Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments....

[Dennis Peacock]

Well Good Morning to you,

I hope this find each of you safe and warm.

It's been raining here for the past month.....well....ok, maybe not a month, maybe more like 4 days. My driveway has been pretty much under water since Saturday morning and now it's just point the car towards the road and hope you stay on the driveway on your way there. I know some of you have been going through this recent ice storm and I hope and pray that each of you have survived the storms as well as keeping safe and warm.

The computer desk is now all but finished. I have 10 coats of lacquer on this baby and 4 of those are clear gloss. The two tops are now in here in the house curing (and staying dry) until this coming weekend when I will toss on some water and rottenstone and rub out the top to make is a smoother overall finish.

I've at least "started" on the kitchen table and now I have to make a 7 drawer dresser for some friends of ours that are having their first baby and they desperately need furniture and I just couldn't turn them down.

I've been working a LOT at the day job and looks like things aren't going to let up for a while, so my shop time will be limited.

On the good news side, I have at least started turning a bowl and is on my lathe at this time. I just have to find time to finish it.

It's STILL raining here today and I have hopes that it will stop soon.

So what did YOU do this weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Rick de Roque]

Dennis, if it doesn't stop raining soon we will be using boats to go to work. At least the below 32° stuff isn't coming until after it stops raining. Was able to rough cut some walnut for a desk I'm starting and made a cutting board for the inlaws. Not very productive but had to work some on saturday.

Rick

[Matt Meiser]

It was too wet to go buy plywood for my daughter's book case so I cleaned and painted my mower deck. To make that easier I welded up a set of dollies that take the place of 2 of the guide wheels and hold the mower up on its front edge. That will make service and storage a lot easier since I can move it by myself now. Once that was done I started converting my brush hog to fit my quick hitch. I've got that almost done so hopefully one dry afternoon this week I can run and get the plywood in time for next weekend.

Plenty of rain here too. Last night it stayed just warm enough that the freezing rain didn't happen as predicted. We ran out last night and filled 4 5gal cans with gas for the generator to be safe. Just to the northwest of us the ice did come--many of my coworkers are without power this morning.

[Dan Gill]

I only managed a little shop time, and that was for someone else. The Jr. High kids at church are putting on Godspell, and I'm making some playground benches for the set. Just a 5-foot piece of 1x8 with feet. But I am making them very sturdy, since the kids will be jumping up on them and walking as well as sitting. They get to paint them.

[ron hill]

Dennis,
It's really cold un here on the prairie. It's -20 this morning but they say the cold snap should end by tomorrow. My brother and I made 200 pounds of venison sausage on Sat. and it sure is good. It was a little breezy so had trouble keeping an even temp in the smoker. It's a lot of work but we were done by 6:00 pm. We had the old frying pan going all day to sample the work. On Sun. I put 4 coats of laquer on the hall table I've been wrestling with and it's setting in it's permanent place by the front door. I'm not real happy with the final product as I tried a different glue for the mortice and tenons and it foamed and expanded which pushed the top up a bit which left small gaps around the exposed ends of the tenons. I didn't have it in clamps, I just put some weight on it but evidently not enough. Another lesson learned, this simple little piece has taught me a lot. Ron H

[Tim Malyszko]

The weather here in St. Louis sucked all weekend, which limited what I could do.

Despite the crummy weather, I managed to pick up some cherry and poplar for a TV stand I will be building for my Dad, clean my shop and begin building the base for the blanket chest.

I tried sketching out some final plans for this blanket chest, but after hours of coming up with a plan, I decided to dive into it and let my imagination take over. I know approximately what I want the final product to look like and the dimensions - hopefully it will turn out okay.

[Mark Pruitt]

Dennis,
Feel free to send some (not all, just some!) of that rain our way.

I look forward to seeing that computer desk, and I know you'll be excited to see it completed.

My weekend was as boring as a drill bit, except for about 6 hours on Saturday when I paid my first visit to the nearest AAW affiliated woodturners association and joined. It was great to watch others in action, since recovering from carpel tunnel surgery still has me on the sidelines. I look forward to getting to know this new group of friends. Dunno if there are any Creekers in the group, other than Don Fuss who also joined the association on Saturday. (It was Don who alerted me that the meeting was scheduled. Thanks Don!) Maybe we can "Creek" a few more folks.

Well that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. In another 10 days, 2 hours, 24 minutes and 37 seconds I can resume woodturning.

