Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Tag: AmateurWoodWorker

Our children’s school currently has

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No EA’s in the building, and at least four teachers off sick. Oh! Who ever could have foreseen this happening? Uh, everyone!?! So we have that going for us. My youngest is off with a lingering cold (not covid – tested negative twice over a period of six days). Who would have thought that no longer wearing a mask in a building full of unvaxed four year old was a good idea. Not too mention the poor vaccine uptake in the five to twelve year olds. Ugh. So what’s next, a school closure because they don’t have the physical adult bodies to keep it running. Get all those consultants and board folks in here to keep it running. They were so keen on their political aspirations, and ambitions to find a cushy job later on, that they signed off almost immediately on dropping masks in schools, with very little push back, if any, at all. But they still work remotely because their offices are too dangerous to go to work in person. Must be nice to set different parameters for yourself, and leave the kids your jobs are centered around, out to dry. Very frustrating. If it was dropped for some, it has to be dropped for all. You made those decisions, now go wallow in your folly.

In other news, I have personally worked on two Ukraine Support gigs in the month of March. Which is cool. Raising money for displaced families via multiple micro breweries. Very different artwork for both ventures. I hope that they both manage to make a difference in somebody’s life for the better.

Hey! , yeah so yesterday I busted out the angle grinder, a cut off wheel and some angle iron to make my rigid router sled. After a practice cut where I was a full quarter inch shy, due to a wandering disk, I got two 6.5 inch cut offs made without maiming myself, or burning the house down from flying sparks. I wore my leather apron, gloves, goggles and ear phones, so I was most protected from a 10,000 RPM spinning wheel. Then I filed off all of the slag, rough edges, points and vein opening Shanks on both pieces. Then bolted it all together with quarter twenty bolts, washers and some nylock inserts to keep it from coming undone. Looks like I thought it would, and gives me just shy of 42″ inches worth of width to flatten slabs, or bigger chunks of wood. The aim was for a full 48″, but I forgot about my routers handles that stick out of the sides, and connect with the sides of the sled, impeding full coverage. But no matter. I don’t really have the room in my shop to work on slabs that are close to or over four feet wide. Three feet would be best, given the constraints of the space. Fine with me!

I had hoped to start in on my adjustable saw horses, but sick child #2 is home, so that’s a no-go today. And by the sounds of it, tomorrow as well. She finally reached the snotty expulsion phase, so we have another few days of this before it clears. Then I have the router table sacrificial fense to build, and the face plate for the trim router so I can mortise out wider pockets without it ripping downwards and gouging out uneven holes. So many things to do!

Busy work in the wood shop a.k.a. The Garage.

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Started off on Wednesday with the school closure due to inclement weather, and had my eldest help me tear down my jointer table, and the old, heavy, unsteady planer stand on rickety old plastic rollers.

Then yesterday, after what felt like an ineffective interview with a potential new design client I built myself a 24″ deep, by 39″ wide, and 16.5″ high wheeled cart to house both my jointer and planer, so I can store them under my table saw. I was fortunate enough to be able to reuse some of the wood from the prior jointer stand to reinforce the new joint venture. Added a low shelf to put paddles and spare Allen keys on, and I’m good to go.

May find I want to bolt the items down, but I’m not sold on that yet. I used the better part of three two by fours, one two by six, a two by two foot piece of half inch ply wood, and a 39x24x.75″ piece of MDF for the top. Various 3″, 2″ and 1.5″ wood screws were used. I had a set of swiveling caster wheels already, two that lock, and two that do not. I have about 3/8ths of an inch gap before the top most part of my planer will hit the lowest part of the saw. I though a half inch would work, but I’m ok going just a bit tighter than that. Looks ugly but it works for me. Plus it got started and finished in about 2 or so hours. Lots of pre-drilled holes, and repeat cutting. Braced both top and bottom for the weight.

And today I build a six panel cubby for my drill, impact driver, staplers, 2 sizes of pin/Brad nailers and a heat gun. Works like a charm, and used up scraps left over from the jointer/planer cart. Win – win! That is 26″ wide, 13″ high, and about 11.5″ deep. So not huge, but not small either. I should have added a seventh cubby spot, but I was more concerned with not having to fight to pull items out of each cubby, so I got generous with my spacing. Could have been more conservative, but it works, is labeled, and everything fits as intended. Plus now I can get rid of a handful of plastic cases that I had to dig through everytime I wanted a tool. If you needed more than one you could be certain they would fall off a bench or get knocked over, and I’d have to go looking for oil bottles, Allen wrenches and any extra caps or guards that were stored in each case. Ugh. What a pain. But, no more! Out in the open, easy to reach from the bench. This also opened up some space on one of my other carts, so bully for me!

