Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

6 Aug 2012

Good morning everyone,
It's been a long and hard weekend for me. I come off of oncall duty at 8 AM CT today....then I will become a free man once again. I'm currently functioning on total mental exhaustion. I should sleep well tonight though. :)

Still hot and dry here but we have had a couple of small rain showers here. Still not enough for the trees to turn from brown to green. Temps outside are still way too hot to work in the shop. I still say....come on Fall. :)

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

Best of weeks to you all.

[David Hostetler]

I have finished picking up, or at least ordering all the components I need for my Main panel replacement, and sub panel job excluding the feeder wire for the sub panel, conduit, a hub, and some liquid tight fittings. The permits should be getting pulled next week, and we should be ready to pull the trigger second week of September. I am looking forward to this!

I ended up cutting off the mortiser accessory rack from my SCMS / Mortiser accessory bench, planing everything smooth, and re-mounting it 2" below the original point. Now none of the chisels will interfere with anything. It's good!

I removed the shelf from above, and next to the first clamshell cabinet, and moved the second off the wall entirely.

A quick Amazon order has a BUNCH of 2" peg hooks coming my way. These seem to be my favorite size, they work best with the clamshell cabinets, and there only seem to be 2 or 3 to a 50 piece peg hook kit from the BORG, so I bought 2 50 packs from Amazon instead...

LOML voluntold me to mow the back slope to the Bayou. The city is responsible for that, but the grass is now 5' tall. They seem to by avoiding mowing behind my property line more than others. Everyone else's grass is only 3.5 feet tall. There are a lot of dead fall limbs behind my fence. I weed whacked down as much as I could, removed as many limbs as I could, and mowed as far as I could. I want the area at least 20' back from my fence line mowed, that way snakes and rodents will give LONG and careful consideration to the idea of being that long in the open as there are all sorts of birds of prey along the bayou... I know why the city isn't mowing, or spraying for mosquitoes, or fixing traffic lights, or... they say they are broke. Oh well that's another story... My yard guys might get voulnteered to handle this task too... I don't want to do it, and the city won't...

I put in a bunch of cedar shavings into gallon water jugs, and am steeping them in the sun on the back deck. Once the stuff gets good and dark, I will run the stuff through some strainer funnels into a clean sprayer. I use this stuff on my lawn and in particualr around my bushes, it keeps the bugs, most specifically the mosquitoes away. However I do fear it attracts small furry critters thinking my lawn is an overgrown gerbil cage...

[Matt Meiser]

Saturday morning I made a run to the local hardwood dealer for a little more maple to make the trim, toe kicks, and a few other miscellaneous pieces to finish up my laundry room project. I found that they now stock shoe molding in maple which was perfect for some of the trim I needed with no need to do the milling myself. I got all the frames made/fit for the qainscoting as well as all the trim. Cut the panels that fit inside the frames, sanded, raised the grain, resanded, and started spraying them with stain and went to refill the cup from a new can of stain to find it was bad. JUST squeaked out enough to finish those. They will get sprayed with EM6000 today and be done but I'll have to wait to start the frames and trim until a couple more quarts of stain show up from Woodcraft hopefully tomorrow but maybe Weds. My local Woodcraft placed the order for me since they are out of stock on the color I need and aren't positive they are getting any on today's truck.

I'm making a big push this week to get at least the necessary frames done so I can get the rest of the base cabinets installed by the end of next weekend and get the granite people in for templating ASAP.

[Shawn Pixley]

Slow weekend here. Started the finishing schedule on a gift I am building for my nephew. Sunday cleaned the shop (garage) and organized some things that had been annoying me.

[Paul Sikorski]

Clean up and tool tune up weekend at my shop. Narrowed downmy scrap pile to a reasonable level and gave the rest out for fire wood. Pulledthe front trunion bracket off of my saw it was cracked. My Dad’s buddy brazedit (did a killer job). So it was reassemble and align. Got it down to about.001 difference between the front and rear of the blade. All in all I couldnt be happier with the result and how quick it went. Adjusted the jointer blades and almost donealigning the tables. That’s a frustrating job. I even emailed a couple machineshops to see what the cost would be to have them regrind the tops perfectlyflat. Replaced a capacitor in my bandsaw its up and running. Getting ready for vacation were going to see my Nephew he Graduates from the Marines next Friday cant wait to see him. Got a lot done butalways so much to do.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Time permitting, I have been trying to learn how to create hand-cut dovetails that actually look acceptable. So, last month I started cutting dovetails by hand in earnest. I started with two drawers (so eight corners) done in 3/4" Cherry. So four joints half blind and four joints normal. Not too hot.

I then made a box out of cherry with four pins and tails. Not too good.

Next I made two boxes out of cherry that is 1/2" thick and about three inches wide.

Now that was a problem because I did not have room to pare out the waste with the chisels I had on hand. So, I bought some lee valley detail chisels. Let me say WOW, very nice.

http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.aspx?p=46035&cat=1

OK, so those boxes are done and I have done 12 joints by hand with not very good results, but, I felt like I was starting to get the hand of it. So, I decided to cut a set a day for the next month.

Those lee valley detail chisels are about the sharpest things I have ever owned, and it convinced me that I needed to re-evaluate my sharpening a bit so I did some work on a bunch of chisels (I have some more to do, and some were some old stock I just acquired from my Father who got them from my GrandFather). Something about a taking a chisel up to a 16000 grit stone that makes it wicked sharp.

My practice dovetail joints are done on 1/2" thick stock about 3" wide, and I am cutting three tails / pins in each.

My current regiment is to mark the top line (in the end grain) for each tail. I set the board at an angle and cut from that top line (no lines on the side).

I then use a Knew Concepts Titanium saw to cut out the waste. I am not great at that, but I am improving. I am amazed at how much easier this saw is to work with than my other saws. Part of this is the saw and part of this is the super fine blade that trivially gets into the cut and removes the waste. I am a believer... I then pare the wee bit that is left to the needed depth (which I marked with a marking gauge.

http://www.knewconcepts.com/titanium.php

Next, I mark the pins along the end grain, but do not bother to drop the vertical line. I then cut down and remove the waste as before.

My test cut last night required no paring on the sides. It was a bit tight (probably too tight), but I was able to whack that thing together and it looked pretty good. So I am beginning to get the hang of it. I need to figure out a good light that I can set for cross lighting. I have a lamp that is just not suitable, but I need it to set some of my cuts.

Regardless, I am very happy that I finally managed to get a chisel sharp enough to make me happy and that I finally seem to be getting the hang of hand cut dovetails that are not totally embarrassing.