Project Cleanup (spoiler alert: includes tool porn)

For me, as major projects come to a close, I spend time in the shop doing those small jobs that occur to me when in the middle of something big. Gives me a chance to clean things up and recharge before diving into something new.

First off though, the bedroom furniture is ready for delivery, my son is moving from an apartment to a house in a month or so, so its being stored here getting a bit of sun to tan the cherry a bit more. I must say they are aging nicely.

The side panels are the same on all pieces,
cherry from my hometown, should have been firewood!

Lots of storage here

The dresser provides lots more storage options.

In addition to the Chest and Dresser I made a special surprise to go with them, more will be revealed in time once the surprise is gifted to its unsuspecting recipient...

Organization to feed the OCD soul...

Tool Chest Willy Nilly

When I made my bench-top tool chest I lined the drawers with leather and placed the tools inside loosely until  I decided how I wanted them to be organized. This became an annoyance after a while as things slid around and hit one another as the drawer was opened and closed. So I decided to fix this; I bought some of the 30mm layered foam from LV  and prepared to work the drawer layout. Before making a cut I decided I wanted to deal with my plane storage area as well, as it was becoming overcrowded with a few new additions. :-) This meant moving to a bigger drawer and thus it became a bench drawer re-org project.

The foam is quite easy to use, but I did not follow their directions where it showed scooping out what you don't need which was very tedious. Instead I drew around the item, cut all the way through with the knife and then shaved the cutout piece to the thickness I wanted to raise the item to the proper height. This let me cut sections of the piece to completely support the tool that had a staggered profile, like the marking gauge. This is the top drawer of my workbench so these are all right at hand and are always where they need to be - wish I had done this years ago.

Time for some layout

These guys are going no where!!

Much better organized plane rack with everything within reach.

No back to figuring out what to do about tool chest since this project transferred some stuff from the chest and some stuff from the wall.

I have turned it up a notch!

Mills anyone?

While I do not consider myself a turner like the pros in the videos; guys who can turn a bowl with one continuous shaving and one arm tied behind their back. I have become pretty accomplished at it mostly for decorative art, functional and furniture components. The house (and relatives' houses) are full of bowls of different shapes from the past 20 years. Most of my turning tools have new shiny handles and have made many handles for hammers and chisels alike.



I was getting a little fed up with my Delta 14" lathe which is 6 years old and it was time to upgrade.

The old setup - lots of work came out of this rig.

The 14" size limit was becoming an issue when I wanted to turn some stool seats as well as larger size bowls. I did not want to go overboard but wanted to buy a pro-level lathe but one that was not too large. I settled on the Oneway 1640 for a few reasons, it is acknowledged to be one of the best made out there, and they are made in Canada, which meant less hassles getting it here. Last weekend my buddy Jason was by and got a turning lesson and carted off the old Delta - this was to be payment for helping me mule the new one into the shop.

This morning we made the trek to Busy Bee, disassembled the beast (all 650 lbs. of it), threw it into the "man-van" and lugged it here. After some struggling we had it assembled in the shop and ready to plug it in. Man does it ever run smooth, looking forward to turning a project to christen it later. Here she be in all her glory...

The cleanest she will ever be...