Home Machinist's Journal

Not very complex project but took up an afternoon monkeying around in the shop..which isnt a bad thing. 
I received a very nice Yeti cooler as a gift by a well meaning family member.  The intent was we could use it on our weekend overnight boating trips where we basically live on it a couple days at the marina.  Storage for our perishable food.  The issue is there's very limited space on a 26' boat and walking space in the cockpit is precious. No room in the cabin and the swim platform it would be in the sun and in the way.  So.  After playing around trying various locations to put it, the best compromise was as shown.   As luck would have it the fender compartment near the back table was almost the perfect size. All I needed was a way to temporarily support and something to attach straps to.   Checked my stock bin and half azz designed some quick attach cross bars out of 1/2 x 3 HDPE  Cut, machined and assembled the bars which worked out well except the sharp square edges seemed hard on the hands so I decided to bevel the edges.  Rather than do a dozen vise setups for 12 edges a part I figured to just use my router table and a chamfer bit with follower bearing.  way faster and easier.  That would have been easy except the hole in the router table I made years ago wasn't large enough for the bit.   That caused project #2   Dis-assemble router table and machine the center hole bigger.  In the end it worked out well but wow an hour worth of setup and work to open up a simple hole for 5 minutes of routing some plastic!  At least I improved the router table for the next time.   I know many router tables have drop in plates for zero clearance etc which is the way to go but mine was a homemade deal from a drop off Blanchard ground plate I acquired for zero.  All I had at the time was a craftsman drill press so to even put a 1" hole was a feat.  Anyway I thought it was funny how even making something simple ends up with even more projects the shop fully involved, tools and stuff everywhere and a mess to clean up after. 
Glad I don't do "hey mans" for $   I'd starve. Hehe.

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Ya gotta love it when you get to use the machinery to create something useful!  Makes me feel kinda justified in my hobby when that happens!