Creekers Weekend Accomplishments....

[Dennis Peacock]

7 Apr 2008

Good Morning

I hope that this finds each of you doing well or at least "on the mend" if you have not been well recently.

It's garden prep and planting time here now for the early crops and it's time to get out and start working on getting the grass and lawn work done. So you can guess what I'll be doing today besides taking the #3 son to the doctor today due to his asthma and running a fever. I'll sure be glad when we are all well...at the same time!!

Things are ok here. The #1 son is working parttime now and I feel that this is doing him some good. He's ready to be done with school, that's for sure.

I'll be working on getting the shop cleaned up and trying to figure out when we can take a trip to visit the In-Laws since the FIL has only 5% kidney function now. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers.

Enough about all that...so what did YOU do this weekend???

Best of weeks to you all.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Good morning folks! Back to work this morning after a week off. Spent the early part of the week recovering from the flu. Did manage to get the yard dethatched, mowed and fertilized. Got soil sterilant down on the 3 driveways. Spent a couple of hours in the shop of Saturday playing with my new Lacer skews. It's coming along.

[Jim Broestler]

Just finished that tambour table featured in the December WWJ. It was a great project that really wasn't very hard, provided you were very precise in the machining of the joinery. It will now serve as a dinner/tea party table for my 2 year old daughter. Just the right height for a little girl and her teddy bears!

What makes it even more satisfying is that I got a great deal on the red oak I used to build it. The supplier had a large bundle of narrow boards he wanted to get rid of, all between 2-5 inches across, so he sold the whole lot for $.80 a bf.

Things like that make life sunny.

[alex grams]

Dropped about 500$ in lumber for my wifes desk (several 4x8 sheets of good walnut veneered 3/4" plywood), and then one beautiful sheet of 4x8 3/4" birdseye maple (these things made my wallet hurt, but are going to be gorgeous when finished). Birdseye maple top with walnut body desk, and a matching wall bookshelf unit.

Other than that, lots of work around the house (gardening, re potting house plants, getting shop in order to get wood delivery and start next project).

[Lee Koepke]

I got my little sidetable project almost completed. Everything is glued up and all thats left is the drawer and the finishing. Its not much, but its my first 'furniture' project and my first mort / tenon project. I havent reached the .001 tolerance level yet, but at least I know now that I CAN get there ... I am about as excited as I could be ...

and, during glueups, I finished a stair landing so my puppies feet would quit getting all muddy ..

[Matt Meiser]

Saturday afternoon we went to see the Tigers get beat by the White Sox. My daughter has been wanting to go to a baseball game and an opportunity to go on a fund-raiser bus trip for a local non-profit came up so we took advantage of that. The rest of the weekend was spent planning, procuring parts for, and installing closet organizer systems in our and my daughter's closets. The plan was always to build them, but I've never gotten around to it. Last weekend I took some stuff to the Habitat for Humanity Restore and saw that they had a whole bunch of brand new Closetmaid stuff that Lowes had donated, apparently because they are now carrying Rubbermaid shelving instead. We were able to buy what would have been about $600 of shelving for 1/2 that so we jumped at it. I'm really glad I didn't build it as we did a fair amount of tweaking the original design which would have been a lot harder with a less-flexible home-built system.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Ah, I had such high hopes.... well, not really, but it sounded good. :)

I spent time doing 'little things' - worked sharpened some of my chisels and plane irons (trying to get 'better' with my sharpening technique), set up a stand for my CMS, and started to work on an extension table for my TS. I put a 52" Biesemeyer fence on it (finally), and now I need to fill in all that extra space on the right. I say 'started', because then the kids had friends over and I had to keep an eye on them, then I got sidetracked...but I hope to finish it up in the next day or two.

Oh, one other thing - and maybe someone has some feedback on this - my wife had bought me a Dewalt 12" sliding CMS for Christmas, and I've only used it occasionally, but I noticed that it was really 'rough' - almost like there was too much vibration - but since it was my first real use of a 12" saw, I just chalked it up to it being a beast. Well, I decided to replace the blade on it to see if that made a difference - and voila, with the new blade on it runs smooth as silk. warped blade?

[Jim Becker]

Thoughts are there, Dennis.

