The Official "What I got for Christmas" thread...

Wow, that's a serious hunk of iron. How much does that puppy weigh? [I'm thinking that must be one stable piece in operation].

Reply to
Mark & Juanita
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Cool stuff, isn't it

I certainly have similar feelings. It also seems to me that scraping is a whole lot faster than stepping through 5 grits of sandpaper. I found my biggest problem is getting the wood ready for scraping. On the entertainment center drawers I'm working, the Ash seems to have some wild grain in places, I've had trouble with tearout even with my Knight smoother and an LN block plane set for wispy-thin shavings.

One word of warning as someone who just finished finish scraping the sides and bottoms for 12 (yes that's an even dozen) drawers for an entertainment center -- that scraper can become a serious problem for the hands. My thumbs are still not back to 100% even after 3 days, but at least my arm is not going numb on me anymore. Does the LV scraping deal include a card holder so you don't have to flex the tool by hand? I've found that aspirin seems to good for these kinds of aches and pains, but I sure don't want to fight this every time I do finishing work. I'm thinking a scraper plane may be in my future.

Reply to
Mark & Juanita

We'll keep you in our thoughts and prayers -- best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Reply to
Mark & Juanita

Heh. I got one of those indoor/outdoor thermometers with the wireless remote for outside. I spent most of Christmas day watching the temperature go up by two tenths of a degree then drop again. I'm *way* to easily amused by anything involving technology.

Tim Douglass

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Reply to
Tim Douglass

Unisaw A100 wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Land's End, or maybe it was LL Bean, used to do just that. Made it SO much easier, when browsing in the primary reading room. ;-)

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

Have you ordered a Starrett temperature gauge calibrator yet?

David

Tim Douglass wrote:

Reply to
David

When you get bored with watching the one you have, get one or two others and set the displays side-by-side. Try to guess which of them is correct.

The two that I have now consistently read 1.5 to 2.5 degrees apart. I do have a third (that I can calibrate) to check the first two, but I haven't become sufficiently motivated/irritated to do so, yet.

R, Tom Q.

Remove bogusinfo to reply.

Reply to
Tom Quackenbush

Mark & Juanita wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The power sander(s) did that to me. Particularly that 1/3 sheet monster that I bought sometime back in the Nixon adminstration, when Sear allegedly sold good tools. The 'it was supposed to be a prototype' entertainment center for the bedroom pretty much blew out my golf game with the tendonitis. I changed to projects and finishes that were easier on my no longer young body.

Smaller projects. And delegate the sanding to the person who asked me to build the piece for them in the first place, if possible.

I haven't mastered the LN 85 yet, but it certainly looks beautiful on the bench!

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

Unfortunately, the projects that I'm needing right now are not that small: entertainment center, bed and desk combination for son, kitchen cabinets in about that order. After that, I'll be wanting to get back into some smaller, more meticulous projects.

Unfortunately I did. [Hey, I can make one of those while I'm drafting out the son's bed plans. Yeah, and instead of shelves in the bottom, how about I put in drawers for video and game storage? Shouldn't be too big a deal to add a few drawers. Doh, what was I thinking?]

What kinds of things are you encountering in trying to master the 85? That certainly is one of the candidates that I'm looking at; as much time and effort as scraping looks to save over sanding, I want something that will provide good results.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Reply to
Mark & Juanita

Yikes! Mark, friend, buddy, pal, scraping isn't supposed to be that painful.

How far are you bending that po' thang? If you're bending it far enough to string it and shoot arrows, I think I see your problem. :) Bend only as far as absolutely necessary to avoid gouging the wood with the corners. (Meaning if you're scraping something narrower than the card itself, you don't bend it _at_all._) No more thumb pain.

As for the arm going numb: That's usually a sign of pinched/constricted nerves in the neck/shoulder. Are you (unintentionally perhaps) hunching down over your workpiece as you scrape? (I'm asking because if #1, above, is true, you're probably having to hunch up to exert all that force.)

Of couse, these are just a couple of wild-assed guesses. (1)

Michael Baglio Who's card scrapers have moved to _second_ favorite tool, since Santa brought me my neat-o Boston Ranger 55 pencil sharpener.

(1) Disclaimer: Since _I've_ never scraped a dozen drawer bottoms in one shot, this entire post could be full of sh*t. Feel free to inform me of same if'n its so. I'll get over it. :O

Reply to
Michael Baglio

The remote shows about 1.2 degrees cooler than the inside unit, which makes it about in agreement with the thermostat, which I suspect is a bit high, so I think the wall unit may be pretty close to accurate, but I'm not going to get worked up over a degree here or there. It is fascinating to see how the temp will rise for an hour or so, then dip down 3-4 degrees before rising again, then falling etc. I was trying to plot the cloud cover by watching it warm up after dark when the clouds moved in.

