Lumber:
86 – 4×6s 16 feet long
26 – 2×6s 8 feet long
234 – 1/2×10 inch galvanized hex head bolts
234 – 1/2 inch galvanized nuts
468 – 1/2 inch galvanized washers
780 – 3 1/2 inch framing nails

Tools:
Hitachi 12 inch miter saw
DeWalt miter saw stand.
Black and Decker 1/2 inch “Hole Hog” drill, all metal construction
Porter Cable Framing Nailer
Campbell Hausfeld 1/2 inch impact gun
Framing Square
8 – 12 inch Bar clamps

Jigs:
Miter saw extension support (made on site)
Spacing and alignment jig (for one end)
Spacing jig for other end
Storyboard for marking stringer position.

Timeline:
First skid – 3 1/2 hours due to jig up and assembly sequence mistake.
Last skid ~30 minutes.

Cutting and drilling is done with the skids upside down due to requirement to recess the hex bolts.
1. Move 3 4×6s 16 feet long onto the work table.

2. Move them one at a time to the miter saw and cut to 148 inches for top deckboard/runners.

3. Move the 148 inch piece back to the work table and cut the left over piece to 42 1/2 inches for stringers.
4. Put alignment jig on one end. The jig sets the spacing of the deckboards, aligns the ends, and sets the location of the end stringer.

5. Make bolt hole locations on stringers with storyboard.

6. Drill recesses for hex bolt heads. Using 1 1/2 inch forstner bit with shop-made depth gauge.
7. Move stingers to deckboards and clamp in position. End opposite the alignment jig is storyboarded for positioning and jigged for spread.
8. Auger 5/8 holes through stringers and deckboards

to remember to keep the pieces in the same relative locations when moving them to the assembly area as the holes are free-hand drilled.
ASSEMBLY
9. Remove clamps and jigs and move pieces to assembly area. Stringers are flipped end for end to put the recess holes on the bottom. Deckboards are turned over and placed on top of stringers.
10. Reattach alignment jig, quick fit bolts, clamp deckboards to jig.
11. Tighten deckboards.
12. Nail end braces to deckboards.
Repeat.

It would be easier If I could do all the assembly on the worktable, but pictures will show the placement of the other equipment prevents a forklift from getting in.

Total time for all the above averaged 30 minutes each …with 20 at the quickest (bolts went through quicker.)

Drilling the bolt head recesses in the bottom of the stringers.

Augering the bolt holes… 5/8 inch holes for 1/2 inch bolts….easier to reassemble

i’ve had the Powermatic 3520b for a few months now (gotta blog that.)

When I first got it the two old Craftsman lathes had to go away ‘cause there weren’t no room in the inn for three lathes.
So I put them under tarps in the driveway and Craig’s listed them to new homes.

I knew when I got the 3520 that there was only one place in the garage for it…under the 14 inch I beam that runs from the front to the back to support the second floor (where my dear aging mother lives.)

But there were 18 other pieces of stuff there so I did the initial setup where one of the old Craftsman were sitting….just to start playing with it.

But this entry isn’t about any of that.

Putting the lathe under the I beam was so I could lift larger pieces up to mount them. (The lathe bed with extensions is 118 inches long…but more on that later.) But that would require something to lift the wood.
I knew I wanted a trolley with a chain hoist.
I also knew that on my limited budget I would have to shop wisely (i.e. slowly) because I wanted to get something good, not just something quick.

So I started looking for chain falls and trolleys on Craig’s list (CL) and the local tool and hardware stores in hopes of scoring something nice for a good price.

There were a few chain hoists on CL, but never any trolleys.

So I ended up at Harbor Freight and got a 1/2 Ton JET trolley on sale (don’t remember the price but it was about $75.)
I got that mounted on the I beam and it worked just like I wanted…it rolled back and forth….wheeeeee !!!

I also had a come-a-long that I’d used for other small lifting jobs so I put that on the trolley for the interim.
It also worked as expected and I used that combo to lift a couple of large blanks on to turn.

