Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

30 Sep 2019

Greetings,
A good but challenging week at the day job. My youngest son was home with us this week and we all ate well and had nice visits. Took him back to his current duty station for his last 10 weeks of training. So proud of him and all that he has accomplished. I’m working through things to setup and work a small part time business. A micro-business I guess is what it would be called today. I hope it all goes well.

That’s it for me, so what did you do this past week?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Steve Fish]

Painted the common bathroom, needs a little touch up. The humidity down here makes things challenging lately.....
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[Jim Becker]

Sounds like you had a nice week, especially being able to spend time with your son while he was on his break between training assignments.

This past week I finished up the fabrication of a large, black walnut, natural edge dining table top and the client picked it up on Saturday morning. In the mean time, I had been considering making a "little" change in my shop to help free up some space that just wasn't being used efficiently...and so I did. I'm really pleased with where things are going and not only did some usable space come back, but also the "feeling" of space came back to where it was before the CNC machine went in. Speaking of which, I'm upgrading the monitor to a larger one to make last minute/mid-job edits easier on my eyes and also changing some things to eliminate the cable bundle that traverses the floor from the CNC machine to the control computer. A long HDMI cable and replacing the keyboard and rodent with wireless versions allows me to move the processor under the front of the CNC machine. I probably should have done this a long time ago, but getting some time in to understand my usage patterns and preferences helped make sure I was making the best decision on how to improve things...and only doing it once. I'm in cleanup and tool maintenance mode, too, and once that's complete, I have a guitar project that needs to be resumed. Also getting ready to build a dedicated bench for the guitar stuff so I can keep my primary bench free for client projects and other things. It will be narrower, mobile and be setup to store the specialized tools, too, as well as have space for my amplifier for instrument setup.

[Paul F Franklin]

Dennis, good luck with new venture, looking forward to hearing more about it.

I finished up 4 new elevated planter beds for the garden, and got them in place.

Here they are after the build:

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And in place (although not leveled yet) next to the two I build last year:

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After that I spent most of a day cleaning up from all the landscaping and the elevated beds projects. I'm always amazed at how many tools get brought up from the basement shop to the garage during outdoor projects and how many trips it takes to get them back. And that's despite having a fairly well equipped workspace in the garage will all the commonly used tools.

I made a first pass cut list for the mantel and cabinet project so I could work out how much material is needed and will place the order today for pickup on Wednesday.

Oh, the wife and I got to ride on the Steam in the Valley train on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway. They run diesel most of the time, but every year or two they bring in a steam engine for a couple of weekends. We had a gift certificate from our 40th anniversary earlier this year so we did the trip in style, riding in one of the dome cars and enjoying a meal and adult bevies on the trip. Good Time!

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[Bill Carey]

My youngest daughter got married last weekend so we were recuperating, but I found time to finally finish the gate on the new deck
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and made a small shadow box for the new SIL
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[Jacob Mac]

Worked on a bed, made some mistakes, powered through the mistakes and got back on track.

Also spent some time trying to learn about CNC machines and software. I want to incorporate one into my shop but wow it is a steep learning curve.

[Jim Becker]

Oh, the wife and I got to ride on the Steam in the Valley train on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway. They run diesel most of the time, but every year or two they bring in a steam engine for a couple of weekends.

New Hope and Ivyland RR does the same...they run their diesels most of the year, but do bring out old Number 40 for some of the special trains...which is nice since they did an amazing restoration job on it over the past few years. They had to actually make the parts since there was no source and that was no small job!

[Paul F Franklin]

The Midwest Railway Preservation Society (https://www.midwestrailway.org) is based in an old roundhouse in Cleveland. They are volunteers doing restorations of old engines and cars. A couple of times a year they have an open house where you can tour the facility and take a very short ride in vintage carriages drawn by a steam locomotive. Here's a couple pics from a couple of years ago showing work in progress:

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[Bruce Wrenn]

While hauling stone last week, blew head gasket on truck. Luckily it was between the cylinders (1 & 2,) so no water loss and warping of head. Bringing a trailer load of stone while only running on two cylinders is fun, yeah right. Baked a carrot cake for a friends birthday. Tore down engine today, and ordered needed gaskets, which should be in by lunch time tomorrow. Continued work on front porch replacement. Replaced oxygen sensor on Ford Areostar van, along with TPS. Thought we would be having some guests in RV's for State Fair, so figured out how to get electric hookup for FIVE RV's. Good for me, they decided to stay in campground at the lake, so electric hookup came off my to do list. Got parts to build a ground rod driver that uses rotohammer. Took wife to dinner on Friday night. Went to hurch on Sunday.

[Jim Dwight]

I finally finished a crib I've been working on for my grandson who is due in November. His mother, my daughter-in-law, wanted it to be white so I saw spraying primer and white tinted Resisthane. I had my normal issues spraying, actually a little less than I had last time, and got it done Friday (I had a 3 day weekend). I spent the rest of the weekend doing things I've been putting off to get the crib done. I installed a wood rack from Grizzly so I can move some wood to get a DC connection to my CMS. I started but did not finish moving the wood. I also set up a free dining table I got from Home Depot. I want to make one but will not get it done by the holidays and this was free so... It will do for now. I had to move another table out of the dining room to get the other one in. Little jobs. The bigger job was some coding for my car. I ran into troubles I am still working through so it isn't done. I need to go back to making sawdust but haven't given up yet.

[Paul F Mills]

I finished an office table I made for a friend (chairs shown just for size reference) and started another project. We sit on our porch a lot on a day bed I built. My wife wants side tables for it so I am working on it.

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The side tables will be based on this design (procured from Instagram). I pulled the wood from the rack and realized the edges were not jointed. I was able to joint the two outer pieces of oak with my tablesaw sled but the walnut center piece did not turn out well for some reason. And naturally the belt on my 4” Craftsman jointer broke. Table project is on hold. I need to go ahead and buy a good jointer.
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