Stick with it

 My comeback to climbing is going well.  Rebuilding the shop after tearing it apart is going well.  Stick with it!  And don't give up on the video either, it gets better and better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJCWziYxRVs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Dust collection pipe almost in!

After a weekend and some evenings, the 6" spiral pipe is finally in.  After I install some blast gates, I'm ready to woodwork.  I don't have to trip over the hose to my 3hp oneida cyclone anymore.  I also have a huge spot in the middle of my shop that has been opened up as the dust collector was moved to the corner of the shop - invading a little bit into Sarah's spot but she loves me and doesn't mind.

What went well:

1. The performance of the spiral 6" pipe is significantly better than the really short 4" plastic pipe I had.

2. Glad I went with metal, no worries with static shocks.  How do you ground an insulator anyway?

3. Getting nice clean runs despite the obstructions that I had.

4. Cutting the pipe with a jigsaw and metal blade

What didn't go well:

1. Getting the material home, especially since the HVAC shop had bankers hours and was far away

2. Cost.  It was 2X what I originally thought, but worth the $600 including blast gates, etc.

Last week's news on the shop

Last week furnace was about to die only after 15 years, some of it having to do with my woodworking dust.  Took the oppurtunity to get a more efficient furnace and upgrade water heater.  Now I have more room for my Oneida V3000 Dust collector!  Photo:

Also did the electrical to my half wall that has the miter saw, mortiser and drill press:

On a sour note, I had to took down my tool rack whose design came from woodworking magazine and move my holtzapfel workbench.  I threw my back out moving the beast, got better then re-injured it bouldering. :-(

This is how it's going to be?

Forgot to talk about the my one experience being part of a blog years ago.

We had the GBCT blog, it was a climbing blog for us to plan trips and share photos, but don't ask what GBCT stands for.  Somebody hacked it and posted vile things even we didn't know about and had to look up.  Even Robert blushed.

Blog post about my blog experiences so far

Over the last couple years I started doing things that I purposely didn't do previously because I didn't want to be that guy.  Woodworking - who would have thunk that I wanted to be like the guys with the crazy nose hairs.  I connected our TV to the computer via the playstation.  I actually started surfing the web.  Up until a few years ago, I spent no more then 5 minutes on the web per day.  I got an iPhone.

With that iPhone it's so easy to surf that I started following blogs on a daily basis.  Here are my favorites:

Christopher Schwarz has taught me a lot about woodworking and much of my shop decisions have followed his advice
http://blog.woodworking-magazine.com/blog and http://blog.lostartpress.com/

Unfortunately, lately I've been reading stuff here.  Some useful information as I'm continuing to make decisions on how my shop looks, but man can there be some drama queens!  Last post I read got into US unions, Chinese manufacturing, government telling you what to do, "that's not what I said you're putting words in my mouth," etc.   I really wanted to post: "Oh my god, what the F* is the matter with you guys?"
http://www.lumberjocks.com/

And lastly, and again unfortunately, I went to Michigan and follow football.  RR RIP.  I'm also a MN Vikings fan, but we won't talk about that until the pain stops.
http://www.mgoblog.com/

Hey I'm testing

John's first blog - hopefully this won't be the last.

Let's talk house projects, woodworking projects, growing stuff, breaking stuff and climbing.