working the bench

So we went to HD last week for the monthly project, which was for a Mother's Day plant holder and plant, but as I posted before, we didn't stay to paint it. When we got home I didn't like the idea of Sam painting at the dining table, so I started in on a workbench for Sam to be able to do projects like this on.

It only took 3/4 of a sheet of 5/8th plywood and about four 2x4s I ripped in half. I got all the lumber and plywood cut for the the back and the work surface and the two-by-two's for the frames done on Thursday and got it all put together last night. Then this morning I had to make a trip to HD to get hinges for the legs and fold down worktable. It only took about an hour to get the hinges mounted after I had lunch.

The almost finished product:

I just need to:

1. do some round over router work on all the edges so they aren't likely to produce splinters
2. put some stops in for the legs
3. put levelers on the bottom of the legs
4. put pegboard on the back
5. and maybe change the piano hinge for the top so it folds up instead of down over the legs.

It is pretty sturdy. I stood on it and it didn't even creak. I put the frames (back, work surface, and legs) together with pocket screws and the plywood work surface is screwed from underneath with them so that there are no visible fasteners.

It is totally collapsible; the legs fold in and the table down, for now; all to about 4.5 inches thick. I may end up cutting some hand holds in the top of the back before I put the peg board on so it is easier to carry. It is sturdy and weighs probably close to 40-50 pounds. It should be a nice place for me to have Sam work on things when I am working on my projects in the garage.

legs half folded in

totally collapsed

Progress on the garden

So, Sam and I got home tonight about 5 and Aimee welcomed us home.  The drive was wet and crazy, with several people driving almost dangerous, cutting me off once and a lot of others just being stupid. I won't go into the details cuz I could go on and on... you already know if you have been reading my blog.

Anywho... it was clear out when we got done with dinner, so I went out to check the garden and did some watering on the second bed that was under the canopy I have up to shelter the third bed until I got it together. Then I noticed that Aimee hadn't put the new fertilizer I got Wednesday on the tomatoes and other veggies, so I went about putting the fertilizer around all the plants and found a couple piles of cat waste in the second bed. Yuck. I don't want that in my garden.  I took it and all the dirt around it out, but I need to find a way to keep it from happening again. I am hoping with the dirt being wet from watering it won't be as desirable for a litter box.

Aimee offered to get Sam to bed so I started in on the third bed and started drilling the pocket holes for connecting the sections together. After trying to put the short section in the second row, I found I made it an inch too wide, so I put it on top and unscrewed one side to screw it back in at the right width; with the ends poking out the one side, figuring that I would cut them later.

The sections screwed together quickly after the pocket holes were drilled and I then found the plastic I cut when I put in the first bed two years ago, amazingly, and got it stapled to the top of the bed box. The landscape fabric took a couple staples to keep it in place and then I started moving the sifted dirt I did last fall and started filling the bed, mixing in some bagged garden soil as I went. After I got the bed about half fun I put in the soil conditioner bag and mixed it in so help keep the "native" soil a little more help to not get sticky like in the other beds.

I put the rest of the pile in the bed, which wasn't much and I don't have enough.  I still have two more bags of garden soil and one more of the conditioner soil to add to the box but I am going to need more sifted dirt; guess what I get to do tomorrow. At least I should be able to sift it right into the garden bed, which will save me from double digging it, or actually triple digging it since it is already moved at least once.

Oh and I found a nice friend under the cover I had on the sifted dirt pile. He was cold and pretty sluggish; I was kinda sorry I had to throw him over the fence. ( I really don't like his kind in reality and was glad he wasn't snapping at me like they usually do when I discover them.)

Longest day

Today started with getting up at 7:30 wondering where Aimee was; she had evidently opted to sleep on the couch in light of my rampant snoring when she came to bed. That got me up and going since my mind wouldn't calm back down, even though I would have normally crawled back in bed for awhile.