Tim Douglass

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Reply to
Tim Douglass

I certainly was exerting less pressure as time went on :-( I don't think I was over-bending, but that may have been part of the problem. I know that a couple of the scrapers I have are fairly thick, so required a bit more pressure. In the future, I'll have to see whether I can get by with less pressure.

Well, I certainly had some neck pain on one side.

May have been the opposite actually, my bench may be a bit higher than it should be (or I'm too low).

Thanks for the ideas -- I really like using the scrapers, I just need to get to the point of being able to use them without inducing tendonitis or joint damage.

:-)

The sheer number of pieces to be finished certainly contributed to this, basically 48 sides and fronts, inside and out => 96 surfaces, 4 drawers were 4 1/2" tall, the remaining 5 3/4" tall, plus 12 drawer bottoms (cherry ply, but still needed scraping on top side) for another 12 surfaces. All in all a pretty substantial number of surfaces. I was doing this for about

4 1/2 to 5 hours a day over a period of 3 days (some of the drawers had a lot of nasty grain that resulted in having to spend some time dealing with tear-out, thus the 3 days instead of just a couple of days). I know I would have spent more time if I had been sanding these pieces. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Reply to
Mark & Juanita

I got: A Dewalt 12" SCMS from my daughter (big bucks, thanks)

From SWMBO: A PC 16" Omnijig (sweeeet) A PC ROS

2 late Stanley block planes One of the laser level things Several small hand tools

Gary

Oh, and from the Governor, a life time pension, I retired December 17! (Age

55).
Reply to
Gary

Ahhhh, to be young again... j4

Reply to
jo4hn

Missed that subtle detail...

I think I was trying too hard to use it to flatten, rather than put a smooth finish on it. I _think_ that I need to soften the corners of the scraper blade, so that they don't dig in.

My challenges seem related to a life long search for patience.

The other thing I'm learning is that these tools work very differently with different wood species. I did another small project last week for my youngest son, using cherry. After maple, red oak and some tropicals, working in cherry seemed almost to be cheating. It's no wonder woodworkers love it so much.

I promised to make a replacement table leaf for a family friend this week. I'll try the 85 on that, or on the offcuts, at least, and try to remember to get back to you.

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

"Gary" wrote in news:WvJzd.13555$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net:

Why do I suspect you earned that pension honestly?

Enjoy your new life!

Patriarch

Reply to
Patriarch

After several years of going sig-less, decided to try something subtle, yet twisted. :-)

... snip

Thanks, I'd appreciate it. Just put together next year's tool budget/wish list -- a scraper plane is one of the things on that list.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Reply to
Mark & Juanita

Nope. I don't have a clue what you're talking about, sorry. I don't watch much TV.

Reply to
Silvan

Those deep crevices in wood are usually put there with routahs. :)

I don't have suitable clamps. Plus it hasn't come off yet. I'm waiting. I've been waiting for at least 12 years. I can get a pick under it now. I'm tempted to put it in the shop and get it worked over good. New frets, fix the bridge, come up with a new saddle. It's definitely not worth it from a purely economic standpoint. I could fix it myself, probably, but let's face it. It ain't gonna get done if it waits for me to get around to tackling it.

I'm not really sure. The instructions suck, and I can't see inside it enough to guess quite how the pickup works. I think it's under the bridge, and it picks up vibrations in the top. It has a little red LED on it, and I have no idea what that means. I have some vague idea you're supposed to put a 9V battery in there, but I can't figure out how to get it open, and it seems to work just fine without it.

Wow. You'd think more guitars would come out of Mexico. There are lots of little old men in Mexico who can make a guitar with nothing more than a hatchet and some horse hide.

Um. :)

Actually, I might not mind having something like that to really irritate people on camping trips, unless it sounded completely lame.

I'm not a big electric guy. Not a big guitar guy either. I've been playing

15 years, and I suck. People say "Play something" and I can't play much of anything anybody recognizes. I've just never really tried to learn popular songs. I just fiddle with the thing.

eg.:

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'm playing flute and didgeridoo too, and yes, the flute does sound like shit, thanks for noticing. :)

Reply to
Silvan

I have one of those things on the mirror of my truck. It's fascinating to see how the temperature varies from one spot to another. There's a parking lot I sleep in regularly that's almost always 10 degrees warmer than the street in front of it. Even at night. Really black asphalt. I'm always getting up, taking off most of my clothes, thinking it's going to be a really warm day, then freezing my butt off when I get down the road a little ways and realize I was far too hasty ditching the long johns.

One of these days I want to get one of those laser flummies I've heard about. You're supposed to be able to shoot them at the road and measure the temperature difference between the black road and the white stripes as you fly by. Whee.

Are we a coupla dorks or what? :)

Reply to
Silvan

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