What's Been Going On - 4

Project #4 is a direct result of all the work sanding the clock workbench. I use a Dewalt DustVac along with a Dust Deputy to try and keep some of the saw dust levels down. My sander is corded so that creates one pull and it has a port for the dust vac which creates a second directional pull. With the current setup it makes sanding a pain because I'm trying to hold the sander and manage a cord and the hose at the same time. Just irritating. 

I had saved a video from the Lincoln Street Woodworks on Youtube that showed how he built a boom arm that he could swing out over his work surface which made all of that easier to manage. I watched again, made some notes and went through the scrap plywood and found enough to build it. Took a couple of hours because of all the drilling but it makes life so much easier that was the best two hours I have invested the workshop I think.

The arm extended into the center of the shop. The vacuum hose is in place but I still need to find a reel for the power cord. You can see the dust setup by the window.

The boom pushed back against the wall.

An interesting feature. This is the sander with the hose attached but with the shopvac off.

This is what happens when I turn the shopvac on and I'm not holding the sander,

What's Been Going On - 3

Since we now have a clock room to display and fix clocks we need a good desk to work on. Enter major project #3. I scoured the internet and found a number of jewelers' workbenches/desk that would be ideal for clocks as long as we were willing to fork out some serious cash. Thinking it through I remembered that we had purchased about 12' of reclaimed tractor trailer flooring. This stuff is made out of maple and is 12" wide (which includes a way to lock into the panel next it) and is made from 2" thick maple strips glued up butcher block style. We also had some spare walnut to create a raised edge to contain anything that decides to go wandering.

I took the 8' piece and ran it through the planer...a lot. I milled off the black undercoat and a good portion of the top trying to get it as level as possible and clean it up at the same time. I cut off 2 43" pieces which fits the space available along with the matching walnut edges.

I glued the two pieces together and filled the big screw holes with 1/2" maple plugs and filled around those. I then proceeded to sand it and sand it and sand it some more. For some reason I had decided that I liked the "character" of the side that saw all the abuse.

I then proceeded to route a rounded edge front edge, both top and bottom.  I also routed the inside and outside edges of the walnut with the same rounded edge. Once all of that was done I screwed and glue the walnut edges (which had also been sanded) on. I counter sunk these holes and will use a 1/2" maple plug to hide the screws. Unfortunately I'm still waiting for those maple plugs, the legs and a new finish that I want to try. So this one has a little way to go before its done.

Desk top, all the initial sanding is done and the front has been rounded off. The walnut edges are in the back.

A quick sanity check to make sure I didn't mess anything up to badly.

The edges screwed and glued in place. Commencing more sanding on the bottom but not to the level of the top.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

What's Been Going On - 2

On top of the garden project another opportunity arose. Over the last 3-4 years we have bought a few antique clocks (yes, real antiques) from a gentleman up in Loveland. He is in his 80s now and his wife is making him clean out his "man-cave" (a stand alone steel building about 30'x60'. He is a serious collector of stuff and as a fairly famous auctioneer had plenty of opportunities to acquire seriously nice stuff) so she wouldn't have to.

He contacted us and told us he was going to make us a great deal on clocks (and he has a lot). He had been putting some aside just for us. Well, a normal deal is he want's $1000 for a clock but he will give it to us for $950. Now I have managed to score a few deals from him over the years just because I have a good eye and he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. I also know that I have over payed for a couple but they were worth it to me because they filled gaps in our collection.

So we traveled north with some serious skepticism of what the deal would be. Well it turned out to be an actual deal this time and we picked up 16 clocks including a nice grandmother clock (which is just an overall smaller version of a grandfather clock) for a seriously good price, This seriously impacted our capacity to display clocks.

The decision was made to convert a room that we had used for pottery and make it into the Clock Room. That entailed selling off the two pottery wheels (quickly done actually), cleaning the walls (clay dust) and generally prepping the room for painting. We basically did about a wall and a half at time so about three days to paint the room. Mostly because we decided to move furniture around rather than empty it. Since I was the only painter at this point it just took a little longer than it would have normally. 

