Why I train with free weights

I excersize alot but I am not a memeber of a gym or anything like that. I dont want to have to spend the money on a gym membership when I can get a better workout at home.
My older sister has moved out of the house and I now have the upstairs to myself. I have turned her old bedroom into my excersize room, how great! My personal gym consists of; 7 dumbells (2 45lbs, 2 35lbs, 2 10lbs, 1 40lbs), a basic weightbench that can be adjusted to various inclines, a balance ball (the big beachball thing), a pull-up bar that hangs in the door-frame, and an eliptical machine. Other than the eliptical, everything is pretty cheap. The only reason I have the eliptical is because my mother wanted to start excersizing so she bought the eliptical but NEVER even go on it, so I have it now.
With this meager bit of equipment, I think I get a great workout.
Freeweights (dumbells) give you a better workout than the gyms fancy excersize machines. The machines kind of "assist" you in the movements, the guide and balanace the weight. With free weights however, your muscles have to work harder to balance and steady the weight which gives you a much better workout and builds a wider variety of muscles. With machines, specific muscles are targeted rather than a large number of different muscles.
So, if you want to start working out without having to spend much money, then dumbells are definately the way to go!

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DIY Folding Sawhorses Version 2 0 with Free Plans

I am calling this free plans, I have the cutout photo of a sheet of plywood with the dimensions on it. The rest pretty straight forward I believe. But, while I was building this set I was video taping a how to video and hopefully that will be up and running online soon which should make everything very simple.
The original sawhorse design was a great one, the only things I really changed for the 2.0 version were the height of the horses, the width of the horses, and the width of the leg panels. The changes made now allow for nearly, if not all of the materials to be cut out of one sheet of plywood (on the computer it says it can be done, but when I tried I failed somehow). The working height could be lowered still to enable you to get everything out of one piece except for the 2x4 top piece, but that would lower the working height to a level to low for my personal preference.
The working height in version 2.0 is approximately 31" which uses a leg panel height of 28", and the width of the sawhorses are nearly 43". The width of a leg panels is 5" which allows you to cut two leg panels out of a 48"x33" section of 3/4" plywood. It may be difficult to understand but I will have a image of the cut list soon which will help clear everything up.
Everything else is the same as the original version.
I built a set of these about three of four weeks ago and have been using them on remodeling and construction jobs and they are holding up great. I have had easily over 100 8 pieces of tongue and groove pine on them along with a miter saw and they never showed any signs of weakness. Everyone who comes to the jobs takes a close look at the sawhorses and asks my boss man where he got them, it feels good when he points at me and says "He built them, not me".
The construction is pretty simple and I think you should be able to simply recreate your own. I did however make a cut list type thing on Sketch up that shows how you can get the pieces easily out of one sheet of plywood.
The "U" shaped leg panels are 28" tall and about 42 15/16" long and 5" wide on all three segments. When it is laid out on a sheet of plywood I center my saw blade on the line since I am using both pieces on either side of the blade.
The rest is pretty easy, 6 pieces 3" x about 42 15/16" (four of them with an 18* bevel cut down one long side) and 4 at 2". Then from the inside of a leg you cut 8 pieces that are used for the inside of the legs for support.
Here is a video helping with the building process. I go into some detail about assembly and remind you of a few things, check it out.
More detailed photos and descriptions are availiable in this post that should aid in the the building process.
If anyone has and questions of comments feel free. Dont forget about The Woodworking Trip, there should be a video on these things coming soon. Thank you!

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How to build a Lumber Rack Video Better than free plans!

I definately needed a lumber rack in my new small shop so I got to looking around the internet at other peoples ideas and builds and most of them seemed pretty complicated or they protruded out from the wall to much for my small shop.
I came up with a simple but strong design that doesnt force you to sacrifice space nor does it take alot of tools, materials, or complicated jointery to build. In my small shop I am trying to put alot of things on wheels and this lumber rack is not built all the way to the floor so that I can roll tools underneathe it.
So take some time to watch this video and build yourself a great lumber rack.