Spindles on the Front Deck

The spindles are now up on most of the deck. There is only one of the side pieces to go.
The top rails and spindles are attached using pocket screws. To put in the pocket screws the angled pockets are drilled with a jig and the Robertson washer head screws are used in the pockets to pull it tight. Once everything is in place angled plugs will be used to fill the holes. There is still quite a bit of sanding/filling/painting left on these but it is nice to get them out of the house and up.

Update on the Fridge

It seems like this darn fridge should be done by now?

We'll it's not quite there but getting closer every day. I guess that we are just getting too distracted by the warm weather and want to work on some outside projects.

The trim is finally going up on the top. Here you can see a picture that shows the piece off gooseneck molding being glued up as well as the top trim beam that goes around the door when it is in place.


The return moldings were also formed and put in place.

Yikes, time to drill some more holes in the fridge. This time they are for attaching the two piano hinges that attach the actual fridge door to that of the unit.


Now time to get those doors fit and up in place. The doors attach in two places; to the side L shaped piece that was put in a long time ago and the edge of the actual existing fridge door

The edge of the doors were trimmed and a small rabbit was cut into them to fit the hinges. Great chance to use that old rabbit plane that has been just collecting dust.
So here is how the door gets mounted to the L shaped panel. The end that is just floating free is the one that is cut with the rabbit that will attach to the piano hinge. You can see those hidden barrel hinges attaching the L piece with the rest of the unit.


This is a picture of what the door looks like installed and open a little. You can see where the piano hinge interfaces the fridge and unit doors. You can also see the other door that has its hinge but does not have its panel on yet.


So here it is with the door panels fit and hung and the bottom panels just resting in place with tape. The next step will be to figure out what we want to use for hardware and to take it all apart and put the finish onto it.

Dust Collector

We'll after a couple months of cutting wood up in the garage/shop the place was accumulating quite a bit of saw dust. So, we decided to put in a dust collector system that hooks up to all of the equipment in the shop to remove the dust when it is running. This is not something that is totally out of the blue we have been thinking about putting one in the shop for a little while.

First step was to figure out where to put it......The best spot that we could figure was in the downstairs portion of the shop so that it would be easy to run all of the pipes and send them up through the floor. Plus it also makes it easy to get to the bags for removal and checking of the levels.

With that decision the ground was cleared and a form built to pour a concrete slab for the thing to sit on. The form was built so that the pad would be 1.5" below where a "finished" floor would go if we want to continue the floor that is in part of the downstairs.

This picture shows the Smith family tradition of trying bury anything you really don't want to take to the dump (that tennis court looks like it is in the same place where Russell's boat used to be?) There were some random broken cinder blocks, bricks and some other offcuts from building the small garden bed in the back yard.

Four bags of concrete later and it looks like this. I also put in some J bolts that hold down 2x4's to the top surface and the dust collector bottom plate attaches to those.


Here is the dust collector assembled and placed on top of the pad. In this picture none of the 4" ducting is run upstairs to the equipment.
All of the ducts and blast gates (the valves that turn on or off the flow at the tool) have been put in place. There currently is one branch that goes over to the lathe and another that goes over to the table saw and router table. The vacuum works great with only one minor hitch...you can only power the tool or the dust collector at once! I knew this was going to happen in advance so I was not surprised at all. I am going to bring out a new 50 Amp 220 Volt line and put in a subpanel in the garage to power the lights/power tool/dust collector. Should be done on that one shortly.