Creekers Weekend Accomplishments....

[Dennis Peacock]

19 May 2008
Good Morning,

Been some very beautiful weather around here since all the storms and tornado's have left. Nice cool temps in the mornings and 70's to low 80's in the afternoon. The LOML and I are really liking this kind of weather.

The family project this year is a family garden. Everybody got to plant something they liked to eat and then the LOML and I planted the rest of the veggies. Strawberries are coming and very nicely as well as radishes. Got a neighbor or two that has a couple of small trees (8" DBH) that I need to go and get for the coming winters firewood. Seems like with all that's going on at the day job, that the weeks fly by any more before I even get warmed up to the current week. I guess that's the deal with getting older.

This week I start the process of putting in a cutterhead for my PM 15" planer. Once that is done, then I'll be back to milling walnut for the neighbors kitchen table. The LOML wants some things done for our home this year, so I won't be taking on any commission work this year at all.

That's it for me.....so what did YOU do this weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Matt Meiser]

I got my mom's bookshelf primed Friday night, painted the first coat yesterday morning and the second last night. Saturday was pretty much a wasted day as we woke up to no power and it didn't come back until around 11, messing up my plans for the day since we had to leave in the late afternoon for a party. And we had rain showers on and off so I couldn't do much outside. I did get a little time in working on my workbench. I got the top cut down to the dimensions I wanted and got the factory finish sanded off. I also picked up some wood for the aprons which I need to accommodate the vises I'm using.

[Gordon Harner]

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday celebrating my youngest's (daughter) graduation from nursing school at Villanova. The whole graduation thing has really gotten complex since mine. President's reception, nursing college award ceremony brunch following, religious ceremony and finally commencement with reception following. I'm exhausted and I'm sure that my child/adult is too. Proud/sad/thrilled don't know how I feel.

[Greg Hines, MD]

I worked all day Saturday on one of my Scouts Eagle Project, and did yardwork all day yesterday.

Doc

[Jim Becker]

Congrats, Gordon!!

This was a somewhat productive weekend, although I would have liked to get more things done. We are in the "musical rooms" game with our house at this point since our addition is completed and much of what I'm doing in my "copious free time" is related to that....moving furniture, hanging pictures, painting and installing register grills in the great room, etc. Professor Dr. SWMBO got the veggie garden cleaned out and acquired some things to plant, but the rains came and it got too messy to complete the planting.

{edit} I almost forgot...had a 'Creeker visit here on Saturday morning...Charlie Plesums from Austin TX and his lovely were in the area for a wedding and stopped by. They took pictures and will hopefully post them soon.

From a woodworking related standpoint, on Sunday, after a trip to New Jersey for some of their "cheap gas" ($3.65 per gallon), I hit the Flemmington Home Dept for some material to start on the trim work in the great room. Once home, I milled the double bead for door trim and single bead for the base in the shop (really...I got "into" the shop for a change!) By the time I stopped in the evening, I had the door opening trimmed out and the base installed. This is all to match the trim in the new addition to "pull through" and make the whole structure feel like one. Because the bead is "continuous", installation is not just simple butt joints, but requires some careful hand work to make the bead on the base mate up with the outer bead on the door casing. I did a reasonably good job on this...not as good as the finish carpenter from my GC...but acceptable, especially since this is painted trim and any small errors are filled with caulk and spackle. Here are a couple pictures of where things are pre-paint.

loft-trim-1.jpg loft-trim-2.jpg

[Jim O'Dell]

Well, I went out Sat late am and got 2 sheets of 3/4" MDF. Got one off the van, benches cleared off and set up for the first cut. Set up wrong. Went in and watched the Dallas/Detroit hockey game and ate lunch. Got back after the game and straightened out my problem and actually thought about what cut I needed to do next, and got both sheets cut out, and the smaller torsion box built. Sunday, I built the second, larger, more complicated box. (70" X 27", 4" double thickness overhang on one side for clamping to, 12" overhang shallow torsion box on one end to clear the contractor saw motor.) Finished that one up last night about 7:00 Beautifull weekend weather wise. A little warm Sunday, but nothing a box fan didn't take care of. Have a great weeK!! Jim.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Yardwork............

[Greg Cole]

Started out Friday night moving ceeement @ 1,000 lbs. And dug some holes to put the cement in. Started Saturday morning making more holes to fill with ceeeement. Ah, I just love post hole diggers (electrical service near said holes in the ground so an auger is out of the question). Once the holes were dug, I got to fill them in. Ah back to the joy of moving that ceeement again.
Sunday morning was at the lumber yard filling the back of the truck with PT 4x4, 2x4 and fence pickets. Had that all unloaded at home by @ 9 am.
Spent the day setting posts and framing a fence. Had the BIL over helping stain the pickets before installation, so I'm skipping out of the day job early to go home and finish framing and start installing posts. Least the pool is @ 74 now.
After having my little dog get hit by a car earlier this year... this project can't be done FAST ENOUGH (then again neither can any other project?).

Cheers.
Greg

[Dennis Peacock]

Started out Friday night moving ceeement @ 1,000 lbs. And dug some holes to put the cement in. Started Saturday morning making more holes to fill with ceeeement. Cheers.
Greg

Ouch Greg..!! You make my back hurt just thinking about all that. Here's to a speedy finished project.

[glenn bradley]

Face and edge jointed a bunch of ash that is part of the next project. I'm really liking the new G0490X.

[Jerome Hanby]

I've been stewing over building a workbench for quite awhile. I like the looks of those Veritas Bench Bolts, but almost $30 for a set of four was bugging me. I decided it couldn't be that hard to make those 1" diameter cross dowels. At that point the little voice in my head started shouting that it's going to cost much more to get setup to make these things than just buying them. So, I made my first stop Fastenal where I picked up a foot of 1" round brass bas stock and bludgeoned that little voice until it quited down. Next stop Harbor Freight (yeah I know, boo, hiss) for a six inch sliding vise. Normally I'm not expecting much from HF and figured I would look at the vise and end up ordering one from someone else. To my surprise, this thing was solid, weighed a ton, and had x and y axes (that's the correct plural for axis, I Googled it) that operated smoothly and I left heavy one heavy vise. Next stop was the blue borg where I picked up a couple of 1/2" bolts, a Kobalt 1/2" drill/tap combo, some cutting fluid, and a cheapo bandsaw blade suitable for cutting brass. Running total was about the same as four sets of Bench bolts from LV and I still hadn't produced one metal shaving.

Set things up Sunday Afternoon and discovered that heavy as it was, the vise still wanted to walk around during drilling. My Shopsmith table also serves for it's NEVER USED table saw function and therefore didn't have the slots you would normally expect on a drill press table. I'll build a jig to fit the miter slots and bolt the vise to and that will take care of that problem. So after putting a head lock on the vise to hold it still, I completed the drilling, did the tapping, and ended up with a working bench bolt, a 12 inch bench bolt, but a bench bolt none the less. Next steps are to lay out the other holes, repeat the drilling/tapping, possibly build a jig to guide the bandsaw cut, and slice off the individual cross dowels.

Assuming I use 8 bolts per workbench, I'm a scant 8 or 9 workbenches from breaking even!

I just requested The Roy Underhill book that documents his method of making really large wooden threads. I'm thinking that something larger than the inch and a half thread boxes that I can find will produce would be more suitable for vises. I found a link somewhere to a guy that is making and selling 2" vise screws but paying $165 for one is kind of bugging me. I'm going to need another hunk of pipe for that darned little voice...