But this entry isn’t about that (this sounds like on of those British documentaries with the 10 minute lead in.)

I still wanted a chain hoist because the come-a-long ratchet action always seems to put the blank too high or low by about 1/4 inch from the center of the lath spindle, which is WAY too far off to get a big piece of wood mounted.

So a few months went by…big lumber sitting at the side of the garage getting punky, no comfortable way to get stuff up to the lathe… me getting older every day.

So just a couple days ago a nice thread started here on our beloved LJs about Harbor Freight (HF) tools. I have a couple of HF, and I’ve bought a lot of small shop supplies there. So I know that sometimes you can get something that is worth the money for what you’re doing.

So I mentioned to the boss…er wife that I was to the point of getting the 1 ton they had on sale for $49 because it would do the job that I needed well enough and that I wasn’t finding what I wanted on CL.

Having said that I tottered off to the office to check email and LJs. On a whim I decided to check CL one more time..
Interesting, posted the evening before was an add for a 3 ton chain hoist…a BUDGIT 3 ton hoist…with an advertised lift of 15 feet !!! Oh, did I mention the asking price was FIFTY DOLLARS !!!!
This was overkill for what I NEEDED…but there are other things around here I might want to play with (like moving the house or pulling trees out of the ground, or moving the earth itself) so bigger wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the price was right on budget.

I hopped in the car and made a 30 minute drive out into the rural area south of town to meet the seller at his house. WOW what a spread, 4 1/2 acres in the country…with a 1500 square foot outbuilding/shop.

He had the hoist in the bucket of a small front end loader/tractor.
Not being a hoist expert I didn’t think that bigger lift means bigger size.
I mean I knew it would be bigger than a 1 ton, but this, this was MASSIVE.
I got goosebumps when I saw it.
It was big, it was old, it was beautiful.
I was surprised that what I thought was a gray paint job was actually a cast aluminium(?) body.
Did I mention it was BIGG.
The body is over 12 inches wide, and tall, and deep.
We hooked it on the edge of the bucket and raised it up so I could verify it worked….it did.
I noticed the seller had a neck brace on…he said he’d broken his neck…so he was selling off some of the stuff he wasn’t going to use anymore, but this was the only thing he had left.
He mentioned he’d had it listed on CL for a while at $150 but had no takers…and at $150 I wouldn’t have looked at his add.
I didn’t quibble over the $50 price.

He drove the loader over to my car and and heaved it into the back…did I mention it was heavy….about 75 pounds total weight I think.
So I got home and the next morning hauled it into the shop to hang it on the trolley.

Did I mention it was big….trouble a brewing.
The hook on the hoist is 1 1/4 inches wide at the top and 1 1/2 inches thick (top to bottom) in cross section.
Nice and beefy, which you’d expect of a 3 ton hoist.
Did I mention the trolley is a 1/2 ton trolley.
Half ton trolleys are pretty beefy, but there’s a limit to the beef….the hanger strap hole is only 1 inch wide, and 1 1/4 inches tall.
The hoist was too big to hook onto the trolley. #$%$$

I can’t afford to buy a bigger trolley…so what to do.
As a collector of junk I do have an old Craftsman metal tool box (the first toolbox I ever owned) that I use to store chain and wire rope and fittings. I was hoping I had a big enough shackle to use to put everything together.
I didn’t.
But I did have a quick link connector rated 1700 pounds and some chain that’s good for at least 1000 pounds.
Both of those are more than the trolley is rated, so I cut a few links of chain and fastened that to the trolley.

The plan was to get a platform ladder and lift the hoist up to hang it through the loop of chain…....

Did I mention the hoist is big…and heavy…
I got the ladder under the trolley and heaved the hoist up onto the platform.
All good, didn’t strain my back, or throw out a hip or anything.
The bottom of the I beam is about 10 feet above the shop floor.
The chain loop hanging off the trolley was about 9 feet up.
The ladder is 6 feet tall, but the work platform is about 4 1/2 feet off the floor.
That made the lift to the loop another 4 1/2 feet.
I’m just under 6 feet tall so things were really spaced out great for both lifts.
Did I mention the hoist is BIG and HEAVY….4 1/2 feet from the floor to the platform was do-able.
4 1/2 feet to the chain loop was do-able…at least on paper.

