Sunday..

THIS is pretty impressive. 360 view of a Airbus cockpit.

Sat.

Well we got about 2" of snow today. It won't be messing us up too much, but is really kind of a downer when you are waiting for spring to .. well.. spring.
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HERE is an amazing collection of cars. About the time you think they are done, they go into another room. I could name most of the cars, but not all of them. I guess that not everyone in Michigan is broke.
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Got the last of the 3 tables done today. *whew* Here is a picture if you don't believe me. The third one is actually not in this picture, but it is mostly behind the couches in the corner of the room. It is pretty much like the one on the right, but a little bigger. It is nice to have taller tables so you can just reach over and set stuff on them instead of having to set stuff down behind the arm of the couch. Also the lamps are high enough now that they are useful.

FRIDAY!!

Friday: Me. A screen porch. A Diet Mt. Dew. A Mac Book Pro. AAAAAH.
Mary will be home in about 15 min and we are going to go to Okaboji Grill for dinner to celebrate the kids both getting on the honor roll. I will have an All American Burger. 14 oz. of REALLY good beef on a bun. OOOOH. I just saw their menu on line and I see that they added bacon to the All American. Because it was not excessive enough. :-) Mary will get a steak and Alex will get THE best chicken strips around. Tim will have a burger like mine. We will all be very happy.
Last I heard the weather is supposed to turn on us and we may have snow so I came home and finished up sanding and trimming the top of #3 table and put some stain on it and then I thought I better take a few moments to enjoy this moment.
That is all. Enjoy the weekend.
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THIS JUST IN: Sham.. WOW.

Thursday..

HERE is an impressive computer with an SSD array that well.. watch the video.
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I got the second of three tables done today and then I sanded and glued up the legs for the third. The top is done for that already, so it should go fairly quickly, don't you know. I kind of wanted to have a lower shelf on the end table to match the coffee table, but Mary did not want one so I left it off. Besides it was way less work and I am about ready to be done with this and move on to other things. (wall unit)




Must sleep now. Good night.

Friday

Well for those of you who don't have to work tomorrow.. congrat's, you made it. Me, I gotta work in the morning.
Today I was driving home and I saw one of these. $100,000 plus Audi. Pretty slick looking in person. Somebody is doing okay.

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I got home from work today and glued up a top for another table. #2 of 3. Then I got done and took time to think about it and realized I would have rather run the grain the other way. That is okay, since #3 will be square and I can add on to #2 to make it work for #3, and then start #2 again tomorrow. Follow? Anyhow, nothing lost.

work

I had to run to the store today. As I was going there I watched a few people. There was a construction site and about five guys were standing outside the workzone with a big sign saying, "RON AND TIM NEED TO PAY THEIR CARPENTERS MORE". Then as I was coming home I drove by the Liberty Tax guy on the corner. Today's Liberty Tax guy was an older Mexican guy standing there looking silly in his costume. He was smiling and waving at cars and looked like he was happy to have a damn job. Talking to him was a guy with a sign saying how he was out of work and wanted me to give him money.
I would have loved to stopped and given the Liberty Tax guy $5 and told him that if / when we get through these hard times, it will be people like him who make it happen. And I am not sure of the details about Ron and Tim's construction company, but I don't think too many people driving by had any sympathy for them. If Ron and Tim don't pay enough, then why don't they take their hammers and go make twice as much somewhere else? Oh, wait. That is right.
Anyhow, I have the day off and have been ripping boards down to make an end table to match the coffee table I just got done.
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I came across this video today. It has been around for a while but I forgot how funny the ending of it is. Here ya' go.

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HERE is a rather interesting and amusing interview with Geddy.

Wed.

There are a few scenes in movie history that capture human emotion and define drama. They set high standards for all others to try to reach.. This is not one of them.

table is finally done

I just got home from work and it is 75 degrees! I am on the screen porch right now with the dog at my feet and the MBP on my lap. It's all good here.
We brought the table inside last night. I took it up to the garage to put 3 coats of poly on it since it was really nice out. That was a treat.
Don't know if the pictures show it, but there are pinned mortise and tenons in the legs. That was a first and pretty fun to do. The drawers are box joints. I used the jig I made a while back and they came out really great. All in all it was a pretty good project, but it took a long time because of all of the sanding and edge joining of all of the oak flooring to make the panels and to glue up the 2x2 legs. I need to go down and start sanding some more stuff to make the 2 matching end tables, but it is waaaay too nice out here.



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When I was at work I got some really bad news that makes you stop and re-think things. A lady that used to work with us retired years ago. Nice, funny lady. I met her husband at a few cook outs that we used to have back in the day and he seemed nice also. They were in Mexico on a tour bus today and it got hit by a truck. It killed him and she is in a Mexican hospital as we speak. I felt horrible about it. It also made me think how things can just suddenly change with seemingly no reason.
So enjoy today. Sit on the porch when you should be sanding boards, or whatever it is that makes you happy. Do what you need to do, but make sure you also do what you like to do.
Like taking goofy pictures of yourself with your computer.

Saturday

Well i spent the day fixing my stupidity. I am working on the coffee table from hell this weekend. I worked out how to mount the top and allow for expansion. I was not sure about how I was going to make the bottom shelf, but thought it would be plywood or else slats. In the end I decided to make a solid shelf of edge glued flooring. I got it all glued up yesterday. The mortise and tenons fit nicely. I drilled and pinned them and that went well. I was sanding off the bottom shelf when it hit me.... *DUH* I did not allow for expansion of the bottom shelf. Today I worked on the box joint drawers and got them pretty well done and then I took a chisel and broke the joint between the bottom stringers and the bottom shelf. That made me sick. I then put a trim piece over the top of the ugly-ass mess to hold the shelf in place and let it move when it wants to. All in all not a fun day.
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I like to look through Britain's Got Talent videos once in a while because you never know how they are going to turn out. Here is a good example:

Thursday..

