Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

28 Oct 2019

Greetings,
I've fallen into the pit of tablesaw repairs.
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For some strange reason, my tablesaw, drill press, and the sander I was rebuilding all decided they wanted new bearings. I hate that my TS decided to get sick on me because I have so much going on in the shop right now and I need all my machines up and running. If all goes well, I HOPE to have my TS back running tomorrow night.

I attended my 1st ever craft fair last week and I sold a few things and met some really great other artisans of many other crafts. Had an enjoyable time and I enjoyed selling some things that I hoped would sell.

I performed "tooth" surgery on my Powermatic planer by changing the teeth on the shelix head on it and replacing some broken teeth. I just ordered 2 more boxes of 10 teeth for it and I hope all this stuff comes in this week.

Well, that's it for me...so what did YOU do this past week?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Frederick Skelly]

This weekend I decided to start learning chip carving. Bought a knife, watched some vids and started practicing. Ordered Barton's book too. Wish me luck!

[Tom Dixon]

I made some wall clamps for 6" spiral pipe.

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[Charles Taylor]

At the middle of last week, the weather forecast indicated a washout for the whole weekend, and there were some steps of my bed frame project that I wanted to do outside. So I took the day off Thursday, trimmed the edges of the torsion boxes that make up the headboard and footboard, milled pine lumber to be applied to the visible sides of the headboard and footboard, and got things ready for the next set of steps.

On Saturday we replaced the existing chandelier in our foyer with one we bought on vacation several months ago. It took the whole day, mostly assembling the many, many parts of the new chandelier. We didn't have too many leftover pieces at the end, so I presume we got it about right. We finished off the day watching some football on television.
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Sunday afternoon was not a particularly productive time, but did I press forward with a little more progress on the bed frame, getting some of the show material attached to the headboard.

[Jim Becker]

Dennis, you seem to be knee-deep in machine maintenance! 'Hope you get through that soon so you can continue to build things up, as it were.

Tom, those brackets are...outstanding!

My week was pretty low key. Did a few small CNC jobs for a regular client and met with him on Friday to discuss some new and very interesting ideas, one of which takes my guitar building thing into the food serving arena. More on that later. I also built and completed the auxiliary bench top for what will be primarily used as a dedicated surface for my guitar building "hobby". That's part one of the project...there will be a built-for-purpose cabinet below it with drawers for application specific tools and supplies as well as a formal location for my amp for testing and setup purposes. I will hopefully get to that soon. This project also validated my need to replace my current primary workbench top which is no longer flat and has too much inadvertent metal in it (stray nails/brads from over the . years) to resurface and flatten it with bladed tools. It's served the purpose for a very long time, but a design update will make it even more useful...something akin to the new auxiliary bench top mentioned above, but "more special". I also did some guitar work on both the sapele build and a new VG D-Fir topped body. Most of Sunday (a VERY rainy day here) was spent on the computer doing design work for my clients new requests. (billable time even...)

This week will be more of the same and also hopefully have a little time dedicated to some cleanup in the upstairs of my shop so I can move the miter saw up there for the winter. It can't stay in the one garage bay because I have to tuck the ZTR in the back so I can get the Kubota tractor in there during the cold weather so it's more accessible if there happens to be any "white stuff". I have a lot of stuff upstairs that either needs to go into the trash/recycling, donated to the ReStore or otherwise get better organized. I also need to make some space on my lumber storage rack up there for some material that one of my client's purchased as he has no room for it and his spouse isn't impressed with the idea of it taking up her garage space.

[Jay Kepley]

I've been working on improving several tools recently. This weekend, I worked on my Jet 14" band saw. This saw can only be so good, but I believe I've got it dialed in pretty good. Some time ago, I replaced the bearings, balanced the upper wheel, and added a link belt. There is almost no vibration on the table. I also replaced the tension knob with a larger heavier wheel. I added LED lights which are great. As I get older, better light seems to help a lot. I found a Kreg fence on Craigslist (with the micro adjuster and the resaw attachment). I just installed that fence. It's very nice. I also organized and tied down all the wiring. I added a magnetic metal tray from Harbor Freight. It's very handy. I also put the saw on a homemade mobile base using Home Depot 3" casters. The wood base is just southern yellow pine. The saw moves very smoothly and is good and stable on the stand. The stand also raised the table to 49 inches. For me - with a bad back - that height works great. I can see the work piece better, and I don't have to bend or stoop. Finally, I bought a couple of house blades from Highland Woodworking. I'm using the 1/4 inch blade now. It cuts very nicely.

