2014 Shop Cleanup

Every year towards the end of the year, I change up the shop to make it more dust free, safer and more welcoming.  This year I wanted to put everything away in such a way that I could the leaf blower to blow out dust unabated.  Not the best neighbor, but oh well.  I did these pretty much all during christmas break.

Started with the outfeed table for the table saw.  The old one moved too much with moisture changes and caused the table saw blade to bind on the workpiece.  Made out of some really nice 1" thick appleply.  Torsion box-like design using clear cedar saved from the deck demo from "Epic 2"

Painted with a bunch of layers of finish to make to glass smooth

Also added a piece of flooring on the holtzapfel bench at an angle to help with supporting longer boards on the table saw.  The previous solution made out of softwood worked really well on ripping all the redwood for the pergola (epic 1).  This new one works even better. 

Decided to build a "roubo split-top assembly bench."  This was made out of the remainder of the clear cedar I saved from Epic 2.

Painted base, it's deeper than my main roubo at 32" vs. 24" and lower at 28" vs. 32".  This should make it easier to do glue ups which were kinda of a pain on the garage floor since I could never be certain the floor was flat.

The bench is a split roubo and is designed to be knocked down.  The center section is also where I plan to run the festool track saw.  I also plan on having some replace-able pieces cross wise (in dovetailed ways?) so I can cross cut using the saw when I'm traveling and need my tools.

 Got myself a refurbed Veritas shoot board plane and track system over cyber monday.  Used leftover plywood to make the board and designed it such that the oak fence can be adjusted and replenished as it's cut into.  So far, pretty nice.

Not enough drawer space caused me to leave things out which then got lost when running the leaf blower.  Instead, just cut up a bunch of left over plywood to create some drawer dividers (simple, detachable, disposable)

Clamps were falling everywhere, hung them up instead in the used spots of the shop.  Also, built a french cleat charging station.

Notice anything?  This style of tool rack when it's just a 1/2" wide slot allows all your screwdrivers to constantly fall over on each other and eventually out of the slot (when running the leaf blower).  Toe-nailed small pieces of wood (not shown) to hold them upright. 

Doesn't look like much, but this was a disaster before.  By getting rid of my tool cases, I freed up 50% more space.  There are a lot more hand power tools that I did this to (not shown). 

 Finally, a storage spot for my super expensive 9' long festool track.  It's simply too expensive for me to just lay around.  They say "Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten," I guess I'm still in the latter phase, I haven't forgotten about the price.

2014 - The year of the stinky cat

2014 is the year our cat named "Stinky" become super needy.  Regularly sleeps in my chair, steals the office desk as soon as I stand up and sleeps in my armpit at night.  After a couple of trips to the vet this year, the cats caused us to pull the trigger on hardwoods throughout, caused me to ask "you can spend that much on rugs?" and we considered their safety in designing our deck.

We have lots of nick names for her, what is your favorite?

• Stinky Meatloaf
• Stinky Sausage
• Stinky Royale with Cheese
• Stinky Butterball Turkey
• That Furry Little Sh*tface
• Princess Licky Licky
• Princess Bitey Bitey
• Furrocious D
• Stinky Bo Binky
• Stinky Turbo

Picture frame with integrated stand

Cocobolo, future gift for christmas.  What a pain to add a finish to it.  I think I should approach cocobolo differently.

Better pictures of our deck and pergola

Shortly after finishing, the rains came.  Had a random day in december where it wasn't rainy for pictures.

 Both pergolas.  

 Main part of the deck - hidden fasteners

Deck railing.  Side facing the neighbors that adds privacy and a base for the future outdoor kitchen counter

Flooring install time lapse

Time lapse video of the hallway on sunday.

Time lapse of the bedroom on saturday.  Took a while to get used to

Decking - Epic 2

Sarah and I decided to replace our carpet and put in hardwoods, while we were at it, we decided to replace the decking too.  What the hay, can't be that hard could it?  Wrong!

The old deck, only 6 years old but looks pretty bad.  We hated that there were so many different kinds of fasteners and holes that were haphazardly (irregular) made for the fasteners

 Lifting the deck was much harder than we expected, 2 different screws whose heads were clogged with debris.  We had to clear the debris before we could back them out with a drill with whatever we could find that was pointy.  Three different kinds of nails, including super long screw shank nails which were pure evil.

Bigger pile than it looks and only about 1/2 of the debris created from the removal of the railing and deck boards and "benches".  Some of those boards are 16' long. 

The 20 lbs of screws and nails that were removed with the decking and railing, seriously a bunch of hacks who built our deck.  (posts held down with toe-nailed brads.  5000 18ga brads are equivalent to a single lag bolt right?)

Constantly rejiggering furniture, deck boards, etc in order to have a place to walk and let the finish dry while being able to work on the next section of the deck.  Lots of planning around the weather too, we lucked out this Oct, although it was HOT! 

Stinky was perfectly comfy though and did a lot of watching and meowing through the window, when not sleeping. 

Completed deck with the railing saved for next year.  Still have some fascia to put up, but that should be easy (knock on wood).  Doesn't look like much, but our deck is over 40' long.  

The hidden faster system was worth it but took 2-3 times as long to install (cutting biscuit slots, getting the fastener inserted along the entire length, the correct gap).  The boards are all clean single board runs except in the middle where we ran a board perpendicular (hard to see).   Straightening the 18' long boards for the main part of the deck were a bear.  Sarah and I are both glad the hard work is done.  Ipe is always what we wanted, already much better and cleaner looking while providing the durability that cedar can't even come close to.  I've already dropped stuff on the deck and there isn't even a scratch this stuff is so hard.  I think we would do it again to, I don't think we could pay someone for the level of attention we paid while building this deck.

What an epic and HOT project.  I don't think I've ever sweat so much on a project.  Maybe the next project will be to finally build some furniture.

Pergola finished - epic 1

Started the project late June.  Milling the rough redwood from the previous post.  Finished the pergola over the weekends in what must have been the absolute hottest days we've had in Oregon, ever.

Sarah working on joinery 

Ledger and posts for one half of the pergola 

Ledger, post and beam for the other half of the pergola 

One of the completed pergola and hints towards Epic 2

This was an incredible amount of work.  It took a tremendous amount of work to mill the redwood from rough, green slabs into the wood used for the beams, rafters and lattice.  Probably emptied the dust collector over 10 times (35 gallon).