Shop move temporarily interrupted by playtime

I have a layout now for my basement shop so that I know where the major equipment will be and where I will need electric and dust pickup. I have been making one or two trips a week to the lake house to bring back box loads of smaller items to the new basement shop. It amazes me how much I have accumulated and now have to move from one shop to another.
I bought two new plastic storage shelves and have them now loaded with turning blanks. I incorporated the shelving units I had at the lake along with the two new ones and now have them pretty well full of wood, project materials and hand tools.
I still have to disassemble a work bench and the table saw before the machinery can be moved. I also need to take down an air cleaner and ceiling fixtures to bring back. After all of that I can build the dividing wall to separate the shop from the other half of the basement. The final step will be adding the electricity and dust collection to areas of the shop. That is probably going to take most of the month of January to accomplish.

So I was feeling a little tired of all work and no play in the shop. I had started working on a Christmas ornament project and decided to bring just enough tools up to the new shop to complete the project. I will end up making Christmas ornaments after Christmas. Being able to work on a project, even a late one, trumps packing and toting anytime. The project uses basswood and brass tubing to make older style Christmas lights. I used red, blue, green, orange, and yellow dyes to color the bulbs and spray gloss lacquer to finish them.

Cutting the tubing into 1/2 inch segments was a little more challenging than I thought but the major challenge was trying to reproduce a consistent shape for the bulb body. Even with a template the variations in the shapes was considerable. I will post a picture of the range of colors later. It was fun to take a break.

Why in the world was I saving all this?

The project of relocating my shop has made me realize I am a wood hoarder! Just like those poor folks on TLC "Hoarders" I have been collecting "important and potentially useful" pieces of wood.

While I was deciding what to move and what to dispose of, I realized that I had so many little left overs that I would be better off disposing of all these scraps. Now it seems quite foolish to have saved them.

So, with this realization, I filled up several totes with small scraps and created our first fire of the winter.

This move is proving beneficial on many levels: being able to access my shop more often, cleaning and reorganizing both the old shop area into a useful garage and the basement into a nicer area, and now, enjoying a fire from the hoarded wood.

Quilted maple bowl

A teacher/friend of mine from West Virginia, Joe Smith, gave me a couple pieces of wood when I took a class from him this fall: two pieces of quilted maple. I have been to Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Ripley, WV a number of times to take classes with Joe. He is an excellent turner and teacher.

The first blank turned into a shallow bowl with rim with some of the most vibrant quilting I have ever seen.

It is 12 inches round by 2 3/4 inches high. the rim is 1 inch wide. In the picture the grain in running horizontally while the quilting runs vertically. The photo does not do the bowl justice since the quilting is acutally more evident than the grain.

I put on four coats of urethane oil and then buffed and waxed with the Beall Polishing system.

A lot has happened since last post

Butternut and walnut hollowed vessel

It's obvious that I haven't been blogging for well over a year but I have been in the wood shop. Two years ago I wrote about my new Jet lathe. Woodturning has become my primary activity to the exclusion of almost all my other projects. As my wife says, "you like woodworking, but woodturning is your passion." And I think she is right. So now I want to resume blogging as one of several changes I am making to improve the quality and quantity of my time in wood working.

The big move

I decided over two years ago that it would be a good idea to locate all my wood shop at our lake house, twenty miles away from my residence. It was appealing because we have a four car garage there and I could have most of a very large, flat area for my work. When I bought new tools, table saw and lathes, I had them delivered to the lake house garage.

Then, I started realizing the problems I had created. First and foremost, I was a 45 minute drive away from my wood shop which meant that I had to have a chunk of several hours to make the round trip worthwhile. Secondly, I soon realized that a little air conditioner did not cool the garage in the summer and the two baseboard heaters did not heat the space in the winter. I didn't go at all on certain days because it would be too uncomfortable. Finally, I noticed that some of my equipment was rusting or getting mold, both due to the excess humidity from the lake.

