Lately I have been working on getting my workshop organized and functional. This has involved spending my hard earned money on toys, er, tools. I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the right job, and along with that goes the philosophy of buying the best tool available for the job. Buying low quality stuff just creates headaches and is a waste of time and resources IMHO. Here is a list of photos of the workshop

Would you like to take a walking tour of the shop are grounds? Well, tag along. Click here and this link will take you to a document that gives a walking tour of the grounds and the shop with blow by blow descriptions of the goodies. It will also give you an idea of where you might want to come back to on your own when you visit the master directory of woodworking photos.

Blade Guard: A while ago I posted on RWW my method for creating an overarm guard that is similar to the Biesemeyer overarm guard. If you follow this link you can get set of rough plans that I used to make the guard. Keep in mind these dimensions are rough and as such you might need to double or triple check them. I also have some semi-bad photos of the guard in my Woodworking directory (I am not good with the digital camera yet). I will try to get some clearer pictures real soon. The guard works really well and with the 2.5" diameter dust collection hose there is virtually no sawdust emitted from my Unisaw. If you look at some of the other photos in the Woodworking directory you will also see some pictures of the arm guard. Many of these photos are better than the ones dedicated to the arm guard. Here is the list of all photos related to woodworking that is workshop based. I have some photos that are kinda woodworking in that they are related to the deck that I put on our house.

El-Slabito (my workbench project): I am in the process of building a cabinetmaker's workbench. I have a large supply of maple as shown in my garage storage rack, (maple is the third pile up from the bottom), and I had a large supply of #2 common cherry (not shown). Keith, please note the nice big honking 8/4" cherry slabs on the top of the garage storage rack. Neener, neener. During the course of building the bench slab for the top of the bench I decided I wanted to make the slab out of the poorer quality cherry. The thickness of the slab (5") could easily hide the defects in the cherry boards. So, I proceeded to make El-Slabito, a 5" thick, 25" wide, ~70" long hunk of laminated cherry boards. Here is a photo of El-Slabito sitting on top of its 1/2 finished stand. Soon I will finish the stand by making some drawers to fit into the stand. 

Our Deck: Several years ago I embarked on a retaining wall/deck project for our house. The stone retaining walls are made out of Chilten stone and they were placed by a professional landscaper. I know, I whimped out, but we ended up using over 23 tons of stone. My back could not take that kind of abuse. We had four landscape laborers work for a total of six days, and they worked about 12 hours per day. If I had done the job alone……well you do the math. The deck is curved because I determined that making a curve was a lot easier than making an octagon type shape. It was a lot easier for me to make a nice sweeping bend than it was to work out all the required funky angles. The railing's horizontal members (2x4s) were made out of strips of cedar 1/4" thick. They were glued up into the proper shape by using the frame of the deck as a clamping mold. I used a Urethane waterproof glue that has held up for 3 Minnesota winters. The horizontal 2x4 railing pieces are mortised into the vertical 4x4 posts so that no nails are required. The horizontal 2x4s are free to "float". With no nails needed there are no cracks to open up when the cedar dries out between rainstorms. The deck treatment I use is X100. It is available at a number of paint stores and it kinda pricey, but worth it, IMHO. The deck and railing have one coat of "Cedar Tone Gold" on it, and each year I add another coat of clear X100. The stuff works very well, and I highly recommend it I have no financial ties to the company.

Thanks to Geocities for having a way to post web pages.