Year in Review

If I said this year was great for woodworking I would be lying.  I actually did not get a lot of woodworking in this year.  A lot of this year was painting our old home, repairs and moving.  I did get better painting as I progressed through the house.  It was pretty noticeable from the first rooms to the last rooms.  I was doing basic repairs to sell the house and make it livable.  I replaced the deck boards in the deck and did some last-minute landscaping.  I don’t know if the landscaping even survived.

Tool purchased this year.  I purchased a DeWalt battery operated brad nailer.  This was a game changer for me.  I no longer had to carry an air compressor and a hose to do repairs and add moulding.  It works as well as my pneumatic one without the hose.  I am very happy with this purchase.  I also purchased a DeWalt battery jigsaw.  This is mainly to cut down large boards and repair work.

My favorite project this year was painting the final room in the house.  I was happy that I don’t have to paint for a little while.  We do plan on painting our new home, but it is not needed at this time. 

No new plans this year.  I have some ideas, mothing concrete.  There are some books that I have that I want to try some of their designs. 

Business is holding steady.  Etsy has been doing well.  I have taken off all my actual toys and made it strictly plans.  I am getting less complaints about people thinking they have ordered a physical toy.  I have not done anything to grow business out here.  There are a lot of craft fairs, but I am not sure if I want to go through and get a Virginia sellers license.  Time will tell on that.  I am enjoying what I am doing now.  I do need to find some charities to donate to.  I have a couple of leads.

Next year should be a good year.  I have a lot planned and it is mostly setup in the garage.  I have been saving up to upgrade my table saw and some of my workshop.  I am looking at the Laguna Fusion 2 table saw.  I am also looking into a dust collection system.  I also want to build a couple of workbenches.  One is going to be mine for projects.  It will be on wheels with stops.  The other is going to be a kid’s bench.  I have been doing a fair amount of research on making movable benches and I think that I am ready to upgrade from sawhorses. 

New Guinea Pig Cage

My middle child got a pair of guinea pigs over the summer. One of the things that I wanted to do was elevate the cage we got so that we (I) didn’t have to bend down as much to pick them up and clean out the cage. I also wanted a place to store all the supplies they have instead of having them all over the floor. The base is made from scrap 2x6’s that were left by the previous owner. I purchased a sheet of particle with melamine on both sides. I also edge banded all the edges. I try not to use the convenience of Amazon for wood projects, but edge band was ½ when compared to the stores and twice as much. I cannot tell you about performance, because it is the first time I used iron on edge band. It worked well and cleaned up nice. The new cage is slightly larger than the old one. It seems to work well. We shall see how it holds up.

Joining the Bandwagon: Slabs

Last month I was on Facebook marketplace.  Not a usual occurrence, but I needed to get rid of a tv wall mount fixture and moving boxes.  I put these on for free and decided to look at tools and wood just for fun.  I have heard of some great success stories and great deals happening on marketplace.  

I found someone local that was selling his off fall.  he was asking $125 for a large bin.  It seemed like a pretty good deal so I ended up buying the bin.  I was interested in it mainly because of the different thicknesses of material. The person selling it ran his own furniture shop and lumber mill at his home. he is a good source for lumber.  He also kiln dries his lumber.  There was a lot of lumber and it was worth the price I paid for it.  I don't know if I will do it again for two reasons: I can't process lumber that is less than 12" easily.  Second it is a very different approach to look at a piece and say what can I do with this board.

In this bin of lumber, there were a few pieces of walnut that had a live edge: The bark was removed and the edge was not cut straight.  I sorted all this lumber out and said "What can I make with this?"  My two youngest have been asking for shelves to display their rocks.  It seemed like a good idea.  I made a basic plan on how these shelves would be put together.  I don't know the style but it is 1/4-20 threaded rod with nuts holding up the shelves.  All the pieces are stainless steel.

The pattern was four lines where the threaded rod would be and a top and bottom to mark the upper and lower limits.  The shelves themselves were straight edge cut on one side to flush up against the wall.  There were some bug holes which I cut off trying to follow the grain to keep the live edge look.  

When the shelves were ready, I gave a pile of shelves to my youngest two kids and told them to lay out where they wanted each shelf on the pattern.  It took a little work showing them how the system worked.  After all was done they came up with an idea that was not what I pictured.  I like their idea better.

All said it was a project that was nice to do to get back in the shop.  It was a lot of planning and a not a lot of woodworking.  I had to re-saw some of the walnut because it was 2 1/2" thick.  The chunks were only 12" long so I learned how to flatten a board with a hand plane.  This is where I like the longer boards so I can do the work with a machine,  

The project turned out how the kids wanted them to turn out.  I don't know if I am happy they are putting rock on the shelves.  It is just going to damage the finish.  It is what they wanted and it was me looking at someone elses scrap asking "What can I do with this?"