I got up on the platform with the hoist body between my feet.
The plan was to just lift it up and hook it on the loop of chain.
(Big and heavy…remember.)
First attempt. picked up hoist, started to lift up….load chain gets lifted off floor…the higher I lift the more chain I’m lifting. It’s not that much extra weight, but I don’t lift weights anymore and the extra weight got my safety brain engaged. Not safe….put hoist back down…back to head scratching.

Bright idea….hook the cargo hook on the side of the trolley. Less weight to lift….accomplish mission.
Not a completely bright idea. The hook and chain were heavy enough to tilt the trolley so much it looked dangerous.
While I’m figuring out a better bright idea the hoist body (remember…big and heavy) that I had casually placed ON THE TOP OF THE LADDER, not the platform, decided it didn’t like being there and tilted over and headed for the floor.
Fortunately for me, I noticed the beginning of the swan dive and grabbed the load chain, which might have been a bad idea, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it, I just wanted to slow it down a little before I let go.
Also fortunately, it was headed away from me, so instead of trying to knock me off the ladder it was only trying to pull me over the top of the ladder. But best of all the platform was in its line of descent, so I just kinda flipped off the top and plopped down on the platform (where I should have put it back in the first place.)

All is good and safe.
I moved the cargo hook to the side of the I beam where it looked nice and steady.
I even took the hand chain and wrapped it around the cargo hook assembly to keep more weight off the hoist body.
I grabbed the hoist and muscled it up to the top rung, again, and the hand chain decided it didn’t like hanging around the cargo hook so it fell off and tried to convince the hoist to follow it toward the ground, again.
But i was watching for that and had a hand on the hoist to keep it in place.
So i lowered the hoist back onto the platform (momma only raised a half fool) and wrapped the hand chain a full turn around the cargo hook….thinks looked even better.

Now, hoist back onto top rung (carefully)....deep cleansing breaths before lifting onto the chain loop.
Funny thing about chain, when you make a loop it really just looks like two pieces of chain hanging side by side.
It tends NOT to have a nice opening like a loop of rope or wire.
Lift hoist up (big and heavy) and put hook through loop….hmmm fat, blunt end of hook is pushing chain but not opening it up to slip through….
Funny thing about trolleys….they rolll…
I know, they are supposed to.
But not when I’m trying to hook a 75 pound chunk of hoist through a reluctant loop of chain.
You guessed it…I’m manhandling the hoist, 9 feet off the ground, trying to put the square peg in the round hole…and the trolley starts rolling…away of course.
So…hoist back to top of ladder, then down to platform…a couple of minutes of deep breathing…and plan C.
I moved the trolley back where I wanted it and scooted the cargo hook with the hand chain next to it to keep it from rolling (in retrospect I have 20 clamps I could have put there, but I was up on the ladder and the cargo hook was there already sooooo.)

Final lift (kinda).
I grabbed the hoist and start to pick it up to put it on the top of the ladder (small steps).
I’m old, but not that old….but I can’t lift it up again….hmmm…better grip, cleansing breaths….still won’t lift.
Duhhh, it was hooked to the cargo platform HAHAHHAHAHAHAH silly me…trying to lift the hoist, the platform, and me all at the same time.
So got the hook twisted free, up to top rung, up to chain loops, pushed through !!! JOB DONE !!!

So now I have a 3 ton hoist attached to a 1/2 ton trolley with a 3/4 ton chain loop.

BTW a new BUDGET 3 ton hoist retails for….$1833.00 !!!!
So $50 was a great deal.

Obviously not a lot of photos as I was one-manning this whole thing.
But here’s a few.

The picture of the bolts was done by hiding the rest of the crate…it took about 5 seconds to hide the other components.

The finished crate will be 11 feet high, 11 feet deep, and 16 feet across.

Material is 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4 SYP with 1/2 13UNC galvanized bolts.

