What did you do in your shop today?

Cut the rest of my Mango into boards today! Sappiest wood I've ever worked with. I did learn a kinda cool new trick. I had been told that 50/ 50 Titebond and water was pretty good for sealing ends. Today I noticed I had a partial bottle of old glue, added water then shook up, so now I have a dispenser too. Worked well.

Les, if you decide to part with some of that Mango I've always wanted to try some out. Tony
 
I think I can get some more. I tried not to be greedy and got just enough to make a drum shell out of. This is fairly plain grained stuff. Kinda reminds me of plain maple with open pores like mahogany if that makes sense. Seems to work nice though. What size boards or blanks might you like and I will see what I can do?
@Tony
 
I think I can get some more. I tried not to be greedy and got just enough to make a drum shell out of. This is fairly plain grained stuff. Kinda reminds me of plain maple with open pores like mahogany if that makes sense. Seems to work nice though. What size boards or blanks might you like and I will see what I can do?
@Tony


What does the color look like? I would use it in cutting boards, I rip them into 1" strips. 24" long would be ideal, but I can use shorter boards as well. Tony
 
I don't have enough clamps - but I knew that already and know that there is no such thing as having too many clamps.

I sent my wife this pic (she's out of town right now) and I hope that she'll have mercy on me and let me get some more clamps sometime after we get back from vacation and visiting family.

Router Table carcass glue-up. I had just enough clamps to make it work, but really wish I'd have had at least four more longer clamps.

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My wife's been real good to me the last two weeks. Mother's Day she told me to go ahead and order a dust collector from Harbor Freight when she peaked over my shoulder and saw the 25% off coupon I had in an e-mail from them. She knows that one of my top priorities for the workshop this year was to tackle dust collection.

So, today I had a chance to get it set up and running. I do, however, have plans to upgrade it as finances allow. I'll be upgrading it with a Wynn filter, building a separator, and doing some running of lines.

Then yesterday we were in Rockler - the Burnsville, MN location where they have their outlet deals section where they sell damaged, returned, or opened merchandise. My wife let me buy a couple things - even though I didn't have near enough money in my tool fund to buy them. She did, however, make me promise that I'll pay our checking account back when the money comes in from a couple pen orders I'm working on.

From the outlet deals section I came home with two items, both brand new, in box, never opened: a Kreg router table top with plate for $90 and a Porter Cable 892 Router for $150. I just need to build a base for the table top and I'll have myself a router table up and running real soon! (And now that I have a router I can stop scratching my head as to how I'm going to do the stopped dados in the bookcase I started building last weekend.)

So, today I put together my dust collector, hung up the air cleaner I purchased two or three months ago, started putting the router table top together, did some cleaning and organizing, and built a couple shelves for my lathe area in the basement.
I think you'll do very well with the dust collector and Wynn (when you get it). Dust collector is kinda like a lathe though...it's the cheap part and you'll eadily spend as much or more on pipe snd fittings.
Suggest you make sure all the runs at 6" and drops at 4". Even if you have to adapt to 2-1/2" at the dust source, you want to maximize flow with larger pipe. Works very well for me in a 16x28 area.
 
I don't have enough clamps - but I knew that already and know that there is no such thing as having too many clamps.

I sent my wife this pic (she's out of town right now) and I hope that she'll have mercy on me and let me get some more clamps sometime after we get back from vacation and visiting family.

Router Table carcass glue-up. I had just enough clamps to make it work, but really wish I'd have had at least four more longer clamps.

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That looks like a similar glue up when I did mine last December.:good2:
 
I think you'll do very well with the dust collector and Wynn (when you get it). Dust collector is kinda like a lathe though...it's the cheap part and you'll eadily spend as much or more on pipe snd fittings.
Suggest you make sure all the runs at 6" and drops at 4". Even if you have to adapt to 2-1/2" at the dust source, you want to maximize flow with larger pipe. Works very well for me in a 16x28 area.

