Weekly Blog - November 11th (Rememberance Day!)

[john]

Another pretty slow week in the north country.

Good progress on the outdoor Mr. & Mrs. Frosty Christmas decorations until my beloved gave me heck for starting to paint the images on them. It seems she wanted to, but that's where the fun is.

Finished the two bread knives and one small tanker truck for the upcoming sale. I have one knife blade and one guard left so I guess I will be doing another in the coming weeks.

Still working on, and screwing up, the CD cabinet. This thing is proving my limitations in both skill and thinking/planning!

On the reno side, we got tired of waiting for contractors so my wife stripped paint from our staircase to the second floor and while she is on a little R&R/shopping trip to Burlington, Vt this weekend, I applied three coats of varathane. The contractor called today to say he would not be here tomorrow as it is the Rememberance Day holiday. Normally around these parts, only government workers and banks get that day off.

Have a good and safe week!

John

[charlese]

Not much going on in my shop this week - except work! Ordered up a few board ft of poplar to make more shutters and had to face the fact "useful" scrap had to be cleaned out of the place to make room. This was kinda funny, when I think about it. Sorting through all of the cuttoffs and deciding what can stay and what has to go. Actually, I almost teared up at sawing up and tossing some of it. (Almost made me want to have an old wood burning stove! - Almost) Wife and I will go down to Canoga Park to pick up the lumber on Tuesday. Then the fun will start again. Have decided on some improvements for the shutters and have built a new jig for the stile pin holes. (Norm's plan modified)

John - Don't be puzzled over the "Eye Pod" - If you want to make one - get a cube of wood about 3x3x3" (mine was 2 1/2" - In fact it wasn't quite cubical) Then select a forstner bit somewhat smaller the the cube and set it up to bore holes in each side. Do this drilling in small increments and sneak up on freeing the bottoms of all holes. When coming to where you see the holes merging - go slow! At this point it's best if you drill the two end grains last. The inside block will free itself. If you want, you can slice off the small corners with a small knife. I bored the small cube a small amount with a smaller bit, so I could insert the eyes and hide the holes from the center of the bits. Then a little hand sanding for the inside edges of the outside cube. Used the belt sander to sand off the sharp corners of the cube.

To Ed from Tampa - Sorry - I didn't see your question about the HVLP Sprayer until tonight. I'll answer in a Thread under Tools.

P.S. The Magazine says to drill the end grains first to avoid splitting - I expect they are correct, although I didn't have a problem.

[greitz]

Busy weekend for me- the local Woodcraft conducted their annual Veteran's Day Turnathon, where volunteers turn pens or pencils to send to the troops deployed overseas. I made 8 pencils, pix are attached. Two other blanks were too badly cracked, all the way down to the brass tube. Tried to stabilize them with thin CA, but I didn't know how to fill the cracks well enough to make a usable pencil. (The cracks ranged from hairline to ca. 1/16" wide.)

Last weekend I finished up my first segmented bowl (red oak, I think), made using the Incra Miter Express. (pictures attached also.) I like that Miter Express! Now I have to rig a better solution to attaching a stop block on the fixed panel. I just clamped the stop block and the fixed panel to the SS table, but I think it would be more elegant to add a T-track to the fixed panel and use a toggle hold-down instead. Gives me something to think about anyway.

Gary

[rolands]

Gary - Very nice job on the pencils and the bowls.

[john]

Gary:

That Turnathon sounds like a great idea. Nice pens and bowl. I'm sure the recipients will really appreciate the pens and pencils.

Chuck:

Thanks for the intructions on the "eye pod", also for the post on the sprayer. I have often thought of getting one but costs seemed prohibitive until your post. On my next trip to Niagara Falls through Buffalo, I must drop in to rockler and check it out. Maybe I can time it for my birthday next year.


Well the contractor is coming bright and early tomorrow so right after I sign off, I will start breaking down the computer set-up and be off line for a few days, (might even suffer WW withdrawl).

Keep up the good work.

John

[charlese]

Busy weekend for me- the local Woodcraft conducted their annual Veteran's Day Turnathon, where volunteers turn pens or pencils to send to the troops deployed overseas...