I started the projects for the day by getting the planer running and planing the boards for the garden bed. I had to cut down the 14 foot boards from the deck in two: 8 and a half feet and 5 and a half feet boards. This allows me to have room for the gouge out at the end of the board as it leaves the first roller and the blades dig in a little more; allowing me to get the 8 foot and 40 inch boards I need for the raised bed.

The boards planed really easy once I had them cut to length, with the exception of a couple I had to back up the depth a little bit due to some cupping that wouldn't let them feed through at the depth I had set. I re-ran these boards again at the same depth as the others, keeping track of how far back I turned the depth knob.

The melamine board I was using as an extension table in the planer, with the melamine skin worn off from planing the deck boards (please pardon my phone, it sometimes has issues corrupting pictures).

Once those were done, I went to HF to get the 12" Compound Sliding Miter Saw I have been wanting to get; I had a coupon for $119 for a saw that retails at $199 and usually never on sale for less than $149. I am pretty happy with it, with the minor exception of the saw's table not being level with the center portion of the saw that swivels with the angled cut.  I even didn't mind the tuning I had to do to get the blade square to the fence and table. oh and there was a slight adjustment i had to do with the extension arm to get it to be level with the main part of the saw table involving a hammer and a block of wood, those arms are surprisingly tough to bend. 

With the saw put together and "tuned", I turned my attention to lunch and then to preparing the garden for the last raised bed. I had to relocate the wood chips I had spread out over the ground to keep it from being so muddy. The chips moved and the landscape fabric pulled back, I started measuring where I needed to dig out for the gravel for drainage.  It was going to be tight and pretty close to the fence, so I fudged it a little ways toward the other beds and marked 6 inches wider all around for ample drainage area. I got it dug down about 4 inches and to make the area drain that much more due to the muck, I borrowed my neighbor's post hole digger and dug six holes down to the sandy soil that is below the clay surface soil.  Sam was a great help during all the digging, taking shifts to help put a shovel full of dirt in the wheelbarrow or dig out the edge of my hole. 

I only had a small amount of gravel left from the dry wells, but it was just enough to fill in the 6 holes.  I will have to go get more or steal from my driveway extension in the front. That will have to wait till tomorrow since it was getting to be dinner time and we cleaned up, ordered pizza and came inside to eat. After sitting here in my chair for a couple hours now, I can really feel that I worked hard digging in really sticky soil that weighed a ton, and the post hole digger really worked a lot of muscles that haven't been worked in a while. Translation... I hurt; wrists and hands being the worst, but my quads are a close third. I don't really understand why my quads got such a workout, but it was a day of about 8 wheelbarrows full of heavy dirt that I dumped in the front and one of gravel that got dumped in the holes. 

After the first wheelbarrow of dirt from today, the dark dirt on the ever growing pile.  

Halfway? through digging out for the gravel. 

After I was finished digging.

The picture of where the holes were roughly located.

and without the stamps so you can actually see the gravel filled in holes 

Sam and Aimee planting Marigolds in the garden beds; they are suppose to have pest repellent properties, so we thought we would try it out. (I like his nonchalant pose.)

Aimee finishing up the last of the flower beds against the back fence. She has been doing a great job weeding out the beds and making it look fresh for spring. Now to get landscape fabric down, Preen weed preventer, and some bark down to keep the weeds at bay.

Plane great separator

I spent last night trying to clear off my work bench and ended up putting up another section of peg board above my bench after taking my One+ charger and drill holder off the wall there and hanging my One+ multi-charger on the end of the cabinets, out of the way but within reach.

The bench got cleared but I know now that it was there cuz i didn't know where to put it; it was stuff that didn't have a home yet. Still looking for that home for most of it still. It is sitting on a make-shift bench, plywood on saw horses, behind where I was taking the picture from.

Then tonight I finished putting together the dust hood for the planer since the order with the dust ports for it finally came yesterday. I wanted to build a longer support table for it too, so I went to HD to get a melamine shelf to use and ended up getting a garbage can for the chip separator ports that came also; it will collect the chips from the planer so they don't clog the dust collector. I tried it out without the separator and it lost suction after a short time since the planer chips would not pass through the screen protecting the motor blades.

