Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

11 Jan 2010

Good Morning,
It's been really cold here (well, to us it's been really cold) and with temps near the single digits, that pretty cold here. Some of the mornings reminded me of some of the times I had when I was stationed in Italy many years ago.

Been planning out things to do in the shop and I had a lady bring me a chair of hers that she desperately need to have repaired. I guess this year, I will be teaching myself how to make chairs as well as how to repair them. I still have people that want some of my cutting boards so I'll be working on more of those at the temps begin to warm just a tad.

Been staying busy keeping the woodstove going, keeping the wood pile moving from behind my shop to the back porch of the house. It's been a good time overall and I've really enjoyed friends coming over and all huddling around the stove for hot chocolate or coffee.

The LOML and I are making plans on continuing forward with doing upholstery here in the other end of my shop. We've already started working on getting the old "playroom" all setup for upholstery work. We are excited about it and are trying to learn what we can as time permits.

Well, that's it for me on this 21º morning (cold enough to keep me off my motorcycle)....so what did YOU do this past weekend??

Best of weeks to you all.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Hi Dennis -

A very laid back weekend for us. Two of the kids were sick, so we wanted to give them some 'down time'. The third still had to go to church and CCD though :)

I started in on a new crosscut sled for my TS, since the old one would not fit. Cut the miter guides and planed some 2x6 oak for the fence last night. I want to do this one differently (using some T-track in the rear fence, and maybe some sort of track or slot in the base for a hold down). It's only 1/2" MDF (the base), so I might make this one "plain" for larger x-cuts, and make a smaller one with 3/4" ply for the base so I can insert some t-track. I've been reading a lot of the sled posts on SMC.

[Jim O'Dell]

I too kept a fire going Friday and Saturday. Tried to during the night but my portable alarm clock didn't go off and when I did wake up, the fire was out. We had a new air handler installed about 2 years ago. Went from a unit designed for a 3 ton unit to 5 ton. I guess when the heat strips come on now with it this cold, it kept popping the breaker for the inside unit shutting things down. :( House is pretty tight and is insulated pretty well. It was about 63 in the house both mornings. Once the outside temp got up above 28, the unit would work ok without throwing the breaker.
Watched the Cowboys do what seemed to be the unbelievable 5 weeks ago. :rolleyes: Good games yesterday on TV.
It finally warmed up enough yesterday afternoon to venture into the shop. I got to looking a the dado insert for the new saw, and it didn't have provisions for holding the back end down like the regular insert did. (a hole tapped with a screw in it that goes through a slot in the undercarriage of the CI top to keep the insert from lifting.) So I marked the dado insert, drilled, tapped, and found a machine screw to fit to make it work. Then it was too cold to stay out there. ;)
Have a great week! Jim.

[Dave Gaul]

Watched the Cowboys do what seemed to be the unbelievable 5 weeks ago. :rolleyes:
That's funny Jim! I watched the Eagles do what seemed to be the unbelievable 2 weeks ago!

Friday night took my daughters shoe shopping for the one and for me... was actually kinda fun!

Saturday, put some finishing touches on the drawing table I made for my oldest daughter for Christmas.

Yesterday I took my RotoZip apart and fixed it, well for now! The internal fan came off the shaft and grinded away a ton of plastic, but it should work for a while now! Also made some repair parts for a coworker's daughter's jewelry box which he stepped on and damaged.

[Matt Meiser]

My company's annual meeting and holiday party were Friday and I had a pre-meeting Thursday so I flew to St Louis Thursday morning. After having one flight canceled, I managed to get out of Detroit before the "storm" hit here and got there right after it left there. Flew home on Saturday after breakfast with family.

Sunday morning I helped Damon Marxer wire in his DC remote. Came home and relaxed for a little bit and just as I was getting ready to head out to the shop LOML informed me that the hot tub was displaying an error code and "wouldn't do anything." Resetting the power cleared the error code but unfortunately the lines had already frozen up and despite a couple hours of trying I couldn't get them thawed. And the drain line was also frozen so I can't even drain it. Maybe it won't be a total loss when it warms up but I suspect it is. At least if it is, its an excuse to stop throwing money into it in the form of maintenance and energy. Ended up not making it to the shop by the time I thawed out.

Won't get any shop time for at least the next week, probably longer, unless I can sneak out tonight.

[Derek Gilmer]

My wife's parents came into town unexpectedly Saturday night. It is always great to see them but even more so when I saw what they had brought with. Her father picked up a new table saw for me for Christmas but then heavy rains trapped it on high ground surrounded by rice fields. So the water finally came down enough for them to bring it. Needless to say I was floored and someone speachless when I got to unload my new baby a shiny new G1023SLWX :eek:.
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And my ever great wife had surprises for me as well a mobile base and Incra 1000HD to go with it :D. The electrician is coming tomorrow to run the 220 30 amp circuit since the breaker box was full it was a little more complicated than I wanted to tackle.

Sadly church and social commitments have kept her in the unassembled naked state above. That ends tomorrow, taking vacation time to meet the electric guy and finish assembly and tuning. Better pictures once it is all assembled an ready to go for now the iphone snapshot will have to do. The garage/shop smells perfect now. I mix of rough cut lumber and packing grease :cool:

[Fred Voorhees]

Very quiet weekend around here as far as any kind of work being done. The better half and I played grandparents from Friday night through Sunday morn when we returned the scamp. With the new Jet 12" J/P on order, I checked a few possibilities for selling my old Delta 6" jointer and all of them were dead ends. I threw it onto CraigsList on Thursday evening and Friday night, I had a guy picking it up. Couldn't ask for a faster sale than that!

With the jointer gone, work is pretty much at a standstill in the shop right now and I am basically going over in my head how I am going to accomplish getting the beast up a set of stairs to my shop. I need to run a dedicated circuit for it and also fabricate a mobile base for it. So, while things aren't happening in the shop.....they are in my noggin'!

[Jim Becker]

Spent some time in the shop this weekend doing about half of a much over-due "deep cleaning" and also constructed a sheet goods storage area. More and more of my projects are involving this material and the old location for this stuff was getting too difficult to deal with. I'm sacrificing opening of one pair of exterior doors (but still have the benefit of light from the windows in them, but workflow should be so much easier now. I still have a lot of work to do on this cleaning thing, but alas, I need to make for some better organization going forward, especially if I start making some tack trunks for others from time to time. The rest of the weekend was equestrian oriented plus taking down the Christmas tree, etc.