The New Shop! Pt 1

I am loading up my shop and moving it to a new home! Well, not yet, but I am getting close!
I have decided to move my shop to my home, since I have had a break-in and having a shop at home would be so nice (having to drive 20 minutes to my shop makes me spend less time there). The plan is to moving into a bay of our "boat barn", it is a larger garage if you will that is approximately 30x60 and has a two boats, fourwheelers, a golf cart and a bunch of my step fathers junk, yes, most of it is junk. Sadly I couldnt convince him to give me the whole thing, so I settled with one bay of it a 13.5x25 section.
As you can see, it is pretty full. Most of the barn is this way, I think my stepdad is a mild hoarder..... alot of the stuff is... well I wont go there. I got him in there with me Sunday afternoon and consolidated all of the things into the other parts of the barn. Our agreement was that I could get 100% of his stuff out of that bay and have only my things over there. It took us probably a good hour to move it all, when we were done it was looking good.
My plans are to close it off completely from the rest of the barn with a nice wall. I want to insulate it, hang 1/2" plywood all along the walls, paint it white, then move all my tools in and build something! More to come!
Feel free to "Follow" along with me, this should be exciting! Look in the right column for "followers" and click follow.

Read More..

The New Shop Pt 2 Moved In

This past week I have been working hard and I have most of my tools moved into my new shop space, its so exciting! First I insulated the walls then put 1/2" plywood up. After that I painted the plywood white with a eggshell latex paint which really made the shop brighter and appear larger after two coats (I still have some touching up to do, but I wanted to get my tools in there).
It feels so good to get my tools in there!
The next few things I am working on are my french cleat system and my lumber rack. I am putting french cleats where ever I can and hanging whatever I can on them. This way everything in my shop can be moved around without much trouble with the only things being permanent on the wall are the lumber rack and the ladder to the attic. You can see where I have already hung a small cabinet and a clamps on my french cleats. The clamps had no where to hang and were taking up valuable space rght off so I made up a quick holder for them. Also, I needed a place to put some fasteners so I made up the small cabinet to hold my hardware.
My lumber rack will be located above the jointer and my unfinished router table. I am making it out of 2x4s and 1/2" plywood, it is pretty simple but should do the job nicely.
Moving into my new shop I will be building lots of new shop furniture and jigs, most of which I will try to make videos on. This afternoon I hope to be able to complete my lumber rack and have a tutorial video made and uploaded by Wednesday. I already have all of the parts cut for the rack I just have to get to videoing!

Read More..

The Drinking Bowl Turning the bowl pt 2

Hi Everyone,
Well, I went down to the work shop and took a long look at the bowl and did a little measuring as well and it turned out that there wasnt a lot of wood left between the ends of the screw holes and the bottom of the inside of the bowl. So I turned the bottom more convex a couple of millimeters. This deepened the bowl, improved the appearance, and added a little more volume. Heres what it looked like immediately afterwards:

And I decided to stop there. Its not worth the risk of cutting into the screws and ruining the bowl. I sanded and oiled it and here it is at present:

Im going to oil over the next several days and give it a beeswax finish at the end and polish it. Ill post more photos when its done.
VW

Read More..