Not a very "productive" weekend for me as I had the YMCA karate/swimming run on Saturday and we attended a production of 101 Dalmations in Haddonfield NJ where our good friends' son was performing. By the time we got home from that, it was far too late to do anything else. I did spend a few quality hours on the big orange power tool exercising the backhoe and loader while excavating for the walkway from our new front door to the driveway/guest parking area. And, I got the rest of the HT speakers mounted in the new media room as well as a start on the wall mount for the 52" LCD. A few hours on our taxes happened on Saturday night...oy!

Later this week, I hope to get the glass in the wet bar doors and start work on the master closet storage accommodations. I may get started on the lower cabinets for my new office, too.

[Nancy Laird]

LOML and I spent Friday running a few errands and helping another woodworker set up his Matchmaker and learning to use it. Saturday and Sunday we mostly spend in the yard, pulling weeds, raking leaves left over from autumn, and generally sprucing the place up. I did get a few pens turned and one big pen order finished and shipped, and LOML got some maple chopped up for an order of desk name plates. Now to get them sanded and finished.

Have a good week, everyone.

[Todd Crow]

This is from Sunday evening from out my front door in Northern MN. Totals came to about 26" here from snow Sat night and Sun. Not what you expect in April (even for MN)

I cleaned the driveway out on Sun, and then again this morning. Thank goodness for snowblowers!

So there's my weekend project!

Todd

http://www.crowsnest.us/images/DCP_0899.jpg

[Jim O'Dell]

Not much woodworking for me either. Sat was spent with LOML gone for 5 hours to pick up a new dog coming into rescue. Then left again about an hour later for 4 more hours to see one of her students in a talent show.
I got the sprinkler pump hooked back up after the winter shut down. Found some cracked lines on the inlet side that had to be repaired. Finished that Sunday. Mowed the yard (just under 1 acre), cut some wood for a friend and former co-worker, and visited with him for a while. Lots of dog duty. Got the new table on the RAS after some help from some fellow Creekers. And I spent some quality time in my shop sitting in a chair, pondering life, and what needs to be done in the shop. And listening to some good music!!
Have a great week all!! Jim.

[Ray Schafer]

Well, I built this garage storage loft:
http://www.plansnow.com/dn1143.html
but I made it large enough to hold two bins stacked on top of each other, and deeper than this one. I reinforced it with SureTies to make sure that it could hold the weight. I also used lag screws instead of 3" wood screws -- again because of the weight.

Not exactly woodworking, more like carpentry, but I made a lot of sawdust!

The best part was that my two little girls, ages 7 and 11, helped me. They were actually a big help and they really had fun. The best part for them was hammering the nails into the SureTies.

We all had sore arms by the time that we were done. It seems that these days with so many power tools, my arms don't get very strong! I may have to use my hammer and screwdriver more often!

[Ralph Wiggum]

Here are a couple of pictures of a blanket chest I have been working on for my wife. Spent the weekend putting a finish on it. It is walnut that I bought at a auction about a month ago. I like to find old lumber that has been sitting around for awhile and put it to good use. This stuff was all rough sawn, covered in dirt from sitting in a barn for 20 years. The bad thing was it was all bundled together and tied up so you couldn't look through it. It ended up not being very clear so I had to go with a frame and panel construction to get a knot free chest. I did use ceder for the bottom. All the panels are bookmatched, not that they show up that well in the pics. All together I probably have about $50 invested in it. :D

[Scott Haddix]

I had 34 people over at the house for a get-together with my team from work and their families on Saturday night, so spent pretty much all day Friday and Saturday preparing and all day Sunday recovering. But, this might have been the best weather we'll have in Houston all year this weekend, so the timing of the party was great!

So, only time spent in the shop was cleaning it enough to show my coworkers, while keeping it dirty enough to tell it is a working shop and not a show piece!

[Doug Swanson]

I spent a good part of the weekend installing a new ceiling fan in my daughters room. Then I installed some new outdoor lights for the deck/patio. Then I tore apart my rolling cart that held my vintage craftsman lathe...I had to make room for my new wood storage rack which is painted and ready to be installed...

[Mike Gager]

i spent the weekend trying to cut down a black locust in our front yard... with a battery powered sawzall.

needless to say i didnt get it all done. i got 3 of 4 main branches down though (they are about 7-8" in diameter), the 4th looms periously near our house so im not sure what to do about it and then there is the main trunk which is about 16" in diameter. thats gonna take awhile!


a chainsaw, a chainsaw, my kingdom for a chainsaw!

