Beware of Shiny Squirrels!

The day started with a plan. It was time to tackle the lathe area. Clear all the unwanted or misplaced “stuff”. Throw out or find new homes for things which seem to grow from the cracks in the floor. I had a plan. However, mother nature had a plan too. The January day was unseasonably warm. It had rained last night so the ground was soft and it was overcast. As I looked out across the back yard, I heard the sound of wood, under great stress, cracking. Noting that at least a dozen trees were down, in the woods, I also saw the hound playing under another tree, the tree that was moaning its last, the tree that was leaning, the tree that had to come down. A shiny, chrome colored squirrel just ran by and took with it, one hundred percent of my attention. No working on the shop today, today would be yard work, chainsaw, bar oil, and Anchorseal. Yet, by the end of the day, the shop would win too!

A lumberjack I am…NOT. Honestly, felling trees scares the crap out of me. Sure, I own a chainsaw. That’s for cutting stuff already down. Not 20 inch diameter trees of whose entire weight is on one or two stress points. With over 20 years as a medic, I have seen far too many times what happens when something under stress suddenly pops. Cautiously, I approached.

My chainsaw fired up on the second pull. First the six inch oak that is pinned under the base. About half way through, the oak tree cracks with a loud pop. I back off. This is not helping my confidence. Maybe a cut on the pine would help, or maybe not. The base of the pine is resting on the stump. A few hairs of bark holding on. This does not need a chain saw. I return with a sledge. 1 Hit, two hits, three hits,  boom. The tree falls to a nice workable height.

Granted any would be lumberjack could have cut it down and not broke a sweat. Did I mention I am not a lumber jack? However, as I look around, I begin to see something that peeks my interest. A birch was hit by the pine, an oak tree was also hit and damaged, as well as a hickory and a small cedar. While none of these are large enough to yield any significant board stock, they can all yield turning stock. With new enthusiasm the chain saw fires up as turning blanks pile high!

Break out the Anchorseal! When it comes to drying green logs, I have found Anchorseal to be the MVP of the game. When dealing with large diameters, simply brushing a heavy coat on the cut ends will do nicely. For the smaller diameters, I prefer to dip them into the can. Once dried the log will be marked and stood up for drying. Depending on species and size the process may take up to 2 years. Though I find with these smaller ones it takes about 4 to 6 months. 

So, I didn’t get to clear space or build a new table, but I did get to add some new stock to my inventory and I opened up yet another project for 2013….The Great Back Yard Clearing. More on that later.

Until next time,

Kevin

The Clean Out Begins

It never ceases to amaze me as to how much junk one can accumulate over time. My garage, aka workshop, serves as a museum of yester-year. In one corner there are boxes which have not been open in the 12 years since I moved in to this home. They came off the moving truck and were stacked there, never to be opened again. Next to it, the fishing poles and various “must have” appliances which failed the “test of need” in our home (such as the Sno-Cone maker I had to have, used once and retired to the garage). As the piles expand outward, various woodworking tools and tables seem to spawn from the mess. To the untrained eye, it would look like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie. Yet, in my mind anyway, there is some level of organization. I can tell show you where the prized Ebony and Bubinga boards are, where the major power tools are, and where the hand tools should be. However, as the shop had been mothballed for almost two years, I find that finding anything often takes longer than the task it was needed for! The other day, while turning a pen, I set down a gouge only to spend twenty minutes looking for it. The shop, to my dismay, is no longer functional. 

So it begins… the clean out, that moment in time when one must start throwing stuff away! Better yet, one clears out enough junk that they actually start finding tools that went missing long ago!

The first day concentrated on one side only. As a result, two old pieces of furniture made their way to the dump along with several bags and a truck load of odds and ends. Some items went up into the attic while others were moved to new homes. The band saw was moved to a temporary home on the other side, as the router table and table saw looked around in amazement at the fact that they can now see the floor around them. At the end of the day, an 8 foot wide clear path of concrete led from the house door and out the garage. 

As I begin next week on the shop side, I will now have a temporary holding area for various tools. The shop may still look like a science experiment gone wrong, however, progress has been made. The next goal will be to clear out around the lathe and tool box. The shop side will take some extra time. The problem here is that many of the items will stay while the furnishings will be replaced. The newly cleared section will serve as a staging area for that.

I probably should have done this, years ago, when I realized that the shop would no longer be for handy work. However, sometimes we have to recognize just how inefficient something is before we change it. Other times, it just takes us a while to comprehend what we want to change it to. Of course, there is always budget constraints that must be considered.In my case, it was all three.

Until next time,

Kevin

A New Year and a New Beginning!

So it has been almost two years since my last post. However, A LOT has happened since then. I was notified that my National Guard unit would be deploying. That led to 5 military schools, mobilization training, and then a plane ride across the world. After several months in country, I found myself on a Medevac heading back to the states and now, several months after that, I am looking at a medical retirement. As a part of deployment, my workshop got mothballed. Now, I’m ready to begin rebuilding the old shop and look forward to the sounds of various motors as new shapes are revealed in the wood.

Initially it will only be a little bit here and there. I have discovered that the old shop needs a lot of adjustment and changes. First, there’s the fact that when I first started, everything centered around a 4 x 6 foot stand up table.  Over the years, as new equipment came in and my style evolved from general handyman to woodworker, the old shop has become less and less functional. In some cases it even hinders projects.

So what does all this mean for the Homemade Workshop? The first project will be a complete overhaul of the shop to become more organized and functional. Then we’ll jump right in to various projects. Some will be simple and quick projects like turning a pen or building a desktop humidor. Other will be far more complex like building a new screened in deck. The goal of the Homemade Workshop is to explore all facets of woodworking and the day to day projects that find their way in to our shops. As I am a hobbyist, my shop may turn a peppermill today, build a table tomorrow, rewire a lamp the next day, and sharpen lawn mower blades at the end of the week. But each project is an adventure. If done right, even the most mundane of task will build skill which translates to better and finer projects in the future.

Along with changes will come a strong use of Google Sketch Up. Seen on many other sites, I have found Sketch Up to be an invaluable tool in the planning of projects.

Hopefully by this summer I will start adding video blogs to this site. We’ll see, my video expertise is in the sub novice level :) .