Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

30 Mar 2020

Greetings,
Still in lock-down. Still working from home. The good news is that the family and I are still healthy. I spent a bit of time this past weekend working on my CNC since i upgraded the Z axis hardware to the HDZ. I should have made that upgrade a long time ago. So much better overall! I got the waste board re-flattened with the new Z setup and I'm getting ready for my first machine cuts on the new setup. Being locked in at home, one would think that I'd have a lot more time to do things around the house. Well, the day job seems to find ways to eat more of my time and WFH means that I have to put in more time to satisfy senior managers.

I hope this finds all of you safe, healthy, and family strong.

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

Best of weeks to you all.

[Jim Becker]

'Glad that Z-axis upgrade worked out for you, Dennis! Sad that you are faced with the interminable work hours, but I'm not surprised, honestly.

Last week was not very productive once I completed my downdraft work surface project and one small CNC job for a regular client. I'm trying to get a little motivated, but it's not easy for some reason. My plan for this week is to hopefully get working on the replacement top for my main bench. It's designed and I've determined that I have material I can use to build it. The front, center and back rails will have to be purpleheart (what a shame... ) 'cause that's the only 8/4 material I have that's long enough and the remainder will largely be cherry from several slab cut offs that are not really usable for things like tables. It will not quite have the contrast that purpleheart and maple would have, but my suppliers are closed and even if they were open, I'd be hesitant to head out and buy material. If I get this completed this week, I'll only be able to do a temporary install of the vice or maybe just wait on that because I want to have it sanded perfectly level and my go-to for that is currently closed for obvious reasons.

I also have some drawers planned for our master closet to replace the wire baskets that are sometimes maddening. After 20 years, those baskets are getting the heave-ho real soon now...

Stay safe, folks...

[Charles Taylor]

I finished the chair...which is to say I forced myself to stop fiddling with it.
Chair Complete.jpg

[Mel Fulks]

Charles, fine job. Beautiful color ,much nicer than the "authentic" dark black.

[Paul F Franklin]

Got a reasonably nice day and sprayed a seal coat of garnet shellac on my proto office cabinet. Came out fine considering it was the first real thing I've sprayed with new HVLP rig. Weather is supposed to get decent again in a couple days so I should be able to spray the finish coats of GF High performance on it; then will assemble.

It became clear while doing that that I will need a lazy susan type setup to easily rotate items while spraying, so I'll cobble something up for that.

In the meantime, I've been working on drawer boxes and the frame and panel door. Also took some time to tweak the jointer/planer. Needed to raise the jointer outfeed table a couple of thou to eliminate a tiny bit of snipe on trailing edges. With the table set to max height I found it was a couple of thou below the arc of the cutter inserts. But after a hour or two of fussing with it, I shifted the range so I could set it properly. There are quite a few adjustment points and they interact somewhat, so it took some time to dial it in. Managed to keep the infeed and outfeed coplaner while I did it, at least with my ability to measure them.

I got in a little outside work, getting a couple of the elevated garden beds I built last fall ready for planting, and DW planted lettuce and carrots in them. She also started some tomatoes and peppers from seed inside. Normally she just buys those as plants from the garden center rather than starting them from seed, but we're not sure what the availability will be this year.

The local farmer's market transformed itself into an online market where you can select available items and place an order, and then just drive by and pick your items up. I was impressed by how quickly they were able to get it all up and running, especially considering the variable product mix of a small farmers market with maybe 15 or 20 vendors.

That's about it. It was one of those weeks where it seems like I was very busy, but ended up not getting all that much done. Hope this week is more productive.

[Steve Wurster]

I did some shop cleanup here and there, which always feels good. Reorganized a few things, threw out a bunch of stuff, and cleared / cleaned up some space. Otherwise it's just working from home and trying not to go crazy.

Over the weekend I made a new shooting board, based on Rob Porcaro's design. I didn't like my old one anymore, so I went with a much beefier construction this time. This one is so big that I have to hang it off the side of my bench. lol

board1.jpgboard2.jpg

I also built a little sharpening "station" based on the plans from Lie-Nielsen. I bought their honing guide, as I never got consistent (read: square) results with the Veritas MkII model that I had for years. This station is much more compact than what I had before, which means I can and will just leave this out on a side counter all the time. I don't sharpen frequently enough, probably because of my frustrations with the Veritas guide, so hopefully having this out will get me sharpening more often.

sharpen.jpg

And today I started putting the finish coats on a picture frame I made a few weeks ago. I'll post pictures of that once it's all done.

[Charles Taylor]

Charles, fine job. Beautiful color ,much nicer than the "authentic" dark black.

Thank you. Most of the time, I'm not inclined to change the color of the wood anyway, and in this case the natural color is a match for the existing furniture where this chair will be used.

[Ryan W Taylor]

I finished the chair...which is to say I forced myself to stop fiddling with it.
Chair Complete.jpg

That is a fine looking chair!

[Rod Sheridan]

Very nice, the colour looks great, it's what I normally strive for.

I'm soon going to be making 8 A&C dining chairs without arms..........Rod.