[a1Jim]

The workbench is almost complete.

There it sits, proudly in nearing completion glory. And it is almost usable! The dog holes, lower shelf, sanding, and finishing are all that is left to complete this project.

I wasn't sure I should post this one. The twist you see is an optical illusion. I have checked it with straight edges, levels, you name it. This thing is dead flat…

My Central Forge 9" quick release vise fitted with wooden faces, and bench dog holes. Yes the back face of the vise is uneven. I am considering taking it back to Harbor Freight. Looks like a screwy casting to me. I guess I will see if it impacts anything.

The quick release works very well. Making me wonder if I really should take the thing back or just deal with it…

As you can see, the lower stretchers did not get the slots cut into them that the uppers did. I REALLY wanted to flush mount the lower shelf…

That's it for now. More to come soon!

coming along nicely

 

[a1Jim]

Some pics of the workbench top...

Not much today. Just snapped some pics of the workbench top to show y'all how it is looking… I don't know about you folks, but I LOVE that color! I need to finish sanding the edges and get after them with some oil, then get after the base… And finally, wax it all down…

looking good

 

[a1Jim]

More storage improvements.

I have had a reasonably busy weekend of restructuring my storage in the garage workshop. I am finally getting around to removing the mistakes I made a couple of years ago by purchasing some very LIGHT duty undersized storage shelves with a usable shelf size of 12" deep x 24" wide. These are being replaced slowly but surely by a heavy duty (as much as common plastic shelving can be) "24" deep x 36 wide shelving units from Lowes.

While both units appear to be made of ABS plastic, there is a readily apparent difference in the thickness of the plastic in use. The new ones are substantially thicker, with molded in ribbing for stiffening. The support columns are substantially thicker, and the completed assembly is noticably sturdier.

Aside from removal of rickety storage units, the bigger part of the reason behind this was to have a more efficient system for storing my stuff. I have so far tranferred the contents of all 5 shelves of my first unit, and am taking up only 2 of the 5 shelves on the new unit. I have a total of 5 shelving units to replace. I figure 2 of these will do the trick…

The organization kick is partially due to wanting to get my camping gear out of the garage and into totes up in the attic (mostly toted up now) AND to better organize lawn & garden while it is in the garage…

I hope and pray I am making progress, because right now, I can't even see the top of the table saw, or either workbench…

wood shelves work too.

 

[a1Jim]

Coming clean sure is dirty work! or. A little pictoral evidence for Jim..

Jim from Anchorage, you asked for photographic evidence of the mess, and what the heck. I'm not too proud… So this is what a shop looks like when you tear it from end to end to reorganize it, and are only about a quarter of the way through the project… (And I needed something to lighten up my day a bit!)

The current view from the entry door to the shop. Hey at least you can tell there is a workbench and a table saw in there, sort of…

Oh, the big green thing immediately above the workbench is my Pelican Excursion 146 DLX 14.5' plastic canoe. This thing is a beast. It handles great in the water, is danged near sink proof, but is a PAIN to portage!

The junk piled up on the drill press. No this is NOT the permanent location for this stuff!

The view from the roll up door point in. The big black thing is a New Braunfels Smoker Bandera Smoker. Char Broil has since bought out New Braunfels Smoker. IF you can find an NOS New Braunfels Bandera, GET IT. The Char Broil versions burn out and rust out too fast…

The new Heavy Duty 24 inch deep x 36 inch wide shelves. Lots of storage space, not a bunch of cash… Yes wood would certainly work, but adding up costs wasn't cost effective. I should have waited for these to go on sale though and bought 2 of them.

The row of old Plano shelves. These things are junque… Just because my Plano tackle boxes are well made does NOT mean all their stuff is worth a hoot…

Ok I will certify it's a mess. A little work and you'll be ready to rock and roll.

 

[a1Jim]

Starting to be an air head...

Okay I know, cheesy title for saying. Woo Hoo I finally got a compressor!

The piles, and piles of other stuff in the way are dwindling, and the dust collection is up and working quite nicely.

This is actually my Wife's fault. She wanted to go to Big Lots, and has been after me to replace the Arrow electric brad nailer for a while now. A little background before I confuse you to death…

I have an Arrow ET200 electric brad nail gun, and it, well sort of drives brads. What exactly do I mean by sort of? Welll…

When driving 1-1/4" brads into SYP, it leaves the brad 1/4" proud of the surface. Requiring me to drive the brad home with a hammer.

