Corona Virus Projects

[ray1970]

Yeah, July and August were brutal for my grass. I am watering every other day for 45 minutes per station. That means my sprinklers run for over five and a half hours every other day. My last water bill was $300. It still isn?t very green. Think I?d rather have a dead yard and save the money but my wife disagrees.

[Frac]

Yeah, July and August were brutal for my grass. I am watering every other day for 45 minutes per station. That means my sprinklers run for over five and a half hours every other day. My last water bill was $300. It still isn?t very green. Think I?d rather have a dead yard and save the money but my wife disagrees.

I water the front yard 3 hours per week and my bill is $120-ish. I can't imagine what I would pay to water 5 hours a day, every other day. The wife hates all of the dirt that gets tracked in, but even when I run a manual sprinkler back there the grass doesn't survive past May. I do plan to expand the irrigation back there next year along with the patio project.

[CS1983]

I'd look into xeriscape options. Watering grass in CO is like making sculptures out of rice during a food shortage.

[Erni]

I?d do fake grass in that area and combine it with some xeriscaping so doggo has a place to go.
I?d do my south facing front lawn but the HOA are pricks. That side always dies off in late winter and it?s a pain to get it back.


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[Frac]

I?d do fake grass in that area and combine it with some xeriscaping so doggo has a place to go.
I?d do my south facing front lawn but the HOA are pricks. That side always dies off in late winter and it?s a pain to get it back.


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Yes, that is exactly what I was just telling the wife. I?m ready to put down artificial turf over the dirt for now. The back half of the yard grows great. It is a combination of the runoff from my neighbor over watering and being far enough away from the house that the hardiboard doesn?t bake it.

[JohnnyEgo]

t's been a while since I've updated this thread, but that's because it's been a while since I did anything on the cabinet. I've had the busiest work year I've had in 15 years, and what limited shop time I had got redirected into my wife's sewing shelf that I'd also put off forever. So nothing happening until this weekend. When last we left off, here is what I had:



The next few weekends are going to be all about finishing the drawers. Broke them all down so I could reshape the drawers. They have to be fairly deep to hold the two types of Pokemon boxes my son has, but little fingers still need to be able to scoop them out.


I normally use double-sided carpet tape to hold pieces together for pattern routing, but I was worried that it would be too strongly adhered to these thin pieces, and I didn't want to risk that. So instead, I stuck two pieces of blue painter's tape to each piece, and then put a few drops of Cyano-Acrylate glue (CA glue, aka Super Glue) on the tape. Mated them up, pressed them together, and got a good hold while still being easy to release when the time comes.


Trace the drawer shape onto the blanks with the routing template.


Since I am scared of my patterning bit, and don't want to create a small mountain of shavings at the router table, I pre-cut most of the waste. Started with a forstner bit in the drill press to clear out the two curves:



Then over to the bandsaw to rough out the larger waste:


Then I attach the pattern to each pair of drawer sides, and route it out. I use a very large pattern bit running at a good bit of speed. It will hog through just about anything, and when things are going well, it's smooth and can cut thick stock without hesitation. But the moment it encounters something it doesn't like, all hell breaks loose. It will grab a piece and throw it with remarkable force, so fast you won't realize what happened. If your thumb is in the wrong place, you have now lubricated the bit and your table pretty thoroughly. Likewise, I have seen it catch and split huge chunks out of both stock and template before. It has my respect. Mostly, it hates hard corners, so I usually ease those transitions on the bandsaw or sander. Then one light pass to make sure the transitions are smooth, and then I can hog out the rest. But this is the scariest bit in the scariest tool I have in my shop.

[JohnnyEgo]

Once it is routed to the pattern, I take it over to the spindle sander to smooth out any rough parts and remove most of the burn marks.



Next is a trip back to the router table with a round-over bit installed, to ease the top edge of the drawer.


This is about the point where I realized I had flipped the pattern on one of the twelve pairs of drawer blanks, so I will have the joy of spending several hours cutting replacement parts in a future weekend.

Now that all the shaping is done, I clean up the inside faces of any markings, and file and sand any agregious burn marks remaining, until I lose interest.

[JohnnyEgo]

So when last we left off, I had finished most major construction on the drawer pieces. It's kind of a pain to apply stain or finish evenly in the interior of boxes once they are assembled, so I usually prefer to pre-finish all the insides before clamp and glue.



I'm using Watco Danish Oil here. I like it for a couple of reasons. It's a clean, natural finish with just a bit of amber. It's oil based, and you just wipe it on with a rag, let the wood absorb whatever it's going to take, and wipe it off. Do that twice, and that's it.



Another nice thing about Danish Oil is that it is very easy to refinish. I found a box where I forgot to remove some pencil marks before I applied finish. I just waited until it dried, sanded down the finish and the marks, and hit it with a little more Watco. Watco is super-easy to blend with, because it doesn't care. The wood is going to take whatever it takes, and that's it.


This stuff dries to the touch in a couple of hours, but it still takes a couple of days to fully cure.


Finally ended up with a small pile of half pre-finished parts.


Next comes glueing and clamping.

With the large box, I used some extra care for the glue-up. Taped all the inside corners before I hit it with TiteBond III glue. After realizing what it would take in terms of patience for the next 13 boxes, this is the only one I taped.


Some folks might wonder how many clamps a guy needs. The answer is always at least one more than you actually have. It took a lot of clamps per box to pull everything in and make it reasonably square.


The smaller boxes took about the same number of clamps. I had enough to do about two boxes at a time, so I did a pair a night over the course of the week.


The cluster box I cut upside down with the template. Also known as box L. I will get the priveledge of recutting this eventually.


All glued up!

[Frac]

Some folks might wonder how many clamps a guy needs. The answer is always at least one more than you actually have.

Ain?t that the truth!

Nice work as always.

[JohnnyEgo]

Much appreciated!

Next comes the part of any project I hate most. Finish sanding. Anyways, all the boxes need some work, and some of the joints look pretty gnarly:


The answer comes via a cup of sawdust and a bottle of superglue.


I pack the larger gaps, and surface sand until the smaller ones are full of dust, then hit it with a few drops of CA glue to lock the filler in place.


Once the glue dries, I use sanding blocks with 100, 150, and 220 grit and hand-sand everything flush. I have 80 grit in my rotary sander which I use to take down the most proud of the dovetail fingers, but I use it very sparingly, because it has a tendency to round over sharp corners. The 100 grit on the sanding block actually takes down the end-grain cherry pretty quickly. It probably only took me 10-15 minutes of sanding per box.


Hit the outside of the box with some Watco Danish. Box joints cleaned up quite nicely, all things considered.




Same process for the smaller boxes. Nibbled away at them over a couple of nights.