Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....New Years Edition

[Dennis Peacock]

2 Jan 2012

Welcome to 2012.!!!!

I hope all of you had a good New Year's weekend and that you are already making strong plans for 2012. This past weekend was all about family and friends visiting, even some from out of town, and spending time talking and catching up on old times. We put on our usual "junk food feast" for all who came to celebrate with us. We served homemade salsa & chips, cheese dip with medium hot sausage & chips, pizza rolls of all flavors, summer sausage, cheese, and crackers...and the list goes on and on from there. Today the LOML and I get back to our food plan and watching what we eat. We both are on a reduced calorie meal plan and it's been working well for us. My goal is to lose a total of 71 pounds by this time next year, so I'm going to do my best to see how well I do.

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

Best of weeks and happy new year to each of you.!

[Jim Becker]

Happy New Year! Aside from an outstanding riding lesson on Saturday and ringing in the New Year, the only thing of note about this weekend is...I caught a head cold. Darn... :o

[Matt Meiser]

I had Friday off and am taking today off so I'm not quite done yet. Friday I got up early, loaded the tractor up and went over to my parents' to spread a large dump truck load of gravel on their decrepit driveway so hopefully no one will get stuck in the spring--came close this past spring. I finished that up just as it started really raining, but not before caking everything in sticky wet limestone dust necessitating a stop by the car wash on the way home which is where I really got wet. In the afternoon I got a mobile base for my shaper made and painted and got all the baseboard trim for my shop painted. That was my first try spraying latex through my HVLP which worked very well.

Saturday I spent the whole day in the shop installing the trim. When I got to the corner where my water is located I decided that it would be a good time to flush out the water heater and in the process found that the sump pump that serves to drain the slop sink had failed. After messing around with all of that a few hours I finished up the trim and came inside in time to spend a couple hours in front of the TV waiting for the new year (which we almost missed "live" because LOML had paused the TV and we hadn't caught up!)

Sunday I went to pick up the new sump pump and had to accompany the girls to the mall. Ugh...not even a Sears at this mall to amuse myself for 5 minutes and the Borders is of course still empty. Got home to find that Home Depot had redesigned the sump pump, but not updated the dimension info on the package so back to Lowes to see if they had one that would fit and then HD to return the first. Also had to stop and pick up a hard drive because while in the shop I discovered that my shop PC's hard drive didn't want to see 2012--totally dead and doesn't even spin. Luckily with Windows Home Server I just boot from a CD, load a network driver, and 2 hours later the thing is back to where it was the night before. Now I'll have to call HP and see if they'll actually honor the warranty on the machine since its not even a year old. I suspect there will be major time consuming and/or costly hoops to jump through.

Today...TBD.

[Shawn Pixley]

Busy for me over the last week/weekend. I serviced a vacuum pump for LOML and finished dressing the anvil for her use. She is using it to do "foldforming". We had alloyed some silver and copper earlier so she was thinning that down prior to going in the mill. She also did some foldforming on copper prepartory to enamaling.

While she was banging on the anvil, I was finishing up the prongs from my second table. It got completly assembled. I inlayed the medalians but was unsatisfied with the initial work so I ended up redoing 3/4's of it.

I searched for 8/4 walnut at the various lumberyards around us. The plan was to lay this up to produce 16/4 stock for my next project, the guitar display case. I was unsastified with any of the existing stock there. A visit to my local Woodcraft had me finding a 6' length of 16/4 black walnut - perfect for my needs! Thanks, Bill! With this element ready, I needed to to work up the final details of the project prior to the first cut. I'll cover that in my Blog.

We ate well: curry, sushi, and soba noodles with tempura for the three evenings. Can't do much better than that in my estimation.

[John Olson]

I build a cutting board to replace one my daughter said was on the floor to much .

[Kyle Brooks]

Feel bad, this should go on last years. This is the jewelry cabinet that I built my mother for Christmas.
218020

[David Hostetler]

Spent the weekend entertaining in laws. Took LOML out on a date night last night. We were trying to catch a couple of movies but got the timing goofed up so we only caught the latest Muppet movie... I know a kids movie, but we wanted fun and light hearted...

What little shop time I did get in, I lined the clamshell tool cabinet shelves with heavy felt for my hand planes. So now all of the planes are well protected, and hidden from plain view (not contributing to clutter).

I did get some "woodworking" time as it were in. I have an old particle board computer desk that had a connector tear out of the MDF. I repaired the bridge with a strong tie connector plate and plenty of screws. I need to start designing a replacement for this behemoth... I like the design, but it doesn't work with my X-Rocker... Yeah I have a gaming chair @ my computer. LOMLs idea...

[Jerome Hanby]

Finished my first "Tom Clark" shop cabinet and got it mounted. Went back on another shop cabinet i built and added a face frame and built the shelves. Funny, the 'Clark" cabinets were supposed to be practically self squaring, but the one i just winged and added the face frame to was dead square where the other was off just a bit. I suspect that was just dumb luck.

Guess anything is a useful endeavor as long as you are learning. I've learned a few things about shop cabinets. First thing, I'm building a cabinet lift before I try to hang any more 6' x2' x2' units by myself<g>. Second, piano hinges are a huge pain in the backside, I'm guessing there is some better method to mounting them... Third, adding another "face frame" type piece along the back bottom edge would sure be handy for attaching a cleat when leveling the cabinet after mounting it on a french cleat.

[Rob Cunningham]

On Saturday afternoon, my son and I attended the NHL Winter Classic Alumni game at Citizens Bank Park :). To see Flyers players from the Stanley Cup teams skate one more time was fantastic. I was at the Flyers game in 1979 when Bernie Parent sustained a career ending eye injury. To see him put on the pads probably for the last time ever was a dream come true.
My wife and I spent a quiet New Years Eve as she is recovering from Pneumonia.

[Brian Tymchak]

Started New Years Resolution #2 - to make the shop more efficient to work in. ( #1 is to get back into shape... same as every year..:o).

I seem to waste a lot of time looking for things so the new strategy is a place for everything, everything in its place, and the place for everything is efficient. To that end, I built and mounted a bunch of small holders for my very infrequently used sockets and wrenches so they are now stored behind my small hardware bins, as opposed to (I hate to admit this..) just sitting on the end of a bench... :eek: Also hit on an idea of how to store my long clamps between the upper rails of my workbench. I cut some pieces to create round cross-rails that will mount between the long upper rails and the long clamps will sit on those cross-rails. Those cross-rails will be my very first turning project, which I hope to do tonight.