So, the first big change I am making is to bring everything back to my home. A short sentence is describing a long, heavy, dusty undertaking. I am now realizing that I have a very large stash of wood blanks for turning and a much larger array of tools, jigs, accessories, and what-nots. So I am making two or three trips a week loading my Explorer with smaller items and all my hand tools.

Preparation work

The basement workshop needs some work in order to be useful. We are building a wall to separate the  workshop from the rest of the unfinished basement and adding electrical outlets where needed.

When that is finished, I will hire some movers for help since everything (table saw, lathe, band saw, drill press, jointer, planer, work benches and cabinets, etc) will need to go down the basement.

Mid January is goal

I would like to have everything working in my new workshop around mid January.  In the meantime I need to prepare some blanks for a January class at John Campbell and to organize a gazillion items in their new home.

Wooster Woodturning Show 2010

Domino Cutting Board

I'm back in the work shop over the last few weeks. I have been working on turning projects over the last months after attending another turning class in early March at John Campbell.

Some other projects are progressing slowly but I completed several cutting boards using a pattern from the Winter, 1999, Wood magazine. The light wood is maple while the divider and dots are walnut. I intended to have one sacrificial one on which I would test each step and then have three finished boards. The sacrificial cutting board ended up being good enough to give as a gift.

Each cutting board consists of eight 3/4" X 1 1/2" maple slats with 1" walnut dowels used for the dots. Each board is 6" X 11 1/2". It is on the small side and is not edge-grained so it probably works better as a serving platter. I did add rubber feet to help it stay stationary in use.

The article also has directions for producing cutting boards shaped like a quilt block or a lady bug. I will probably try the quilt block pattern some time later.

My next project that is already in progress: post-office-box-door banks. I purchased a number of old post office box doors very similar to the photo to the left. I have written previously about the process of cleaning the old brass with Coke and ammonia. I had made a bank a number of years ago from oak and used a pattern which included a base with feet. I liked this pattern better than the one in this photo since it looks more like an old safe. I have the oak and cherry wood cut and will be assembling the base and mortising the slot in the top. That should consume my next day in the work shop.

Merry Christmas to me

It was a bargain that I couldn't pass up. I first decided not to buy it. Then I went to Cedar Lakes and spent three days using one just like it and fell in love with the power and sturdiness of this lathe. The final straw was my wife's suggestion that this could be my Christmas present from her. So, I recontacted the seller and negotiated a mutually agreeable price. We disassembled it, loaded it in my Explorer, drove it to my workshop, and reassembled it. Here I am standing next to 440 pounds of cast iron that Mary Lou and I moved from my car into my shop.

This is my new baby: a Jet #708359 JWL-1642EVS 16-Inch Swing 42-Inch between Centers 1-1/2 Horsepower Electronic Variable Speed Woodworking Lathe. I bought it from a small business that purchased it to make trophy bats and then discovered they could buy preturned blanks and reduce their costs. It was only used slightly and appears almost brand new. There are a couple of accessories that should have come with the lathe but did not. I will order those this coming week. The overall cost savings on the lathe is about 35%.

Along with the lathe I bought the Vega duplicator that the seller had also purchased to make the trophy bats. It is used to follow a template or another turning to duplicate turnings. Here again I initially was not interested in the duplicator. Again, my wife intervened to suggest that I would probably regret not getting it. So, that came along as well. The duplicator is already set up to work with the Jet lathe that I bought. Although I don't intend to make trophy bats with it, making spindles, chair legs and Windsor chair spindles did come to mind. This cost me about 50% of the retail price listed on Amazon.

Finally, the listing for the lathe sale indicated that a tool set was included. It is a Steelex 6-Piece Deluxe HSS Lathe Chisel Set. I have never heard of the brand but I did see some listing on Amazon for the set and several other Steelex products. This particular item did not have any reviews but another Steelex chisel set was really downgraded as poor in quality. I don't need any of these tools but will at least give them a tryout. This set lists for just over $100 which would be about the cost for one good chisel so I know not to expect too much.

I really don't want to end on any kind of negative comment. The lathe was a beautiful gift from my wife and a fantastic tool to help me improve my wooturning skills. This was a fantastic deal all told! Merry Christmas just a few weeks early.