2x4 Table: The Tuesday Night Project

What is this you might ask? Well it is a table to be. It is sized to match my dorm-sized garage fridge. Once complete, the fridge will sit atop the table and the old guys won't have to bend over to grab a soda any more. No, we don't really say "soda" in Alabama.

Danny is making a box for ashes. Ashes of dead people. What a strange hobby.

Wood Working - Project Box #3

This is my latest WW project. The wood is Purpleheart and yes it is naturally purple. The painters tape is used to keep the wood from splintering while cutting the boards. All six boards were mitered on all four edges.

So I meant to post some copy with those last three photos but like so many things I never I got around to it.

Weekend Update

Saturday David M. and I drove up to Scottsboro to purchase some hardwood for the next couple of projects. We ended up buying some Leopard and Purple Heart. Both should make some spectacular boxes. Danny's next project will be from cedar. I already have a stash of cedar in the room above the garage so we didn't pick up any cedar at The Hardwood Center.

For Saturday afternoon the plan had been to drive up to Colombia, TN to ride the (model) trains but that little adventure was rained out again. I believe that was the third time in a row we planned to make that trip only to have it rain.

The previous photos show a piece of white oak joined with a piece of MDF, a photo of Danny using the joint jig we purchased back in the spring. Yes, that is the Morris in the background. The last photo is a shot of a weather balloon rising from Green Mountain in South Huntsville.

GMC Update: I painted the drive shaft this week.

And the Chainsaw! There I mentioned it, but it is not really news until I finish it.

Tuesday Night Wood Working

Got behind on posting so I will try to catch up with a few quick posts.

During the Tuesday Night Woodworking sessions, we finished up a few more boxes. The picture above is David. M displaying a Maple box with Wenge accents. Danny's and my box were also Maple with Blood wood accents. All three of the boxes were finished with tung oil. The oil really made the color accents stand out.

Tonight's wood working session consisted of some time with the chisel insetting the hinges into the current box project. Working with a chisel and a hammer is very therapeutic. And of course there was a trip to Lowe's prior to the chisel time to purchase the hinges. David M. was absent tonight.

Next week we should finally begin finishing.

Monday Night: Small Engine Repair

Brian, Danny and I attended our first class Monday. I learned several things during the first class. They probably did as well.

#1 Ninety percent of problems with small engines is simply bad gas.
#2 Of the other 10% of problems, 90% percent of those can be fixed by rebuilding the carburetor.

I also now know what is wrong with my pressure washer. Based on the instructors experience, its pilot jet is clogged. A carb rebuild should resolve the problem.

Tuesday Night: Wood Working

Tuesday evening's WW session consisted mostly of sanding. The boxes are nearing completion. The hinges need to be installed, a little touch up sanding, and then applying the finish. Total hours to complete: maybe 3. Total weeks until completion: maybe 12.

Tuesday night woodworking was not very productive. The greater we managed to make 24 precision cuts. OK, so maybe only 3 of them were precise, but we did try to at least cut the correct boards.

I also crawled under the Morris to find the gas leak. It turns out the leak is in the tank. This is quite unfortunate as the tank is pretty much full right now. And now it is slightly less full. And now ever so slightly less than it was a second ago. You get the picture. So in the very near future I suppose I will be dropping the tank, but first I must procrastinate for a while.

And finally it must be said Danny is now officially a bum. Bring on the summer and shred the list.

What I Did and Did Not Do This Week

Last week was spent standing in a field in the middle of Ohio. I got back home Saturday at about 1:00 AM.

We got a dog Friday afternoon. His name is Yoshi. He is about 1.5 years old.

A camping trip had been planned for the weekend, but it was canceled because several of us could not make it. Turns out we had bad weather too.

There was also a car show on Saturday that I wanted to go to. It was postponed until next weekend because of the weather.

And finally there was a wood working show this weekend and I managed to get there on Sunday afternoon.

Woodworker Progress

Tuesday night was the weekly woodworking session that doesn't really meet every week because we sometimes have something, anything, better to do.

Last week, we worked on re-sawing and then planning down some maple boards to about 0.6" The S4S thickness will actually be 2/4" but we didn't know that at the time. Woody says "Plan your work and work your plan." During the planing (not planning) process we had no plan (but we did have a plane), just a vague notion that it was Tuesday. Without a plan, it is hard to plan your work. Without a plane, it is hard to plane your wood. We did have a plane though, so we did plane the wood. Not sure if we were following the plan though. At this point you may be asking yourself about woodchucks and woodchucking.

