Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

25 July 2016

Good Morning Everyone,
Needless to say that it has been hot and dry here. We have had some spots of rain recently which helped a good bit but I'm ready for fall weather already! No woodworking for me this past weekend but I did help the LOML work around the house trying to get stuff done that needed to be done. Still working out at the gym and trying to work through a weight plateau that I seem to be stuck at. I'm in this for the long haul so I'm not overly worried about being stuck at this weight forever.

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

Best of weeks to you all.

[Michael Stockdale]

Finally completed laminating the top to my new workbench... It turned out really nice and flat. It's currently 6.5' long x 23" wide x 3.25" thick... And, I think it weighs over 200lbs! It's definitely a two man lift!

The trestle base is done, now the top is ready for the skirt/tooltray and the vises...

I'm really slow... Got over 6 months of sporadic shop time invested so far.

Mike

[Aaron Conway]

My Incra router lift arrived Friday so I finished up the rough sketch of the router table. On Sunday, I got the base platform and all the carcass pieces cut to size. I'm hoping that tonight I can get a lot of the dados cut. I also did a glue up of some oak for a sign I've been asked to make...nothing fancy, using the Rockler letter templates.

[Jay Larson]

I got the steering all put together for my Wrangler. No issues now. On to the body mounts.

Yesterday it was so humid, 80%+ humidity, that the floor on the garage area was sweating so bad I could not sweep. I had picked up a small air conditioner on Saturday, so I had that running for a while late morning. After lunch I went into the wood shop. I glued the formica on my cabinet top and got that installed. Then I cut a couple pieces of MDF for a temporary workbench top. After that, I made some bases for my bench top tools. Band saw, planer, and chop saw all sit on top of my cabinets, and I didn't want them to scratch the new formica top.

[Mike Ontko]

Ate up some vacation time to give myself an extra day to get my bunk bed project over the hump of indecision I've been stuck in lately. I found the right bed rail connection hardware from Rockler and then decided on double tenons for each of the rail ends. The photo shows everything dry-fit together (the ends are already glued) -- I haven't drilled for the hardware or installed the inserts yet but will spend time doing that this week after setting up a temporary table for my drill press to support the mass and bulk of the bed ends.

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[Jim Becker]

Since "outside" was like an extra hot sauna this weekend, outside of mowing the lawn on Sunday morning, the majority of my free time was spent in the shop...with the AC on from Friday evening through Sunday evening. (Turning it on Friday night made a huge difference in the humidity factor in the shop...it sill pushed over 80 during the 96 degree afternoon, but it was remarkably comfortable compared to "outside") I did some more work on the door project, including drilling for and test installing the handle-set and then priming the door with Kilz. I also built and painted a couple more hive boxes for Professor Dr. SWMBO's honeybees. The one other "out of shop" thing I did was to head to a local sawmill and pick up some partially dry pine for $0.80 a board foot to sticker in my "upstairs oven" for later use for more bee woodenware construction over the winter. I'll probably start the second door this coming weekend. Or something else. Who knows?

[mark mcfarlane]

Since "outside" was like an extra hot sauna this weekend,...

Jim, I don't feel too bad about your weather. My weekend on the Persian Gulf was 115 F and 75-85% humidity. It was 120 the week before but the humidity was a little lower.

I spent the weekend in my garage shop (luckily AC'd) cleaning up and inventorying tools and other collected junk, getting ready for the move to Texas. The packers are coming in 2 more months !

[Jim Becker]

Oh, I get that Mark! Not only was it hot and sticky here, but it was, um...very similar...in New Orleans for the three days this week that I was there. I'm just very thankful that I have at least minimal level of AC in my shop at this point because for some reason, I'm minding things more as I, um...mature...

[John K Jordan]

...I also built and painted a couple more hive boxes for Professor Dr. SWMBO's honeybees.

I'm about to run out of spare deep boxes (and frames) here.

The short story: It took seven trips and at least 12 hours of work over 5 days to remove a honey bee colony from a hollow in a huge sassafras tree a homeowner had cut down. The alternative was for the exterminator to kill the colony with poison.

The sassafras was the biggest I've ever seen, approaching 3' in diameter. Most of the work was in 90+ degree temps in the full sun wearing a bee suit and heavy gloves.

I chainsawed a big window into the chamber. It was a miracle I found the queen without which capturing the colony was nearly impossible (without a bee vac). I found her after an hour of scooping up maybe 40,000 bees and dumping them in the hollow and watching them scurry around in the tree. I moved the hive to the farm well after dark Saturday night.

bee_tree.jpg

The picture shows the cavity and my hive boxes balanced on branches and brush about 5' off the ground.

JKJ

[Jim Becker]

'Glad you were able to make that cut-out, John...good for the bees for sure! Fortunately, making boxes can be pretty quick, wether you use box joints or rabbit joints like I do. Pretty "cookie cutter"!!