Band saw tuneup project

I went down to Woodcraft and bought a 2 inch by 2 inch by 12 inch long piece of rosewood for $10 to make a pencil box. Heavy piece of wood, it's sitting on my desk. I changed blades on the band saw to a 1/4 inch blade, but didn't reset the blade guide blocks. The guide blocks wore out the teeth on the saw in about two minutes. Live and learn.... Bought some more band saw blades from Sears and replaced the 1/4 inch blade and carefully reset the blade guides. Cuts well now, but it makes a squealing noise when it cuts.... very irritating.... Decided to make a practice pencil box on a two by four piece of pine. The fence that came with the band saw is not very good, and the saw blade has a lot of lead too. The top and bottom cuts on the two by four wandered all over... Oh, the humanity!.... I cut out the body okay and glued bottom and ends back to make a pretty decent body for the pencil box. I made a beveled cut to cut the sliding lid out of the top.... what a mess.... I couldn't get the semicircle on the end to cut sharp enough... very ugly. Also, the wandering beveled blade doesn't facilitate a nice straight cut for the sliding lid. After gluing the top to the body, the lid wouldn't slide in. After sanding and filing to get the lid to slide, it was so loose that it almost falls out, bevel cut or not.... It is obvious to me that pencil boxes of this type must be made with a router.... I'll post a photo this evening.

Band saw tuneup project

Here's the pencil box I'm going to make as a starter project to learn how to use the bandsaw. I plan to build it out of a piece of 2 inch by 2 inch by 8 inch long poplar wood.

The master plan for my back yard.

Here's a photo of my back yard along the north side which faces the street. We live on a corner lot, so the other side of the fence is a street, with a small park and tennis court on the other side.

Compost bin

Here's a photo of the completed compost bin:

Another:

Compost bin plans

Here's a sketch of the compost bin I'm planning for the garden.
It's two bins side by side, together 2 feet high, 2 feet deep and 3 feet wide each.
I will be made out of cedar 2 by 4's and 1 by 4s.



The lids are not attached and sit on top, centered by cleats. In the figure below, I've tilted a lid back to show the cleats. Shown also, the front boards are held vertically in channels made from cleats.



The basic structure is made from three squares formed from 2 by 4's, joined by lap joints, as shown below. I am planning to cut the joints on my table saw using a dado blade.

Workshop area in my house

Here's a floor plan of my house. The garage is my workshop. I'l ltake some photos tomorow.

Here's a Sketchup drawing of my house. I'm really getting to like Sketchup, it's easier to use than Solidworks and still looks good. In this drawing I traced out the wall of my house from the scan of the floor plan. I haven't added all the doors and windows yet.

You can see my workshop area, the garage, in the lower part of the drawing. The work area is about 400 square feet.

Nightstand drawer

This is the design of the drawer for the nightstand.
Click to enlarge. The drawer has lap joints front and back. The bottom is 1/4 plywood or hardboard. The drawer box has a false front mounted on the front of the box. It gives 1 inch clearance around the box. An xray view of the box is shown in the lower figure.

I'm trying to decide whether to build it from some cheap wood like yellow pine, or to go the full monty and buy some oak or cherry. Expensive wood would be a waste on such a basic unadorned design.

Learning to use Google Sketchup: nightstand project

I've been learning to use Google Sketchup, it's easy in some respects buy hard to learn in other ways.

Below is a nightstand I designed using Sketchup. I haven't designed the drawers yet, and the drawer handles are just dummies to substitute for something purchased.

The unit is panel type construction. The panels will be made from 1/4" plywood.

Click on the image for a larger view.

The view below shows the case with the panels removed.

Building my shop

Last week we were supposed to participate in the 5K fun run at the Houston Marathon. We got there too late and weren't able to participate. Rats!

I bought a miter saw off Craigslist for $25. This turned out to be a real piece of crap, and I found that the blade guard was all screwed up and I ended up removing it.

I found a old retiring carpenty off Craigslist and bought his contractor table saw for $375. He threw in for free 10 inch Delta miter saw and a half pickup truck full of pine and cedar lumber. Also gave me a tapering jig and roller stand.

My project now is to build a system of rails on my garage wall for hanging storage.

Racquetball!

Went to Lone Star Community College gym today to exercise, since its on my way home from work. I went into the racquetball courts to practice and see how my arm felt. I was worried about maybe having a minor tendon injury in my right arm, which caused a little pain when I pulled back the racquet to hit a kill shot.

There were some students playing a game of cutthroat in one of the courts and I asked if one of them would like to play a friendly game. They were relative beginners so I kind of thrashed them, 15 to 5 and 15 to 2. Anyway my arm didn't cause me any problems.

I did weight training, doing one set on each of the machines.

Morning weight was 224 lb.

Starting a new week

I have been eating out a little more since Esther's been back. The weight was 227 pounds this morning, up about 4 pounds or so over the last month. Time for discipline.

I haven't been skipping exercise, going a t least 4 times a week, but I haven't been running very much because of the rain and cold. The elliptical trainer is kind of boring.

I got a few books from the library on woodworking and went to the Woodcraft store last Saturday. They have a lot of neat stuff. They also have woodworking classes too. I sent the trunk plans to Mike last Friday. He should received them soon.

I have a bunch of wooden boxes the were sent to me from Russia, when they sent me prototypes from Ekaterinberg. I'm going to bring that wood home and use it to practice making joints on the table saw. I'll try making a small frame and panel trunk first....

Checking out woodworking stuff

I found out that there is a Woodcraft store about a mile from my house. From what I can tell, Woodcraft and Rockler are the two big woodworking retail chains. Both have stores in Houston. The Woodcraft store has classes, apparently like shop classes, you go in all day on a Saturday and they teach you how to build something.

I'm keeping up my exercise, but getting a little bored with doing hamster wheel stuff at the gym. After it warms up, I'll start running again. The Houston 5K is coming up in a couple of weeks. I participated two years ago and it was a real gas.

I spent last night surfing the Internet looking for trunk hardware. Found several places: Lee Valley, Woodpeckers, and Woodworker's Supply.