Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

15 Aug 2011

Good Morning Everyone,
First off I'd like to say......Peter A.....I hope you are recovering well from your kickback accident. Prayers go out to you for a quick and smooth recovery.

Woke up to a WONDERFUL 67º F this morning!!! What an AWESOME temp to wake up to after those 104º + temp days. We even got some much needed rain last week that broke our local drought. Everything looks much better when it's all pretty and green.

Been working with my boys in taking their old tree house down. They are too old and much too big to "play" in a tree house. We are going to recycle the good lumber from it and make a picnic table for the back yard. This will be the boys first official woodworking project and even though they say they don't want to do this? I'm making them do it. Teenagers are typically on the lazy side at various points in life and my 2 boys are no different. I told them that they need to learn how to use tools and how to take something from idea to finished product. I promised them that I'd leave the calipers in the drawer.

My boys and I did some 'wrenching' on my motorcycle on Saturday. The valves needed adjusting and the coolant needed changing. That took us most all day to do as it was "our" first time doing all that.....and yes, it was a learning experience for all of us.

Well, that's it for me, so what did YOU do this past weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.!!!!

[Matt Meiser]

No woodworking for me. My brother and his family had been visiting all week so we've been spending as much time as possible visiting with them at my parents' house. They left Saturday mid-afternoon for the first leg of their long drive home. Saturday afternoon and early evening I worked on ripping out some bushes around our deck that had become too overgrown and running as much as possible through the chipper to make mulch for the places where they were. Also chipped up about 10" of the handle of the rake trying to clear a jam Sunday we ran some errands, I changed the oil in my truck, then I was back at it with two bushes on the front of the house as well as trimming the rest of the bushes around the house, using the string trimmer, cutting up the trunk of one small pine tree I took out so I could handle it, washing debris off the siding where I blew mulch on the wet siding, and blowing all the debris off the walks, etc. I think I used every piece of outdoor power equipment we own!

[David Hostetler]

I got the milling I had been trying to complete done for a project I am working on. The dovetails are cut, and the four sides of the basic box are done. and I have made the top and bottom, unfortunately in my dry fit, I am NOT liking the scale of the top and bottom. I need to figure out how to reduce the thickness of this piece, and I want to eliminate snipe here, so... I am thinking hand planes here...

[Jim Becker]

Hah!!!! I spent some time in the shop this past weekend!!! Unfortunately, it wasn't for project work. Rather, it was to store away some material that a contractor friend gifted to me and to clean the cyclone filter. But I was IN the shop! LOL

Otherwise, we celebrated my younger daughter, Aleysa's 12th birthday with dinner out Sunday night as that was more convenient than Monday, the actual date.

[Peter Scoma]

Wife is due in 4 weeks so this weekend (so far) has been spent preparing the nursery (ie. wife washing new baby clothes and me putting in crown molding). Wife gave me tomorrow morning off so starting at 5am ill be perusing Adamstown, PA for vintage tools for the last time until the baby arrives (its a 90 minute drive and I don't want to be that far away so close to her due date). No wwing this weekend but I did turn 6 new cocobolo handles this week for a set of stanley 750's Ive been accumulating.

PJS

[Jason Hanko]

I had NO plans for the weekend. Finally.

Saturday got filled up with visiting my wife's sister, and then my father in law (they live close to each other, but about an hour and a half from us). While we're there he mentions his computer isnt running so great lately. Spent half an hour poking around, but theres so much spyware crap (and probably viruses) running that opening a window takes 5 minutes. Into the trunk it goes to come home with us, Ill re-load Windows later this week so at least my Sunday will be lazy.

On Sunday SWMBO wants to go the hardware store (!!). Things are looking good! Seeds are on sale (we need more of those? are the 800 packets youve already got bad?). But I figure I can poke around a bit for some deals, so we round up the kids and head off to the store. Once there the wife spots a great deal on a ceiling fan on the clearance table. "You could get started on this this afternoon! Theres already a fan (broken) where I want to put this one, shouldn't take long, right?"
Great - now Ive really got plans.

Well - the last 7 hours of my beautiful plan-free Sunday go something like this: Take down old ceiling fan, blink dust from eyes. Discover that whomever installed the thing didnt put in a ceiling box, and instead used 17 drywall screws, two 3'' lag screws, and 3-6 hours of prayer to keep the thing up there all these years. Discover the reason the old fan 'prolly didnt work is that the existing knob and tube wiring is now rotten-and-insulationless wiring. Back to Ace for Romex and a ceiling box. Spend 3 hours cutting holes in my plaster walls and ceiling and drilling holes through floor joists and top plates. Blink plaster chunks and sawdust from eyes. Use skill (ha), brute force and cuss words to force Romex through dark, cellulose insulation filled passageways between floors and walls. Cry insulation out of eyes, also do great impersonation of a grey Yeti (wife and kids are not as amused as they should be). Ask wife to get started cleaning up plaster and insulation. Get laughed at. Ask kids for help cleaning. Get a blank stare followed by an offer to play My Little Ponies. Clean up by myself. Cut some drywall squares, break out the plaster bucket and patch up all the holes I just made. Stand back, exhausted, and reflect on the fact that its been 7 hours and Im back to the point where I can start figuring out how to hang up that new fan....

Sigh. Cant wait til next weekend!

[David Keast]

No woodwork this weekend, too busy picking and bottling green beans (is that the right term in US english - the beans are the long thin fellas we call Haricots Verts in France). Also received a huge tray of fine pears from a friend, bottled a load of those too.

Monday I'm back to replumbing a radiator in the dining room after making a hollow skirting board (in oak) to hide the pipework. Will post photos when installed.

[Brian Tymchak]

Well, I took a clue from another thread about not being motivated to get into the shop, and I spent some time there yesterday. (It's been probably 5 months since I last did anything of any real woodworking consequence, aside from read SMC.) I had left a rails and router table installation unfinished on my TS in the early spring, and so got back into that. I only had a few hours available so I worked out the mounting of the power switch for the TS on the new rails. I wanted it located right where the rail mounting bracket fell, and I wanted it recessed back away from the rail edge some to help prevent the accidental bump in mid-cut. I ended up mounting a U-shaped piece of plywood to the bottom of the rail and then the switch to that block of plywood. Wasn't as straight-forward a task as I thought it was going to be. But it's done. Small start but something productive and hope to get that whole project done in time for a vacation in September when I finally get started on some turning projects, what I've really always wanted to do.

[David Hostetler]

Spent the weekend on the beach in Galveston with family, and then back home to just relax with my lovely bride... Even with the A/C on, it's too hot to be in the shop.... 104 deg F all weekend, with overnight lows in the low 80s... Ick.

[David Keast]

Spent the weekend on the beach in Galveston with family, and then back home to just relax with my lovely bride... Even with the A/C on, it's too hot to be in the shop.... 104 deg F all weekend, with overnight lows in the low 80s... Ick.

Not far off that temperature here, 35°C, about 95F if I remember the conversion correctly - high humidity too.