I was going to wait and use my new Dado stack to build the cubby for tools, but I didn’t feel like waiting for the new table saw cover to arrive, which will be in two weeks time. It would have been more professional looking, for sure. But it was to help me stay organized not be a showcase for any sort of wood working talent. That’s also why I used miss matched scraps that were three or four different colours. And some of it was particle board, mdf, and plywood. Not a glorious item to behold.

I would like to make a router bit holster in the near future, because I have several bits now, and they are all in boxes, bags, or cases and not easy to get to. If I can get them out in the open, and build my 12×12″ router base from clear acrylic I’ll be able to do more custom pockets and mortising. Which reminds me i need to build my router table at some point. I have the plate ready to go. Always more to do than expected. But once i get these things done, i have them at my finger tips for when i actually build something of consequence. The router sled for flattening is on my to-do list too.

If I refinish anything or start my hickory slab coffee table, I’ll be sure to take photos as I go, since that will require a fair few operations, jigs, and tools.

Let me tell you what kind of person I am.

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I’m the kind of person who hates having an appointment in the middle of my day, because I can feel it looming over me. So I don’t like to start anything prior to the appointment in case I forget about it, or turn up late. So in most instances I sit and wait, minute by minute until the appointment arrives. I hate that. So today I forced myself to run some errands, which took 45 minutes, possibly 50 to complete, that on any other day, I would have had to rush to complete after my appointment was done. But now those three things are done, and I have a full hour left to sit and wait. The waiting always makes things worse. I wasn’t nervous about it all week, or last night, or this morning when I woke up, but now it’s filling me with anxiety and bubble guts. Argh! Hate that. Oh well c’est la vie.

So day 100! Woohoo! Milestone for sure. Did you catch yesterday’s back to back chapter entries for the interconnected series Ghost of the Dirty Starling? Fun stuff. Those Bison drones sound gnarly, and a tad volatile. Hmmm… foreshadowing perhaps? Or just another side trip I can make later on if need be? Good to give yourself off ramps occasionally, I believe. I was going to do something funny with Norman and Gerty, but changed my mind. I like the self serving killer for hire in a tutu. I also liked the fact she knew enough about murder to do her gloating afterwards too. None of this providing your captive with extra precious seconds or minutes to formulate a plan or escape out of sheer luck. No sir! Gun’em and then gloat. Like a good little hitman – hired gun, contract killer etc etc..

I might be fortunate enough to pick up some bakery bagel display unit design work today or in the near future. Which is great. I kept in touch, once every six months since Jan 2020, with all of the folks I freelance for, and recently those connections have become active again, as people feel as though the pandemic is coming to an end. I have thoughts on that, but I am also a huge fan of the work coming in as well. Work in, and invoices out, this is good for business.

Had my oldest child help me with some cleaning in the garage. I had to tear down some tables and stands I had for equipment. I have a larger table saw now, so I need to recover some space by placing my jointer and my planer together on a low lying wheeled cart, so it can be tucked under the rails of my hybrid saw. I can’t have that space go to waste anymore. I have completed projects eating up space, which I need people to collect, or accept delivery of. It’s all bought and paid for, and I knew I would have to hold on to it all, but now it’s getting on a bit, four plus months later, and I would like to not have to maneuver around it any more. It’s not a huge deal, but it aggravates me. I’m not working with 40,000 square feet here people. Think, tall single car garage stuffed to the gills with house hold stuff, Christmas  lights, bikes and wood working tools. Not a pretty sight to behold.

If I had the money, and paid work, I would use a dedicated dust collection system, and air cleaner, rather than my ShopVac. But it’s nice and compact, and I can store it under tables and shelves with ease. But the dust means you have to work in a mask at all times. Not a real problem,  since I use a fair bit of Walnut, and you want a mask for that stuff anyway. I have my eye on a hickory slab waterfall coffee table I want to make later this Spring/Summer/Fall. Could be a real looker if I take my time with it. I have the angle iron I need for a rigid router sled to flatten the slabs. I am looking forward to it a lot! I will also venture to build adjustable leveling saw horses to hold said router sled. So those will be fun to build too.

