Hello….hope everyone had a great week and a good Labor Day weekend so far. We took a little road trip out of town to visit some friends. Their town hosts a big car show cruise night….several hundred cars….so that was a lot of fun. I found my ’66 Chevy truck but couldn’t talk the guy out of it. Good good food also! A trip to his wood store and a day in his shop playing with his toys.

I have a few good subjects to chat about this week….but not a lot of project pictures. The 2 project pictures are of the pediment assembly (I cut mine as 2 pieces). I sanded the edges to get a good fit-up and the edges are very fragile. I sat a flat board (plywood) up against the the sander for support then took a very light pass on the sander….worked great. Then I glued and clamped the 2 pieces together. I clamped them to a flat board (with wax paper between) to assure the assembly is flat. When I get back to the shop I will sand it and fill a seam if there is one. While I was here visiting today, my buddy and I finished cutting out the brackets for the Pyle Clock. Fun to watch others styles as they cut and how they differ from your own. We had conversation about one of my most asked questions…what speed and what blades to use. Both are kind of a preference thing. Speed varies per the wood, thickness, the blade and even the blade wear. As my blade wears I will nudge up the speed some. And blades are a preference thing as well….I recommend just playing with the variations until you hit the ‘feel’. You’ll know when it’s right.

One of the things we did this weekend was to check out his wood store. Owl Hardwood Lumber Co. 620 E. St. Charles Rd., Lombard Ill. 60148 (630)-627-5060 www.owlhardwood.com . They have a very nice selection of wood both exotic and domestic. Most everything they have is 1/2″ of thicker with a limited amount of 1/4″. They also have the largest molding selection I have ever seen in one place. I picked up the the rod to finish out the quilt rack which I finished up the ends a couple months back. Look for that in a near future update. I also picked up a nice 1/4 sheet of 2 sided 1/2″ Hickory plywood and three 1/4 sheets of 1 sided 1/4″ Teak plywood (this looks awesome). To finish out out the trip I picked up a 3/4″ x 5″ x 12″ piece of Yellowheart and 2 nice pieces of 1/2″ Poplar. The one piece has a lot of the figured green color and the other is insane with color. It has light, 3 shades of tan, green, purple and dark gray. This will be the base wood for the next project. Tam picked her up a nice little board for a shelf she wants. Also they have ‘reader’ safety glasses which I picked up a pair of. They are bifocal so it will work great for safety and for up close work. Tried them out today.

Also my buddy pointed something out to me which I have taken for granted but is worth touching on here. I talk every week about checking the square on pieces. This is important and if something is out of square it can make for a long assembly experience. My buddy picked up 6 of the 3″ squares and 3 of them are not square….one being out almost 1/8″, note that in the picture. Take one that you know is square and butt the others against it to verify the squareness. Be sure they are sitting on a good flat surface. You can also set it in the ‘good’ square.

The next subject I want to talk about is re-sawing and planing/sanding thicker wood to a thinner thickness to get 2 or more pieces from the same board. For years Dad and I have did this for wood conservation. We would get (and I still do) 3/4″-1″ and saw the thickness in half on the bandsaw. This does take a bit of practice so I recommend getting a 2″ x 4″ and just slicing it up. My bandsaw has a 12″ riser in it so I can re-saw wider boards. The wider it is the more difficult it is and if there is warp, that will effect it as well. I have a jig that I built (I promise a picture next week) that is a 2″ x 4″ base with a large dowel pin mounted at the end with tapers on the 2″ x 4″. I clamp this to the table and draw a line centered on the top and follow it with my blade….works very nicely. Today we just used my buddies fence on his and it worked great but we could only get 5 1/2″ tall. The first step you want to do is get a good square surface to your width dimension on the tablesaw or the jointer. After we ran the pieces through the bandsaw today we ran them through his drum sander. Wow! I gotta have one of these. Wish I would have used this before my update last week. Drum sanders are a pretty incredible toy to have and I will be checking into getting one. Anyway after the bandsaw step you would run the boards through a planer or through a drum sander and clean up the boards are required. We finished by a final pass over the Sand Flee. The board used in the picture is a 2″ wide board that we cut to 12″ long and sliced it up then ran it through the sander. We laid the boards by each other to give you an idea of the outcome. We also worked up my piece of Yellowheart and most of my Poplar that I picked up while here. This is a good way to save on wood costs and a great use of all your wood. Nothing worse than planing a 1/2″ board down to 1/4″ and throwing all the sawdust away. I just noticed…and it wasn’t staged….his copy of the mini clock book in the back ground of one of the pictures. We have plenty of these available for anyone interested.

Also this week, for those of you that are traveling through the north eastern part of Missouri and the north western part of Illinois, be sure to check out the Monroe Street Suites in Pittsfield Illinois. The phone is (217)-285-6129 and the website iswww.monroestreetsuites.com . This little place is an old manufacturing business that they converted to this little hotel. It is 6 rooms that are as close to spending a night at home as you can get. We have stayed in alot of high end places that couldn’t hold a candle to this place. It is like I told Tammy….If when you die you stay the night before going up to the gates of Heaven….the place would be like this place. Best nights sleep I have ever had on the road…hands down. I don’t often talk about a place I have stayed but this place was so different than the rest. The night we checked in, the Dad talked to us for 20 minutes or so as if we were acquaintances and the next morning the Daughter did the same. It left a major lasting impression on me. Believe me when I say if your gonna be in that area and need a place to lay your head….it is worth you checking them out…..and the (low) price will knock you out of your chair!

And another Update finishes up. Hope everyone has a good Labor Day Monday and your upcoming week is spectacular. Again this week please keep all of our woodworking brothers and sisters who are struggling or hurting in your prayers. Also be sure to check out our approved vendors and catch us at www.wilckenswoodworking.net and on facebook. Look for our ads in S.A.W. and Creative Woodworks & Crafts. We have several new things available right now along with ALL the old stuff. If we’ve had it…we still do. This week the Anniversary Clocks/Boxes are added. Don’t be a stranger….drop us a line to say hey….we love talking to ya. Send us pictures of what you have going so we can share those and if you’ve cut out the free Web Clock…send us pictures of that. I know several of you that have been working on it but we have received only a few pictures. Remember that the best one (voted by your peers) will receive a premium pattern. We added several new project pictures this week…so check them out. Also I plan on pulling out the pieces for the Shop Memorial Cabinet. If you are interested in being a part of that let me know. We received about half of the patterns we originally handed out. Look for more to come on this. Have a great finish to your weekend and a good week next week….and as always…

Until Next Time, Keep the Saw Dust Flyin’…..