The cargo (shown in gray) is a US NAVY Aircraft Carrier catapult seal holder assembly that is 15 feet in diameter, and 6 inches by 4 inches in cross section. The seal is like a metal strip 4 inches wide and 300 feet long that is coiled inside the holder. The seal and holder assembly weighs about 1500 pounds.

The crate will be shipped a few hundred miles for rework on a special lowboy trailer that tilts the cargo when passing under overpasses and through tunnels.

Will post pics of the finished crate (if I get the bid.)
enjoy

The regluing went so well that I didn’t have to return the face of the bowl, I just sanded it to get the glue off, then a coat of 2# shellac buffed off while wet with an old T-shirt.
1. back on the lathe with safety cage in place.

2. shellac on the front.

3. getting ready to round the corners off….jam block in place. I didn’t band saw the corners because I wanted to practice cutting off the square….no catches, no shrapnel…went well.

4. reversed with a wooden drive block in the chuck and a piece of waffle non-skid shelf liner between that and the face of the bowl. I turned the bottom flat and just left a little button around the live center cone.

5. bottom rough turned, outside edge sanded, ready to put in the cole jaws to work the rest of the bottom.

6. bottom finished, ready to shellac and then buff.

7. and done. polished on the beall system, finished diameter 5 1/2 inches, height 5/16, thickness ~3/32…a fun little project.

Anyway, I’ve flung a few pieces of wood off the lathes over the past 40+ years, and I’m always conscious to keep my face shield/mask/goggles in place (unless I forget in the heat of the moment.)
But the safety cage just looked better holding a couple of worklights than down in its intended position.

Sooo A couple of days ago I started turning a little blank from some scraps of Indian dontknow I use for most of my smaller works. It was square so I thought I’d chuck it up and try something like a winged bowl, just to get used to working near spinning square corners.

The piece is only about 8 inches across, two larger pieces of one wood with a smaller “center” piece in another.
It only weighed a few ounces, so after I drilled a 2” recess (using a forstner bit) for the chuck I mounted it and did a test spin.
Everything looked good so I cranked the speed knob to the right and brought the RPMs up to about 1300.
I finished turning and sanding the top and decided to work the bottom without remounting it, i.e. from the headstock side.
(Hmmm your thinking…is this a good idea.)
I made a few passes on the backside when WHACK…a reddish/yellow blur flew off the chuck, hit the toolrest, (somewhere in here it broke into two parts), whacked my big worklight (mounted on a plywood backstop about 2 feet behind the lathe) and bounced up (and down….[two parts, remember]) into the wood stack behind the lathe.

I knew I wasn’t hit (not this time at least, but that’s another story) so I shut everything down and did a quick survey of the damages.
I was ok (see above.)
Lathe was ok (take more than a few ounces of wood to hurt that.)
Safety cage was ok….it was safely flipped back out of the way.
Worklight wasn’t….the bulb was broken (a nice compact florescent one too) which wasn’t a surprise.
But, just beside what was left of the bulb there was a tear, in the aluminum reflector, about 3/8 by 1 1/4 inches. Now the reflector isn’t a heavy duty thing…but it’s WAY thicker than a soft drink can.
I was duly impressed by the damage from that little piece of wood.

So here’s a little math for you…
8 inch diameter (corner to corner) equals 25 inch circumference.
1300 RPM of a 25 inch circumference gives 32,500 inches per minute.
Divide that by 12 (inches per foot) and you have 2,700 feet per minute, or 45 feet per second.
I don’t know about you folks, but I can’t dodge ANYTHING going 45 feet per second when my face is about 10 inches away.

So, I took the lights off the safety cage and will at least use it until anything I’m turning doesn’t have any sharp corners left.

As a side note, the blank broke at a glue joint, very unusual I know, but I don’t think it was the cause of the dismount. (In retrospect I am habitually too stingy on glue….that will be different in the future.)
Because I used a forstner bit to drill the mounting hole there was no dovetail for the chuck to hold into.
When I started working from the headstock side I think I pushed the piece off.
A simple tailstock block would have stopped that…typical me…get in a hurry and forget the common sense.

