Maintenance Time

      Thanksgiving is tomorrow.    The wife has been working hard to buff up the place.    She keeps referring to how quickly everything seems to get dusty around here.   (I try.  I really do.   Sometimes fine saw dust just seems to find a way out of my shop no matter how many vacuum cleaners I run.)   Some of the family is going to make it home for Thanksgiving dinner and that means instead of shopping at Menards or Lowe's this week, or shopping online at the Rockler web site, we have to focus on shopping at the Fareway grocery store.   Now there are a few tools that I need to replace, but after seeing that grocery bill, I decided that maybe I should try to repair a few things.

    I have to admit that when it comes to my mechanical skills there seems to be a void in the brain matter.    (Why is that?  I know some mechanics who do a good job of building stuff.)  Anyway, this was a week where I thought it might be a good idea to avoid blowing saw dust around the house, so I focused on doing a little update maintenance.    My good router has a micro adjustment on it that just quit working for me.   So I dismantled that as best I could, shot a little 3 in 1 oil here and there.   After a little forceful pressure (grrrr)  something gave and it started to work again.    I was so proud, but when I reassembled the router the micro work for one setting then failed.   Who needs a micro adjustment setting anyway?  The band saw needed a little cleaning and could use a new blade so we took care of that.  




      Something that I have not spent a lot of time on before is sharpening my tools.    What I have done here is glued some fine grit sand paper and emery cloth onto some old glass panes.   That gives me a smooth flat surface.  Then I took my chisels and clamped them in this holder thing that I purchased and rolled them back and forth over the sandpaper.   In the past I just would sharpen them using the electric grinder.    (That always worked too, but this is suppose to be the way the master craftsmen do it.)  We will see if we have a sharper edge this way and if that edge lasts a little longer.  

  It is the Thanksgiving Holiday and one should take a little time to give thanks for the many things that we have been blessed with.    Life has been good to us here at the Dag Wood Shop & home.   For that I give thanks and I pray that it has been that way for you also.