Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

29 Aug 2011

Good Morning Everyone,
To all of my east coast ww'ing friends/families/associates, I offer your my prayers for a quick recovery for all of you. The weather here has been hot and dry. We've been blessed with some rain and cooler temps have moved in for a bit and that has been a welcomed break from the heat.

My 10 year old J.D. lawn mower is finally giving up on me. I spent almost $600 2 years ago hoping to get more out of it and I did...2 more years. This time, I'm looking at getting a Zero Turn mower. My SIL sells Toro with the Kawasaki V-Twin motors in them. I will go and see them today.

The story on my dad is that he's getting a lot more frail and his memory is now going. The hospice care nurse says that she's not sure if it's from the disease (bone cancer) or from the medication....or both. My mom is stressed out to the max and now I'm back into the planning stages of going to stay with them for a week to see what all I can do to help them. I've had 4 trips to stay so far this year and I am very thankful for my motorcycle that saves me almost 60% on fuel costs on these 800 mile round trips to help my parents.

The temps are getting cool enough to stir the desire for me to get back in the shop, but due to family medical issues and work, my time has gotten even more limited and I simply have chosen family over woodworking. I will continue the Weekend Accomplishments posts and I will keep up as best I can, but I really need to focus on family for a while now. I know my ww'ing family/friends will understand. I mean, it's not like I've done a lot of ww'ing in the past 2 years any way.

All of you are in my heart and in my prayers. Remember me and my family when you can.

Well, that's it for me...so what did you do this past weekend??

Best of weeks to you all.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Thoughts and prayers for you and your family Bibs!

Completed 2 of the 4 sliding shelves for the entertainment center.

Stopped building long enough to clean it to make a safe environment. My name isn't John Keeton.

[Matt Meiser]

School starts here a week from tomorrow (MI state law says school must start after Labor Day) so we went school shopping trip for LOMLjr. Saturday we hit the outlet mall in Birch Run, MI, the came part way home and spent the night before going to a few more places. It made for a long weekend. Since we stayed in the northern suburbs of Detroit I got a chance to visit Performance Tool which touts itself as Michigan's largest tool store which is probably accurate as it appears to be a former 50's-60's era grocery store and uses the whole building. I picked up a Kreg band saw fence kit I've been wanting to get.

Wednesday I am are expecting delivery of the cherry ordered from Irion for my parents' dining table so I'll be getting going on that very soon.

[Jerome Hanby]

Finished up a flooring project at my parent's house. Cleaned up in the shop a little and tried to fix a glue up error on some edge banding. My Woodriver scraper did a great job cleaning up the glue squeeze out and an x-acto knife worked to force some glue into a crack left over because I didn't position one of my clamps correctly.

[David Hostetler]

I built a quick and dirty t track table for my Harbor Freight mortiser so that I could use holddowns instead of the lousy OEM clamp and tested it. It works far better than I could have hoped!

While I had the regular general purpose blade out, I took the opportunity to clean it, my ripping, and dado blades, so now I have some nice, clean blades to work with. And of course, I spent plenty of quality time cleaning shop.

Honestly there really wasn't that much shop time though, less than 3 hours. I had been plenty sick last week, and was still more or less on the mend. So I took it pretty easy over the weekend. I did get to watch a couple of movies with LOML, one I wish we could get the time back for... It was truly awful. An hour and a half of sexual innuendo and bad gay jokes all wrapped up as a fairy tale of sorts starring Natalie Portman. Ms. Portman should be embarassed that she even read the screenplay let alone acted in this thing...

The other one, called Paul, while I didn't care for the blatant attacks on people of faith, it was a fairly funny movie. Probably not something I would have paid full price at the theater for, but something fun to watch On Demand.

[Jay Maiers]

I finished setting up a Rigid contractor style table saw. I got it in trade for my Rigid portable. Not a bad deal, even though the new-to-me saw needs a bit of TLC, adjustment, and rust removal.

I finally got around to starting a till for my hand planes. I made a prototype tray out of plywood and MDF; the surrounding cabinet, shelf, and hinge system are on my hit list for this week.

[Will Winder]

In preparation for potential flooding I decided to clean up the shop, I decided it would be easier to vacuum up the dust on Saturday rather than shovel it up on Monday. Fortunately my basement with a history of flooding is still dry and I didn't even lose power. Can't say the same for the rest of the town, there are at least a couple power lines that failed to sto falling trees.

Other than that I've been futzing around with a treadmill motor I hope to install on my lathe.

[Mike Goetzke]

I'm in the middle of my tenure project - kitchen remodel. I counted about 60 raised panels required :eek: (counting end caps etc.). Working out of my garage shop I've been building the doors about 10 at a time so I can manage the parts. On this wave I have 13 doors and 17 panels. Last night I was figuring it out and starting from Friday evening I made over 500 cutting/routing operations :eek::eek:!!! ....and that doesn't count all the sanding I had to do on the panels to ready them for assemby after work this week. But, I'm still enjoying it. One thing I found out quick, especially since I have a day job, is to label everything and find a good place to stack it.

Mike

[John Shuk]

I weathered Irene with no real issues. Lots of damage in my area but not to my house and my electric only went down for and hour or so while they fixed something else.
Dennis,
Please remember that the Hospice folks are also there for your Dad's family. There are counselors and chaplains who would likely be able to help Mom with the stress. There are many benefits to Hospice that folks don't avail themselves of. You and your family are in my prayers.

[Christopher Pine]

Worked on some Post Office Box Door banks for my uncle. He has been after me to do this for him for a few years now. He had some doors he wanted used for this purpose. Coming along nicely and should be ready for this weekend for his visit.

Chris

[Jim O'Dell]

Dennis, prayers for your family. And I'll ask for some for my Dad as well. We found out today and said that Dad had fallen several times. I was with the 2 and 3 weeks ago as we moved them into an assisted living complex. Took Dad to the Dr. today, they did a CT scan and found that his brain is bleeding on both sides. Loaded him into a ambulance and took him to Oklahoma City. Just got off the phone with Mom who just got their within the last hour as she had to find someone to driver her up. They will likely do surgery tomorrow. Dad thought that they might have done it today if Mom had been there. How did we find out about it??? Some friends of theirs there at Lake Texhoma where they have lived for the past 25 years,live in the same town as my wife's sister and family, and told her. Elizabeth called Glenna to see how things were going and if they needed to help in any way. Glenna said "About what?" I've not read Mom the riot act yet, but after this settles down, there are some things she needs to understand.
Shop stuff....Hmmm I did pull my defunct ROS out of the trash heap, glued the pad on and used it to sand the drywall mud I put up on the family room/kitchen ceiling last weekend. I think it really is toast now, but couldn't bring myself to use the new one for this messy job. My hand sander was less messy, but would have taken me another 2 weekends to do timewise, if my shoulders could have held up. Now to see if I'll have the long weekend to prime, cut in lights, texture, prime and paint. Thanks for letting me unload. Jim.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Jim....your Dad, Mom and your family are in my thoughts and prayers!

[Peter Scoma]

Bad weekend for parents it seems. My dad is recovering from his 4th operation in 2 years to manage stage 4 colon cancer. Seems depression is starting to set in as he just doesnt want to do much. Removing a met from his brain last year left him with impaired fine motor function in his hand which makes writing nearly impossible. Hes been talking about making a secretariat from figured maple but I dont know if he is able to do so with his hand. I was thinking of just picking up the lumber from Hearne and driving it down to see if it gets him moving a bit. Other than that the weekend was spent vacuuming water off my oak shop floor. It looks like the boards cupped a bit so I might have to sand and refinish the floor in the future. Sucky weekend all around.

PJS