You check the toolpath. You do an air cut. You eyeball the material location on the CNC machine, You double-check (maybe even triple check) the hold down locations on the material. But, sometimes, despite our best efforts, a router bit manages to “find” one of the aluminum hold downs you’re using. Ouch!! Most of my hold downs have a rubber grippy thing on the end and, after a router bit has found them a few times, the rubber isn’t very effective any more. No sweat, there’s a solution for this problem, and we can redo the grippy thing.
Plasti Dipto the rescue! This stuff is way more rubbery than plastic, and is actually designed to be used to put rubber grips on stuff like pliers. You can use it to add rubber handles to your tools, like your router wrenches. When you’ve clipped your hold downs a few times, and there isn’t enough rubber left on the tip to actually be able to call it a hold down anymore, you can use this stuff to reapply the rubber and make the hold down effective again. You’re back in business.
The Process
When you do this, be sure you follow the instructions on the can. You need to dip at the right rate to get the proper build of rubber. Do three coats or so to get a good thickness of rubber built up.
Shop Tips
Who wants to bang their head against the wall, or reinvent the wheel? The WWGOA Contributing Editors have been doing woodworking a LONG time, and have lots of experience. We’ve grabbed onto that experience and brought it to life, making sure we provide you with more shop tips so you can keep your shop, and your projects, moving forward.
George, i use the plasti-dip on my f-style clamps. When doing glue-ups, I have a habit of scraping my arms across the ends of the clamps and at times have had some nasty scratches from them. This eliminated that. Now if you can tell me how to preserve the remainder of the dip in the can after opening. Thanks for the videos.
Hello. Thanks for sharing this tip. Great idea, and good use of a very versatile product. As far as preserving it after opening, my understanding was that the new can design, which looks more like a paint can, was supposed to help with this. If not, perhaps dump it into another container that can be well sealed. That should at least help to extend the useful life.
Thanks
Paul-WWGOA