This week's session was very different. We still had no plan, though we still had a plane. The difference being that this week we forgot to pretend like we were making progress. That means when the guys arrived they sat down and watched as I pretended to clean off the work bench. After spending 15 minutes putting away many of the things that were piled up on the bench, I got tired of being heckled, and perhaps a little disgusted at the lack of benching top that I could see. So I sat down too. And they continued to heckle me. At least for a little while.

The conversation then switched to politics as it often does with these right-wing-wing-nuts. (Make sure you read both wings.) Health care reform, yada yada yada. I think we fixed it all.

Not a single piece of wood was harmed during the creation of this post, nor in the events that led up to the creation of this post. What does that make our average cuts per minute per person fall to? Don't answer. Speaking of numbers, I had no takers on a 40.

Tuesday evenings wood working session reminded me that some of the tools don't get used very often. Starting with a piece of rough cut maple, I had to ask myself "where do I start?" to get a nice S4S board (surfaced four sides) .

After thinking about about it for a minute or so, it all came back to me. Surface an edge with the jointer; surface a side with the joiner with the surfaced edge against the fence so the two surfaced sides will be a right angle; using the table saw, make the second edge parallel to the first edge; and then using the planer, make the top side parallel to the bottom side.

I intended to resaw the boards on the bandsaw after the second step, to have a few pieces of thin maple instead of converting them directly to saw dust, but unfortunately the board was so twisted that it would not be feasible. So much for trying to plan ahead.

So, anyway, the current project is to make a few small boxes, approximately the size of a cigar box. Notice I did not say a jewlery box as these will be far to nice for storing silver and gold. The plan is to make two apiece, the first being maple with purple heart accents and the second being black walnut with maple accents.

We should be done in, oh, a year or so. Don't ask.

We, the Madison County Woodworkers Guild, started our 2010 project tonight.

You might think we are getting a late start, it being February already, but we are not. We are fast workers so we will make up any time we have already lost. As an example, we actually made an average of 1.6 cuts per worker tonight in a 3 hour period. That is about 0.55 cuts per person per hour. Not bad considering we were using power tools. When you average that out over the past four weeks the numbers get unbelievable.

The wood we have selected for the project is a maple with purple heart accents on the first, and black walnut with maple accents on the second.

Finished up Bri's bookcase today. I can't believe I spent more time painting it than I did building it.

We had some snow Thursday and Friday. The schools shut down so the kids got to stay home.

I walked out by the creek in the backyard today. There was some ice along the edge of the water. I walked on it, so technically I was walking on water.

Whew!

Where did 2009 go? I have been remiss in blogging for a few months. Let me catch you up. I will start with December.

Had I been writing recently I would have mentioned helping my neighbor Tom remove the V8 from his 1966 Mustang convertible. (Yep, there are two old convertibles on my street.) Why is it always cold outside when an engine is being pulled?

I would have also mentioned a couple of hiking trips - a few around Rainbow Mountain and a trip to Sipsey. The Sipsey expedition explored a few trails I had seen in quite a while. We visited Happy Rock and Ship Rock as well as locating a couple of great camp sites for possible use in the near future. We also successfully located an alternate route for returning home after leaving the trail. Some would say we got lost. I would disagree. Those were some of the nicest dirt roads I have ever driven and the GPS was quite aware of their existence. I will stick to the route I know next time though.

Progress on the '72 GMC truck has been pretty much non-existent since August. Hopefully I will get the dust and cobwebs cleared off in the not so distant future.

The Tuesday evening woodworking sessions did see us all (David, Danny, and myself) complete some nice little boxes this fall. As usual, I have not taken any pictures. Worse, I don't even know where the camera is right now. It has been MIA for better than a week. I am also in the process of finishing up another bookcase for Bri. And I started some benchwork for a model railroad that J and I will be building.

Time to make some biscuits.

Mundane Post #1109

A nice three day weekend. School has been keeping me busy.

Today I tried to catch up on some of the chores that needed to be done. Really exciting stuff like replacing a toilet and a door frame. The plumbing task is complete but the door still needs a little work.

The oil and plugs in the Miata were replaced this weekend, the odometer reading 111k miles. Filling up the tank today produced a a result of 31 mpg.

