Scavenging from the electron users
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>A while back, I picked up a free saber (modern term: jig) saw at a garbage sale, an old Skil in poor shape. I salvaged the operating end - the rod on which the chuck sits - which I'll call the spindle here, for lack of knowing the right term. The end of the spindle happened to fit in the hole in a file handle I had, and happened to have a 1/8" cross-hole. Last week, needing to cut holes in the lath-and-plaster ceiling of our house for installing the smoke detectors (part of the kitchen remodel), I finally got around to drilling the file handle for a 1/8" roll pin that went through the cross hole in the spindle, et voil�!, a small jab/keyhole saw that takes commonly available blades.
It didn't work so well for the lath/plaster, because the plaster wore out fine blades, like metal-cutting blades, too quickly; and coarser blades, like the scrolling blade in the picture, caught in the lath. I have to confess that the most effective tool yet for this was the 4" hole saw my son loaned me for the last hole, which then required lots of spray foam to fill the edges of the hole.
Still, I'll be interested to see how my new saw works for other projects.