With the room empty clocks were hung and evaluated for both physical and mechanical condition. One of the objectives is to have a designated room where clocks get fixed. I have taken a number of courses on the fixing of mechanical clocks but I don't really have a good place to start experimenting on taking them apart and putting them back together. We now have a room to fix clocks in and wall space for two more hanging clocks! I still need to figure out how to display the mantlepiece style clocks though, a project for the future.

I think this is the oldest clock in the group. Its labeled "Ansonia Brass & Copper Company" and dates back to a period from 1869 to 1877. This is a weight driven shelf clock and stands about 2' tall and it feels like it weighs about 30#s. 

Part of the label is damaged. But that first word is Patent and in the second line the first word is Ansonia. In December of 1877 it is re-organized as the Ansonia Clock Company.

I have no idea who made this clock at this point. I can't see any markers on the mechanism, other than a four digit code, but its a beauty. There may be something underneath though, I forgot to check.

What's Been Going On - 1

I have, obviously, been very absent from working on this blog. Firstly I have run straight in to the brick wall of apathy. I always have plenty of projects so I can switch from one thing to another as the mood strikes. Unfortunately the mood hasn't been striking for building or painting. Plus there is the annual garden prep which is where my efforts to building something have come into play.

Starting back in late April, early May, my wife and I made plans for garden projects. Planting a Colorado garden can't realistically start until Mother's Day and even that can be iffy. My wife likes to wait till Memorial Day (which is pretty early this year but we went with it). Since the garden was going to feature a lot of squash and some other climbers I wanted to replace the little A-Frame from last year with something much more substantial. I also wanted to remove the very ugly anti-hail "covers" that we have used for the last couple of years with something more effective and easier to put up. We spent way to much time taking the covers on and off last season and I wanted to avoid that this year. Those covers were never meant to permanent anyway.

I basically built these climbing frames around the existing raised beds. The new anti-hail frame (basically a very big pergola) started after I finished these. We found some anti-hail netting and it was on order and, of course, it was delayed. In the meantime pergola construction started and my wife planted the seedlings that she started in the greenhouse (squashes, peppers, zucchini and pumpkins for sure, I can't keep track).

The east side frame, this is built around a 6' raised bed.

The west side frame, this is built around an 8' raised bed.

Then this happened

The storm started around 10pm which was strange to begin with. This is the mix of sizes we found the next morning. Yes, there were tears.

This is a piece of golf ball sized piece of hail. This is after it had lain on the lawn for  about 8 hours. Punched holes in siding, cracked to dome skylights, dented all the gutters and our poor Jeep Gladiator was outside and the hood has about 50-60 dents in it from hail strikes. Fortunately it did not shatter the windshield and the removable composite roof and fenders as well as the bed were undamaged.

Between the beginning of construction and the arrival of the anti-hail netting we got pummeled by major hail storm on May 30th. This ruined an entire weekends worth of planting, not to mention major damage to the rooves on all four buildings. Gutters were not only dimpled on the bottom but on the sides from ricochets. The east side of the garage actually had holes punched into the siding. 

The netting arrived the next day and I pushed through and finished the pergola and got the netting stretched across it. Which was good because we had another, much smaller, hail storm that week. The netting worked like a charm.

East side of the pergola. On this side its either anchored directly to a raised bed or is supported by a cedar 4x4.

Cross members looking towards the south.

On the west side the pergola is anchored to the fence. Its all cedar 2x4s on this side as are the cross members.

On this side the netting is fastened with hooks on the top rail of the fence.

This is the smallest netting we could get which is 50'x30'. Which means we have a lot of extra but we can't really cut it because of the edging. On the east side its just held down with bricks.

I have a couple of ideas to be able to keep the netting above head level but still be able to pull it down to cover the ends in case of a storm,

It actually provide quite a bit of shade on the inside. I have since taken down the supports for the old anti-hail covers.