2022 - Improving the shop work flow

 As the quality of lumber has declined over time I find I have to spend more time cleaning up rough sawn boards to find out what surprises lie inside for me, and I don't mean good ones.  Once I get the surface planed a bit I can have a good idea of what is usable and what I need to work around in a given board.  Or perhaps to set it aside for use on shorter parts if it has too many problems.  This is causing a lot of extra time on the jointer and planer and the jointer is me pushing the board through by hand.  Taking a heavy cut and this being very hard white oak, it takes a lot of force and is starting to hurt this ever-aging body.  I had a power feeder on one of the shapers, and decided I was going to set up a mount on the jointer for it so I can at least make my life a bit easier when feeding the jointer.  Since I still have a ton of stock to run through for window trim and baseboards, this should help speed things up and make it less painful. 

So I took a couple weeks to figure out how to mount it, where to position it and sort out steel for the mount.  I used some leftovers from the Sweeper project and had to get a couple more pieces to do what I wanted to.  Some head scratching, cutting, fitting, more head scratching and fitting and I finally got something that looks like it will do the job.  There is a lot of reaction force on the feeder when doing this so the mount had to be very sturdy.  I made a tweak to one of the existing post clamps to help it grab better by opening up the slot in the cross direction to allow it to pull tighter on the main vertical shaft, and that seems to help a lot as it was a weak point before.

The mount is pretty simple - a min tube with a plate on top to mount the feeder to, and an upper and lower mounting bracket, with some gussets to improve rigidity, plus steel backing plates inside the jointer stand to help spread the load out better on the thinner stand steel.  Getting the mounts in the right place to allow the backing plates to fit around the obstructions in inside the stand was the biggest pain of making this, but once that was sorted out it was mostly just some welding.

So here it is installed on the jointer after a bunch of work to get everything to fit properly.

I also went and got new urethane wheels for the feeder that should grab a lot better than the old oxidized rubber ones, so that should help too. Seems like a big improvement already so should help a ton getting the rest of the trim done, and beyond.  The lowest speed (which I had it on) seems a bit slow relative to how fast I was pushing by hand, so I may swap out the drive gears and try it at the next faster speed.  Even at the slow speed, it is much smoother and a ton easier than it was by hand, so i could deal with it being a little slow for that gain.

2022 - Doors Are Done!!!

 A major milestone reached with the last door installed and trimmed out on 10/17/22.  I had installed door number 14 right at the end of 2021, and my vow was that all doors would be done by the end of 2022.  It was a bit variable how it went throughout the year depending on other things that needed to be done, but by the middle of August I had 6 doors complete and the upstairs was now done.  That left the final 3 in the basement level to complete all doors, which I finally wrapped up in October.  The very last door was a bit complicated as it was a closet made from leftover space from a lot of structural bits around it, so it had an opening that was non-standard and did not make a lot of sense to use as-is. The solution was to frame in the opening to make it match a more normal door and patch in some drywall to cover the new framing.

So first off lets look at photos of the upstairs doors.     

Here is from inside the bathroom with the door to the BR on the right, the door to the hall on the left, and the small linen closet in the middle:

And a photo from inside the BR with the bath on the left, hallway in the middle, and the 2 bypass sliders for the closet on the right, one slider partially open.  The sliders work better than swinging doors here as they do not take up floor space and are much easier to get fitted and a pair of large swinging doors are. The better solution was bypass sliders, and I used top quality track that has soft close and open mechanisms in them to make sure the doors don't slam and that they also stay closed all the way and don't bounce back:

And the view from the hallway, BR on left, bath on right:

Next, I did an exact copy of the sliding doors for the BR closet in the lower level guest room which was the same dimension as the upper BR (no pic).

And then the final door!  There was an alcove created next to the entry from the garage due to some structural framing needed for the heavy fireplace just above it.  It was made into an impromptu closet but now needed a door to finish it off.  This was a late decision that was not in the plans, but when you are doing it all yourself, that is something that you can readily accommodate.  The opening was not framed correctly for a door, so the first step was to frame it to match the garage door next to it, which was the standard 6'8" door and not 7' like the rest of the interior doors in the house.  So this one will be 6'8" to match and 32" wide, as that is plenty wide for a coat closet. So here it is framed in and the drywall up:

And then finally, with the finished door installed and trimmed out. I made casing for the garage door at the same time to match, while I was already there.  

And I painted the garage door and jamb to match the wood better at the same time.  That took a few more days to do but I was able to get it done before the weather turned too cold.  It is a slightly darker shade of the yellow family that the walls are painted.  Not as dark as we were expecting, but it will do...

And here is our completed corner of the house and the final door, now done!!!!

