What did you do today?

[BillyJack]

Put up a small pool for the granddaughter...

 

[JohnG]

This has been an hour at a time over the last few days. Improving my firewood storage by my water stove. 

For kindling and smaller stuff I have 4’x6’x8’ contained and covered space. 


For the real firewood I now have 12’x8’x8’ contained and covered. The ends are open and the spacing of the fencing should still allow plenty airflow for drying. 

I had been stacking wood the ‘proper’ way with the ends alternating direction, but that proved to be too time consuming since I get a lot of donated logs and firewood when neighbors have trees come down. Without consistent sizing, the alternating method takes too long. Or maybe I’m just not very good at it. 
 

The firewood section seen on the left will get fencing boards on the outside as well, when I get around to it.

[Tom King]

That's the nicest wood shed I remember seeing.

[JohnG]

Thanks Tom! This also houses our water stove which is seen directly behind the kindling, and feeds the solar water heating panels on the roof. I need to replace most of the pipe insulation. This was installed in the mid 90s when there was a 100% tax credit for installing these, so the people who built the house built this structure nicely.

[Tom King]

We had some renters in the house this weekend.  I told them they were welcome to burn all the firewood they wanted to out of the pile.  This was their attempt.  Notice no green grass in the fire pit was harmed.  I was hoping the new fire pit would have been used over the cold, damp weekend. 

This was their attempt at laying a fire.   They had three teenage boys.  I thought all teenage boys knew how to burn something up.   At least they knew how to take care of a house, and left it in fine shape after having a sizable crowd over the weekend.

[wtnhighlander]

Tom, did you remember to leave a can of gasoline?

[JohnG]

Or one of these?

[Tom King]

It would have taken about 10 pounds of propane to start that fire.  It must have taken two of them to carry that piece of kindling on the bottom down there.

[legenddc]

Work organized a volunteer day this morning so I spent some time harvesting kale, lettuce and swiss chard and planting edamame something else. All the food is donated to a food bank to help people in need. 

[Tom King]

Took puppies to get their exam and shot today before going to their new homes.  This is waiting their turn outside under a shade tree.

[Coop]

Ka-ching, Ka-ching! 

 

[Tom King]

Any time we have the back open like that, someone will come up and ask if we are giving away puppies. 

Nope.  They were all spoken for before they were born.

[BillyJack]

Moved the Adirondack chair to the back porch. Just started raining. Guess will see if the finish is spotty afterwards…

 

[Coop]

What was the finish? 

[Immortan D]

I need to save space so I got rid of my sharpening "station" and made a box out of scrap pine for my diamond stones, sharpening jig and setup jigs. So basically I went from this:

To this:

 

[Ronn W]

No matter where you go....there you are. 

[Immortan D]

Yep, like walking in circles, that's me.

[Von]

Got back from Europe over the weekend. Am digging out and looking forward to getting back into the shop. I put the photos I took that are in anyway related to woodworking into an album. Nothing too exciting.

Some good news is we've decided since that I'm retired, we don't need to park cars in the garage regularly, so I can start using most of the space for a static, don't have to push things up against the wall shop (yard tools and wife keep about half a stall). Just need to be able to clear one parking space for the occasional snow storm. So I'll be rearranging slowly to take advantage of this. I'm really looking forward to moving my bench out from the wall and being able to get all the way around it again.

[Von]

I added some material to one of my bench legs to make it flush with the edge of the top and add some dog holes:

The following photo shows why I did this - to have a deadman. I'm refinishing this coffee table top and it's occasionally useful to get it up and high enough to comfortably work on the sides. I had been clamping a hand screw clamp to my bench and using that in conjunction with my vice, but it really took three hands to get the top into place and I'm getting too old for that...

Obviously, this top is barely long enough and this won't work for anything shorter. A sliding deadman would be more versatile, but that's probably a "next bench thing." The vice racks a little, but seems to hold well enough for sanding. I can still add another clamp on the right if needed and, who knows, maybe I'll break out the anti-racking doohickey I bought but never seem to use.

The dog holes also provide nice storage for my hold downs, though the hold downs don't actually work in the leg. I think at 5"+ deep, the dog holes are just too deep for the hold downs to bite. 

 

[Chestnut]

I'm not sure I could go back to parking outside. It's really nice when going topless to just be able to park in the garage and not have to worry about all the nasty stuff outside.

[Von]

On 6/7/2023 at 8:49 AM, Chestnut said:

I'm not sure I could go back to parking outside. It's really nice when going topless to just be able to park in the garage and not have to worry about all the nasty stuff outside.

Yeah, no convertible in our household so we don't go topless much :-) But I could see feeling differently with one.

[legenddc]

If we can find a house with enough room for a shop and a garage my plan is to get another Jeep and just remove the top all together.

@Von Sounds like you need a shed for the yard tools. Let's see some pictures of your new layout!

The smoke from the Canada fires has made it's way down here giving us Code Red air alerts. Everything smells smoky outside and its pretty gray outside. Most outdoor things have been cancelled at school.

[Tom King]

Smoky here today too, and it smells different than the type of wood burned in forest fires in this part of the country.

[Chestnut]

2 hours ago, legenddc said:

The smoke from the Canada fires has made it's way down here giving us Code Red air alerts. Everything smells smoky outside and its pretty gray outside. Most outdoor things have been cancelled at school.

This is year 5 or 6 of the last 10 that we've had forest fire smoke bad in the Midwest. Doesn't  matter if the fires are in Alberta sask or Quebec the smoke ends up here.

We've been hitting those aqi numbers over the last couple weeks but I haven't heard about outdoor events being canceled here. Wonder if things are worse with the higher populations and air quality that is a bit worse on the baseline there. Your ozone numbers are double our normal readings.

 

[legenddc]

Seems like we’re on the edge. I just went outside and you can see a slight haze and smell a little smoke but overall it seems pretty nice outside.