Now Arrow Tech support says this is due to insufficient power supply, but I am running it off of a 20 amp circuit, with no other load, and have no problems with any other power tools I run off this circuit…

Read the Amazon reviews for this thing. I am FAR from the only person that has had a lousy experience with this thing.

A pity really… Arrow used to make nice stuff…

Anyway, I digress… So LOML notices, and asks me why it was doing that, and then she asks me the inevitable questions…

#1. What good is it if it doesn't work right?
#2. What would it take to get something that would work right?
#3. What are you waiting for?

So I did my research, and even though I would LOVE to have a huge compressor, with tons of CFM, a big motor, big pump, and big tank. I simply do not have the room. I need something that is space efficient.

After reading the reviews, and seeing that the model I chose is identical to well reviewed Northern Industrial, and Campbell Hausfield models, I selected a Central Pneumatic #40400 2HP 8 Gallon oil lubed compressor, 50' Goodyear hose, HF disconnect sets, and a HF #66872 16 Gauge Air Finish Nailer.

Setting up the compressor was a bit of an unexpected challenge as the axle bolts used allen head bolts, with a 3/8" allen head. While I happen to have that size, it was on a strip of sockets, not in my combo allen wrench thingy… Wasn't expecting that…

Typical of Harbor Freight. Assembly instructions were horrible. and typical of this model and its clones, filling the oil resevoir was a challenge due to the location of the handle. A long spout funnel, along the lines of what are used to put transmission fluid in cars was what I was finally able to use to fill this, but it did not go it without putting compressor oil on the floor. (since cleaned up with some CRC Brakleen.)

First run of the compressor went exactly as expected, until I powered it off, and went to drain the tank… The stupid petcock would NOT unscrew… Until I figured out another undocumented feature of this compressor. The petcock works backwards. It WAS all the way out, and sealed. It screws IN to open the port and drain the tank… Once that oddity was figured out, the tank drained, and we waited for a few minutes.

The next step was to set up the hose…

I bought a 1/2" Goodyear hose. Mostly because it is what I am used to dealing with. Well that would appear to be too big for this setup. 3/8" is what I should have gotten. So the thread sizes on the fittings were too big. A trip to Home Depot fixed that. Yes I will grab the right size hose, but for now this works…

Now the first female thread x barb fitting did NOT want to seat all the way down in the quick coupler. I tried all the others, just that one… Good thing I had about 3 extras in my toolbox… So now the hose, compressor, and air tools plug and unplug quickly…

A drop or two of air tool oil down the fitting of each tool prior to test running them, run the compressor up to pressure, and get after testing the air tools…

HF Brad Nailer. Check.
Ingersoll Rand air hammer. Check.
Blue Point die grinder. Check.
Blue Point Air Ratchet, Check.
Blue Point 1/2" impact wrench. Check.

Tire chuck set up for this compressor too!

Now aside from brad nailing some scrap rough cedar 1×2 to a scrap 4×4, I have actually done something useful… Reinflated my flat basketball… Of course this reminded me of WHY the ball got flat in the first place. I stink at basketball…

LOML already knows I am planning on a pin nailer, and framing nailer for upcoming projects.

I know she will be ecstatic at the use of the framing nailer when I put the fence back up…

Having fun?

 

[a1Jim]

My head hurts for good reason...

So last night, I took one of my bowl blanks, I believe this stuff is Camphor due to the smell (it smells like Vicks), but I wouldn't testify to that in court. The wood came from a tree that had been storm fall from Hurricane Ike last year. So anyway…

Like I said I took one of my bowl blanks, about 6" in diameter, and mounted it to the face plate, roughed it out, and created the tenon on the bottom of the blank. Removed it from the face plate, and mounted it on my chuck…

About 1 minute into working the inside with the bowl gouge, I heard it…

It was sort of a shhhh shhhhh shhhh ckckckckckck sort of sound. Now I was turning somewhat slow, maybe 600rpm or so… but it seemed to happen so fast, for just a fraction of a second, the tool seemed to get MUCH louder on the blank, and then SNAP!

