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View Full Version : LOUSY weekend in the shop!! (Long)



Dale Thompson
12-04-2005, 9:45 PM
I mean LOUSY! :mad: If you can believe this, it was a weekend where I made even MORE scrap than I normally do. I'm absolutely INCREDIBLE! :rolleyes: I think that I will make the Guinness Book of World Recordsfor producing the MOST scrap and doing the MOST stupid things in a forty-eight hour period. It will be my fifteen minutes of glory and I will share it with all you folks who appear to do EVERYTHING right the FIRST time! :(

I will not get into details because I DO still have SOME pride, but NEVER use a wide board for making raised panels just because it is WIDE. If it is wide AND not "bowed", that is fine. However, if both of the above requirements are not met, biscuit or, as I probably will, pocket screw narrower boards together for your panels. Cutting, machining and trying to fiddle with "bowed" panels to make them fit took the better part of Saturday. Even if you get them to fit, they look like the garbage that they are. :o If you need a pile of "bowed" panels, they can be found in my submittal to Guinness! :eek:

Chris Christopherson said it best with, "Well, I woke up Sunday Morning with no way to hold my head (make that PRIDE) that didn't hurt"! Sure enough. Here we go AGAIN!

My last "hobbiest" supply of Oak was supposed to be 180 bd ft of Red Oak for about $1.40/bd ft. My buddy at the yard, however, said that his planer blades were a bit dull so he would plane it at 13/16" instead of 3/4". He knew that I had a thickness planer so that would not be a problem. He also gave me about 340 bd ft which brought the price down to about $.75/bd ft.
I sent him a bill for having to unload all of the extra footage.

Anyway, while planing the first few boards, something happened that has never happened before. Two of the boards lined up perfectly out of the planer and contacted the wall. This started to push the planer backward and by the time I could hit the "kill" switch the timing belt on the planer overheated and BROKE! :mad:

Being the genius that I am, I found a spare belt for one of our vacuum cleaners that fit PERFECTLY!! The problem is that it was made of rubber.
It ran the cutter head perfectly - until it contacted the Oak! :( The smell of rubber burning is a lot like the smell of an electrical fire!

Of minor concern is the fact that I took two Oak slivers about the size of the Space Shuttle, took a nasty rib shot from my workbench and banged my elbow on my drill press table. :mad:

Since my shop is in my house, neither dynamite nor flammable liquids can be considered as reasonable revenge weapons toward my shop. Any ideas??

Remember. I'm retired so I will be back in the shop tomorrow morning! :)

As the old saying goes, "When you are at the very bottom, the only direction is UP!" :o

Dale T.

Jim O'Dell
12-04-2005, 9:54 PM
Look at it this way Dale, at least you got some shop time this weekend!!!! Jim. Who's bummed that the only trip to the shop this weekend was for a screwdriver to take apart the TV that died, trying desparately, and uneffectively, to fix it.

John Keane
12-04-2005, 9:58 PM
You don't have the market cornered! For some reason known only to God, there are times in the Woodworking mode that just do not jell. When I am mentally on top of it, I just walk away. When I am not mentally on top of it, I just make scrap.

John Miliunas
12-04-2005, 10:39 PM
Let's see....340 bd/ft for a project which is calling for about 10 bd/ft. Yup, you should be able to cover that without another trip to the supply house! Heck, you might even have a board or two left over!:rolleyes: :D

Don't despair, Pesh... I go through that kind of a routine more often than not in my shop!:D Tomorrow will be better!:) :cool:

Dale Thompson
12-04-2005, 11:19 PM
[QUOTE=John Miliunas]Let's see....340 bd/ft for a project which is calling for about 10 bd/ft. Yup, you should be able to cover that without another trip to the supply house! Heck, you might even have a board or two left over!:rolleyes: :D

Hey Spring,
Yep! The project calls for about 10 bd ft. On the other hand, you have underestimated my ability. :( With my high-tech drawings and advanced CADD capabilities, I am told that I will have AT LEAST 19 bd ft left on my pile. Of course, that assumes that I will be PERFECT from now on! EGADS!! I will have to order 400 bd ft tomorrow and hope for the usual "overage". ;) :) My friend Wade calls it a "fat" load. :) :D

Dale T.

