Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

2 Jun 2014

Good Morning Everyone,
The rain has finally stopped. My driveway is a total wreck. It's like walking on a stiff trampoline!!!! Reminds me of seeing the LOML stir up a stiff cream when cooking. I simply have no idea how to fix that and I have to figure something out before Friday because that's when they will deliver the MIL's POD. They already cancelled delivery once because of the rain and were concerned about being able to make delivery. I'm just as concerned as well. It's difficult for even us to get in and out of the driveway without dragging the bottom of the vehicles.

More framing will take place this week. I'm off work this week to help and direct the project. Getting closer to having to do the electrical work and such and I still need to find and borrow one more decent sized generator since I will be without power for about 2 days. Good progress has been made and I'm really enjoying the work.

That's all for me, so what did YOU do this past weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Matt Meiser]

Mostly house stuff. We were supposed to take a second look at a FSBO house we liked on Friday evening but got a call that they accepted an offer Friday morning. Since we saw it the first time without our agent he talked them into letting us see it a second time anyway so he could understand what we liked about it. Then went over to take a look at a second house. Sunday we took a second look at the house from Friday night and wrote an offer. Waiting on the response to that. Had two first showings on our house, one Saturday morning, another Sunday. Both responded with questions which shows they at least didn't hate it.

Saturday afternoon I installed an aftermarket grill on my truck and hand-washed it inside and out for the first time this year (to be fair I had it professionally detailed in April and go to the car wash every 1-2 weeks so it wasn't that bad.) Then washed LOML's car twice, went over the whole car with a clay bar (which is like magic eraser for a car's paint) and gave it a good coat of wax while she cleaned the inside. One of these days I need to get it over to a car wash, let it cool good, and clean the dust and road grime from the engine compartment which will get us 85% of what the detail place did on my truck.

[Charles Taylor]

My wife and I made two trips to the lighting store on Saturday, and I hung three different lights over the kitchen table so she could decide on one of them. She's left it to me now to make the final choice between two of them.

I spent some time in the workshop cleaning up the base of the drill press I'm restoring--the base had been in an electrolysis bath for a few days to remove rust and paint--and making a bending strap for my first adventure in steam bending, which may happen next weekend.

[Dale Murray]

For a little side money I shoot weddings with another pro - camera money pays for my woodworking tools.

This weekend the bride suffered a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction at the hotel (before wedding); the zipper on her dress completely separated with zippy thing only connected to one side and no way to feed it back together. The bridesmaids were trying to tape or pin her into the dress having given up on the zipper.

I asked permission to give a try at fixing it.

Using a multitool I pried open half the zippy bit, the bridesmaids held the halves of her dress as I reassembled the zipper. A quick pinch on the zippy thing as all was well. Everything held together for the entire night.

I am inordinately proud of this accomplishment. Something really rewarding about saving the day for a really nice bride.

Something else very cool is my wife rehabbing this garage sale find.
She repainted it last year. On Saturday she reupholstered it while I was off saving weddings.

Not bad for her first attempt.
Now she wants a pneumatic upholstery stapler - NEW TOOLS FOR ME TO USE!

290489

[Rod Sheridan]

It was cupboard team weekend so the ladies were over using my shop to make cupboard doors.

The only thing I did was move a bunch of the urban oak I milled last summer into the shop.

I'm not going to get much done this week, and next week I'm working in Virginia so no shop time then either.......Rod.

[Julie Moriarty]

I sprayed the final coats of lacquer on a guitar for a friend. People are wondering about me since I got into guitars. I'm actually completing projects!

[Bill McNiel]

Golf Friday, dinner at a friend's house, enough wine to spend the night. Half of Saturday recovering and then limited to basic shop cleanup. Sunday hit some balls, yard work and a long hike in the woods with wife Linda and shop dog Cleo.

[Phil Thien]

I wanted a portable table saw I could use at my daughter's house, and I might want to use it outside at my place for projects around the home (like ripping long pieces which I cannot fit into the basement).

So after a lot of deliberation, I settled on a Porter Cable PCB222TS I found at Lowes. It was $284 ($5 off the normal price of $289). I had read online that Lowes will accept HF coupons, and I had a 20% off orders over $100. I got three answers when I asked if I could use it: (1) I don't think so. (2) Sure, but only 10%. (3) Sure, full 20%. I wasn't asking over and over or anything, I was ready to pay the $284 for it. But after much confusion, in the end the cashier just rang-up the 20% off, so $237+tax.

Other contenders were all in the $500 range, like the Bosch 4100 or the Ridgid R4510. Didn't really want to spend that much.

Then on Sunday I built a stand because I don't like the wheeled steel stands that come with these saws. They seem unstable. I wanted something with at least a 24" square footprint, for stability. Also wanted to be able to level it nicely. Not too heavy, and be easy-on/easy-off of the saw so I could move it easily.

It is a very nice saw for the money. I think it is the only portable saw with dedicated bevel hand-wheel. The pricier saws have better fences BUT, this fence is usable there is just a simple extra step to get it to lock parallel to the blade. I might play with the fence a bit to see if I can improve it.

[Mike Olson]

I planted 2 trees in my back yard on Saturday and on Sunday the kids and I started the process of turning some of the Clay I dug out of the holes into Pottery clay.
Hopefully that first bucket full turns out well because I have a whole wheelbarrow that I have no other way to get rid of...

[Raymond Fries]

Finished removing the large bushes that got destroyed last winter.
Finished and delievered the memory box for my daughter.
And we decided to install a dual zone mini split for her garden room and for my workshop in the garage. Gonna be a cool summer in the shop. :D

[Garth Almgren]

Let's see... Got lots of yard work done, went to a friend's wedding, and started making a sheet of MDF into sawdust, cutting off strips for the grid of a torsion box table I'm making for my wife's craft room (inspired by Mark Spagnuolo's assembly table). Those full sheets are <bleeping> heavy!

[John Sanford]

Got more organization done in the shop, and got my Gladiator Gearbox hung up on the wall.

[Shawn Pixley]

It was a lousy weekend for me, Saturday night / Sunday morning I ended up back in the hospital unable to swallow and a fever after being released last Thursday. Had a thoroughly unpleasant stint in the MRI trying to better image what the fluid was and where it was coming from. I am fairly claustriphobic so it was 50+ minutes of hell in a narrow bore first generation MRI. They opened me up again to drain fluid in my neck. No infection though - very good news. I've been cooliing my heels (heals?) in the hospital awaiting discharge, presumptively tomorrow. The reason for the initial operation seems fully addressed. This side trip is unpleasant but ultimately a distraction. The worst part was telling my dad. I knew he would worry.

The upside of this is that I got to catch up on some reading between dilaudid injections. My roommate here is a young man just out of high school with Crohn's disease. He does a little metal and woodworking, so we got to talk shop for an hour or two. Seeing him so young facing a difficult future certainly puts things in perspective.