Creeker's Past Week's Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

4 May 2020

Greetings,
A bit of work done in the shop this past week. I made some custom window molding for a friend of mine and he picked it up Saturday. Got some yard work done, watched a movie with The LOML, played some music on my guitar, my bass guitar, and also a bit more learning on my Mountain Dulcimer. I picked up a Mountain Dulcimer late last year and have really enjoyed learning a new musical instrument. My issue is, I'm not a master of any of them, but I play well enough to play with people in a group.
This week, I have to work on making the truck bed boards for a buddy that is restoring his dad's old pickup truck. The bed will be Red Oak. I have a pair of benches to make for a previous customer of mine to go with their dining room table I built for them. We are continuing to stay well and I hope you are as well.

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

Best of weeks to you all.

[Jim Becker]

Sounds like you had a nice week, Dennis! I'm glad you're getting some shop time, too! (maybe consider white oak for that truck bed project...it will not wick up water like red oak will...but you knew that already )

Not a totally exciting week for me; mowing, trimming some shrubbery, eliminating a tree stump that remained from something that came down a few years ago, mowing, etc. Oh, and installing a new dishwasher to replace the one that conveniently chose to die in the middle of a global pandemic. I also worked on a current guitar project in the shop as well as prepared to resume some subcontract work for a client...finally.

I had a visitor yesterday...one of Profesor Dr. SWMBO's honeybees was checking out my shop which was wide open to enjoy the nice weather. It's swarm season, so there's always a lot of scouting going on...in fact, one of our colonies swarmed on Saturday, but once again, they were very polite and landed on a low branch of a large shrub and were easily captured and rehomed. That was the second time The Professor's bees were polite about swarming this year. LOL And now we have eight colonies...

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I also got the DRO installed on my drum sander...finally I have my metric preference represented on the machine. The install was super easy, too, and it's reasonably accurate.

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Also got started on clear coats on the latest guitar build...

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This week in the shop it will be doing the subcontract work for my client and continuing with the guitar build. There will also be mowing and landscaping maintenance as weather allows.

[Darcy Warner]

Gave the old war wagon its spring detail.

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[Dave Mount]

Still cleaning up from maple season -- SWMBO and I had some together time doing a little road repair on the road to one of the maple stands. In the two birds with one stone category, shavings from the lathe are great for covering the poles once they're sunk into the mud. This is on one of SWMBO's main riding trail routes, so she has extra interest in making sure it's passable on horseback. This is the worst time of the year for the roads, frost is just out of the ground so everything is super mushy and wet. The road is frozen for most of maple season, but by the end, some soft spots usually emerge and cause trouble when we're hauling sap.

On the woodworking side, I roughed out a few bowls -- I was bucking firewood and found a reasonably sized (14" on the butt) red maple log that was curly. Unfortunately, it was cut last spring and has some grey staining in it as a result of sitting for a year before I found it was something worth saving. Not what it could have been, but still nice wood. Bowl roughs are not very photogenic. I need to cut a couple blanks for turning some natural edge bowls; because the curl is more pronounced when quarter cut, a natural edge bowl presents it better because the sidewall of the bowl is more or less in the QS orientation. In the traditional orientation (bottom of the bowl is out by the bark), the bowl generally follows the grain lines so it is kind of "flatsawn".

Firewood is a painful experience for me because I'm constantly seeing things I think I should save for bowls, it's surprising anything makes it into the wood stove. It was easier before I started turning, because anything that wasn't a saw log was firewood. When you turn bowls, the funkier it is, the better.

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[Charles Taylor]

A couple of weeks ago, I began to make some new moulding to be applied as the faux muntins on a bifold French door belonging to my father-in-law. His dog had done a real number on one side of the door and especially the original muntins. I have a rail & stile set for the router whose profile is a good match. Things went well as far as milling the profiles and coping the outer ends of each piece. The original moulding uses mitered half-laps at the interior joints, which I intended to duplicate, figuring the joint would be stronger that way. I got the half-laps made without incident.

Things went south when I tried to cut the miters. I felt sure I could do it with a chisel and a scrap of wood with a 45-degree cut as a guide, but instead I was confronted with the limitations of my setup and/or my hand tool skills. The results of my miter chopping were horrendous enough that I just started over.

For round two I opted to use the rail & stile bits as they work best, with coped ends for the interior joints. Since I'd already half-lapped all of the round one material, I milled all new pieces. The interior joints hold together well enough with glue and pins while I get the pieces primed, painted, and reattached to the door.

I'm trying to evolve my woodworking methods from Normite to hybrid, but I need a lot more practice with my hand tool skills. Hand tools keep me humble!

[Clark Hussey]

Welcomed my fifth Grand Daughter into the world. Ava Marie! Both Mom and baby are doing well. Here with her proud Dad.
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[Rod Sheridan]

I completed an A&C clock with a tile in it.

The clock mechanism is an electronic type with Westminster chimes.

The tile is from Mary Philpott, a ceramic artist that lives near me.........Rod.

http://www.verdanttileco.com/
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[Paul F Franklin]

Congrats Clark!

Great looking clock Rod!

I finished the assembly of my sawstop and accessories, including the overarm dust collection that just arrived today. I decided to go through all the assembly while only doing rough alignment, and then now that I have it in what I think will be the final location, I will partially disassemble it again and do a much more careful alignment, now that I understand how all the pieces fit together and interact. I did extend the dust collection ductwork to the new location, and ran a new 240 circuit for the saw. I finished installing some new lumber racks and moved some other stuff around to improve workflow a bit. I may do some more of that, but want to use things the way they are now for a while and see if further changes are needed.

I should be able to get the rest of the materials for the office remodel by next week, so will get back to that with the aid of the new saw.

It was pretty rainy last week so didn't do much outside work, but I did get the skid steer out of winter storage. It's just on it's trailer out in the drive for now, since it's normal storage spot is still pretty soggy.

[Tom Bain]

I did NOT get coronavirus ... is that considered an accomplishment?!?