I’ve been working on some projects that allow me to work at home (in Bowling Green) on the Gardner House Project. 

The main goal of the semester has been to finish installing the door.  The door is in the house (picture to come) and is in use and lockable.  That was one of those should-have-been-a-small-job-but-was-really-a-massive-job types of jobs. 

I’ve been working the past few weeks at developing the infrastructure in Bowling Green at my apartment to allow me to turn these rough black walnut boards donated by Charile Williams into moulding trim that will seal the open spaces between the wooden jamb and the repaired brick wall.  We’ll use spare shake shingles to shim the spaces between the bricks and jamb to create some more pressure and tension.  Then, we’ll close the opening with wood trim, flush against the masonry (fingers crossed).    

A few weeks ago I built the bench.  This is a view of the crooked board, with my hand held planer that I used to make the board straighter on top

This weekend I used my two new jigs (built last weekend) to try working up a piece of the walnut, to see if I can do it.  First, I used my power hand planer to take down the largest and most out-of-square parts of the boards.  I took about an inch off one end of the right side. 

Then, I set up this jointing jig that I learned about on the Youtube Channel “Rockin-H-Woodshop,” and used my new table saw’s blade to skim about a 1/6^th of an inch off the right side of the board.  I checked to see if it was straight and it was!  About 1/32” off one way or another.  I used the newly “square” side against my fence to rip the rough side.  Then, I flipped it back around and ripped off my “mostly square” side with the ripped side against the fence.  Now, I have a straight 1X6!  Awesome!

The jig is bolted onto the fence with recessed 3 inch hex bolts.  I took the moving blade up into the wood fence, half buried so that some of the blade was showing.  Then, I glued a 1/16 inch strip of wood along the behind-the-blade end of the wood fence-face.  The wood strip allows the wood to run evenly (and safely) along the blade/wood fence even though 1/16 of an inch has been removed.

I also put my new cross-cut sled to the test.  If this sled worked, then I could feel good about using my table saw as the principle saw for the upcoming deck-building project.  I could also then justify spending a half-day building a similar miter sled for the table saw, and eliminate the need (for the time being) to buy a miter saw.  

The sled works great and makes totally square cuts.  Because I’m using a jobsite portable table saw and not a permanent cast iron table saw (about $1500 in cost difference) it’s a lot harder for me to set up stop blocks for repeated cuts (my table is small) and this sled is really only safe/efficient for making cuts on shorter, non-eight-foot pieces of wood.  So, I’m working up my pieces into rough lengths with my handheld skill saw and finishing them with the table saw.  Seems like a good compromise.  I learned how to build the miter sled and cross cut sled from Wood Working for Mere Mortals (Steve Ramsey’sYoutube Channel). 

This week I also bought a router and practiced making cuts.  I’m shopping for the appropriate bit to match the Gardner House’s patterns, and hopefully, we’ll have square boards with decorative patterns by the end of the week.  Also, I fixed the generator again this week, as well as my undependable angle grinder.  With some luck, I'll have finished cleaning up my rough brick edges on the door by the end of the week.  Installation may have to wait until after exams…we’ll see.

Thanks for reading!

NS