People seem to be getting hung up on the half flat part of this design. Firstly, what is the real reason for the half flat to begin with? Is it just so that the set screw has something flat to rest against? You don't need to do more than slightly flattening one surface to do that. I would think the set screw would hold even on the round surface.
If the only reason is so that the inner rod can't fall out of the outer tube, OK, I can kind of see that. But rather than jump through hoops, why don't you rip the inner rod in half, then just glue full chunks on the ends. Or, use a router to flatten one side a bit. With the router, you could keep the ends full round and flatten one side and it seems a lot easier than trying to do it on the table saw. Or, how about this. Use a tube with a larger diameter than the rod. Glue a cap on the working end of the tube with a hole in it the size of the rod. Then attach a chunk of wood to either end of the rod that is the same size as the tube, thus too large to fit through the hole in the cap. Personally, I would prefer a square block on the working end of the rod, rather than just the round rod, that way it would keep the system from rolling. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu Tel: (412) 268-9081
