Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

18 July 2016

Good Morning Everyone,
I'm proud to say that I'm a brand new, 1st time, Grandpa.!!!! Baby girl, Gabby Grace is her fist and middle name. Mother and baby and doing fine and getting settled at home. I'm like crazy excited!!!!!

Been visiting with out of state family this past week as well as working at the day job. We did experience more layoffs at work and my heart goes out to all those that are no longer employed. Good thoughts and prayers for each of them and their families.

No woodworking for me and yes, I do have several things to get done but it's so hot in the shop that I can't seem to get anything done. I'm past ready for cooler weather and yes, I'm even ready for fall & winter. At least in cooler and cold temps, I can still work well in the shop.

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

Best of weeks to you all.!!

[Charles Wiggins]

Congrats Grampa!

Closest I got to woodworking was starting on clearing a snarl of downed pine trees. I got one hangup on the ground, limbed and bucked. Still got a leaner to drop and a much larger one already down but it will have to be pulled out of the underbrush to be cut up and I have to deal with the leaner first.

[Aaron Conway]

Dennis, Congrats on the new grandchild!

Despite the great summer weather, I spent a lot of time in the shop organizing, rearranging and cleaning. Built this simple clamp rack and and hammer/mallet rack. I have two open spots so guess I'll need to go buy two more hammers.

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[Jim Becker]

A hearty congratulations to you, Dennis!

Busy, hot, sticky weekend that nicely included a lot of time in the shop working on an interior door project. There was also the obligatory lawn mowing and a few other minor landscaping and garden tasks before the heat of the day forced me indoors. I'm glad I have some level of AC in the shop because otherwise...well...stuff wouldn't get done. It's not the most efficient because it's clearly not large enough for the space, but at least it didn't go over 80ºF and took some of the humidity out.

[Mark Gibney]

Congratulations on becoming a grandfather. I have a feeling that young girl will know how to dap a hinge mortise with a chisel before she can ride a bicycle.

Like Charles and Jim I did a bunch of gardening, trimming the heavy hedge out front, but I also put two new handles on my Narex skew chisels. I turned the handles from the branch of a plum tree that grew out back and died years ago, and the darker handle is from the pittosporum hedge I trimmed. Both branches spent maybe 8 - 10 years in the woodpile. You can see the pith in the second photo. The branches were just over 2" diameter each. Very satisfying to use something off your own property, not something I get to do much of having only a small urban lot here in LA.

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[Mike Ontko]

Congrats on the new family addition, Dennis!

Little to no shop time for me this past weekend, even though I have an ongoing project that needs to be finished soon. I spent Saturday with my daughters since we weren't able to be together this past Father's Day. And then yesterday was spent mostly in the yard, keeping the weeds at bay and trying to keep our overloaded peach tree from breaking apart under the weight of the fruit it's carrying this year. This year has been such a great one for fruit production that all of the trees (cherry, apple, and pear in addition to the one peach tree) seem to be working overtime.

I did manage to spend a little time in the shop though, trying to figure out how I'm going to put together a jig that will help me to cut the shallow mortises for the bed rails in my bunk bed project. A little while ago, I'd ordered a set of router bushing guides for my Porter-Cable 690 and spent some time practicing on the prototype that I'd made out of 2-by lumber. The objective of the jig will be to help me ensure that the position and spacing for each set of mortises is the same for the twin and full bed frames. It looks a little like a large drywall square, with the guide templates made out of scrap 1/2" MDO screwed in at the correct positions for each rail end. I'll add pics when I've got the whole thing set up.

[Keith Hankins]

I got my 4x8 spoilboard cut and bolted down. Used a center punch to mark location for T-nuts. Glad its done now I can Surface it

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[Jay Larson]

Grandkids are great, wind them up and send them home.

About the only thing I did in the woodworking shop was to put the subtop on my bench legs. And that was to press in a bearing for my Jeep.
I did get all of the bearings and seals replaced in the front axle of my Jeep TJ (Wrangler). Only to find that one tab for the mount on the axle for the track (panhard) bar was broken. No wonder there was a possibility of getting pulled over for DIU in the morning. (Kinda wandered all over the road.)
Then yesterday I replaced the leaky power steering pump in my Grand Cherokee.

[Brian W Smith]

SOLID,4 star crab cakes.

Have spent mucho time in crab shacks on coastal Md,and Va.

My mentor was a friends G-ma...her and husband were lifer's on the bay.She showed me exactly how it was done 30 plus years ago.To which I'll always be grateful.

But...and that's a huge one.How each chef see's or tastes things is just a touch different is on point here.

I nailed our dinner Sat night.It's one of those,stars in alignment things,that like WWing is sometimes hard to describe.That's all fine and dandy.What was even more incredible was the omelets the following morning.

Wife and I spend quality time in Annapolis,yes..eating crab omelets.But it never dawned on me what it actually takes to get that profile on a plate.

That is what I learned this past weekend.Left over crab cakes,in the Md style,is what you use for perfection on the omelet front.Just sayin.

[Jim Becker]

Brian, a great crab cake truly is a wonderful thing. The folks who own the place I eat lunch at nearly daily are originally from the Baltimore area and their crab cakes are positively divine. Almost no filler...all crab...and delicious. In fact, it was one of three menu items featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives a couple years ago. (Along with the Snapper Soup and amazing ravioli)

[John TenEyck]

It's dry as popcorn here. We haven't had any appreciable ran for over a month and we're down 8 or 10 inches for the year, so a lot of time gets spent watering the shrubs and garden. As long as you keep water on it, though, the garden grows great because of all the sunshine and warm temps.

I did get my Ipe' deck cleaned and re-oiled last week and it looks great again now. In only a few months it went from a beautiful red/brown to an ugly, weathered gray. No way I could put up with that.

Over the weekend I worked on a wainscot project I'm building for a small bathroom, as well as a matching vanity. Nearly ready to finish. I also put a couple of rarely used machines up for sale and sold my shaper in less than 24 hours. And I cleaned out some stuff that was taking up space but never getting used. More to go, but it was a good start and I can see actually creating some "new" space in my shop. Enough space to put a big new bandsaw down there - I'm excited.

I love my basement shop, other than getting machines up and down the one set of stairs. We've had a lot of hot weather for this part of the country, with more later this week, and it's a true pleasure to work down there where it's nice and comfortable. Same in the Winter.

John

[Bruce Wrenn]

Took great grandson to Daughter's house (West Virginia,) but she wasn't home. She got "bumped" on return flight from friends in Maine, despite her husband being the pilot on plane. He got home OK, so he met us. Yesterday, he had to go back to work, so we all drove into Dulles to pick up daughter and have lunch together (three generations at the table.) On way back to daughter's house there was an accident on Route 7, which occurred in an area with guard rails on both sides of roadway. This made it very difficult for Emergency responders to get to accident scene. Forced to make a u-turn and find another route. Got up this morning and drove 350 miles (shortest, and quickest) home. Wife turned on GPS, which wanted to route us home a different way. Finally about ten miles from home, GPS came to see my way of thinking. What we won't do for our kids and grand kids.