What did you do in your shop today?

It could be yours if we can work out a little deal on the auction closing time...
 
Got a chance to do a little turning, had some green blocks I wanted to get roughed out and waxed. Ended up roughing out about 20 bowls in the 4-6 inch size, most natural edge. Got a couple pieces of spalted whatnot I'll have to stabilize. Pics of the shop ( I really do get it dirty from time to time) and some of the roughed out bowls.

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Hawthorn, Buckthorn, Boxelder, and one of the spalted pieces I'll have to stabilize, Probably just load it in with a pile of pen blanks in the next week or so.

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I've done nothing in my shop lately - not even pack - as I've been so busy with so many other things. The boxes I've been working on have had spray lacquer applied to them and that's all cured now. I had access to someplace where I could spray them where no one would be for a few days so the fumes wouldn't bother anyone. Sprayed them last week, but forgot to pick them up the other day. Will be able to get them on Wednesday. Then I'll cut the lids off, do any final touches, install hinges, and call them done!

I've also been dreaming and scheming tonight. That's been fueled by a couple glasses of good red wine from the one bottle I brought back from our honeymoon in 2012. Great bottle of wine and brings back great memories of an amazing honeymoon with my better-than-I-deserve wife. Second most expensive bottle of wine I've purchased (the most expensive bottle I've ever purchased was a Tawny Port from the winery I worked at for a year in grad school.) A Pinot Noir from Castello di Amorosa. Touring Castello di Amorosa was one of the highlights of our honeymoon.

Anyways, for some reason the wine not only got me thinking pleasant thoughts about our honeymoon, but for some reason, part way into the second glass, I started thinking about my future shop. The house we're moving into has an attached one car garage. I don't know if it's insulated, but the walls are covered in plywood, which will make hanging things quite easy. It's a blank slate in there right now. I only got to peak in there. Not many outlets (plan to remedy that as soon as I can after we move in). Just a few shelves. Seems a little longer than a normal one car garage. And the place will be all mine! There's a shed where stuff that I don't want in the garage can go. Katy has come to terms with the thought that we'll likely never park a car in that garage, unless I move a bunch of stuff to get a vehicle part way in to work on it. She's ok with that, because she really doesn't want my shop in the basement in our new house for noise and dust control reasons. I wish I had a few minutes to spend in there when we saw the house. I do plan to paint the place white, to help with lighting. I also plan to add more outlets, including some on a switch for lights - and hopefully there's enough room in the breaker panel to add in another circuit or two. Also hoping to figure out a way to heat it in the winter so that I can work in there more than 3 months out of the year.

The garage in the house we'll be living in really is a blank slate as far as setting up shop goes, and I'm really looking forward to a few months down the road when I can start turning the garage into my workshop!
 
Nothing. It was too cold.
 
I processed more citrus and seagrape into pieces that will be useable to me in the future. Learned a bit from what me and Jamie (woodlove) did and it went a bit more smoothly and I think I had a little less waste. May also have some left over pieces that will make game calls and pen blanks I can trade later, yay!

Jamie gave me 3 half log pieces of Acacia that I am now mentally processing into the most useable material?
 
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Cut staves for drums from Red Eucalyptus, Acacia ( thanks Jamie), and Osage Orange. I sized the spalted Citrus and put the angles on it and have it in hose clamps making a polygon. Hopeing I am able to trade pen and call size blanks of the woods from the last 2 days to get some sort of very dark wood. I will cut the dark wood into 32- 1/16" stripes that will go on both sides of some 1/8" Black Olive stripes. The citrus has black line spalt and I think pinstripeing this way will really set it off.
 
Today I worked on new racks for craft shows that will fold up and take up less space, allows me to use the Prius this year and save on gas. Seemed I used a little bit of every wood I had leaning in the corner and got to use my new Follett rulers to mark center lines on some parts! The trays are a standard jewelry tray available pretty cheap from Gems on Display and the inserts are made for bracelets but the grooves work perfectly to organize pens and they slide into a carry bag for transport.

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I got my latest headboard assembled. Now it needs a bit of sanding and it'll be ready to go to the painter. She does a much better job of making it look pretty than I do. IMG_20140310_185753.webp

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So I started in on an order for 200 little appetizer plated that sit on a wine glass, pretty simple, just a disk with a tenon on the bottom to fit inside the opening of the glass. Got about 70 of them turned, just need to sand the tops quick and grind the tenon to length and that batch will be ready to finish, the piles up on the stool have some nice spalting that my customer doesn't want so they'll go in the showroom. I also had a minor mishap with the saw, guess I have a little drywall work to do.....

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That doesn't look like a minor "mishap". That looks like damage from a 3" blank kicking out of the table saw. Tell me you aren't using your ripping fence and your miter gauge together to make cuts.
 
That doesn't look like a minor "mishap". That looks like damage from a 3" blank kicking out of the table saw. Tell me you aren't using your ripping fence and your miter gauge together to make cuts.

No, I was ripping some shorter lumber with high moisture and it must have had some stress in it, Got 1/2 way through the piece and the kerf closed up on the blade, Started to buck hard so I hit the stop switch and jumped back, I learned years ago about the fence and miter gauge together being not such a great idea ( the bruise on my gut took weeks to fade), I have a chop saw for cross cuts.
 
Sometimes I am glad my saw is an old 3/4 hp. When that happens if I don't see the kerf closing or here it or feel it I can usually just hold the wood and the motor will stall. I did shoot a board through the shop door once when the kerf closed, always stand to one side of the blade.
 
Sometimes I am glad my saw is an old 3/4 hp. When that happens if I don't see the kerf closing or here it or feel it I can usually just hold the wood and the motor will stall. I did shoot a board through the shop door once when the kerf closed, always stand to one side of the blade.

It's the reason I stopped using my 16" Oliver. I used it for years just fine but for some unknown reason I lost confidence using it freehand, so it's just a dust collector now. If I ever have a need to use it much again I'll get another power feeder for it but my days using it freehand are over. Too damn scary.
 
Sometimes I am glad my saw is an old 3/4 hp. When that happens if I don't see the kerf closing or here it or feel it I can usually just hold the wood and the motor will stall. I did shoot a board through the shop door once when the kerf closed, always stand to one side of the blade.

That one ricocheted off the buffer mounted on the bench behind where I was and went up high on the wall. On the rebound off the wall it landed on the other side of the shop. Of course this place is only like 15 feet wide so it didn't have far to go.
 
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