Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

17 Oct 2022

Greetings,
Spent some time this week with the family and my now at home son. Been working on building a white oak kitchen table and I am almost done with machining the parts and starting assembly this week for dry fit before too much glue goes on. Helped Daniel, my son, start on a cutting board, so I'm also teaching him about shop safety and various other aspects of woodworking. People are starting to think about gifts for the coming holidays and I'm trying to figure out how much I want to commit to for working in the shop at night and on weekends. When I retire, I'll be glad to spend days in the shop but the day job takes a lot of my time and I'm trying to get things settled there so I don't have to work as much as I do. Live and learn I guess.

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

Best of weeks to you all.

[Jim Becker]

'Glad you're getting family time, Dennis. As to working in the shop...my suggestion would be to focus on projects that you enjoy including those that provide "skill building". That's kinda what I've reverted to, even not having a "day job" any more since retirement. Doing for others for a few shekels is nice, but if it takes away from the experience and the limited time you have... ;)

This past week saw a lot of basic interior work being completed on the inside of the new shop building. In fact, I'm pretty much at the point of "stop work" because to go any farther, I need final inspections and the electric service is still not in. I'm hopeful that will start to move along today or tomorrow. The electrician has been swamped (figuratively with work and literally with some recent weather delays from rain) as well as having his second in command (son) get tagged for National Guard duty for a few weeks. Fingers are crossed. I've moved to a few exterior things...started on getting to final grading and repair across the front of the building yesterday before a big black cloud dumped even more rain down. I'll be pouring a pad in front of the man door as well as installing "prettier" stone across the front to tidy things up. It may or may not be too late for seeding, but I'll likely do it anyway with a thicker bed of straw and then remediate in the spring. 'Gotta deal with the mud.

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Other things completed this past week was replacement of the bucket curl hydraulic cylinder on the Big Orange Power Tool...had to go aftermarket because OEM was uber-expensive. (The old one could not be repaired as I've explained previously)

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Lastly, the rain collection barrel installed last week is working well and it's already filled to the top after two moderate rains. Prior to that, I installed gutter screens so that the water would be "clean" before hitting the downspout and the diverter. Our house well water has a bit too much sodium in it for our house plants because of the necessary softening, so this rain barrel collection will solve that issue for most of the year. (it has to be drained for the heart of the winter season when the cold gets down to where freezing is an issue)

[Cameron Wood]

Milled & glued up stock for a chunky outdoor bench- from 6x6 fir. Working on a small dovetail box. Building a fence for next door neighbor- 14 posts, four gates, hog wire. Sold a simple six board bench.
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[Paul F Franklin]

Did some cleaning in the shop but other than that it was mostly outside chores for me this week. I did transplant our blueberry bushes into the new enclosure. Here's a picture Mary snapped showing a critter's displeasure with the new enclosure:

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Spent some time on the skid steer moving last years compost pile out of the way to make room for this years leaves. While I was at it I mixed in about 12 bags of cherry sawdust. Compost will be ready to go next spring as we use it instead of mulch on our planting beds. Weather this weekend is supposed to be very nice so I should be able to finish up the outside chores, except for dealing with the leaves for the next few weeks. Looking forward to getting back in the shop and working on my bookcase and other projects.