The garage is a mess again: Part IV

Slowly but surely I am making progress on the garage. I took down a couple of shelving units to make room for the band saw. I've hung some peg board on the wall behind the saw to provide storage for some of the saw's accessories. Over all I like the arrangement, but it has left me with a shortage of storage locations for my tools.



Luckily, I found at least a partial solution in the repurposing of Meghan's old desk.

Before:



After:





Meghan's old desk was one of my first large woodworking projects. I built it for her almost six years ago. Last year we bought a new desk and moved our office down to the family room. I are planning to redecorate the old office and make it Ivy's big girl room, but that has been at least partially on hold while we figure out what to do with the furniture that is currently in there. Reclaiming the materials and making a tool chest out of them helped to solve both problems.

Building the tool chest was interesting in two ways. First, figuring out how to build the biggest storage possible out of the materials at hand was a challenge. Second, comparing my construction techniques of 6 years ago with what I do today provided some perspective in how far I have come as woodworker (I hesitate to use the word craftsman because I just don't think I'm that good yet). The construction of the tool chest is in every way superior to what I achieved building the desk, and I was able to build it in half the time.

Since I had to knock out the shelving on my workbench to make way for the tool chest, I took the time to square up some of the joints and add a tool tray and a planing stop, both of which I had seen on other benches and liked.






I still have a ways to go, but at least we can get one car in the garage again.

The garage is a mess again: Part III

The garage is a mess again: Part II

Made some progress on the mess over the weekend. By that I mean the garage is now in greater disarray than when I started.

Though I did not make as much progress as I would have liked, I did accomplish a couple of things. The biggest milestone, as far as the whole garage/shop organization is concerned, is the completion of a lumber cart to store my scraps in. It's built from 2x4 and the shelves from one of the shelving units I am taking down to make room for the new saw and future dust collector. This is really a huge step forward for me because keeping lumber organized and out of the way has been near impossible up to this point. The foot print of the cart is actually smaller than the milk crates and stacks of wood that it is replacing, and it's storage capacity is actually greater. Plus it looks better than I expected.

The other thing I accomplished this weekend was getting the band saw properly tuned up and fitted with a new blade. We haven't been able to locate the instruction manual for this saw, which is strange considering the near OCD levels of my grandpa's organization. I had hoped to find a copy online, but Delta doesn't have a digital copy of the saw's manual either. Luckily, the design has changed so little over the years that the current 14" band saw has almost identical adjustments for the blade. In fact the most difficult part of getting the saw set up was aligning the motor and pulleys properly. It took probably an hour of fiddling with the thing to get everything in line with proper tension on the belt to drive the saw.

While the Delta is without question a superior machine to the Ryobi 9" band saw that I previously owned, it has made me regret not taking the time to really learn that smaller machine. Obviously the Ryobi has some short comings, such as small cutting capacity and not having a fence, but on the other hand, I never really took the time to properly adjust the blade guides and thrust bearings. As a result the blade traveled every which way. If I had taken the time to make sure everything was set properly, I would have used that saw a lot more.

Skinny Table

Coffee tables are nice, but when you have limited space in your family room, they can get in the way. Several years ago I built a narrow table to sandwich between our couch and the wall. It's great. It provides a place to set your drink, the remote, a candle, pretty much anything you might set on a coffee table, but without getting in the way. For almost as long as we've had this table, which as one of my first furniture builds is of rather crude design and construction, my mom has been after me to build one for her. So for Christmas I finally did build one for her.

The garage is a mess again

Between the addition of a 14" bandsaw and storage of Ivy's slide, the happy organization that I spent countless hours trying to achieve last summer has vanished. Stuff is everywhere and I can't park both cars in the garage again. Given that I'd like to add a dust collector to my wood shop this year, I guess I should reassess how I have things arranged, and maybe get rid of some crap I don't use.

I'm With COCO

http://imwithcoco.com/

Helping people

A big part of the reason that I switched to Ubuntu linux (aside from the fact that it was easier to install than Windows) was the friendly and helpful community of user that were welcoming of new years and eager to help others solve their linux problems. With 3 years of use behind me, I've started contributing to the community support forum. It's certainly a better use of my free time at work than playing Bejeweled Blitz.
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