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Good luck with that - a battery operated sawzall? reminds me of the Count of Monte Cristo....digging out of a prison with a spoon. ;)

What is locust good for - other than firewood? We have a large one that I really want to take down (I've been told it's a locust - not sure if there are different types...) It's probably 2' diameter at the base, and I'll probably have to pay someone to take it down but I can most likely keep the wood if I want.

**edited** After some quick Googling.....now I'm even more interested in the wood. Although I can't be sure if it's a Honey or Black locust, from the desciptions I've found of the differences, I think it's a black locust.

[Scott Velie]

I spent Sat AM milling wood for the "western PA table project" This is a very cool thing. I will be posting more about this here soon but in a nutshell the project is making dining room tables for Katrina victims. They are knockdown no fastener tables that were designed originally to be put in a Conestoga wagon for the move west. They will be built by and paid for by volunteers. We have started with 6200 BF off wood.

More soon

[Wes Billups]

I posed a question to the group a few weeks ago about the best aftermarket router table fence. Previous post (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=79194)
Based on the responses and after looking at each in more detail I settled on the Jessem. It was slightly above my price range but I really liked the features it offered. I live a few miles from the nearest store so I opted to buy sight unseen.

Upon receiving it I was impressed with the weight. It appeared to be very well machined which is why I wanted to buy a manufactured fence in the first place. I’ve built two fences and each one ended up needing shimming to get things square and planar. Soon after looking it over I realized the phenolic fences were not flush with the aluminum T-track. See attached drawing. The problem was they set back farther from the T-track which would prevent a board on edge from being perpendicular to the table. I called Jessem and left a message with their technical support person. After 3 days I called again and left another message. I then waited another 2 days and this time got him on the phone. He admitted their phenolic supply wasn’t a consistent thickness leading to the alignment issue. He offered to send me a set of shims to place behind the phenolic fences to make up for the issue. I agreed as I’m happy enough with the other features I didn’t feel like sending it back.

If I could do it again I would go with a different fence. The fence is very well made but suffers from this design flaw. I measured the phenolic thickness at 0.725” and the T-track extrusion is 0.750” thick. If they would just set the T-track back another 0.025” they’d eliminate this problem. My real frustration is I gave them ample time to call me back as I was told their technical support person was in the office each time I left a message.

I’m really surprised I’ve not read of this in any reviews as the technical support person knew exactly what the problem was when I first described what I was seeing.

Thanks and sorry for the rant.
Wes

[John Timberlake]

Spent some time working on a muzzle loader flint lock rifle I am working on. Using mostly chisels, spokeshave and rasps.

[Ben Cadotte]

Sat went to a flower show with the wife. Sat was going to buy more shelf brackets and maybe a new push mower. But the wife changed that. She saw a front loader washer that was on clearance. Ended up leaving with just the washer. Was a good deal though.

Sun cleaned the shop some, moved things around for little better workflow.

Today spent all day out there. Re-aligned the TS, was .005" out. Finally took the new mortiser out of the box. Everything was fine except the fence has some corrosion on it. Spent about 10 min on it to remove it. Did a couple test hole and works good.

[Ben Cadotte]

Sat went to a flower show with the wife. Sat was going to buy more shelf brackets and maybe a new push mower. But the wife changed that. She saw a front loader washer that was on clearance. Ended up leaving with just the washer. Was a good deal though.

Sun cleaned the shop some, moved things around for little better workflow.

Today spent all day out there. Re-aligned the TS, was .005" out. Finally took the new mortiser out of the box. Everything was fine except the fence has some corrosion on it. Spent about 10 min on it to remove it. Did a couple test hole and works good.
I did not MAKE him buy the waher.


"THE WIFE!!!":p

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Sat went to a flower show with the wife. Sat was going to buy more shelf brackets and maybe a new push mower. But the wife changed that. She saw a front loader washer that was on clearance. Ended up leaving with just the washer. Was a good deal though.

Sun cleaned the shop some, moved things around for little better workflow.

Today spent all day out there. Re-aligned the TS, was .005" out. Finally took the new mortiser out of the box. Everything was fine except the fence has some corrosion on it. Spent about 10 min on it to remove it. Did a couple test hole and works good.


I did not MAKE him buy the waher.


"THE WIFE!!!":p


I'm thinking Ben has a split personality?:confused::eek::rolleyes: