We’ve now got 3 shelves and the top of the computer cabinet put together. I put together a nifty jig to make it easier to cut out the corners of the plywood shelves.

The first pic shows the jig attached to one of the shelves. The face of the jig is sacrificial. It works fairly well.  The rest of the pictures of the cabinet are on the last page of the workshop album.

I hate Christmas lights.  We decorated for christmas the weekend before Erin’s surgery.  I told her that I didn’t want to decorate on my own, so we did it when she could help.  Turned out that the majority of the christmas lights were burnt out.  We decided to go to Walmart to find some replacement bulbs.  I found a pretty big rip-off there.  I picked up some replacement bulbs 10 for 98 cents.  While browsing through, Erin found some light strands 100 bulbs for $2.  Erin was laughing hysterically at this point as I was just amazed that they would try to rip people off like that…not really amazed, just pissed that I almost fell for it.  Buying the replacements costs 5 times more per bulb, and you don’t get the strand. 

Erin and I have also spent a bit more time in the garage working on the computer cabinet.  I’ve done all of the routing for shelves and side panel inserts.  I also got the whole frame glued up and inserted the bottom plywood plate.  The side panels are all going to be sunk into the cabinet so that they are flush with the frame.  The shelves are also sunk in.  This meant a lot of routing…nice to have the router table. 

The pic is of the bottom of the cabinet….yes, the nice side of the ply is on the bottom and the bad side is up.  That’s actually ok because I’m going to be putting another piece of ply on the other side of the bottom rails.  The front rails have through tenons.   They were a pain, but they’re done now and should hopefully look good.  We’ll see how it turns out.

Here’s a pic of the saw in action!

It is fairly quiet and is going to make things a lot easier for me. I’ve been looking around the net and have found a couple of interesting woodworking sites that I think are worth linking. Wood Gears, Chisel Jig, Woodworking (forum)

I got the tablesaw today!  It’s huge, heavy, and awesome!  I picked it up at Sears this morning in a moving van…the ramp was key.  We got back and started working on assembly at about 11:30.  About 8:00, the saw was assembled.

Pics are at the back of the workshop gallery.  

I just found out what I am getting for Christmas! I’m getting a table saw!  This wasn’t really much of a surprise…I helped Erin pick it out.  This saw ought to be the first and last table saw I ever need to buy.  It can be wired for 110 or 220 and run on 15 amps.  We’re getting it delivered since it weighs about 430 lbs.  I can only imagine trying to unload that from the trailblazer, hernias for all.  It’s going to be delivered on the 27th, although Erin claims that I won’t be able to use it till after Christmas.  We’ll see about that, she’ll be doped up soon enough  .

All of my projects so far would benefit from having a table saw at hand, but it’s been nice to learn how to be proficient with my other tools so far.  I’m looking forward to being able to make some straight cuts with a little less effort.  The saw comes with a Biesemeyer fence which is really nice.  The top is cast iron and should absorb the motor vibrations very well.

I should be able to  finish the computer cabinet this December with Doug’s help.  You’ve got to love projects that last a full year…or hate…it’s a fine line.  It’s been hard to find time to work on it between work, the pilot license and Erin’s surgeries/bad luck.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to use a truly sharp chisel, you don’t know what you’re missing.  Erin wanted to help out, so I set her up with the chisel, sharpening jig and 2-sided stone.  I got home and found a mirror finish edge.  I put those to use and knocked out 5 mortises pretty quickly.  It was great, I don’t even need a mallet.

Update concerning the search for a better shave: I decided to try the fusion razor…yeah, the one with a battery.  Erin suggested it as a first try before going to something that could kill me.  I find that it’s a bit rough on a couple day beard, but it does a pretty good job on the upstroke.  I think the next step is getting a brush and shaving soap.