But this block isn’t going to beat me….it’s already glued back together, with a LOT of glue, and is chucked back on the lathe, where I’ll finish it under the watchful gaze of an in-place safety shield.
Here are some photos of the event.

The recovered blank, split at the joint.

The worklight, bulb shattered and spun 90 degrees by the impact of a few ounces of wood traveling 45 feet per second.

When I turned the worklight back around the hole was visible.

Closeup of the hole.

The aluminum tore part of the corner of the wood off as it spun out, it was easy to match the corner to the hole.

The view as it would have been just before the event….working from behind the piece, with no tailstock block to hold it on….bad Pete, bad Pete.

1. 1630, grabbed the blank and put it in the drill press to drill the hole for the scoop.

2. 1637, blank rounded.

3. 1639, tenon turned.

4. 1644, rough shaping done.

5. 1645, start sanding…80, 120, 180, 220, 320 grit.

6. 1648, finish sanding.

7. 1650, final turning on tenon.

8. 1654, CA finish applied.

9. 1704, Dismounted the handle, cut the end off, used disk sander to rough finish the end, then a 320 grit sanding mop to smooth it. Applied a little CA to the sanded end, sanded the tenon to length, and polished the handle with the Beall system.

The full series of photos is available here: https://plus.google.com/photos/106338834595233608122/albums/5831694518460057441

I hope you enjoy….comments and criticism always appreciated.

Which reminds me of the first coin holder I ever sold.
I considered it my worst piece, it was some junky dunnage I’d thrown together on an experimental whim.
There was even obvious glue smear available.
It sold within a couple of hours.
Go figure.

So when we converted our wood-burning fireplace to a gas insert (that’s another story entirely) I figured I had a whole pile of future punky wood.

That was two years ago. Unfortunately, it looks like that is a year too long for turning my woodpile into punky wood.

Now it’s just half rotten wood.

But not being one to throw anything away, or burning it in the chiminea, without at least giving it a once-at in the shop, I brought a small, half rotted piece in to turn a bud vase on the lathe.

I’ve worked some rotted stuff before, but it usually had a good core of heartwood.
This piece was something less than that.

I should have known when it was really past punky when I started to tighten the live center in the tailpiece and it started pushing the drive into the other end of the wood! I kept tightening until the drive center was about 1/2 inch into the wood at which point it seemed to find enough good wood to hold.

Despite my other bouts of idiocy as well documented here in these hallowed forums I wasn’t so stupid to just turn the thing on. Stepping the old Craftsman lathe down to it’s lowest setting…about 820 rpm…I stepped to the side and flipped the switch. To my relief and slight surpise very little wood slung off into low earth orbit. I let it run for a while and then grabbed a freshly sharpened gouge.

I could have done most of the cutting with my thumbnail I think. As the gouge touched the wood it started to, well…cut is the best word to use…but the knife through butter is probably a better description. I could barely feel anything from the gouge as it started peeling the wood away. I use a full face-mask respirator when I do lathe work, for debris protection as well as dust protection, but there wasn’t much of anything flying up. It just slipped off the side of the gouge down onto the floor and lathe bench top.

I started to get some grabbing as the wood was a small branch that has some twist to it. My plan was only to turn part of the wood off and leave some of the outer surface untouched. And the good wood was starting to show up, beautifully punked under the rotten parts.

At this point a grabbed a skew to try slicing the wood. I didn’t want too much tearout, although with this wood it is more like the rotten parts just letting go and falling/flying off. So I just took light layers of wood off to work to the shape I wanted.

And I determined the shape by how the wood looked as it spun on the lathe. Due to the curve of the wood there was a point where the “bottom” bulge of the vase was evident, with a tapering up toward the top. I just cut the stuff off that didn’t follow that general outline shown while the wood was turning.

A couple of photos of what I did to this point.
(I gotta keep the shop camera in the shop.)