HERE are some really great photos of the sad slow decay of a city called Detriot.
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And another sign of tought times: Cookie Monster has to moonlight as a street musician. I must say he is pretty darn good and fun to listen to. I can't really hear the pink.. um.. monkey-tubby person on the bass, but I am sure they are good too.


nice job, Dell.

Well it took all of five months for Dell to try to copy the unibody design of the Macbook. They managed to take the idea and make a fugly-ass version of it.
VIDEO HERE
I like the end of the clip because
1. It shows off the MB-sh back lighting of the keyboard.
2. it shows that (even thought many people including me don't like the glossy screen of the MB) it has a glossy screen.
3. They show off the glossy screen by reflicting a bunch of glare off of it.
4. The last shot of the girl holding it. What is that?

coffee table... so far.

Got home from work today, changed into old clothes and headed for the shop. I am working on a coffee table and matching end tables for the "new" room. I have to get that done before i can move on to the wall unit thing. It is taking a lot of time because I am using recycled oak flooring that I got off of Craig's list. The good part is that I am recycling *weee* some wood and I think it will really be beautiful when it is done. The bad part is that it takes a lot more time to sand and glue up each panel, and you have to think up ways around problems caused by the flutes cut out of the bottom of each board. I got the bottom shelf glue-up done and dry fit it today. That worked out really well. Here it is, now leave me alone. I have work to do. (click on image to expandify it)
EDIT: just to be clear, this is a dry fit, not finished, and, yes, the ends of the top will be trimmed.

Jay Leno is too cool.

Okay, this machine is too cool, and he has one. I have seen 3D printers before, but watch near the end when they scan a Crescent wrench and it duplicates it FULLY ASSEMBLED. Yea, if I were Jay, I would own one too. It is worth clicking on to get a better video, the quality is very good.

Saturday

Worked on the coffee table all day and got all of the pieces made. Tomorrow I will cut the mortise and tennons and it should be ready to glue up. Weeee.
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This is a bit of fun..

Thursday

Below you can see that I made a font using my handwriting. It was really slick and took about five minutes using this free website.

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You know... as I spend time in the workshop cutting wood and trying to figure out how things can be done better I often think of 2 people that got me interested in such things. My dad and Jim Gumbol. I am not sure my dad knows how much he influenced me. I did not until the last few years. Every time I hook a wire onto a nut I can hear him telling me to thread it so that the screw pulls the wire in instead of pushing it out. There are so many things like that. And the things that he did not tell me, I figured out myself because he instilled that curiosity that has made me always wonder why things work. It might also be the reason that I have to count the lugnuts on every car and truck I see. Thanks for that, Dad. The other person was Jim Gumbel, our shop teacher at Keota High School. I had "JG" as a teacher for woodworking and metals. When I was a senior, he had 2 classes going on at the same time that I had independent shop where we could make whatever we wanted using any of the tools. He told me that if I would teach his drafting class for him, he would give me an "A". So I did. I did not mention that I had skipped over drafting class and went right into woods. He just assumed I had taken it and I just assumed I could do it. I did and it was kind of fun. A lot of times when I am working on wood, usually around the table saw, I think that it would be kind of nice to tell him that I still have a lot of interest in the things that he taught me. Then today Richard Ellis came through where I work and mentioned that he had passed away. He was one of the 3 teachers at KHS that I really respected. JG, Kuhlman, and naturally Hultman. I liked some of the other teachers, but did not respect them that much. There were some that I did not like or respect. Donny "one eye" Phillips did not deserve respect and he got none from anybody. I did not like Kuhlman, but I respected him because he was able to teach me Algebra and Geometry when I thought I was too stupid to learn it. That was based on my previous experience trying to learn it with "Shifty" Shaffer, who was probably one of the worst teachers ever. But JG and Hultman I really liked and respected. If you can get a kid to do both of those things, you can get them to do anything.
So RIP, JG. I wish that I had gotten to tell ya'....

face doner

THIS is just kind of weird. Don't go here if you don't like spiders. Poke him with your mouse our grab a leg and drag him around. Well done. Pointless.. but well done.

fence done

I just got the router table fence done. I used the laminate flooring that I had left over from the project here at home and made the face of the fence with it. That stuff is slick and tough so I thought it would be ideal. I made a opening in the top that sucks air through channel in the fence away from the bit. I was not sure if that would work or not, but it turned out really well. I don't really know why I put Lexan on the top part, but it was kind of cool to watch the chips go flying into the channel. I ran a bunch of oak through it and there was absolutely no dust escaping. I was kind of nervous about cutting the hole, but it worked out great. I have had ideas before that I thought were great and wondered why nobody ever did it that way before... only to find out there was a reason that nobody did it that way. I have to build doors for the front of the cabinet, but that will have to wait. I have too many other irons in the fire right now.

Sunday

Working on a coffee table today. Had to sand down a bunch of planks and then rip them at 45 degrees to make the end posts. That was a lot of work and noise.
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Here is everything you could want to know about Barbie.
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You thought it was expensive to fill up your car? STORY