2021 - Lumber and more doors

 As I was getting low on the stock to make doors from, I needed to find a new source, and that was Frank L Miller lumber in Indiana.  They are the main supplier of quarter sawn oak in the country and probably the world so I set up a deal with them to come down and sort through piles of lumber to get what I needed.  I rented a big trailer and brought a friend to help out who also knows lumber well.  This load of lumber is intended to take me through the completion of all remaining doors, window and door trim and maybe some part of baseboard trim but we'll see how far it goes in the end!

The pile ended up being too much to haul back with my equipment, so we were able to get the lumber yard to ship the second half of it.  Here is the first load which we hauled back with us. It was heavy enough as it was, so we were very glad to not have loaded all of it.

And picking up the second load locally at the trucking terminal

The 2 piles were similar size, and given how heavy it was, the wiser move was to ship it like we did.

So then with that in place, I managed to wrap up 2 doors in the lower level - the guest BR and the utility room.  As I previously noted, they are right next to each other, so I wanted to use up the rest of my old stock here so they would look close to each other.

And here is that door for the utility room, in the finish booth, closing out 2021.

The focus for 2022 is to complete the remaining 9 doors in the house.  This includes all the doors in the upper floor (6 total including 3 passage doors, 1 linen closet and a pair of double door sliders for the BR closet), and the final 3 in the basement (1 mud room closet and a pair of sliders for the guest room closet)

2021 - What Did I do?

I haven't made a post in quite a while here, so here is something for all my fans, "the Bots" to read....

2021 was largely spent on a tractor project.  I rebuilt and heavily modified a rotary broom to fit onto the loader of my tractor and engineered a hydraulic drive system for it also.  Here is a quick summary of that.  I started in Jan 2021, and finally wrapped it up in early Nov, just before the snow.  It was a BIG project.

So here is the mess I started with. I bought it off a farmer in MN that had it several years "meaning to get to it one of these days" but decided that was never going to happen. The previous owner had done some sketchy modifications to it also.  I wasn't even sure it would run but the farmer said it supposedly did when he got it...but sitting for years now.

I won't go through everything but I needed to fab a mount to make it fit the standard skid steer mount on my tractor.  But first I needed to add a Mid-PTO to the tractor and extend it to the front for the pump to drive this.  The mid PTO is a kit, so I drained all the fluid (and changed it while I was there as it was close to due), added the PTO and then worked out a way to extend it to the front with some shafts and some modifications to the basic design Kubota uses for their snow blowers and brooms.

This is the frame that mounts under the tractor to bring the PTO drive to the front all painted and ready to install.  Since this was basically all custom built, there was a lot of engineering and head scratching involved.  It is fairly easy to install solo.

And in place under the tractor, before it was painted.  The first photo below shows where the pump mounts on the front (the big hole with the shaft inside it)

So with the drive system done, I turned attention to the sweeper itself.  I removed all the old hoses and parts, tested a few things and then did another round of head scratching to figure out how to mount it to the tractor.

Here was after it was mostly torn apart. I had to cut off some of the previous mods that were done and then rework it to fit a skid steer plate.

I bought a mount plate (they are a standard item) and started laying out how to attach the sweeper to it.

After figuring out how to set this up I was here, ready for welding:

Working through where to place the diverter (which runs the angle cylinder), Got some hoses and fittings as needed to help lay this out better too.

I machined up a mount for the check valve mount that bolts to the shroud of the broom and clamps the valve and hoses in place.

I also had to design and build a tank for the hydraulic fluid.  When i finished it, it didn't even leak! A miracle! It was a very odd shape, necessary to fit, and I had a metal fab shop cut and bend the parts for me as I did not have equipment capable of bending stuff that big or heavy.  Then i figured out a baffle and how to mount it, and did all the welding.

So now it finally comes together after painting

All new broom sections!

Main broom frame parts put together and mounted

And finally hoses in place and ready to go!

And finally a little bit of an action shot:

Desk and Second Home Office

 With so much working from home happening for the past year, and a clear indication it is going to continue at least to some significant degree, we needed a second home office.  The upstairs library was the place to do this, so I set about making a desk.  My wife wanted to buy some commercial thing made of crappy particle board for a few hundred bucks, but I have had enough of crappy Chinese furniture, so I said I would build a desk after I wrapped up the last door in my main floor batch. 

Started around the first of the year and installed it in early march, so 2 months or so.  I was not moving terribly fast...  But here it is. One bank of drawers, where the lowest one is set up for hanging folders.  A pull out fully adjustable tilt/lift/lower keyboard tray and a small shelf under the shorter end on the right side.

