Some shop time

I spent a lot of the day yesterday out in the garage/shop. Didn’t get all done that I wanted to, but made some progress.

I got the wood for the new boxes worked down to the right thickness. It’s not quite as smooth as I’d like, but that’s because I took too much off with the planer and only got to run a couple of light passes with the sander. We’ll do a little bit of finish sanding once the boxes are assembled.

I didn’t get to try the rail and style set at all. That’s because I spent too much time trying to work out how to do the oven rack handles. It turns out that that’s sort of dependent on the wood. My plan was to make a template, do the rough cut on the band saw, then use a 3/8 pattern bit to smooth out the cuts.

To that end I made a template out of oak (because I have hardwood floor scraps around) and that worked fine. Then I tried to trim up the blanks I had already made. This is where the “dependent on the wood” part comes in. I made a mistake when I was last at Woodcraft and I misread the abbreviation on one of the scraps and ended up with Basswood (B) instead of Butternut (BN). Turns out that basswood has an issue on the router and wants to split out really easily. I’ll end up a) not buying basswood again and b) using the router to trim everything but those two corners and hit up the sander for that.

Of course, it is never as straightforward as you think it is going to be. I’ll be glad when I finally make connections with one of these people that are ripping out their decks and have enough 2by material to build the rolling workbenches I have in mind. I will then at least have a fighting chance to be able to find things that I’m looking for. I spent probably 30 minutes or so looking for the double stick tape I had picked up only to remember that it was back in the house. Then I had to run to Lowes to pick up some screws. Somehow when I took the router base off of the table I misplaced the screws that held it in. Since they’re #6 x 1/2″ brass, they’re not anything I have laying around. Of course, I looked for them first, taking up more time.

I had to do a minor repair on the Dust Deputy – well, properly speaking, it was on the motivation system. I ended up wrapping some electrical tape around the hose for the small vacuum in order to plug up some holes. I also wrapped some around the end where it plugs in to the DD in order to form a tighter fit. Not as good as a fitting, but it did help.

All in all, I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, but I did make progress. And it felt good.