The blank came off of the chuck with a pretty good deal of force, barely skimming over the top of the face shield, and with whatever it was on there that was sharp grazing my scalp and giving me a nice 2 inch long scratch and bruise on the top of my head… It did manage to draw a bit of blood, but nothing terrible…

Upon looking at the chuck, the tenon was still firmly in the chuck, the dumb thing simply sheared off…

To make things worse, when it hit the floor, the blank split into 4 different pieces…

This is not the first time a blank from this log has done this to me. I think for my skull sake, I am going to get rid of this stupid thing and move on to the walnut I have waiting for me…

Maybe I will saw this thing into planks, empty my dust bin, and run this stuff through the planer. I bet the shavings would be great in a potpourri warmer…

Wow Dave
I glad in wasn't a bigger injury. If it had happen to me people would say no problem because it hit me in my hard head. Be Careful "BOWLING" . OK I'll say it for you Argggg bad pun.

 

[a1Jim]

Tuning my Groz #4. You'd be amazed how sweaty you can get...

Like most new planes, heck, what am I saying, like most planes, period, new or new to you, my Groz #4 was in need of a tuning. First things first check the sole for flatness… Heel to toe dead flat. This is a good sign, Side to side it is concave, at 120 grit I get scratches all the way accross, but moving up the grits the ones in the very center don't even hardly come out. Time to work this plane on the sharpening board.

Now I am pretty sure this isn't the RIGHT way to do this, but it has worked for me for a LOT of years, and I see no need to change it up now…

I use a sharpening board that is a simple piece of 3/16" hardboard, with various grits of sandpaper glued down with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. This was the way I was taught in High School, and right or wrong, it is what I have been doing for all those so many years since then…

Anyway, so I am working my way through the grits, 120, 220, 320, and my finest grit of 400 (Yeah I know I should go finer, but hey, it works so far…) Then to the whetstone. No clue what grit either side is, there is a coarse side and a fine side. I have had this thing since High School…

Anyway run the sole through the whole rigamarole of flattening until I honestly get tired of fooling with it. It's close but not perfect. (WIll get after it again, probably tomorrow). Moved on to the iron. WOW is that thing concave on the back! It took me something like 45 minutes to get it flat! But it is there now… Flipped it over, and got after it with the honing guide. Took me a bit to get the angle right, but I finally got it…

Finally got it put back together, adjusted the blade depth, set a piece of solid wood (Southern Yellow Pine, it's what I had) in the vise, and took a swipe, no chatter, just nice, long, thin curly shavings interrupted where the wood dipped down out of reach of the blade. Two swipes later I was able to keep full width translucent shavings.

I literally wore out the 120 grit in the process and need to replace it on the board. But tomorrow brings another chance to get after this plane and get it perfect…

Oh, for what it's worth, I checked side to sole for squareness, according to my Johnson Engineers square, it is dead on…

I don't recall who wrote the review of the Groz #4 and low angle block plane combo set from Woodcraft, but that review was a contributing factor to me buying this set. While it certainly needs tuning out of the box, I am pretty sure every single new plane shy of maybe a Veritas or similar plane needs to be tuned. And to be honest, part of the fun of setting up shop is tuning and tweaking the tools and equipment…

A lot of work and sandpaper.

 

[a1Jim]

Working on anniversary and Christmas presents...

I have a few projects that are, well in progress for Christmas, and my wedding anniversary. One of them is the obligatory cutting board, of black walnut and red oak. Finished dimensions are going to be 22" x 16" x 1,25" thick. No handle, but a simple 1" hanger hole in one of the corners is in the design. This is the first time I have ever attempted anything along the sorts of this kind of glue up. So far it looks pretty good. I will need to get it to a shop that has a wide format planer to flatten and thickness it.

I am open for suggestion on the finish, since I honestly have no idea what to put on it. Is Boiled Linseed Oil / wax food safe?

!http://inlinethumb03.webshots.com/44098/2411668190103915817S600×600Q85.jpg!

Looks like a super board.

 

[a1Jim]

A mantle clock underway in the shop.

So the mantle clock project is underway, the walnut and oak strips are cut, and the stripe section is glued up and drying in the clamps… It is now too late to run power tools, so the cross section will need to wait until tomorrow.

