Wader's Weekend Accomplishments....

[Dennis Peacock]

Well, aother weekend has come and gone. We survived the severe storms and tornado's in our area last night and yesterday afternoon.

No real shop time this weekend....just yard work.

Hidden Gloat......!!!! I have a new M12V!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Router

[Stan Smith]

I turned a little box and tried to turn off the spigot. I torqued down too much on the spigot jaws and torn the box in half. Since I had just got a treen mandrel setup I decided to give it a try. Discovered that I needed a 1 1/4" drill bit and a thin kerf parting tool. Also they showed a live center using a cup rather than a point. I dutifully headed to the Lee Valley site. $154 later.. I'm now waiting for the tools to come but I will try another box today---with much greater care this time. The lesson here? Never let an accountant build anything.

[Jim Becker]

After several weeks of "spring" things, like tractor maintenance and "feature upgrades", the first lawn cutting, painting of what was my grandmother's metal outdoor patio furniture, some home repairs, etc., I finally got back into the shop for some meaningful woodworking late yesterday afternoon. 'Built the first carcass for our kitchen renovation planned for this summer after dragging home 15 sheets of birch plywood on Saturday. I guess I'll be slinging sheet goods for awhile! (Not my favorite material...I like solid wood)

[Dave Avery]

Finally got a chance to use my new vacuum press...... made some beautiful quilted maple panels for a king size bed that's in process. I have to say that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop..... the glue application and pressing went extremely well the first time out. I'll only claim victory after the panels have the finish applied..... Dave.

[Steve Clardy]

some of it. Got some mowing done betweens the rains and storms. Cut some brush, built a clamp rack for some clamps that have been about everywhere in the shop. Finally going to get them on the wall next to the others. Goofed off some, more than I needed to. Listed some mechanical tools on Ebay I no longer need. Speciality truck engine tools.
Goofed off some more. Watched all the storms on tv. We were kinda in the middle of them here in Missouri. North of us 3 hours, south of us 1 1/2 hours. East of us 1 hour. Wheew. Just more rain and a little wind here. Steve

[Allan Johanson]

After three years in this house I'm finally getting the shop wired! No more crazy homemade extension cords from the dryer outlet to power up my tablesaw. I also love the new lighting! I went from three 2-bulb flourescent lights to a total of 12 of them. Plenty of light in there now. If you've been working "in the dark" as I have been the past few years, do yourself a favor and install more light. You'll be glad you did.

Now I just have to build a bunch of cabinets and my cyclone. It's getting there....slowly....

Allan

[Scott Coffelt]

Garage Sale sucked up Friday Night and Saturday. Sunday in between the nasty storms in the KC area, I installed a new 50 gal hot water heater. Of course my shop looked like it was hit by a tornado, so I can't find the right tools. WH is in a working as of 7:00PM last night.

Think goodness I replaced it when I did, it had a WH blanket on it and when it was removed, I really got to see the problems. The seams where buckled and the thing could not have been far from birsting.

Alert: I would not recommend a WH blanket. They do keep the tank from working as hard, but they can cause them to get too hot and you can not see anything underneath them unless you take it off regularly for maintenance. My 2 cents.

Stared to work on installing the Delta motor blower to the DE cyclone, decided to wiat it out and order the PSI 14" blower for cyclones instead.

[Paul Regan]

Hello all,
After many years of making do with a small benchtop router table, I built a large (38’’ high, top is 2 feet by 3 feet) router table for my basement shop. I’ll make a fence for it a night this week and try to build in some fence mounted dust collection. Best of all, I built it out of left-overs from other projects, so the only real expense was the router plate.

My wife congratulated me and then asked if this would make building the furniture item on her list easier for me. (Bureaus, new side table, new coffee table, headboards for the girls’ beds…)


Paul

[David Hayes]

Spent most of Saturday building keepsake boxes out of lacewood with padauck (sp?) trim/accents from a Wood mag plan for a niece (graduation gift) and my daughter (end of school year gift). Also cleaned the rust inhibitor and set up the iron in the new Veritas 4 1/2 plane (stealth gloat & first bench plane - a big step up from the $10 Stanley block plane bought a few years ago). Got a nice shaving from the edge of a poplar board that I could see light through - now I know what many of you guys have meant about the addiction of hand planes!
Sunday started out well with a good church service and lunch. That evening, stayed bunkered down as the storms passed through from 10:30 PM to 2 AM. We came through the storm okay but there was loss of life all around us and one of our schools was damaged.

[Lars Thomas]

This weekend, I built a oak Air Return Grate based on the plans and procedures from a recent Wood magazine (11/02, I think).

My friend is please with how well it turned out. He did the finishing. I am once again reminded how much I dislike when someone else finishes my work. They just don't do it the way I would. Oh well.

Plus, I spread 12 yards of mulch yesterday. I need another weekend to rest! Lars

[keith zimmerman]

Well, its spring time in Central Illinois farm country and the rain has been falling. This part of the country has some of the blackest, richest soil I have ever seen. What that means is that I seem to have the fastest growing grass on the planet. It grew 8" in the past week. I sat on my mower for 5 hours on Saturday and mowed my entire property. Most of the time was spent trimming around my 70+ trees. Thank God my mower has a zero turning radius. I can get to within an inch of anything.

I also worked at getting an old angle iron table scraped down and sprayed a good of primer on it. Next week, I'll give it a good coat of enamel and cut a new top. It will be perfect for either my grinder or a drill press.

I also tried and died when building a sharpening jig for my lathe tools. Oh well, I guess I'll try a different design.

keithz

[Bruce Page]

I got roped into planning, cross cutting, ripping & routing 300bf of 6/4 red oak for a co-worker that is replacing a stairway in his home. Whew! That 6/4 gets really heavy after awhile.

[John Miliunas]

Nothing too interesting. Spent Sat. morning hauling junk from the shed to the annual "Garbage Day" at the town hall. Sitting on my JD, cutting grass, pretty much ate up the rest of the day. Sunday repainted inside of shop door w/oil-based stuff. Man, does that stuff have a tendency to run! Also, cut off an old exhaust vent (for one of those downdraft stoves) and installed a "new and improved" model. Just other misc. stuff on the "honey-do" list. Not a stitch of WW!:mad: :( Oh well...There's always next weekend! Have a great week, all! :cool:

[John Sanford]

Finished up building 3 36"W x 16"D x 80"H utility shelf units for the shop that were started last weekend. The on Sunday I moved most the stuff out of one half of the shop, put the 3 units in place, then put the sheet goods on top of them. Sheet goods storage is the primary purpose of the units. Then all the stuff that came out of the shop went back in. Okay, most went back in, some went into the trash.

Then off to Utah to catch a performance of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (title???)

All in all, a good weekend, getting a major project finished in one week was quite pleasant, although all the dust from moving stuff about was a bummer. (Hanging the filtration system is next on the shopwork list.)