Making Saw Dust

   Now that the shop has been cleaned up and the guests have all arrived and left, it is time to create a little saw dust and chips.  (Mostly to leave my mark in the neighborhood.)    I selected three rough sawn walnut boards that I plan to use in a future project and worked on turning those into workable lumber.   I started out by running them through the planner until they were 3/4's of an inch thick.

  After that I cut the boards down to the size of the plan that I will be working on next.   There is a lot of prep work that goes into getting rough boards ready for a project.   There are times when one realizes that it would be so much easier to just go to the lumber yard and buy finished boards.   (But when I study the price tag I realize what else does an old retired guy have to do.   Plane and sand.  Plane and sand.   It's a good life.)

  My plan is to join these boards together using Kreg jig screws.    Two things I would like to share here.  The first is that chalk has become my friend.  The grand-kids' sidewalk chalk is what I carry in my apron.   I have gotten so that I mark and write on all my pieces to keep myself organized as to which side to drill on and what is top and what is bottom. (Used to have a memory to do that kind of stuff, but chalk enables me to daydream while working on something.)

  The second thing that I wanted to point out is the drill shown in the picture above.     This electric 3/8 inch drill is the very first power tool I bought for the start of my shop.   In 1969 I bought this drill at a discount store in Des Moines, Iowa  for $8.95 and it still runs like a dream today.   No batteries, just real electricity and it has more power than any of the newer drills I have purchased since.  (And it has been abused, abused, and mistreated.   Unlike my feline friends whom I always treat with kindness and love having them around...  Yeah right - litter box and all.)
 
   Some of this wood had a crack running through it before I started.   To be safe I applied some pressure which split the board open and then I glue the crack back up.    I always wonder if when a tree is fallen if there isn't a little shock wave or something  that weakens or tears a spot in the wood when in falls.   Especially if it fell during a storm when the tree was twisting around in the wind a little before it gave up and came down.  That is the case with this walnut wood.   Sometimes even trees that were just taken down seem to have areas where there is a fault line through the wood.  

  This is a practice that I never used to do but now take the time to rectify.   The walnut board in the picture to the right has a knot that could come loose or could be a potential problem.   I mixed up some epoxy glue and worked it into the knot.    Once it is dry I will sand it smooth.   The epoxy will fill in any voids and make the knot so it does not shrink and pop out later on.    Also epoxy seems to dry clear so it makes for a nice filler.


That is it for this week.   Next week I will show you the results.