I had a $10.00 off any purchase of $20.00 or more at Woodcraft coupon, so I got my walnut there. I really only needed / wanted 2 board feet anyway, just enough to finish up this project, and maybe do another one for MY desk after Christmas is over…

So far, it's looking really good, I have some scraping of the glue squeeze out to do in the next couple of hours, and then planing to my 3/4" thickness,

All told, this is NOT going nearly as quickly as I had hoped. This is for an anniversary present, and that is is 3 days!

I'm a dead man.

Go man go you can do it. and she will love it.

 

[a1Jim]

The strange things we do to clean up...

So I'm out in the shop last night… working on clearing the piles of stuff off of my assembly table / bench. Let's see, I have a couple of surplus closet shelf brackets, and I have a 48" long piece of 12" wide 1/2" plywood. What kind of trouble can I get in with that right?

Well inspiration, or stupidity led me to mounting the brackets, with their bottoms 1/8" higher than the top of the molding for the entry door to the shop…

4 wall anchors, and 8 screws later, I have a perfect spot of small doo dads that get VERY infrequently used. But what?

Well, for now, it will hold a surplus supply of Lliquid Nails for Projects, a couple of sets of salvaged locking swivel casters, and some small boxes of misc low voltage electrical / radio type components, caulk saver foam inserts, weather stripping that sort of light weight stuff.

Is it ideal? No. But it's not much weight, just bulk. It is VERY infrequently accessed stuff, and it needed to get off of my bench.

Now that I have moved that stuff, I have run into a large supply of "What the heck is that?". I think I need to move the trash can closer to the bench…

Never ending clean up and organising

 

[a1Jim]

Lighting, and a broken drill press table.

So I get to scooting stuff around my shop, and the drill press has to move. Now it's been a couple of hot to cold, dry to humid weeks (typical of winter here in coastal Texas), and I haven't given my DP much of a look see…. But it was in the way of where the ladder had to go. Now mind you, I didn't pick it up by the table, but rather by the column, and moved it. When I set it down, and walked past, I brushed the table with my leg, and discovered it was loose. Upon closer inspection, I found the MDF surrounding the thread inserts on the table had pretty much melted away from them… So now, I get to make a new DP table. That's fine, this Grizzly has been functional, but somewhat annoying since day one. I now know why the guy that sold me this thing sold it, and why it was so cheap…

So I go fishing through my cutoffs, and what do you know, I have a stack of 12" x 24" 3/4" birch ply cutoffs… Things are looking up! I happen to have a 4×4 section of hardboard that I will need to cut to size, but I am good there, and I have plenty of red oak in my cutoffs that is long enough I can edge this thing…

One thing about the Grizzly design that the prior owner warned me about, and I noticed, is that the knobs for the fence hold down are in the way of the elevation handles. I measured, and the outside edge of the T track is 5.5" in from each side. I have never liked that. My plan is to on the new one, place it 2" from each edge.

In order to accomodate the T track, and the through bolt for the fence, since I do not have a T slot cutting bit, I will need to make the fence a lamination. I don't need a full 1.5" though, and I have LOTS of 1/4"ply laying around. The fence will end up a lamination of 3/4" and 1/4" birch ply, and 3/16" tempered hardboard on the face. I am not sure, but I don't think I am going to bother edging the fence… But it is a possibility. I need the practice…

Well, with the drill press, and the smoker, and of course the wheel barrow temporarily out of the way (I REALLY need a storage shed!), I was able to get up to the ceiling, and take some measurements and mark them off. I have decided I am going to run the lights at the front wall 45" from the wall (to accommodate the attic ladder) the central row at 10' and the rear row at 4'. So the new marks were made, and the hole cut for the old work box in the ceiling. The box was installed, and the outlet and cover plate were put in as placeholders. I discovered QUICKLY that I need some of those foam gaskets . Even with all the insulation in the attic, there is still a cool breeze that blows from the hole that I need to stop, or at least slow down to the best of my ability…

With this, and everything else LOML has scheduled for me, this looks to be a very busy weekend…

If it can't be welded then use a metal plate and drill and screw it back together then make a new table top
from ply or MDF.

 

[a1Jim]

The stuff in the attic is done, so now back into the shop...