The whole thing is built modular so each panel is knock-down for easy moving.  The top is the biggest piece as it is all one, and the drawer case is a bit heavy too, but not too bad.  Wood is walnut/walnut plywood with a clear/amber water based polyurethane finish.  Top is laminate with walnut edging.

This cost more in materials than the crappy desk would have, complete, but it is very solid and will last a lifetime.  It is similar to the desk design she wanted to buy, tweaked a bit, of course, where necessary.  The long side is a bit longer to make it more useful, I added the keyboard tray and the short side is a little shorter.

During construction:

 

And finished and installed:

Fairly simple, very solid, not too heavy to move around as needed (on felt feet).

Next up is general maintenance work on cars and I am starting on a project to adapt a rotary broom to my tractor, mainly for snow but also clean-up of leaves and such.  Somewhere in there I will get back to doors for the lower level and upper level.

2020 - Corona virus and Doors

 Well, 2020 has been quite odd as we all know with Corona virus causing so many problems.  For me it meant I have been largely working from home most of the year, with some days spent in the office/lab from time to time.  My main goal this year with the house was to finish off the doors on the main level.  There were 6 left to go on the main floor.  I have previously finished and installed 6 doors, over the span of a few years.  The total for the entire house is 24 doors, so with the 6 done this year, I have reached the halfway point.  

 I started with the 2 doors in the entry area - the office and the coat closet, and then trimmed out the main front door at the same time.  Here is a shot of the entry way area with those doors completed.  On the far lower right you can see a sliver of the trim for the powder room door, which was previously done.  With these, the entry way is now basically complete, other than the baseboard trim.

Next up was the door to the toilet closet in the Master Bath, then the door to the Master Bedroom - which is different than the double doors to the Master Suite as it closes off only the bedroom itself, not the whole suite.  Then it wrapped up with the linen closet door in the Master Bath and finally the pocket door for the laundry room.  I also had one doorway in the Master suite hallway going back to the laundry room and Master Closet which is just a door frame trimmed out, with no door.  This work took from Mid-May all the way up to Dec 27 to wrap up.  With everything else going on in life, it takes roughly a month to make a door, install it and trim it out, so this does not go fast and sometimes other things get in the way and I make no door progress for a couple weeks or more.

Here are some photos of (most of) the rest of the main floor doors in the master suite:

This one is looking down the main master suite hallway, through the double doors.  Master BR first door on left, Master Bath 2nd door on left, then the open doorway with the laundry room door barely visible just past it on the left:

Looking from the other end of the hall. Laundry just visible on the right, followed by Master Bath, Master BR and the double doors barely visible at the far end. Looking through the open master bath door, you can see the linen closet door:

Master bath 1st on left, open doorway and laundry door open on left:

And then finally the pocket door to the laundry room, shown mostly closed:

Next up I am going to build a desk for the upstairs library area to make that a bit more usable as a study/work area, and then I have enough wood left to make probably 2 more doors in the lower level for the guest bedroom and the utility room.  I'd like those 2 to be from the same batch of wood as the guest bathroom (the very first door) as these 3 are all right next to each other, so I want them to look very close to each other.  By the time this is all done, that will probably bring me into Feb or early March.

After that I need to figure out a good source for more wood as there will still be 10 doors remaining to make.  And of course I still need to trim out windows and do baseboards. And there are still outside projects that need to be tackled sometime too.  It never ends... But main floor doors are now done!

Interior Stair Railings - Fall 2019- Winter 2020

The railings will be similar to the deck railings with the "prairie grass" theme, also in stainless steel like the deck railings.  They are made in sections for each flight and bolted together and screwed to the stairs/floor.  They start as a basic frame and then the "prairie grass" is added in as separate panels that are bolted in place.  This makes everything much more manageable to handle.

I made a wood jig to start out and help me keep everything in alignment and at the right heights.  Here is the jig with the first set of railing frame blanks clamped in place for marking the angles and places to cut.

The jig is just a piece of plywood with an upper and lower guide that locates the handrail and bottom rail correctly.  the end posts are set plumb in the correct spots and clamped to the rails to set everything up for marking.

The very top flight ends at a half-wall that required a bit of fancy footwork to maintain railing code...

And to make the returns where the railing comes back around to hit the next one in a continuous manner, I needed to get all sections set in place on the stairs but leave out one little piece at the top so I could cut the miters and loop it back around.  Here are the 4 frame sets tacked-up and ready for the test fitting.  The wood blocks are holding them in the right place to get this set up where the missing piece will go.

And then getting them fitted in place

And the returns tacked in place and the mounting bracket that attaches to the next section:

And making the panels.  These are the panels that go into the railing frames (2 per run):

And finally got everything finished, ran through electropolishing and installed:

Start to finish - all stair work including the woodwork and the metal railings took close to 7 months.  None of this moves quickly...