blue skies and bondo

well it's been a while... i've been busy with lots of things not made of wood. we got the house insulated, worked on some drainage around the foundation, taking a tax preparation course, moved some machines into the basement...

ahh, machines. the first one to come in was the poitras 4800. i took most of it apart to move it, and it went pretty well. the tables came off of the main casting, the main casting came off of the base, and then two people can move it. not too bad. spent a couple of days putting it back together, i put the five horse motor that i got with the bandsaw into this guy. i still need to mount the electrical guts to it, and wire the shop for 220V. this thing is heavy, about a 1000 pounds. got the knives sharpened, but i'm holding off putting them back in until it's not going to move anymore.

next was the rest of the gear. i went to my folks place for a weekend and spent it packing. it's amazing how much stuff i've accumulated over the years. it's all in the basement now, thanks in large part to kevin, claire's brother, who cringes every time i ask him if he's busy.

thankfully there's a door leading to the top of the basement stairs from outside. we hauled the saw out of the van and then walked it down the stairs. it went surprisingly smoothly. one step at a time.

then i decided to paint it. it got scuffed during it's voyage, and the green with red wheels had kind of a christmas thing going on, so paint and bondo and more bondo. i decided to paint it blue, with dark blue wheels. i put the first coat of paint on the small parts, and just put the last layer of bondo on the main casting. the bearing still needs to be poured, but i've got all the necessary bits together, thanks to mr. keeble, who is sending me a babbitt scraper in the mail.

using the poitras as a temporary bench for cleaning and painting. i'm getting anxious to start woodworking, but i'm a ways off. i want to get new windows and giprock the walls and paint and fix the water problem and wire it and get lights and ...

flat curves

got some pictures of the showcase cabinet i finished in may. i think it went well, and i really enjoy the interplay between glass and wood. so much so, that my next project may have something to do with that very thing. unfortunately, my next project is a little ways off right now. claire and i just bought a house and it needs immediate attention and money. so august is looking like renovations, and then six weeks of work away from home, and then setting up a shop in the basement. not an ideal basement, but it appears that i must work with what i got.

sometimes i feel like an addict

sometimes i buy wood without necessarily being in a position to do so. but i can't help myself. behold, two green flitches of 8/4 maple with great heart colour and curl. starett square for comparison.

bench work

i've been back home for a couple of weeks now, after spending the month of may out in british columbia. i had a great time out there, but now it's back to reality. the first order of business was to get moving on my bandsaw. i spent a bit of time and money in a machine shop one morning and walked out with a new bottom shaft, a new brass bushing for the top wheel, and the top shaft cleaned up. i'm pretty happy with the work they did. now all i need is babbitt for the bottom bearing. that stuff is a little tricky to find, but i've got a couple of leads.

after that was all said and done, i got down to the task of flattening the top of our bench. i was inspired to get my ass in gear on this after seeing people do there's at inside passage. i figured it was time to do this one. so, like most jobs, there was something to do before getting started. i had to tune up my great grand-father's no. 8 jointer. didn't take much but grinding out a nick in the blade. it runs like a champ.

the bench had a pretty serious dip in the middle, and i had to make an awful pile of shavings, but i pretty much got it pretty flat. it's hard to get too accurate without a long straight edge to check with, but, close enough.




after that was all done, i started on a bench for myself. the other one is something that my father and i built six years ago. it stays in his shop. but every bird needs to leave the nest at some point, and i'm pretty sure my number got called. so a bench is needed. i'm basing this one off of some photos of seth janofsky's bench in woodwork #55. it uses a veneer press screw and a trapped block as a tail vise. this most definitely will have some shortcomings, but the price was right. the bench is going to be about six feet long and two feet wide with some three inches of depth. i went with round dog to simplify my life. all the other holes are for plugs that will replace the knots that were there. this thing is being built out of common 2" x 12". now i just need to find a wide thickness sander to flatten this puppy out. once that is done, off to the base.