Day 11–Catchup

My company, Red Gate software, has given me a 6 week sabbatical. I’m documenting the time with all the posts under a tag if you want to follow along.

After missing Friday, I decided to spend Sat morning on a few things. I went for a drive in the Porsche, and since it was out, I left it out and set up sawhorses and the jointer.

I didn’t have the wood to make the jig and trim boards, but I did need to semi-square two sides. The first operation is the joint two sides, a wide side and an edge. I set up two supports to support things coming in and two on the out. A 16’ board is tough to control and on the video Norm uses a power planer, but I dion’t have one and didn’t want to get one. If I screw this up, maybe I will.

I ran the 12’ 2x4s first and those weren’t bad. They seemed relatively flat on one side after each went through twice. I also did one wide side of each.

With those done I then did the 16 boards. Slow going and probably not perfectly flat, as my instructor would like them, but probably close enough to line up and get trimmed. Once those were done, it was planer time.

The planer runs boards through with it’s own power and just needs support. I supported the boards in for about 6-8 ft and then went on the other side to catch them and ensure they got on the supports.

It was a mess, and I had shavings everywhere. It took 3-4 passes through, thinning the boards each time to get to 1 1/4” thick (from 1 1/2”).

I had a huge pile of sawdust and shavings as the rain came in, and I hurried to put things away and clean up.

Two of those trashcans full of sawdust to clean things out. I managed to just get the Porsche put away as the rain came in.

A good day.