I’m not happy it could have been worse.
The water came in above the garage door, around the mount of the light fixture above the driveway. I’ve never had a leak there, but a recent storm was accompanied by strong southeasterly winds throughout the storm – really rare, as it almost never comes that direction here due to the geographical arrangement of the Ohio River valley.
The leak blew in around the light, ran inside my garage woodshop, down the wall slightly to where the chain drive is mounted, ran along the channel for the chain drive till it reached the articulated lifting arm attached to the top of the door. At that point on the lifting arm is a pull cord/rope that, in case of an emergency, you can immediately disengage the lifting arm from the chain drive. The water ran down that cord where it dripped directly onto the rear of the jointer fence. From there, it ran down the back of the fence, and entered the narrow space where the beveled underside of the fence meets the top of the jointer's outfeed table. Capillary action caused the water to seep down the length of the gap between the fence and table. If nothing else, you gotta give Mother Nature credit for ingenuity.
The result is that I had rust on both the underside of the fence on that side, as well as the top of the infeed table in a long strip. (Fortunately, the leak ran directly to the outfeed table, and not down into the cutterhead!)
The fix was simple: Remove the fence and sand off the rust on the bottom edge, ditto the table, follow with steel wool and some paste wax, and reassemble. There’s a dark line on the table now, but that doesn’t really bother me, and you can barely see it because it’s directly under the fence.
In short, no serious damage, a quick fix for the minor damage there was, and a heads-up on that light fixture housing – which I’ve since caulked.
Plus, a renewed respect for Mother Nature, of course.
A.J.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.