We’ve had the first productive non-work day today in a long time. We really haven’t done too much apart from work and sleep since Erin’s surgeries. Today we went the other way with it. I got pretty far working on the mortises on the shop computer cabinet I’m building. I went through each mortise with the plunge router to rough it out. The mortises are each 0.75 inches deep, and I cleared them out with a 1/4 inch straight router bit. I went through a few depth settings before going full depth. I don’t want to either break the bit or burn the wood. I had to start each mortise with a predrilled hole since the router bit doesn’t cut straight down. I went ahead and got out the drill so that I could make the holes. Turned out that both batteries were dead, so I decided to get something I’d been wanting for a while… a corded drill. I went to Sears to get a Craftsman Professional drill, but found that they didn’t have it and couldn’t get one till April 30th. I decided to get this Milwaukee drill. I’ve heard good things about Milwaukee equipment before and this drill lives up to it so far.

To clean up the mortises, I had planned on using a template to align the router bit with. I’ve got some router bushing inserts that I can use with template work. I decided to try using my carpenters square as the template. I’d have to do a corner at a time. I got it to work appropriately once. It took long enough to get the correct 2.5 mm from the line that I decided it would be too much of a pain to do for 20 mortises. So, I’m going to give it a shot at doing by hand. I got through 2 pretty quickly. The chisel is pretty good for this, I kind of wish I had some mortising chisels…but that’s ok, I’ll use my regular wood chisels. They’re definitely going to need a sharpening soon. The 1″ is pretty sharp, but I need to use the 3/4 for the skinny parts and it’s wearing a bit. I’ll continue cleaning up the mortises for a while, hopefully I can do a dry fit next weekend.

After all that, we changed the oil in both vehicles. It was a little overdue, but it’s a heck of a lot easier when Erin can help guide me up the ramps. Before this weekend, she hasn’t been able to bend over because it’d hurt her shoulder. Even though I didn’t really go anywhere today, it cleared up a bit of the cabin fever I’ve been developing.

Lets see, surgery on January 10th… surgery on February 8th… shall we try for March 15th?  I gotta say, I’m getting sick of this.  I can only imagine that Erin is going nuts too.  She’s been feeling tired and sore and has been running fevers again.  Her shoulder’s got a bit more sharp pain this time.  Also, is a shoulder supposed to beep when you get scanned in an airport?  I’ve never had shoulder surgery before, but my guess is that it’s not supposed to be magnetic or ferrus.  Considering she had the same surgery on her right shoulder at 15, and that shoulder doesn’t beep, something seems odd.

We just got back results from more blood tests and found that her white blood count and inflamatory counts are high.  The numbers are even higher than last time.  So what do we do?  She’s doing another MRI on Wednesday.  Wonder what that’ll show.

I’m claiming victory over the computer today! Instead of continuing to bang my head against the wall of installing Windows on a SATA drive, I went and bought a different IDE drive. It works. Imagine that. We’ve just kept the old computer up and running and I’d been waiting on a motherboard replacement. Since I got the motherboard this week, I got the computer to post again. Now, I’m installing Vista and I’m happy about it.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with an extra 320 GB SATA drive…perhaps I’ll keep it in this new computer if I can get the drivers working. If nothing else, I can see if anyone at work wants to purchase it. I’m sure I can find a use for the extra space. Perhaps Erin and I will get a camcorder and do some movies… cool.

Erin and I decided that we needed to get out of the house. What with the surgery and work, we both needed to get out of the house. We decided to go to for a drive on the mountain loop highway near Darrington. It’s a nice drive with some mountain and river views. Mountain in the distance, More mountain, nature, little river, random barn.

I also got a grinder. This is a nice grinder, 10 inches, cast iron base. It also doesn’t work. Well…not that it doesn’t work, but when I got it, I found that the right shaft was bent. Wonderful. I didn’t notice at first and attached the tool rests and spark arrestors. Once I got it all put together, I tried moving it… and nothing. I noticed at this point that the whole metal casing was bent around the right side. Looks like someone dropped it. I returned the grinder and we’re ordering a new one. Maybe this time they wont drop it.