 

What Have I Been Doing?

 

MOVING!!! Long story short: The company that moved me out to Virginia needed to do some restructuring during the pandemic.  I was not part of the restructuring but was able to find new employment in northern Virginia.  This necessitated another move.  Good news was, I would be able to work remotish for about a year.  This allowed my kids one full year at school and so their school year was not interrupted.  This also meant that we had time to fix up the fixer upper we purchased.

The major repairs that we hired others to do.  We replaced all the windows and aluminum wrapped all the trim and installed new gutters.  The roof was replaced, and the exterior was power washed and painted.  We hired someone to paint the upstairs hallway, foyer, and kitchen.  This included the kitchen cabinets.  These were things that I either could not do myself or did not have the time to do it.

Here is what I contributed to the fixing up:

• Painting: every room in the house was repainted. You can tell where I started painting and where I finished.  My painting skills improved with each room.  Most rooms were two toned and I like how they looked.  If I do it again, I would not use the yellow color.  Here are some of the key things that I learned in the process:
•  Painting.  Prep work is key to a good paint job.  I removed a lot of the cracked caulking around doors and moulding and replaced it.  It made a huge difference.  When I learned the trick with wetting my finger to even it out, it got a lot easier. Filling in all the nail holes and dents with filler.  There was a lot.  I think I used a medium tub of filler on the house.  For the most part I used a roller and a 2” trim brush.  I didn’t need to buy more equipment than that.  I did get a bucket for the trim work.
• Replace the deck boards.  That was a pain.  There were several that had rotted and so I replaced all 19 full length boards.  It was a 16’ wide deck.  This is where I used Home Depot to deliver the boards.  The big take away on this project was the fact that deck boards are 1” thick not 2x6.  Thank goodness I caught it before they delivered the order and I was able to change it.  I also replaced the decks on the stairs. It was a bigger pain than it was worth. After the deck was stain, it looked good
• Patched water damaged drywall.  The roof was leaking in one place over a room.  There was also some water damage in the basement from a previous overflow of the sump pump.  Both areas needed to have dry wall patches.  They looked pretty good after I was done.  I was impressed with the first time doing these patches.
• Grass.  Not going to say I did much in this area. I laid down seed and hoped it would grow.  I think I doubled the amount of grass on the property. I am not going to say it was a lot, but it looked better.  We also added some mulch and flowers which did make it look nicer.
• Caulked all the bathroom fixtures.  Not my favorite thing to do.  I don’t really like silicone and I really don’t like cleaning and scraping out moldy silicone.  I did it and the trick is to use soapy water on your finger to spread it out.
• Cleaned and more cleaned.  I understand the meaning of deep cleaning. I would say that I should do it more often, but it was a pain.  Then maintaining it was another project.  I am glad we only had to do it for one weekend.

Glad this is over.  Now it is setting everything up again.

If you would like to se the pictures of the home you can go here. These are professional pictures.  Sorry I do not have the before pictures.

Challenge Coin Flag

United States Challenge Coin Holder

I was asked to make a challenge coin holder for a neighbor.  I accepted because I like challenges, and this was a way of saying thank you to someone that has served in the armed forces.  I am grateful that I did know what challenge coins were.  It was my first time actually seeing some.  I thought they were always round and about the same size.  They are cool looking.

The design process was not easy.  The US flag does not make it easy to make a symmetrical holder, so it is not.  Thirteen stripes does not divide well.  I was struggling whether to have all the holder on the white part or to have the last holder on the red stripe making the bottom section three stripes tall instead of two.  I decided to put the lowest ledge on the red strip for any of the larger coins.  The next design point was the size.  The customer gave a general dimension of 24x36”.  Thank goodness for the internet because there is a flag calculator there.  I played with the stripe dimension and came up with 1 ½” stripe width.  This gave me 19 ½” x 37”.  Part of me wanted to make this as close to a regulation flag as possible.

The big lesson learned in this project is that you cannot bend bow and cup out of a board no matter the size and number of clamps.  I had maple piece that had about 3/16” of bow along the glue edge.  This was a 1 1/8” wide strip going into a large pane.  I thought that I could clamp and glue it out.  Each piece that I glued to it took the bow of the maple piece.  I finally got it out with five strips, but it broke with in twelve hours of removing the clamps.  I had to remake the lower section of the flag for one piece that I knew was a problem from the beginning. 

I liked how it turned out and the customer is happy.