I finished up running the outlets for the lighting, and have mounted the 4 fixtures I do have in their final configuration, and the light is spread WAY better throughout the shop. I have 2 more fixtures to pick up still (next pay period), but I am not sure how soon I will have an opportunity to mount them. The side of the shop they are on, is currently housing the fencing material, still.

Ah yes, the fencing materials, the bane of my shops existence for now. As you may recall from earlier installations of this blog, I need to do some stump removal, so I followed the A&M recommendation and ran a ring of hardware cloth around the stump in question, filled the ring with charcoal, and lit it off. No joy. After 6 hours of struggling to stay lit, the charcoal finally burned down to ash, leaving charred, but still quite there stumps. This has been a LONG, COLD, WET fall and winter, and getting rid of these stumps has proven to be a pain in the tail… It's just too wet to burn them out. At the rate this is going, I am going to be waiting until the summer before I can burn them out, at that time, we will be under a burn ban and water rationing again… :-(...

I wish they had a stump grinder about the size of a walk behind mower. I cannot get a full size stump grinder behind the house without, well without towing it down a muddy bayou… Gotta love living in Coastal Texas…

Well, while I regroup, and SERIOUSLY consider hiring the stump removal job, at least I can enjoy the lights as configured in the shop. This upgrade really has done a LOT for visibility in my shop, and I would urge others to make sure they have enough light in their shops, I had no idea how badly the lighting arrangement was impacting my visibility until I moved it around. A LOT of time and effort, but certainly worth it!

And the beat goes on.

 

[a1Jim]

More cleanup. Squeezing it in when I can...

I've been unable to get much shop time lately, and currently my biggest project is cleanup. As my gentle readers know, I got stopped toward the end of an attic insulation project by spiraling temps. I simply do NOT want to fry my skull off in order to insulate my attic… But several rolls of R30 remained in the shop. Well that got taken care of yesterday.

In all honesty, with the insulation out of the way, the smoker, and trash cans rolled out into the driveway, my shop feels downright cavernous. My concern here would be resisting the temptation to fill it with more junk, or worse, being able to resist LOMLs wanting to fill it with more junk.

My trip home today will include a trip to Advance Auto Supply for a funnel. I did stop by Krogers yesterday, but no luck… The Krogers in my neighborhood simply does not carry funnels (say WHAT?!) so I have to go to an auto parts house to get one… I need to put the blade and bit cleaner back into the gallon bottle, then rinse the container out, put all the stuff like the brass brush, the bit jar etc… back together and stow it on the shelf…

I have finished Kitty Grave Marker Cross V2.0 (BIL asked for different dimensions) which was going to be my submission for the Nothing New But The Glue challenge, but I ran over time wise due to other projects… So I have Kitty Grave Marker Cross V1.0 sitting there on my workbench, staring me in the face, taunting me, daring me to do something with it… Something tells me since the dimensions are off on this thing to simply bob it off to straight pieces, and head to the lathe…

The lathe dust hood pieces are at the ready more or less. A 4" ducted 4×12 floor register box, some galvanized flashing, and some rare earth magnets (magnets in shipping presently) are all that it should take.

Wood magazine had a pretty interesting band saw dust port upgrade in the most recent issue. I tried their solution. It failed horribly, and went back to my own. (Will post up detailed pics AFTER I send in my submission to Wood Mag). Took the pieces from my wood mag port build and put them back in the box of PVC parts from whence it came…

And I am discovering a need for at least a little bit of shelf space in my shop for non woodworking project stuff. Specifically about 2 60 quart totes worth of stuff. One of them is for R&D projects for ideas I am playing with on outdoor related items, the other is for electronics projects and pieces.

As the space gets cleaner and cleaner, and it is taking shape, admittedly slowly, but it IS taking shape, I am amazed at the bit of pride of accomplishment I get from this. I went from thinking I would never be able to pursue woodworking beyond what I could do with a circular saw due to budget, space, whatever, to having the stuff, but being so space limited I couldn't get anything done, to actually making the space, and kicking finished projects of constantly improving quality out the door… It is all just a matter of taking everything a little manageable piece at a time, and constantly moving forward…

Keep on keeping on

 

[a1Jim]

A teeny, tiny bit of progress, car problems, and leaving shop for good reason...