Last weekend I finished up my first segmented bowl (red oak, I think), made using the Incra Miter Express. (pictures attached also.) I like that Miter Express! Now I have to rig a better solution to attaching a stop block on the fixed panel. I just clamped the stop block and the fixed panel to the SS table, but I think it would be more elegant to add a T-track to the fixed panel and use a toggle hold-down instead. Gives me something to think about anyway.

Gary

Hi Gary! The Turnathon sounds like a very worthwhile event. Neet way to spend a day!! I'll bet someone, somewhere will appreciate your participation in the event. It's very considerate of everyone that took part in the activity. You should feel good about the time spent! Beautiful pens! Did you have people watching while you turned?

What a beautiful segmented bowl! From the beauty and the length and width of the rays in the segments - I would guess you had white oak rather than red. That's a good thing! An easy way to tell the difference between white and red oak wood is to take a small board that will fit into your mouth - put one end of the wood under water and the other in your mouth. Blow! If you see bubbles coming out of the water - it's red oak. You can't blow through white oak, because the vessels are filled with tylosis. (they are plugged).

Gotta ask, did you use another wood for the base of the bowl? It just doesn't look much like oak, to me.

Seems your clamping solution worked just fine! Yeah! you can get more elegant, with your jig, but why? It probably won't work any better!

[greitz]

Thanks for the kind words on the pens and bowl, everyone- encouragement is always appreciated!

Hi, Chuck- The local Woodcraft store is quite a ways from my house, but close to my workplace, so I just picked up some pencil kits and blanks on Friday and turned them at home over the weekend. I don't know what kind of crowd they actually had at the store on Saturday, hope it was a big one!

I have a confession- all the wood in the segmented bowl was rescued from a pallet. My wife's company throws away their excess pallets, so they saved a couple that looked in pretty good shape for me. I'm such a cheapskate, I figured I'd teach myself how to use the jointer and planer by cleaning up a bunch of free pallet wood. And some of it cleaned up pretty nice! So I'm just guessing at the identity of the wood. It's much lighter and redder in color than an authentic piece of white oak purchased from a reputable hardwood supplier, so that's why I assumed it was red oak.

Thanks for the "straw" tip, that's cool! I bet my nieces and nephews will want to try it. Maybe the start of a science fair project?

About the clamping thing, I was just having a problem finding a flat spot on the bottom of the table to clamp to. I know the subject has been addressed in another thread. Just haven't cut out little pieces of wood to fill those gaps yet.

By the way, your "eye pod" is WAY cool!

Gary

[nuhobby]

Gary,

Congratulations on the pallet-wood recycling, and nice work there!

FYI, in the guitar community some years back, Taylor Guitars made a pallet-wood guitar to show that their good instrument quality was from "good knowledge" more so than from "rare wood." Here is a link to that story:

http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/ar ... allet.html

Best Regards,

[reible]

Hi,

Gee lot of interesting projects going on! Keep up the good work and keep up the posting.

This has been one of those weeks for me, and by "those weeks" I mean it has been interesting. First I was glad to here that a major order that has been backordered for about 6 weeks shipped. How ever when I got around to looking at the UPS site I noticed that the order was coming in three boxes but only two of them had shipped. I checked with the company and sitting in the shipping area was a stack of boxes that UPS should have picked up but somehow missed and my third box was in the pile.... OK I still have the Thanksgiving weekend coming up for that, I hope.

I have also been working on another OPR fixture, it is finished but but I have to test it. So be looking for an upcoming post on that with in a few days.

I have couple of other projects in the works but they are not all that interesting so I'll skip them and go on to a warning I feel I need to express to those that use pallets for woodworking.

As it turns out this can be a not so good thing to do. You see a pallet may end up going a lot of places in its life, a factory here a truck there, a building here and a garage there. And you just don't know what it has come into contact with. Perhaps it soaked up some PCB's, insecticides, heavy metals, industrial cleaners, or who knows what else. Spills happen and things like pallets are reused many times over... and you never know what it has come in contact with. Anyway they can be a health hazard just to touch much less to saw and sand. So now you know the rest of the story.

Ed