Creeker's Past Weeks Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

28 Sep 2020

Greetings,
I'm exhausted this morning. I've gotten 10 hours sleep since Friday morning due to day job problems. No time in the shop this week. I do have projects to get done but I need time to get to them. This is short and sweet this week as I need to get back to work.

That's it for me, so what did YOU do this past week?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Jim Becker]

Dennis, I hope you get some rest!

There was no "woodworking" last week as I'm still early in recovery from my eye surgery (my right eye is like looking through a water filled swim mask LOL) but I did take the time to do some meaningful maintenance on my CNC machine...it was time to put on a new spoilboard, so I milled off the remainder of the existing including making sure the mahine table was totally flat and in-plane, and then got the new spoilboard in place. Another activity was refurbishing a small lawn trailer that I can put behind my ZTR for convenience...it had been sitting "up on the hill" unused for many years and needed new tires and some attention to rust spots. Did some weeding, transplanted some ferns and mowed the grass, too.

This week I get back to work in the shop. I have a tack trunk commission plus some CNC carving work for a client to get started. I already did the design and prototyping work for the latter pre-surgery so it's just a matter of babysitting the machine. I'll work on the tack trunk and some other things while the carvings get, um...carved. :)

[Paul F Franklin]

Plugging away on the office remodel. Rehung the painted french doors, tweaking the hinges a bit to get them to hang straighter than they were before. Cut and coped all the baseboard and shoe molding, painted it, and installed it, except for one small length of shoe that runs in front of the cold air return in the base of one cabinet bank. I needed to make a custom grill for that, which I did; now just waiting for the paint to cure a bit and then will install the grill and install the final piece of shoe. Then I have to fill the nail holes and touch up the paint. When that's done, we can move all the "stuff" back into the room while I do the cabinet doors and drawer fronts and begin work on the desks and files. I did get a fair amount of design time on the desks but more to do.

Once I get everything moved back into the office, I will likely shift to working mostly outside for a couple of weeks while the weather holds. I have dozens more dead ash trees to deal with. Many have fallen and just need to be pulled out and cut up, others will need to be felled. I was waiting for cooler weather to tackle all that and now's the time. A bunch of other pre-winter outdoor chores to do too. And of course, the leaves will need to be dealt with soon. I'll probably spend mornings and part of the afternoons working outside and then the rest of the day in the shop so progress on shop projects doesn't stop completely. Felling and cutting up trees is hard work for this old bod; half a day is plenty.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Woke up 2:30 AM Thursday morning to go to bathroom. Flushed toilet,and there was no water coming in to fill tank and bowl. So off I go to check out what is wrong. Remember it's 2:30 AM. We have a well, that fills a 1500 gallon storage tank, with a booster pump supplying pressure to houses. Storage tank was empty, which meant it hadn't received any water from well for several days. Go to well and find "Pump Tech" is tripped, which means no water in the well. Unplug Pump Tech, and replace with an old one. Pump comes on and water starts to flow, so I go to storage tank, and place system in bypass mode. This means well is directly supplying the houses. Get up later 7:00 AM, and start figuring what happened. Seems low pressure switch on booster pump failed to cut pump off. This meant it ran for some time, boiling water in pump cavity, The heated water had swollen up PVC fitting on both inlet and outlet. Went to Lowes and got need fittings and repair such. But Pump Tech wouldn't allow well to fill tank. After eight hours, it had only gained about 500 gallons. Friday AM, adjust Pump Tech, and tank fills up (1000 gallons) in four hours, which meant well wasn't dry. Go to cook some burgers on gas grill Thursday night, and control assembly falls off grill. Piece that attached it to grill had rusted off. Grill is 30 years old. So I set about to repair it, as it only need a piece of angle iron to fix rusted area. Taking the burner out, one of the venturi tubes breaks where attaches to burner. Looking on line, it seems they are back ordered till mid November. Several years ago, I picked up a spare burner(new) at junk yard. Luckily it had venturi tubes attached, so grill project was fixed. Worked on another lawn mower that I rescued from dumpsters, and washed dog on Sunday, after taking breakfast to a friend who had knee replacement done on Monday. Thank God for the skills to fix things!

[Paul F Franklin]

Wow Bruce, you must have felt like Joe Btfsplk after that week! Hate those weeks when it's one thing after another and you don't get to anything you had planned.

[ChrisA Edwards]

Got myself a cheap laser engraver with plans for using it to burn a personal logo on the bottoms of my bowls and cutting boards, etc., that I give to other people.

As it does not have an enclosure, I decided to put a simple one together. Even the reflected light from the laser can damage your eyes, I have good safety glasses for the laser, put the orange lid is also rated as a safety screen.

Got the laser working yesterday, but have to run a few tests to figure out the settings,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eFxloXyXrc

[Daniel O'Neill]

Worked on a step stool for our two and half year old. He can't reach the faucets. My wife will paint it up. Still setting things up after our move so I really missed the router table on this project but it's sturdy enough for me so I'm sure it will work for him and will hopefully be around for his new sister in a couple of years.

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[Jim Becker]

Got myself a cheap laser engraver with plans for using it to burn a personal logo on the bottoms of my bowls and cutting boards, etc., that I give to other people.

As it does not have an enclosure, I decided to put a simple one together. Even the reflected light from the laser can damage your eyes, I have good safety glasses for the laser, put the orange lid is also rated as a safety screen.

Got the laser working yesterday, but have to run a few tests to figure out the settings,


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eFxloXyXrc

Chris, that's exactly what I'm going to build for what appears to be an identical laser I bought a while ago to play with...I still haven't turned it on. Given the nature of these inexpensive laser units, I also want the extra protection...it also sets up the opportunity to play with some venting.

[Mark Rainey]

Worked on a step stool for our two and half year old. He can't reach the faucets. My wife will paint it up. Still setting things up after our move so I really missed the router table on this project but it's sturdy enough for me so I'm sure it will work for him and will hopefully be around for his new sister in a couple of years.

442179 442180

Handles are a nice touch Daniel.

[Bill Carey]

Busy weekend: went to homedepot, menards, finished sparying 15 oak frames, power washed the house, fixed the gutters, made the LOML a board for her jigsaw puzzles, glued up 4 frames for the Morris chairs, put a coat of finish on the revolving bookcases, and continued my classes on Sketchup.and scripting.This retirement is exhausting. LOL

[Lisa Starr]

No shop time for me this weekend, but we did work at the son's house . . . again. Got all the 1st floor radiant tubing installed and connected to the boiler piping so he has heat now. None too soon as this week's forecast has some pretty cool nights again. We'll still have to do the 2nd floor, but that can come later. Hope to get back into the shop during the week and now that the legs for the vanity have arrived get moving on that again.