Last night was particularly brief in regards to my shop time. But I was able to manage some things I have been putting off. In particular, putting up my Rockler blade and bit cleaner stuff. The cleaner comes as a concentrate, so you need to provide a 1 gallon jug of some sort (recycled Hi-C bottle, label removed, and CLEARLY marked "Blade Cleaner", no children yet, so no problem there…), and of course the problem came when needing to put the stuff back IN to the bottle. No funnel. A quick trip on the way home to Advance Auto Supply, which was planned, but the car made it more neccesary unexpectedly yesterday (have been lazy about checking coolant, was finally low enough to need addition. A little concerned about just WHERE that coolant is going, but no evidence of oil in the coolant, coolant in the oil, and no evidence of coolant on the ground, or in the combustion chambers… What on earth is going on here?!) so my little $1.30 funnel ended up being a $12.00 bill. No biggie…

I managed to get the cleaner back into the bottle, got the funnel, the cleaning tub etc… all cleaned and dried up. Then discovered the funnel doesn't fit in the tub… So I peg board hooked it, and went to put up the tub of stuff. Now I had been keeping it under my workbench, but have never been happy with that layout. So I rearranged some things, and placed the tub, and the bottle of cleaner on the upper shelf where the hand held power tools are. I am not sure this is a great idea, but hey, it's what I have for now…

Now for the reason that I didn't get much shop time last night. LOML went to visit with friends in the hospital last night, and their brand spanking new baby boy!

I don't know about any of you guys, but that is a good enough reason to put off shop cleanup for another day…

It seems we can find anything else to do when we have a task we would rather not do. been ther done that.

 

[a1Jim]

What little I could do today...

At home, per Dr. orders, off my nail perforated foot. I really OUGHT to have it elevated, but the swelling is down. Thank God no tendon or nerve damage… But I tell you, I don't want to go through this one again!

Even though it hasn't been anywhere even CLOSE to 10 years, my Dr. decided a Tetanus shot was in order. I wish he hadn't… On top of the throbbing foot, I have, admittedly a low grade, but certainly dealing with a reaction to the Tetanus vaccine. And I DO NOT like it…

Anyway, due to the foot, I decided that after going completely bonkers staying off my feet, that I needed to get out to the shop. Of course I couldn't be standing, so it had to be work at the bench while I was on the stool…

Now the shop stools I have, and I have 2 of them, are the creamy white and green Woodcraft stools that were closed out about 3 or 4 months back. I am happy to report that they are FAR more comfortably to sit in than I expected, and the spreader on it is at just the right height to prop my aching foot up…

Well enough about the bottom 10 digits… I had a shipment today, finally, of the steel machine bushings to replace the stack of plastic junk that my Norton grinder wheels came with. However, I had a little bit of coastal corrosion issue to deal with. You see the axle shafts were starting to build up a film, and with the close tolerance of the bushings, I couldn't slide the bushing on. So a brass brushing, some mineral spirits, and then a coat of Anti Seize compound made quick work of the sticky issue. I did NOT however, apply anti seize to the side of the bushing between it and the stone. I figure if I have to replace the wheel, it won't be any good anyway, so breaking it away from the bushing is no big loss….

Once the flange, and nuts were on and tight, the side plates reinstalled and tightened down, I checked everything for alignment, and then put the Wolverine platform on as close as I dared. I then set up the Geiger's Wheel Dressing and Truing solution thing a ma bob on the platform, and adjusted it to just barely touch the first high spot on the wheel… Spin it up, shave the wheel down, advance the dresser, shave the wheel down, just like in years past when I would machine Automobile brake drums and rotors on the lathe… A couple of thousandths at a time…

4 passes on the 100 grit was all it took…. Then came the 60 grit… Ugh… No less than 10 passes to get a silky smooth pass…

Then test run with a very dull roughing gouge, followed up by a test pass of a piece of pecan set up on the lathe… Wow…. just wow…

This has been a LOT of time, and effort, and expense getting my grinder / sharpening system to this point, but it is WELL worth it.

I am not sure if I am healing up this quickly, or the prescription the doc gave me is finally doing its task well… But I am feeling up to walking a limited amount now…. I hope and pray that I will be able to get back to the fence work by this weekend… I bet the doc will look at me like I am nuts…. I know my wife will…

heal quickly