The garden is still producing tomatoes, peppers, okra, and cantaloupes thought it is mostly unattended.

I just completed a nice box made from black walnut and cherry sapwood. Perhaps that is premature, it still needs to be oiled.

Logging

My neighbor, Mike, recently mentioned his buddy had some trees knocked down during a recent storm. Several of the trees were red oak. Would I be interested in having them cut into lumber. Certainly.

He we see Brian's truck ready to tow the first load of logs to the mill. It was no small feat to load the trailer using only a come-along and a couple of chains.



Here are our logs nicely stacked at the mill (H&K) waiting to be cut.



Here is the center of the operation - basically a pole barn and the mill.



And here is the mill.



We should get a call in a few weeks to retrieve our boards. Now I need to decide what to build.

It's Raining in the Garage

As the garage door opened on Sunday morning, I noticed something was wrong. It was raining in the garage.

After twisting the water cut-off value, I went into the garage to investigate. The entire place was a mess. A large part of the ceiling had collapsed over my '72 GMC and the workbench next to it. Everything on the bench was soaked. Across the room, water was rolling down the face of the cabinets that I had recently built onto another workbench below them. Many tools were lying in the torrent of water. Water was close to an 1" deep on the floor at the lowest spot in the garage.

The last few days have been really cold. I had heard this was the coldest winter we have had in 6 years. I spent several hours in the shop on Saturday just generally cleaning up. (And I finally got around to putting door handles on the cabinets as well as touching up the paint) The clean up effort was in vain, the place was a mess.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon dragging stuff out of the garage, and sweeping and vacuuming up water. After removing most of the water, I setup a box fan to assist in drying out the garage. (I took several photos before the cleanup effort began for the insurance company. )

It appears that a copper pipe in the unfinished upstairs area had frozen. The pipe has about a one inch split that runs lengthwise. After splitting, water sprayed upward. Some water went down the stairwell but it appears most ran across the floor and down into an A/C vent. The duct-work filled with water and the ceiling collapsed under the weight. When the ceiling collapsed, the duct was ripped in half above the ceiling. At this point water was running across the top side of the ceiling and downs the walls.

Upstairs, most of my hardwood supply got wet. I store the wood standing upright to save space. The bottom end of every board has soaked up water. About six to nine inches of each board is swollen. The boards will not dry back evenly. Hard wood is fairly expensive and my stash is all wet. This discovery made me sad.

Back down stairs, I noticed that my planer and chop saw had been subjected to the flow of water as well. I also had a soggy box of truck parts. On the truck, the new bolts had already started rusting. This was frustrating. For about three years now I have been working on the truck - taking it apart, sandblasting the parts to remove all rust, painting them, and putting it back together. It was discouraging to see some rust forming on the truck I had worked so hard to remove it from. I realize the truck would have eventually gotten wet, but my plan was to finish it first.

While cleaning out the garage, I was glad I had sold the 1925 Chevrolet. The ceiling caved in right above where the truck was normally parked. I am not sure that truck would have ever recovered from that much water.

It got cold again!

I am still working on painting the cabinet doors. Twelve doors total. I decided to paint them before hanging them to keep the paint off the hardware. One coat of primer, two coats of paint was the plan. I have finished the primer and the first coat of paint. I plan on making more progress tomorrow.

It has been a busy busy week. During times like this I usually have a lot to write about unfortunately most of it never gets written.

This semester of school is almost over. I took my final for the second of three classes yesterday afternoon. The final final will be on Tuesday.

Over the last week I have managed to effectively procrastinate on several occasions by building a set of wall cabinets for the garage. I build three cabinets spanning a total of 12 feet. Hopefully the extra storage space will allow me to finally get the work bench cleaned off.

That is all for now. I am heading to the high school to sub in a Spanish class. (School started two hours late today due to possible inclement weather. We all knew it wouldn't really snow, didn't we?)

I just breezed past here and noticed I have been delinquent. And then I was hit with a little deja vu. Last year about this same time the blog was idle for a few weeks. School was keeping me busy then as well. Only about ten more days until I can stop using that excuse for a few weeks.

What's Up in the Shop?

After getting the laundry done, I headed out to the shop the create some more dust. After a couple of hours I had managed to make some new cabinets. I built the case and face frame today. Still need to putty, paint, and hang the doors. That probably won't happen for a week or so.

One can never have too much storage space and cutting up some wood creates more free space.