Dan Mages
12-04-2005, 11:30 PM
Sorry, but I dont beleive you had that bad of a weekend... not until I see the pictures of the carnage. ;)

Sorry to hear about the bad luck.

Dan

Bernie Weishapl
12-04-2005, 11:34 PM
Don't despair Dale. I went out this weekend to cut out cabinets for my clock shop. Two sheets of $67 plywood. Got them all cut and when I went to dry fit every piece was 1/8" to 3/16" off square. Teach me not to check each piece. I went and did that assume thing. Found out one of the brackets on my table saw cracked which moved the blade a 1/8" or so from front to back. So I got to order a new bracket tomorrow and my cabinets will probably be 1/8" to 3/16" smaller. :mad: Don't ya just love it. :eek:

Karl Laustrup
12-05-2005, 6:47 AM
Pesh, look on the bright side. At least you got to work in the shop. I haven't burned an electron in well over a month. :( The bugs are having a party in my wood pile. :mad: Of course now it's so cold I think they're sending out for toothpicks to start a campfire and roast marshmallows. :eek:

I certainly hope you get the problems solved soon though, before you de-nude the entire area.;) :eek: The northwoods would just be a cold Sahara desert then.

Karl

John Hart
12-05-2005, 7:26 AM
As the old saying goes, "When you are at the very bottom, the only direction is UP!"...

'Course then, there also the train of thought that perhaps you only THINK you are at the bottom. My experience shows that tomorrow can always bring new lows. Happy Monday Thoughts :D

Kelly C. Hanna
12-05-2005, 9:26 AM
Hang in there Dale! We all have days like that now and then...sorry yours took out the planer.

tod evans
12-05-2005, 9:47 AM
no sympathy here, i have weeks like that! i`m just to stupid to quit:) tod

Jim Becker
12-05-2005, 11:11 AM
Sorry, but I dont beleive you had that bad of a weekend... not until I see the pictures of the carnage.

Very good point, Mr. Dan! ;)

Lee DeRaud
12-05-2005, 12:30 PM
Look at it this way Dale, at least you got some shop time this weekend!!!! Jim. Who's bummed that the only trip to the shop this weekend was for a screwdriver to take apart the TV that died, trying desparately, and uneffectively, to fix it.So you didn't get to see the Cowboys lose?!? Bummer.:eek:

Dale Thompson
12-05-2005, 7:54 PM
Dear Friends,
Thank you for all for the touchingly sympathetic messages. Many of them brought gushing tears to my eyes knowing how much that you cared. The only things that I didn't understand were the "Smilie" and "Big Grin" symbols at the end of your messages. :confused:

Anyway, I must admit it. I LIED! :o My scrapbox is NOT full of horribly machined raised panels. By the time I discovered that I had wasted a day and a half with these "belly-laughers", I took appropriate action. :cool: After smashing them against the wall, I chucked them up in the lathe and savagely attacked them with my razor sharp 18" Bowl Gouge and a VERY dull 1 1/4" Skew. The remaining pieces where stuffed into grooves and repeatedly "buzzed" with my biscuit cutter. :eek: By the time I was finished, these panels were literally reduced to "vapor" floating around the shop. :D My dust collector had no value in terms of "collecting" this vapor. I did, however, have to clean the filter on my Jet Air Cleaner no less than eleven times in two days. :(

HMMM? I wonder if that is another record for Guinness to consider? :)

Moral of the Story: NEVER let a crabby, talent-challenged old Norwegian EVER crack the shells off of too many M&Ms and go on a chocolate binge!! :D

Dale T.

Ken Fitzgerald
12-05-2005, 7:58 PM
Dale......Are you whining again?:eek: :rolleyes: :D

Dale Thompson
12-05-2005, 8:12 PM
I certainly hope you get the problems solved soon though, before you de-nude the entire area.;) :eek: The northwoods would just be a cold Sahara desert then. Karl

Karl,
As your self-appointed "shrink", I would suggest that you need some SERIOUS shop time! :)

Also, I would NEVER "de-nude" the entire area. If I did that, there would be no place for you rich folks from "other" parts of the state to show off your new snowmobiles, jet skis, power boats, ATVs, Hummers, seaplanes and capacity for intoxicating beverages! ;)

Besides, I would probably lose my shoe-shine job in the greater metropolitan area of downtown Crivitz! :(

Dale T.