Yeah, I'm just getting started with this! Even though the dust collector was under $160, I suspect that I'll be in about $500, give or take, by the time I purchase and setup runs, upgrade the filter, and build a chip separator. I've got a 13'x22' space, but all the machines are toward one end of the space, so it should be fairly easy to do the runs of piping. I will probably only have about 4 drops - most of my tools will be on wheels and will need to be wheeled out to use, due to space constraints, so I would be able to use multiple tools on the same drop because I don't have the space to have more than one thing set up at a time. I like the thought of the 6" runs with 4" drops and will probably do just that.

That looks like a similar glue up when I did mine last December.:good2:

You know why it might look familiar to you? Because I'm using the router table plans you e-mailed me some time ago when I was looking for plans for a router table fence. (That table got scrapped when we moved last year as it was turning out quite horrible.) Did you build that same table? Since I got a nice top and a nice router now, and the layout of my shop won't make it easy to mount a router in a table saw wing, I decided a full stand alone router table on wheels was the way to go and I can wheel it out of the way when not in use.

I'm making a few minor changes to the plans to suit my desires, but am also making one big change: I'm making it about 6" taller than the plans have it. It'll be somewhere around 40" tall. I'm 6' 4" and tried putting the router table top at the same height as my table saw and workbench and it was just too short for me to feel comfortable working at. So I raised it up with blocks to a comfortable height and came up with about 40". If I find it's just a little too tall in use, I can always take the wheels off the bottom and reattach them to the ends, dropping it down a few inches.
 
Dang Matt, I don't know that I can see over the top of that table, I'm only 5'5":sorry: Tony
 
Well, my wife and son are almost home from their trip to Wisconsin for the weekend, so it's time for me to shut down in the shop and do some cleaning up...

Did manage to also get a few bowls roughed out and packed in their shavings in brown paper bags to dry. Two of the blanks were Honey Locust - sopping wet at 26%, according to my meter. It was a warm day today and the moisture coming off the spinning blank felt real good to cool me down. Oh, and turning green wood? WOW - super fun. This was my first time turning green wood. Unfortunately I don't have any more green blanks to toss on the lathe and rough turn - that was fun!
 
Dang Matt, I don't know that I can see over the top of that table, I'm only 5'5":sorry: Tony

If you ever make it to MN sometime and stop by for a visit, I'll make sure to make you a step stool so you can step up and see over the top of it! :sarcastic:
 
If you ever make it to MN sometime and stop by for a visit, I'll make sure to make you a step stool so you can step up and see over the top of it! :sarcastic:

Greatness! If I ever do get across the Mason-Dixon line I will surely stop by and see you! Tony
 
Greatness! If I ever do get across the Mason-Dixon line I will surely stop by and see you! Tony

I'm sure you have a similar rule to mine - I won't head south of the M-D line in summer, and I'm sure you won't head north of it in winter! But, if you are ever up in my neck of the woods, you are most welcome here!
 
Put a couple coats of poly on a reclaimed wood shelf. Installed the new sway bar on the outback. Cut some blanks and went for another walk in the park and found these. The last one is the only one I can take. I saw a few others as well. Much harder to cut with a hand saw though. 20150609_092400.webp 20150609_093719.webp 20150609_092239.webp
 
I made a mess today...... I do like these though, I get paid by the hour and the guy who builds the tables does most of the sanding. Although I wish he'd keep the glue ups straight, this one was 3/4 of an inch off from top to bottom. they take forever to balance without flipping the lathe over, You know it's off when it makes the mass of a Oneway 2436 move across the floor.

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nice turnings by the way....

Thanks, They are for an Amish furniture maker, It's pretty funny, everyone goes nuts over their furniture, they buy lumber form some of the same sources I do and they use just as many power tools, the only difference is theirs are run off a line shaft powered by a 40HP diesel engine instead of electricity...... I've even seen cordless drills in their shops, they just charge then elsewhere and the kids have iPods and cell phones....
 
Amish isn't what it used to be....they upgraded their process to keep up with the jones'
 
I've got a batch of pens I need to get finished up within a week and the last of the supplies I needed came in yesterday's mail. So today I got started. Also need to get some bottle stoppers, bottle openers, plates, and a beer tap handle made too. Yup, going to be a busy few days on the lathe the first few days of this week.
 
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