Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments.....

[Dennis Peacock]

23 Jan 2012
Good Morning,
Short and sweet this week.

Nothing from me except working at the day job. Worked all weekend due to being secondary oncall. Yea, we have a primary oncall and a secondary oncall. Now, due to losing 2 people on our team at work, we now have to work the weekends when we are secondary oncall because the primary has to work the nights. I Know, it's confusing, but it is a job.

Storms passed through last night and temps are a bit warmer this morning at 46º.
Well, time for me to rest a bit, help take care of the LOML because she isn't feeling well.
That's it for me, do what did YOU do this past weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Matt Meiser]

We got a pretty good snow Friday night so I spent the evening in the shop reassembling the Unisaw. Saturday morning we got up bright and early, shoveled and plowed snow (just barely enough to plow) and headed to the local hardwood lumber dealer so I could pick up a sheet of phenolic covered ply, then to Costco and the grocery store and returned in time for someone to come look at and ultimately buy my old Unisaw. In the evening we picked up a longer Unifence rail from a friend of mine and went to the mall (which was supposed to be Friday night's fun.) Sunday I worked on the saw some more--lots of time in the shop but I don't feel like I got much done Sunday.

[frank shic]

building a plantation shutter with the rockler jig system... trying to finish the parts prior to assembly is slowing me down

[David Hostetler]

Finally back to normal weekends and work weeks after the Holidays and early January sanity leave... My lovely bride and I went to see her hair lady for a trim (for me) and a color job for her (she wanted highlights, okay, whatever makes her happy...) so I mention the haircut for a reason... I am sitting there, waiting for LOML's hair to, well do whatever it does, cruising Craigslist on my phone, when I come across a cast iron base Dremel scroll saw. Kind of what I am looking for, and the price was right, $60.00, so I send the guy an email. Well no sooner than I hit send the guy is calling me back. And he was about a mile away from where I was. So I hop in the truck and head on over to this guys shop. A cluttered assortment of very cool stuff, and a lot of junk. He seems to be concentrating on large stuff nowadays, custom closet builds and such, so was selling off the scroll saw, a small band saw, and a few other odds and ends. The band saw was an OLD B&D 3 wheeler that he would have had to pay me to take... But I digress. He finally digs the thing out. It's coated in about 15 years of been on the shelf crud. You know, heavy dust mixed with Houston moisture making a mud pack on the thing, okay an overstatement, but it was plenty dirty, but it fired up perfectly, every thing moved smoothly, and it was HEAVY as it was a cast iron base, with heavy gauge steel parts elsewhere... So I snagged it, grabbed some blades from Lowes, and went back to LOML to get her hair finished and go home...

Once home, I proceeded to work on cleaning the junk off the saw, with mixed results. And then I set it up, with a blade and took a good go at it... Yeah this thing will work great!

Sunday wasn't so hot. Morning services went well, and I guess the big guy upstairs wanted me to stay in the house relaxed, because my plans for Sunday was a rear brake reline on my '01 Saturn SL2, and I got side tracked by hit and miss rain all day long... I hate working on cars in the rain...

Oh I should mention, I started the weekend off with a movie that was recommended to me by a friend at work. We went to the Redbox and rented Courageous and watched it Friday night. Now I know it is a Christian movie intended for that audience, specifically Christian men, but this is a powerful movie about family, and doing the right thing. I really feel that even if you can't describe yourself with either of those terms, you can still walk away with a lot from this movie... It was very well done...

I did start cutting out / copying some of the smaller pieces for my wife's holiday garden decor. A plywood scarecrow cutout holding a "Welcome sign". I figure I will knock a few of these out for friends and family as gifts. They are really cute...

[Bill White]

Well.....my hook and loop pad on the PC 333 exploded. The spare I had did the same thing. The belt was also broken. Oh well.....$37.00 later, and the new pad and belts are on order. I guess that 15 years of use and age ain't too bad. Now to clean up all the little bits of foam backing that blew over the shop.
Bill

[Andrew Pitonyak]

It was decided (by my wife) that my daughter's bunk bed needed more space between the bottom and top bunk. We received the beds for fee and it has crazy little space between the bunks. I roughed out some "boxes" to go between the levels and add 11" to the height (so my 6 year old can now use it and situp in bed on the bottom bunk).

I created a second "box" to go on top of the first box and between the legs. The one at the foot of the bed acts as an extra ladder step if climbing up the back. The one at the head of the bed I will add slats so that both boxes can be used as shelving for things such as an alarm clock, glasses and similar. I will add a box on the top bunk to be used for the same.

I purchased two LED strip lights that I will hang in the top shelf for each bunk. These lights have switches and cords and put out about 400 lumens of diffused light.

I will make my first use of shellac because it is a finish that I can easily touch up and the amber shellac looks like a reasonable match for the existing color (not great, but not bad either). Oh, and the bed looks like it is already finished with shellac over stain. I will test it before I finish it and I may choose to switch to a shellac with more yellow, but my wife did like the test piece that I did quickly with the amber. The two stores I checked had Amber but not yellow unless I want to mix my own (which is something else I have never done).

[Carl Beckett]

I'll bite.First I upgraded a WoodRat I bought off CL, to have a digital readout on the primary and an incra index (off an old fence I had laying around) on the secondary axis. The incra indexes the router, and the digital readout allows me to move the primary axis to a set point. I think it will prove useful (havent actually BUILT anything using it yet.....):
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Then I finished off a couple boxes. These designs were pretty much lifted directly off a recent magazine article - when it came I saw them and thought they were fun little projects so I just went down and found some scraps to build them from. The one is a piece of cherry I had left over from something (some nice grain it it), with a curly maple panel (just a single small scrap that was in the pile. The second one I made from leftover deck boards from an outside deck I did last year (mahogany), with a tiger maple scrap (dont at all remember where they were from). I started these in mid Dec, and did the dovetails by hand and used 'Bush oil' I picked up at the Springfield WW show last weekend. The verdict is still out on the finish, but I like the boxes - they will be gifts.

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[Brian Tymchak]

Well, watched the Buckeyes on Saturday cream Nebraska . Worked Sunday morning and then watched my Pats back into the Super Bowl. And then I spent about 20 minutes starting to turn some homemade bench dogs, immediately messed up the turning, and went back upstairs, opened a beer, and watched the other playoff game. So, didn't add much value to the world of woodworking this weekend...

[Jim Becker]

A little snow storm this weekend...no big deal since both of us drive AWD vehicles.

The weekend started off with the normal equestrian pursuits...and then...I spent the rest of it in the shop. Yes, really. In the shop. A new tack trunk commission came in, so I milled a "bunch" of black walnut for the trim (1/4" stock) and for the lid, got the QSWO panels cut and the box assembled before sitting down to enjoy a very tasty pot roast on Sunday evening. What's not to like about a weekend that included horses, sushi, woodworking and pot roast?

[Rich Engelhardt]

I installed 6 prehung doors in one of our rentals.
The tenant had destroyed the old 50's vintage hollow core ones.



Sort of a love/hate thing for me.
I enjoy installing prehung doors, but, I hate the fact that I had to pay for replacing what should have been perfectly fine doors to begin with.