The rocking chair of 2019

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The first item I refinished was an antique rocking chair which I tackled in May & June of 2019. That was my first taste of tearing down, repairing, sanding and refinishing an actual piece of furniture. It was hot, difficult but ultimately rewarding and educational. So much so I wouldn’t do an other item until 2021, ha! But seriously I swore a lot, and picked away at it, 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, every so often over a two month period. Seems to be the way I work on my hobbies.

The OG rocking chair, and various states of sanding and stripping the old finish.
Even more sanding of those damnable spindles, and then the dark walnut stain I ended up using.

It was pre-covid times, and I didn’t document all the steps I undertook all that thoroughly. If I recall I used 80/120/220/320 & 400 grit sand paper to make the seat, arm rests and head rest as silky smooth as you can imagine. Felt amazing under my finger tips. Had a rich warm colour when finished. All in all a pleasant project to undertake.

A Slight Change of Plan.

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Due to my missing a summer and early fall deadline for my hand built screen door build, I’m going to shift gears for a bit and move on to refinishing a table for my in-laws that has some water damage, fifteen layers of paint and needs some TLC. I’m going to break it down into the smallest allowable pieces and then sand the hell out of it, before I decide if I’m going to repaint it white, or stain it to make it look a little more classy. I had hoped to get further along on my screen door build, but my hand cut mortise and tenons are taking forever, and I can’t seem to cut a straight line for shit. On the up side, the reason I didn’t meet my warm weather deadline to hang the screen door, was because I used those eight weeks of school term without kids around to tackle every other home DIY project, so I’m not too upset about it. I may very well be worth it for me, to practice some of those mortises before committing to an exterior door. If I can remember to i will attempt to take some photos of the table to be finished, but I doubt I’ll remember. I was fortunate enough to get through one of this weeks two marketing reports over the weekend, freeing up some time to do more woodworking. I thought I’d have to wait to start until next week, but nope! I hauled ass, and did page by page proofing as I went. It also helps that I spent some time on the front end building up my pages so it could be a smooth process to build out my reports with actual, factual data sets. Time to clean up the yard, and put away the summer toys, as we’re in Canada and it could start to snow at any minute, and we’ll not come out of it until late April. Cheers! to you all!

The last big ticket project of 2021

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Well, that is unless I decide to trim out the basement bathroom, but that’s another matter. This project that I picked up again today is the screen door for the back of the house. Now I originally started this last year, or possible the year before that. I know the Ash took forever to flatten on my Busybee planer, and it pushed my Ryobi table saw to the near limit. Since my project is just shy of 2 inches thick, and i had to cut all the pieces down to just under four inches wide. The snipe on such heavy pieces was a real nasty pain to have to deal with, but I went longer than needed to try and limit that to the outer most edges that I could cut off, which kind of worked, but not as well as you might have expected. Plus my garage is tiny, and building an eighty inch long door, that’s about forty inches wide is harder than you might have guessed. But I took a day or two’s worth of time and milled it all up, and jointed the edges and then left it to sit in my garage for a year or so. Now, after all this time, I am once again, back at it. Today’s foray into wood working saw me using a SKIL® circular saw to cut the beginnings of my tenons on the long pieces of the door body. Took some getting used to holding the saw 90 degrees to the floor, but I see it done regularly by Youtube® peeps like the Samurai Carpenter, and his stuff always looks clean AF (Never mind he’s been at that sort of thing for a decade or two!). So after getting my heart rate back down to normal, I put on my head phones and goggles and I fired up the saw and took to making all eight of my cuts. At least, that was the plan initially. Then I quickly stopped after only four, because I’m shit with the circular saw, and want to see how I progress with a hammer and chisel to take out the meat of my mortise. If that proved to be a less dangerous affair then I would cut those out now, and get my nerves back for more circular saw cuts later on. One hour of hammering, shaving, peeling and general buffoonery with hand tools later, I had my first full through cut mortise completed. And she’s a dogs breakfast if ever I saw one. But I got it done, and I think I know how to improve for when I go back for numbers two through four. The tenons will be done on my radial arm saw, because that I’ve done before and I’m more confident there. I also need to leave more wood on the tenons so I can make a snug pressure/friction fit due to my shaky saw work previously. If I don’t manage to get the door together and up by November first, then it’ll be a May 2022 project for sure. Don’t aim for perfect, aim for done!