No Pound Shop or full fat Sainsbury within 20 miles or so so hunting for cutting boards in person isn't practical. E-Bay shows 5 mm thick 35 x 23 cm plain white ones for around £2.50 a pop. Are these the same sort of thing? I know many of the inexpensive variety are flexible.

Current 80 hole rack is around 44 x 35 cm so two cutting boards per rack should work. A dedicated cabinet with two slide out shelf pattern drawers looks good way to go.

HPDE was on my list as a likely candidate but economy option would be to patchwork together from several pieces. Need to be pretty confident in material and thickness for that much effort.

Mike has highlighted my other big worry. Clearly plastic can be just fine as my current rack has lasted over 20 years with no ill effects on collets. Be nice to know if there are any to be avoided.

Thanks

Clive.

Looks good Jason.

Clearly you have no problem with MDF dust.

I'd always believed that it's nearly impossible to eradicate all traces of semi-loose dust from the inside of holes in MDF. If this were so then with something like collet rack there would always be some risk picking up tiny traces when taking out and putting back. But Johns varnish with dilute PVA sounds an effective solution unless a real mess is made of the hole when cutting.

I guess those round cutters kitchen fitters use for hinge recesses et al do neater job than ordinary hole saws

Time to investigate the stash from the last kitchen re-fit methinks!

Clive

John

Wow. Thanks for the compliment.

Dust issue came from tea break comments when I was still working for RARDE / DERA / DRA / QinetiQ during chats about equipping a new optics lab (not mine). Bloke in charge of the work suggested storing pin mounted carriers upright in an MDF plate full of holes. Same sort of thing as we are talking about albeit smaller holes. A respected co-worker, whose opinion was generally at least good on most subjects advised against it, as he knew of someone at another establishment who had had dust problems with this approach. Not great but enough to be a right hassle in the context of an optical lab. These were ascribed to small particles being rubbed off the holes when things were removed and put back. MDF changed for delrin and problem gone. Bloke having the lab done at our place used delrin. Equivalents in my lab were made by the establishment woodwork shop before my time. Some sort of close grained hardwood, lovingly polished, stained and multiply varnished. Total overkill on the taxpayers money! Hopefully an apprentice product.

Obviously third or fourth hand info so limited reliability and no way for me knowing if its a real problem or just bad technique in that particular case. Generally MDF and I don't get on that well and I've always found it needful to put a bit of extra effort into ensuring things are dust free before painting.

Dust in the collet thread affecting engagement and similar recurring minor issues are the sort of irritation that really pushes my buttons. Big stuff cope just fine. Small stuff danger UXB!

OCD?

Um, lets see, he's getting full sets of imperial x 1/64 th and metric x 0.5 mm 5C collets together. Put that down as a tick in the maybe box then. Oh, and stick another one in the yes box under overkill to whilst the clipboard is out.

Clive.