Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

9 May 2011

Good Morning Everyone,
The good news is that my parents have power restored to them in Alabama. They are still without cable, internet, or home phone, but they do have power and that's a big relief for them and for us.

I haven't done any woodworking but I've spent plenty of time on the road between Alabama and Arkansas in the last 2 weeks or so.

The LOML Jr's wedding is in 21 days so you can imagine what it's like around here most days.

I hope all the Mom here on the forum had a nice Mother's Day yesterday

Needless to say....that's all for me....so what did YOU do this past weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Shawn Pixley]

A weekend with no travel - hooray! Friday, I went to get a Global entry interview at LAX. Two hours each each way for my 30 minute interview. Should save time in the long run. Saturday was spent working on the tray I am building for a wedding present. We then had second Thanksgiving using the free turkey we were given last November. Great fun, good friends.

Sunday being Mothers' Day, I took LOML to breakfast. We had to stop by Woodcraft to get two odd sized forstner bits. She picked up two pieces of rosewood that she asked to be made into somthing for her. She then told me to buy the Festool drill that was on close-out. She spent balance of her day working on jewelry, me working on the tray. Nice dinner, great day.

Spent some time talikng with my Mother and Grandmother. They are a few thousand miles away, so things are a bit virtual right now. I hope everyones' mother had a great day.

[David Hostetler]

After finishing the garage / shop siding and trim replacement last weekend, I finally got around to shop cleanup this weekend. A LOT of the material that had been pulled off was staged in the shop for sizing templates. All of the remaining scrap hardi trim got stowed away on the lumber racks. I need to get to ripping the 1x4 into 1x2 so I can start on the front of the house soon!

The trim boards behind where the gutters were before Ike started showing the original brown color through the light cream I have them painted now, so another coat all the way around was applied this weekend.

The door jamb trim for the main bathroom is a non standard profile, so I was unable to source a replacement from the local home centers. Instead I took some more of my 2x6s that have been hogging up space in my lumber racks, and got busy ripping, flipping the ripping again. The roundover I noticed is smaller than the current trim stock I was able to find, but happened to match the factory roundover edge on 2x stock, so it was an easy fix. I got my now custom piece of trim installed, nail holes filled, and seams caulked. Now I just need to prime and paint in there!

My drill press accessories that happen to lack a case of any sort had been living in a shelf all the way across the shop from the drill press. I had a space of open wall, and more scrap from those 2x6's. This time some of it was resawn, face jointed, planed and ready to go. I ended up building a custom holder for my oversize forstner bits, spade bits, pilot drilling countersinks, regular countersinks, and my plug cutters. Not shown in the pic is after I applied a couple of coats of Watco Danish Oil.
http://inlinethumb40.webshots.com/45415/2744071510103915817S600x600Q85.jpg

I also spent some quality time with the mower, weed eater, edger, and garden hose. Considering how frighteningly dry it has been, these are LONG overdue... I was rewarded this morning by a burst of day lillies by the front door as I went to work! I need to snap a pic of them, they look great!

Oh and heaven forbid I forget, I gave the dog a bath.... He plays outside every other day with the neighbors labs, and gets stinky and filthy by the weekend... For a dog that is half labrador retriever, he sure doesn't like water much...

Another thing I did as well was I drug the air compressor out to the driveway and did my seasonal adjustment of air pressure on the tires on both cars and the pickup. The cars were easy, those 35x12.50/17 LTs on the pickup really tax my cheap air compressor!

I keep considering getting a bigger compressor in order to handle HVLP, but the space a bigger unit would consume bugs me, a LOT, and those turbine based HVLPs like the Earlex models, and even the HF unit, really have a great amount of appeal, other than spraying my little compressor does everything I want it to, and it is very space efficient which is important in a small shop... If I needed more capacity, I MIGHT consider just adding a reserve tank mounted up by the ceiling above my mechanics tool box. That is dead space anyway...

[Matt Meiser]

I did a lot of yard work. First thing Saturday we had someone come out and run a rototiller through the area that is going to be our garden and in the area of our front lawn that got damaged when we had our well deepened earlier this year. LOMLjr and I worked on getting that area ready for a little more topsoil and seeding. We'll start planting the garden next weekend with the things that go in as seeds. Then I started mowing the lawn but after 20 minutes it started pouring down rain. Sunday finished mowing, at least what I could since our whole side yard is too wet to mow. Then I moved some trees that we planted as seedlings that are now getting to be decent sized. I used a couple bags of sawdust I had to mulch around them.

In the shop I worked at planing some recycled cypress and cutting pickets for a small picket fence screen I'm going to build around the AC unit we moved from the house to the shop last year so the neighbors don't have to look at it off their deck, and so that its not quite so obvious to potential scrappers that might be looking for an easy target. Later we picked up posts and cement so I can get that installed in the next few days.

[Jim Becker]

Dennis, I have no doubt that everything is "hopping" around your house with the wedding soon to come and all the other family things on your plate!

As always, a good part of the weekend was spent "horsing around", including a Mother's Day ride with Professor Dr SWMBO. We started out with her on Elvis and myself on my new girlfriend Nellie and toward the end, we switched. It was her first time on Nellie since we bought her last week and she rode well for her Mother's Day treat. Here are some pictures of her on Nellie, a short video of me doing some canter work on Nellie and a shot of "the four of us" enjoying some green grass.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/Nellie/nellie-25.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/Nellie/nellie-26.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EG6bgmecco

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/horsie-family.jpg

I actually did get some time in the shop this weekend. I intended to do some cleanup and sharpening, but when I came home from the barn on Saturday after my riding lesson, my younger daughter, Alesya, brought a friend with her to hang out for awhile. Necessarily, I needed to distract the older (who has issues) so she wouldn't horn in on the younger girls' fun...so...Tia got to design and help make a simple lidded box.

I insisted that she work things out on paper first relative to dimensions. While I held the pencil, she had to think through the math. This was particularly important because she chose to have me cut mitered corners for the best look. (scrap 1/2" cherry plywood was used for the box and solid cherry for the lid). Once the "plan" was drawn, I cut out the pieces and then she applied the glue. She had trouble with the clamps, so I completed that part. While the box was setting up, we figured out the dimensions for the lid by measuring the actual size of the box (which varied slightly from the plan...no surprise there!) and I cut the piece out of some 3/4" thick scrap. She then chose an edge profile from my box 'o bits and I machined the lid, including rabiting around the bottom so that the lid was captured by the box. She then had to sand the top, both along the routed profiles and on the flat top. While she did that, I made a simple lid handle out of scrap black walnut. The sanding was a little challenging for her, both with patience and because she refuses to wear her glasses...something she really needs for close work. Oh, well...she's a teenager.

At any rate, the box turned out nice. It's simple and she enjoyed the time. It's not "fine cabinetry", but the smile was worth it. :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/tia-shop-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/tia-shop-2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/tia-shop-3.jpg

[Tony Bilello]

Not exactly over the weekend, but not too long ago.