Week 6

This was the introduction to the scroll saw.  The project is cutting out puzzles. I need to reevaluate the last set of lessons.  The lectures are over their heads and I don't think they are beneficial.  I need to show how I do setups and tricks that I have learned.  I cannot expect them to ask me how to do something.  I will start taking more time to do setups and explanation of the processes.

There were some people that gravitated to the scroll saw.  There is more of an excitement with the projects and it is fun to watch them work on projects.

This was the first time I had five of the six students.  I usually have 3-4 students due to schedules.  I am glad I capped the class at 6 students.  It was kind of crazy with all the students but it was an organized chaos.

Week 5

This was the first introduction to power tools.  It makes drilling the holes in the car launcher easier to do.  Overall the class did well on how to use a drill press. I found out that measuring and marking the holes was a challenge.  We used ruled square to mark all the holes.  Some of the marking issues were:

• Marking the dimension on the wrong side of the part
• putting tick marks on the edges of the part and then free handing them to where they crossed
• setting up with the wrong dimension

This is were I am learning that I need to be more demonstrative on the techniques than pictures.

Week 4

Week 4 was basic hand tools.  I went through some of the common hand tools and their uses.  They were able to use some.  The project assigned was the car launcher that my son designed and made for the triton tool competition and won.  Their assignment was to make this launcher from the miter box they made the previous week.  I am learning that I have a lot of information and some of it may be useful and most of it is boring.  I am not her to convince them to be wood workers but to learn some design and some tools and some project planning.

My Repairs

I have had a couple of machines go down and two of them were worth repairing.  I did a complete bearing and shaft replacement on my DeWalt scroll saw.  It was about $200 in parts but I think it was well worth it.  For the most part it was not that bad disassembling it.  Putting it together was a little more challenging.  I didn’t tighten the dampener down all the way the first time so it collided with the drive shaft.  There was just some minor scratching, but did not affect the saw itself.  I found it interesting seeing the design of the saw.  It really is a relatively simple design.  It was obvious what the more expensive parts were and where costs were cut.  I felt like I understood how the saw worked a little more. 

The big takeaway that I had was what parts wear out.  The lower arm assembly had all seized bearings and pitting on the shafts.  The upper arm had a lot of wear but would still be able to function. 

I also replaced the belt on the porter cable hand held belt sander.  The drive belt would keep slipping if there was any pressure put on it.  This was a much more frustrating repair because of the design.  I actually had the maintenance department put the belt on because I could not figure out how to do it.  Most belt driven systems have a tensioning lever to them.  This does not so the belt has to be stretched onto the two pulleys.  These belts do not stretch easily, but they do stretch a lot over time.  Mine was about 3/8 bigger in diameter then the new belt. 

Installation of the belt was a pain. What ended up working was using an allan wrench as a lever and being ready to tighten it down as soon as it slipped into place.  It works great now.

Here is the most frustrating part of doing the repairs, shipping costs.  There are a lot of part dealerships but the shipping costs are usually more expensive than the part or the part is overpriced.

Conversations and Customer Photos

I have been on etsy for about three and a half years now and I have to say, I have enjoyed the journey.  When I started out, I was constantly looking at the visits.  I wanted to see who and what people were looking at.  I wanted sales really bad, but they came slowly.  After about a year I had gotten a few sales, but my focus turned to reviews.  I wanted people to review my shop.  I actually had friends and family purchase and review my stuff through etsy so they can leave reviews.  Now it is just fun.  I still check the stats and I want sales and reviews.  I enjoy more the interactions I have with others.

One of the things I am enjoying more is the customer photos of products that they have made from my plans.  It is weird and exciting to see what people have made from the plans they have purchased from me.  Some of them are posted in the customer photo section of the blog.  They have good suggestions and I appreciate the feedback.

Start of Craft Fairs

Yesterday was the first craft fair that my friends and I did this year.  It was at Piecemakers in Costa Mesa.  It said rain or shine and the it rained.  I guess it does rain occasionally in California.  It was a good show.  The bad weather did not deter a lot of people from coming.  We did a fair amount of business and the people that did come were there to support the local crafts people.  Most of the vendors have been coming for years and many of the shoppers knew the vendors. 

There is always a unique story coming from these events.  Mine is the sale of one of my rubber band guns.  I rally want to get rid of them but I really did not want it to go to this family.  The son, about 8, really wanted to buy the rubber band gatling gun.  The mom was really hesitant because of the potential damage that could happen.  It is a rubber band gun, it will hurt if shot.  She even asked if it was safe. I said it is a rubber band gun and it will hurt if shot.  I even asked her if she wanted to buy it and she said no.  My reply was don't buy it.  To be nice to the kid, I let him unload about 15 rubber bands.  The kid begged and the mom caved.  I told her I would not sell it to her if she did not want me to.  Hind sight being 20/20, I should have said there was a minimum age for purchase. 

It was a good fair even with the weather.  We will be going back the first Saturday in December.  If you are looking for stain glass or metal clay jewelry here are the Etsy sites to my friends.  They also take custom orders.





Machelle's Glass Garden










Tudor Rose Emporium

Class Week 3

This was a class that I was dreading and rightfully so.  I knew the content was boring, dry and most of the information did not pertain to them.  However I felt it was important to talk to them about processes, defects and grading before talking to them about how to measure and mark.  This was also the class was the first project that takes some planning.  They started making the miter box.  This was the first time that it was a struggle with me being left handed while most are right handed.  the students are figuring the projects out and doing well.  I think the project made up for the boring lecture part.