I found this really cool poster when we were Christmas shopping last December and thought it would be great for my guitar playing son. Needless to say, I hid the poster in the basement and found it in January, oh well!
I have a quite a stack of ruff sawn cherry in the barn and thought it was actually time to make some sawdust! I planed down enough boards to make a couple frames and build a stand for our new TV. Friend of ours purchased some furniture at Artisan Hardwoods; they have a really nice shaped series of tables called Waterfall, but were a tab bit pricey for me! And besides, why would I buy anything out of wood, when I can build it! I plan to model our TV stand after this design, just a little bit narrower, more like a short console table.
The most interesting part of this project was the price of glass, it was outrageous. You can not even buy “cheap” Plexiglas anymore, it is even more expensive than real glass. No wonder nice picture frames are so expensive! Believe it or not, I had quotes from $35 to over $150. As you can see by the wonderful reflection in the picture, I did not spring for the anti-glare glass, I just could not justify spending $70 on a $10 poster; even if the frame did turn out pretty nice, IMHO.
Sorry for the random, non-technology posts, but I do have hobbies other than software development! So don’t give up on me, I have such a backlog of techo-drafts in the hopper… I have read so many interesting articles in the last couple of months, I just lost a little bit of “writing” incentive over the holidays…
Maybe a topic for another post, but I was given a “smartphone” for my birthday last December and I actually have not tuned on my home computer since then… no need, what so ever. I can do everything I need to, on my phone; it was actually a pretty weird realization… The only thing I gave up was my ability to “blog”, hence the lack of postings! I did install the free WordPress application on my Droid, but I like to type too much!
My parents came for a visit this Thanksgiving and I was able to spend some time in the shop with my dad. I installed a cyclone dust collector last Spring, and realized that this thing really sucked… I installed the dust collector on the outside of my shop, and when it runs, it basically creates a vacuum inside my shop. The amount of air being removed from room is amazing, you can really notice it when you try to shut the door. This was not a big deal during the summer months (other than it might not have been running at peak efficiency), but now that it is cold outside, it was sucking all of my heat out with the dust! We came up with this idea to box in the dust collector filter, and push the clean (warm) air back into my shop. We built a 66″x 24×24 frame out of split 2x4s and covered it with drywall. I still want to make a frame around the front panel, so I can take it off easier. I need to (should) clean the filter out every so often, to keep the suction at a maximum level. We then cut a 14×14 inch hole in the back of the box, which when went through to my shop. Inside the shop, we covered the hole with a furnace return grill; it looks pretty cool. We did not make any real dust after putting it together, but the initial tests seems promising. The cyclone sounds a little different when it running, but not that much louder. It really equalized the pressure in the room, as the doors are much easier to close now. Hopefully, the motor is not working as hard and actually pulling more air through the duct work.
We picked a custom snowboard at a garage sale this spring for Nicholas. The people owned a custom printing shop and did the artwork
on the board. My dad and I made a cool snowboard holder so we could use the snowboard as “art” in his room. Hopefully, we will be able to go back out west and go skiing in the next year or so… before the boys forget how to snowboard!