Have a great week!

[Jay Champagne]

I'm late to the party so I'll give the 9 day edition.
Weekend before last, I headed up to the lumber yard. Previously I bought a bunch of "rustic maple" viewed it in the rough and ordered it milled. (I had no planing equipment) I had picked it up and though it was "S4S" it was all bowed and not useable as-is. Guys are nice there, said bring it back and we'll figure it out. Turns out, they don't face joint when they mill. Just planed both sides, edge jointed and ripped. This is 8/4 and thicker than I need anyway, so they kept it and will have "someone else they deal with get it right" Ok! See you when it's ready.
Also that weekend I made a wall hang clamp rack. Modeled after the woodpeckers style to save space. It's made from 18mm Meranti maurine ply, it's left over from a project and the best I had on hand. Came out good- its utility not "pretty" I didn't finish it. I left room to expand on it.
This past week was machine buying spree.
Great deal on a used 16" Laguna/Meber bandsaw.
A new Dewalt planer 735x, hoping to remove my milling hassles.
And a rock bottom deal on a Delta 1.5hp dust collector.
Also ran 220v to the workshop. Outside work is done on that. Have outlets etc to do inside still.

PS, great thread idea, great place to chat about stuff that isn't thread-worthy.20191021_213825.jpg

[Paul F Franklin]

Dennis, glad to hear you had some sales at the craft show! Jay K, bandsaw looks great. I like the magnetic tool tray; haven't seen/noticed those at HF, but they look like a good solution to keeping the tools needed for each machine nearby. I hate walking across the shop to get a wrench or screwdriver to adjust a machine.

Jim, you hint at a lot of interesting stuff, looking forward to hearing more.

I've been doing some preliminary stuff to get ready for the mantle/cabinet build. I finished two new shooting boards, one straight, one for miters, and am finishing up a version for bevels or long miters. I had versions of the first two, but they were designed for smaller pieces and I need the bigger versions for the project, as well as the long miter version. Since I will be doing miters on the edges of wide and long boards, I couldn't go with a donkey's ear type board, so am doing a flat version where the plane is held at 45 degrees on mitered ramps. Since it needs to be precise, that led to tuning up the miter saw and track saw to minimize need for hand clean-up of the pieces.

I bought a couple of the bora pm2700 expandable roller stands to serve as infeed and outfeed for the jointer, planer, and bandsaw. I'll be dealing with 12-14 foot stock and the single roller stands I've been using don't work all that well. These stands have multiple rollers, 14" wide, and expand accordion style from about 15" to about 50". The four legs are individualy height adjustable as well, so they can be lined up carefully to be in plane with the machine tables. Will post a review after I've actually had a chance to use them. I like that they smoosh together so they don't take up a ton of space for storage.

That led to another small project, a new stand for my portable planer. I wanted to be able to have it at the same height as the jointer outfeed so I won't have to readjust the roller stands when moving between the machines. So I whipped up a simple stand with height adjusters on the legs so I can dial it in to exact same height. Now I just need to figure out something for the bandsaw. It's table is several inches higher than the jointer and now planer. I may make up a couple of blocks of the right height that I can just slip them underneath the wheels of the roller stands to bring them to the right height without having to readjust the 4 legs each time....need to think about that.

Spent a couple of afternoons keeping after the leaves, they are really coming down now! Winterized the pond and put away the hoses, etc. in prep for the cold weather. LOML and I took a road trip to see about 10 of the covered bridges in and around Ashtabula OH. Very picturesque with all the fall colors. It was beautiful day for a drive. That's it from Yellow Creek Woodworks!