Mary Ostler

I decided to clean up the shop this weekend.

Spent a good portion of Saturday cleaning the work bench and table saw top off, and freeing up some much needed floor space. I then decided to finally install my dust extraction system. I decided to place all the 2.5″ piping along the ceiling as the wall have too many things to dodge. I got a set of pipes and fittings sometime in the summer. I managed to set it all up with the exception of one blast gate. Have to make a pilgrimage to BusyBeeTools next weekend. I tried out how the system worked at my lathe. The larger chunks when knocking of the corners of a square dowel just dropped to the floor, but when the sanding started…. Shaazam!  Normally when I sand on the lathe a fine patina of dust deposits on the surface of everything in short order. With the exhaust system on. Nothing! Sweet fancy moses, I may be able to replace my full face respirator with a dust mask. Shiny.

Sunday was about prepping some wood for X-chairs. I am a cheap person when it comes to buying wood. I would rather bust a hump getting good free wood than purchasing awesome ready to go stuff. A large portion of wood I use comes from Hardwood skids I get from work. Some of this stuff is incredibly beautiful wood, that would eventually just get tossed away. I have had a couple of gorgeous skids kicking around for a while. 

Step one. Removing the Slats from the runners.  The slats on this skid where pretty bad, so I decided not to try to save them, so I got to use the prybar of doom.

Step two. Remove any nails that didn’t come out of the runners with the slats. (luckily two runners were completly free fo nails (always checking the nail tips. I will  be running the runners through the tablesaw, and the smallest piece of nail can damage my balde). This is proving difficult on the one runners, as the nails are breaking off inside the skid. This means I have to chisel out the section around the nail, and grab it with a vice grip. This wood is hard as hell, so Its a long slog.  Six nails cleared, 18 more to go. Then I get to move on to skid #2.

Being a cheap bastard is a hell of a lot of work =D

I curse the skidmakers for using spiral nails.