You may also notice some parts that are actually worm and bug holes that are filled with…ummm, worm and bug sawdust. It was packed in hard enough it didn’t sling out, so I left it.

After I got the shape pretty much where I wanted it I ran a couple of sanding pads against it using a very hard backer so as not to round off from the turned parts to the unturned surfaces.
Then I hit the whole thing with some quick-dry polyurethane.
Unfortunately it darkened the wood up so much it lost some of the punky effects.

And the next part I’ll talk more about finishing.

Ok, I’m now in the I can get this done fast and easy mode…..DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, WARNING!!!!
I decide I’ll just feed the 3/4 inch dado through the wood in one slow pass…
Yeah right…I’m going to feed a 3/4 inch dado through a block of wood that is harder than oak and cut a groove 1 1/2 inches deep…in one slow pass.

You know where this is going….
I set a stop block to keep the wood from creeping to the right or left, put a push stick in front of it to keep it from walking away from the fence, and SLOWLY started to pull the RAS through.
Don’t get me wrong…I didn’t kill the dado on the first try….oh no…I stalled the blade about 3 times before the dado decided it was tired of the abuse…
Instead of slowing down to a stop it decided to grab the wood (did I mention this is a ripping operation, not a crosscut operation) and try to crawl up and over the block.

I’m not completely stupid (well, except for the Thanksgiving day massacre that was 8 stitches).
My hands were well out of the way (thank you push stick.)
But when the blades started to grab the first inside blade just stopped in its tracks….
Problem is the other blades kept spinning….at least until they hit the first stalled blade…
Then, like spinning dominoes they each stalled, into each other.
But when spinning things go from 3450 RPM to zero in a millisecond bad things happen.
The carbide teeth smacked into each other at, well, some ungodly speed (hmmm 3450 rpm times the square of the radius of the blade)
Needless to say, when I turned the saw off and stopped to see what happened I noticed pieces of carbide scattered all over the RAS table, and all the Dado blades in a nice little family group, kinda like a hillbilly family, what with all the missing teeth and everything.

So, I put the RAS blade back on and made the groove one small cut at a time.

Lesson learned…rushing things can cost money if you’re lucky…and maybe something worse if you’re not lucky.

So now I get to see if the local shop can braze new teeth on my dado set….

And here’s a photo of the gavel set.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106338834595233608122/albums/5738282689368228721?hl=en

Won’t be doing anything tomorrow night ‘cause I’ve got a dinner thing with Deb and some friends.
But Saturday promises to be rain-free, and I’ve I’m lucky, the back wall will be done this weekend.

But I digress, this was to be the recap of last weeks work. To the task at hand!
I took a weeks leave (Military talk for vacation). That’s 5 days off, Monday through Friday. But the Navy says if you take off 5 days they will charge you for 7. But I digress.
Took the leave because Deb was getting shoulder surgery (torn rotator cuff). So bright and early Monday morning (3 freaking 30 in the morning early) we hopped in the Toyota and headed off to the O.R.

The surgery went well, and by 1300 (military for 1 p.m.) she was medicated in the bedroom and I walked out into THE SHOP, my veritible man-cave of testoserone fueled activities. About an hour later I had moved some stuff, organized some stuff, thought a lot, gone to the bathroom a few times, drunk a quart of Diet Dr Pepper, and decided that I’d take the upper parts of the kitchen cabinets my friend Mike gave me and hang them over the general workbench on the back right side of the shop.
Somewhere I have a google drawing of the garage, useful for virtual remodeling, and visualizing where to put things…I’m not using it for this major project because I can’t remember where I filed it (that’s an entirely separate blog series on filing things between 7 computers, a dozen plus external hard drives, dozens and dozens of DVD/RW and CD/RWs, and a pocket full of thumbdrives…all cleverly controled by a victim of Attention Deficit Disorder severe enough to make a 3 year old full of surgar and caffeine look comatose.
But I digress.
So in an hour I got nothing visible done, but I was just getting into my groove. I went to check on Deb. Pulse and respiration still evident, and I wandered into the office for just a minute to do something….I don’t know what, I’d forgotten by the time I got there. But I popped right back out a couple of hours later and remembered I had stuff all over the driveway, remember the garage, this blog is about me redoing the garage.
So I wandered out to the garage. Oh look, a squirrel. But I digress.