The garbage can should probably have been bigger, but I bought the cheapest one, 20 gallons. The ports went in really easy since I was able to cut the holes for then in the lid with a utility knife. With the smaller can, there are some chips that get through to the collector, but it does separate most of it out.

The table went together pretty easy too, with the hardest part figuring out what the right height to make the supports for it, the legs, so that it was level with the planer. I used my new Kreg jig to put pocket holes in the legs to secure them to the melamine board. I probably should have bought a sheet of melamine instead of buying a shelf; the skin on the shelf is quite thin and has come off with just the couple boards through it. I may have to veneer it with formica or something a little more durable.

I should be able to start planing the boards for the last raised garden bed this weekend. Hopefully I can get it planed and built with enough time to dig out the area where it will go and get out installed. We really need to get the last of the seedlings in the ground.
All in all it was a good project night.

PTO - Day 5

I stayed up way to late last night; almost 3am again. I can't do that more than a couple nights or I sleep in until 11am like I did this morning. I hate sleeping in like that since I feel I am loosing half a day, but it is good I am on PTO since it doesn't matter. I just could not pull myself out of bed whatever I tried... 7am, "I should get up with Aimee... oh, she is already up, when did she get out of bed?"... 9am, "I should get up", then fell asleep mid thought; 10am, "I really should get...", next thing I knew it was 11:30 and I actually got up.

It took a little bit to get going today, and then I screwed up one of the grooves for the i-beam and had to wait for Aimee to get home tonight to get help ripping another piece of plywood. Once I got that piece cut I put it all together and got the i-beams on the saw horse workbenches and the lumber stacked on it with stickers in between. It should dry nice and straight now. Hopefully the couple days on the floor didn't hurt it too much.

You can see the i-beams I made at the bottom of the stack, with a piece of 1/2 inch plywood on it to just keep it together. I ended up putting stickers on top of the plywood to allow for air to get to them and probably should have used a smaller sticker than I did, but they should work fine. I put the rest of the plywood and a sheet of particle board on top to add some weight to keep them straight as they dried and it also keeps the sheets off the floor; out of the way. I now have half the garage to work in.

Now I have room to start on the lumber cart so when this is all nice and dry, I will have a place to stack it out of the way. And now I am going to bed so I don't end up sleeping away tomorrow. Aimee has the day off also, so we need to get up and get some stuff done.

PTO - Day 4

I looked around for the plans for the i-beams and only found a reference to an article the guy from the Popular Woodworking blog had written for Woodworking magazine but didn't give any dimentions or how to make the i-beams and set of boxes he used for that support system.


I needed to goto Home Depot for some of the hardware I forgot yesterday, so Aimee went with me and we ended up looking at and getting some red cement paving stone for putting next to the deck so it is easier to mow. They weigh about 39 pound a piece and it loaded down the car pretty good. You can tell from the picture it is almost bottomed out. There is usually about an inch or space above the tire when it is unloaded.


I figured I would just make the i-beams 6 inches and had Aimee help me with ripping the sheet of plywood into 6 inch strips. That went really quickly with her help and I set out to setup the dado blade to cut the groove into the two side pieces.

That afternoon I ended up finding the article about the support system on the Woodworking magazine website and decided to buy the digital copy of the issue it was in so I would have the actual plans. My size ended up being almost the same size as the plans he had worked from, his being 4 3/4" compared to my 6". The cool thing about these is that you can use them for supporting your work, for cutting plywood by setting them on their sides and cutting through the ends of the i-beam as you cut the sheet of plywood, and I am sure there are many other uses. The set of boxes that were also included in the plans had three different dimensions so you could use them low for assembly of projects, just below workbench height for planing and stuff that requires you to exert some pressure on the piece, or at workbench height for normal woodworking. You just lay the boxes on a different side to get the three heights. I am still working on getting the i-beams glued up since I ran out of glue tonight and stores are closed until tomorrow.