The Taylor Garage

… better get used to these bars, kids.

Assembling the rails for the crib has proved quite tedious. Without a dedicated assembly table, I’ve had to make due with my table saw table for marking and setup – which works fine until you have to slide longer pieces across the table, throwing off any hope of perfect alignment. Can close enough be close enough? Right now, the magic 8-ball points to yes:

I expected this glue-up to be difficult, so I enlisted the help of my wife.  With 13 rails and 52 dowels I certainly needed it.  Despite Kari’s Rule #9, my wife was a willing assistant. I can’t imagine getting this assembly laid out, glue applied, and clamped without the extra set of hands.  After some mallet pounding, a few curse words, and the obligatory gnashing of teeth we were able to get the rails glued and clamped:

The parallel clamps were a huge help, allowing me to crank down on the the pieces and fight my way through some not-perfectly-drilled dowel holes.  I have 26 more holes to drill in another board, then we get to do it all over again for the second set of rails!

Besides being closer to finishing this crib (and its finally starting to look like an actual crib), a huge benefit from tonight’s work was my wife coming to the realization that I need both more garage space and more clamps.  With Christmas just around the corner…

Thanks in part to some of exhortation from Tom, this week I paid a quick visit to my local hardwood dealer, Vienna Hardwoods, to pick up a few new species for the garage.

Up to this point, I’ve only worked with red oak hardwood, red oak plywood, and birch plywood.  Time to add some natural color and interesting grain to my repertoire.

First – the big board of the trip, a nice piece of birdseye maple:

Some 8/4 and 4/4 walnut pieces:

A nice wide piece of purpleheart:

And finally a very orange board of paduak:

All of these pieces will contribute in some way, shape, or form to various Christmas gifts.  Unfortunately, these gifts will be heading to some of the readers of this blog, so I can’t go into further detail at this time.  But fret not – I’ll make sure to take pictures for future posts.  I expect a flurry of posts to appear during that last week of December.

The waiting is the hardest part.

As I’ve been working in the garage over the past few weeks and a couple of times I’ve thought to myself “Self - if you went and bought Tool X, this task would be a lot easier.” But despite the ease it would bring, I just can’t follow through with the purchase.  Not only do we have Christmas coming up shortly, but my birthday follows soon after it. What that ends up meaning for the Taylor Garage (and the Taylor ‘everything else’ actually) is that I refrain from buying myself anything, lest it be gifted to me for the ensuing festivities.

Am I the only one who goes on a self-purchasing fast the last two months of the year? It has been a little harder to abstain this year, since I am planning on building a few gifts to give.  So I’m left torn between wanting more time to build and wanting time to fly, so my shop can expand.  Either way, the stresses of the season will eventually lead to the joys of a simple shop:

For some time now I’ve been doing research and stashing away money for that rainy day when bandsaws fall from the sky. Yesterday, it got cloudy. I got my Powermatic 14″ bandsaw from the lumber guys over at WoodWorkersSource:

Due to its late arrival and the recent early sunsets, I couldn’t put it completely together last night. This afternoon I was able to complete the job:

Here are a few of my thoughts on the process:

1) Getting the motor set to the right height to keep the belt properly tensioned was a major PITA. I don’t know what would be an easier system, but trying to keep the motor balanced, while tensioning the belt, in order to tighten 4 bolts/nuts isn’t easy.  I actually had to lay the band saw on its side to get the correct leverage to properly set the motor height.
2) Despite the trouble getting the motor set, the rest of the assembly was pretty easy.  I spent a good amount of time getting the table balanced and level, but that was somewhat expected.
3) I actually managed to shear one of the bolts in half while tightening it! Thankfully, it was a bolt that holds the rear rail for the fence, so it’s not critically urgent to get another bolt.

Just to use it tonight, I made a couple of ”curved” cuts in a scrap piece of wood:

The deal from WoodWorkersSource.com also included a 6″ riser block for free, so I still have the project of installing it.  Something tells me that won’t happen until I actually need the resaw capability…