I decided I would hang the cabinets (from Mike, remember) using French cleats. Do you capitalize french in french cleats. We have some stuff at work hung with them and I thought the first time I saw them that they were way cool to hang heavy stuff with. I wonder if a F(f)rench guy invented them? So I dug around in the scrap bin, found some 3/4 cabinet plywood (I think there is something poetic in using cabinet plywood to make the cleats to hang cabinets, don’t you) to hang the particle board cabinets with. I got ready to use the brand new RIDGID TS3650 cast iron top (and wings) table saw Deb let me buy off Craig’s List after my new LJ buddy Bowtietruck told me about it when I realized it had a little rust on it. I got it from a fella in Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina, and he had it in a shed in his back yard. His house was about a half mile from the ocean, and I don’t think he’d waxed it recently. So, of course, before I could use it I had to wax the top. But first I had to knock the light film of rust off.
600 grit emory cloth on a 1/2 sheet BnD orbital sander is GREAT for cleaning up light rust. I had great fun sanding the top. Then a little 10 year old turtlewax to bring out the luster of the grain in the cast iron. Oh yeah, an old sheet under the BnD orbital sander with the 600 grit emory cloth on it is a great way to wax on/wax off on your RIDGID TS3650 table saw.
Sooo, I got the saw waxed, ....hmmm it 6 p.m. (1800 military time). Where ever did the day go.
I quickly did some calculations and determined that 22.5 degrees would be the perfect angle for the french cleats. I wacked out a couple of cleats, had fun moving the miter setting back and forth and using the fence and miter guide (no, not at the same time). Then I made a couple more, and had more fun moving the miter setting back and forth and using the fence and miter guide. By this time I had a vicious loop going of making them a couple at a time so I could move all the parts of the saw back and forth.
Oh yeah, I forgot, the fence wasn’t adjusted for zero on the attached measuring tape so I quickly adjusted it so zero is zero (It was off 3/4 of an inch to start, so it wasn’t a matter of adjusting the indicator on top.)
And it’s 2220 (10:20 p.m. civilian time) and I have to go to bed.
More tomorrow if I can remember my LJ password.

In addition I’ve got two work tables 72 by 30 and a workbench thats 83 by 36.
5 filing cabinets hold different tools and supplies.
Three 18 by 48 inch shelf units, each over 6 feet tall, and two of those on rollers, keep various junk and projects out of the way.
The spindle sander and planer are mounted side by side on a 50 by 24 steel table with wheels.
One of the small router tables is permanently mounted on an old Craftsman rolling tool cabinet.
Both bandsaws are on their own rolling bases.
The jointer is on it’s own rolling base.

And I’ve got the dust collector, the trash can that shavings and sawdust go into (barter for a lady that makes stuff out of it.
The left side of the shop has steel shelving that goes up 8 feet (10 foot ceilings) and runs 27 feet of the 30 feet of wall. It’s got more stuff (a technical term for junk) stacked all the way to the top.
The back wall has home built wood shelving that goes up 8 feet and spans about 16 feet of the 24 foot width. It is also packed full of scraps, hardware, paint, and all the other stuff you keep in the garage.
There used to be a right side to the shop…I haven’t seen it in a couple of years. I reach back into the darkness when I come in and hit the switch that turns the air compressor on and then flip it off when I leave. The nice thing about all the stuff along the right side is that is muffles the compressor sound.
Anyway. I’ve set the stage now.
I’ll try to post a little each day in retrospect of what I have tried to do to mold the mass of machinery and mayhem in the shop into something that I can actually walk in to and do some work.

I have some furniture my dad made using driftwood from the Gulf of Mexico. It has holes bored through it from some type of marine worms. A very interesting effect.

Anybody ever reclaim termited wood?

This place is too addicting.

Any thought from the dust-breathers?