[John Timberlake]

Spent part of the weekend working a the base for the dining table for my daughter. All the pieces had been milled to thickness and rough cut previously. I cut all the pieces to finished dimensions, cut joints, glued up and attached the square legs. Now I need to get my vacuum press up and running to make panels for the top.

[Jim Becker]

Nothing accomplished outside of increasing sleep deprivation and parental frustration...visited relatives near DC this weekend including a couple museums. Behavior was, um...less than desired. Back in the shop next weekend if I have any choice in the matter!

[Joe Marotta]

Virginia seems to be the one corner of the country that did not get any precipitation (or cold weather) this weekend. Plus we were all walking around in shirt sleeves.

As for the shop, I got more done than I thought I would. I cleaned things up a bit, and put away a bunch of tools that I haven't used for a while. I also switched the location of the power switch on my table saw. I had placed it to the right of the blade as per the illustrations in the instruction manual, but based upon my usage over the past fewmonths, a safer location would appear to be to the left side of the blade.

Then, I cracked open the stacked dado blade that I haven't had a chance to play with, made a zci for it, and cut the slot in a dado jig I have been working on for my router.

So, all in all a pretty productive weekend, at least for me...

[Calvin Hobbs]

All,

Lost power on Saturday due to downed limbs from the ice storm. Lost about half of a large tree that fell over onto the deck. Lost large parts of 3 other trees. Neighborhood is a war zone.

Neighbor's tree lost a large limb that crushed the shed in my backyard.

Tried my best to heat the house with the fireplace last two nights, but am steadily losing ground and worried about the bitter cold snap expected the next couple of nights.....

So my wife and kids are heading to St. Louis for some warmth from my in-laws. I will stay home and drain the pipes and try to keep an eye on things.

We drove around downtown Springfield yesterday and it's a disaster. So thankfully we are safe and sound and doing fine, many others are in worse shape around the area. Came down to Branson for work this morning and it's like nothing happened here, business as usual.

So, needless to say, no shop time this weekend!!!

Cal

[Don Bullock]

Here in sunny Southern California we've had a very cold (actully down below 32 degrees at night) weekend. I had plans to work in the shop (garage), but it's not heated. Yesterday I did get out there for a while to straighten up a little in anticipation of a new bench top drill press (Yes, Jim I will post pictures as soon as possible). I'm off Monday so I plan to go out today to get something to put the drill press on. I realize that I should make a stand instead, but at this point it's just easier to buy something. I need the drill press set up so that I can continue the project I'm working on now. As soon as I have something I've made to show I'll do that for sure.

[Jim Hager]

Ain't this weather something else. We got rain all day most of the day on Friday all day Saturday and Sunday and it's just now slacking off here. The 5 rivers we have in this county are all over full and the water from the north is filling up the low lying areas quickly. Can you spell flood!!

In the shop I didn't get much done, 30 rp doors cut our and ready to assemble, a couple of repacement doors for two I built to the wrong size and a 28 1/2 x 60 panel wall. A large hunk of my time Saturday was spent replacing a heating element on the water heater. It took more time to figure out what the hey than it did to fix it. My water heater is one of those "Smart" ones with the computer chips and it keeps things from acting the same way as one of the old "dumb" ones After I unhooked all of the smart features I finally observed the typical features of an old fashioned electric water heater. The repair was easy.

[Pete Harbin]

The boy is teething up a storm! Lot's of tag-teaming with LOML to soothe Ty's aching gums. I take the late hours and she gets up in the morning while I sleep a little longer. We'll see how it goes when I'm back to work tomorrow.

Mom and son are off to help a friend who is pregnant now and always has a rough time...morning sickness of exponential proportions!! This is her third so LOML will help wrangle the other two girls (our Goddaughters) while Mommy takes a breather!

No shop time this weekend, other than some tidying up, but the space heater is on right now to take some of the chill off, and while Mom and son are away, I'll work on trimming out some bookcases and bench seat I built for our guest room.

Pete

[Fred Voorhees]

Spent the entire weekend in Atlantic City,NJ for an auto racing Exposition at the new exposition hall. Great weekend that included meeting up with a number of racing freinds that I don't get to see over the winter time, and also got to meet some nationally known names in racing such as sprint car driver Dale Blaney and dirt late model talent Rick Eckert. It was a working weekend, as they usually are and that is me below, manning my souvenir program stand.