Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

One of the things that I have enjoyed about SEMIWW is the varied stages of woodworking evolution of the different members.  I see others going through the same stages and interests that I have been through.  First I was smitten by the bug to make something of wood.  It quickly dawned on me that I needed to acquire tools.  I chose the handtool path because it met many of my needs, lack of shop space, quiet, not too dusty, and cheap.  After years and years of this stage, reams of sandpaper and gallons of WD-40 and time spent cleaning up rusty tools, I started doing what I had originally wanted to do, build some stuff.  

 Of course this stage requires research and practice.  First you have to learn about joinery, design and techniques then you have to practice.  Shop projects that no one else will see and small items that can be easily burned are good for this stage.  I would also recommend taking classes, besides the learning, you meet other woodworkers and get to share experiences, gloats and tall tales.  I have usually made friends with a few of the other students, found some to be really annoying, there is always someone that you can feel superior to and at least one that is so skillful that they are really intimidating.  It’s also a great way to meet the celebrity woodworkers that write books,  articles for magazines and are cited as experts on the net.  

So lastly, you reach the stage where you are fairly competent, at least the projects look similar to what you had in mind, and you have learned to hide or recover from your mistakes.  This is where I find myself and now I have two new problems.  First, I have way to many tools filling up the shop, and second what do you do with all of the stuff that you make.  My house is only so big and if I kept everything I make, my house would look like my shop.  This is where family and friends come in, you can give most of the things you make away.  I see this as having several benefits, you don’t have to look at your mistakes, everyone has different tastes so you can research many different type and styles of furniture, schedules are open ended, and if there are problems down the road you can always say, “Hey, what did you expect, it was free.”

I suppose that was the long way around to my point.  SEMIWW is going through a little upheaval at the moment, but let’s stick with it.  Thanks to a big effort by our computer savvy members, the website is working well.  The new board is slaving away on a back channel to improve meeting content and bring the fun back into our interactions.  The club is evolving and we all have to let our leaders know what interests each of us and lastly we all need to contribute our efforts to strengthen the SEMIWW.  I have enjoyed being associated with everyone in the group and I really would like to see it continue.  Woodworking is inherently a solitary activity and for me SEMIWW is an outlet that allows me to socialize with others that share the same interests and to gain and share knowledge about woodworking.

I’ve been going back and listening to old podcasts from Woodtalk Online, which is a great podcast by the way, and I took a little issue when they were talking about the future demise of the woodworking group. In their opinions, with the rise of the internet and sites such as our forum, sawmill creek, etc, information you used to go get from a group is now easily available online.

While our group isn’t perfect and lately we’ve had some issues, one thing was very clear from the meeting we had last night. Heck, we enjoy getting together. We enjoy checking out each other’s shops, tools, and projects. I don’t think anyone there thought of the forum as the answer for the group. Oh we love it and use it. It keeps us connected the rest of the month, but really, no  one wants to get away from meeting together.

It was the group meeting format that drew me into this woodworking hobby. I was looking for something to do that didn’t involve a computer all the time since that’s my day job, and found a group of guys who enjoy this very hands on, get your hands dirty, hobby. If it wasn’t for the group and the meetings that I drive out more than an hour for, I don’t know that I’d be sitting with a garage full of tools and a table in my hallway.

I’ve been reminiscing lately… when I stumbled across a picture of a guitar posted for sale. My youth came flooding back as I looked over this ad, downloaded the pic and made a call across the country to gain my youth back… to no avail. It was sold.

That day started a frenzy. I had to have that guitar. What guitar, you ask? I’ll tell you.

It was a cool fall day. My new friend and his very cool mom made a trip to purchase him a new guitar. I remember the day as if it was yesterday… although nearly 27 years had passed. I was in the market… mainly because I wanted to be as cool as this new friend… who got all the chicks.

I found a guitar there that was way out of my price range… which, by the way, was $0. It was the brand new Fender Bullet. It was hot off the presses and a beautiful combination of a  svelte 7/8 Strat body and the slim, yet bluesy Telecaster neck. These early models left over late ’70’s telecaster necks… I was told. The thing was gorgeous and a mere $200 brand new. It may as well been $2,000,000… because I hadn’t procured work as of yet. They discontinued that guitar the following year… but my love never wained.

 So, here I am… some 26 years later and in a much different finacial position. I stumble across the memory of this guitar and after a somewhat frantic search, I find a perfect specimen, and jump on it immediately. And here she is… 1982 Fender Bulletin near mint condition:

Justin from the group hooked me up with a great deal. I’ve got an upgraded air cleaner on the way. As I work to put up a ceiling in the shop I keep thinking, “Man, I can’t wait for that air cleaner”. I currently have a hand-me-down Delta AP100 in the shop which works ok. It’s supposed to push some 400cfm and definitely puts out some noise. The new one is this Steel City single speed model. I couldn’t find the db numbers on the Delta so I can’t tell about the noise difference, but the cfm is going to be about double. It’s supposed to be on its way from PA and here around Easter. So I see dust around the garage ( it is an active garage after all) and I can’t help but hope this new toy I’m patiently waiting for will help solve it.

Now I need to start looking into how I can rig up something so that it runs for an hour every time the garage door is closed.

Oh, how I miss my truck! The lease on my F150 was up last summer, and in a moment of weakness I leased a Ford Edge instead of another truck. Oh, how I miss my truck!

Yeah, the Edge is awesome, and it gets relatively fantastic gas mileage for my 50 mile daily commute, but you just can't haul stuff the way I used to in my truck. Plywood? - nope. A new major shop tool? - probably not. A load of mulch? - no way. Two kiddies and a wife? - yessiree. I suppose my priorities have truly changed over the last few years. More family (and more work); less woodworking.

So I'm in the middle of a big desk/hutch project for Sherri, and I've gone as far as I can go without buying another sheet of plywood. Instead of jumping in the F150 and grabbing a nice sheet without thinking twice I now have to plan well in advance to either borrow someone's truck, "evaluate" one from work for a night, or beg and plead for someone to bring me one on their next plywood run. I could ask someone at the Borg to break down a sheet so that it fits in my truck, but then I'd be buying el-crapola ply and trusting one of their oh-so-helpful employees to cut it properly. Nah, I'll wait to get a decent full sheet home somehow, someway. It just might take a while, and in the meantime my wife won't have her desk anytime soon.

Oh how I miss my truck!

We’ve got a bunch of great guys in Michigan doing a bunch of really cool woodworking things. I’ve been hanging around some of them for the last year as part of the SEMIWW group.

The more I’ve been messing with this new hobby the more I’ve been wanting to setup a blog for the things I am doing. I figure maybe someone else out there might find it some light reading or it might also help someone else with their own stuff.

Toward this end I’ve setup this blog on the SEMIWW website. I’m secretely hoping to get more guys in the group to blog the every day stuff they run across and maybe even post about their projects as they progress. All too often you see the final picture, without any decent understanding of what it took to get there. If one blogs along the way, a lot more of that can come out.

So here’s my start. I’m working on putting up the ceiling in my garage so I can insulate the last space…above. I’m doing it in a different way. I’m not just putting up drywall, I’m trying to do it while keeping the joists exposed. I’ll try to post some pictures as I figure out exactly how it’s going to work.

Here is a test to see how well this works with multiple posters to the system. I mean, I really would love to see a bunch of us posting blog entries on tips/tricks/events/projects and such. This thing allows the uploading of images, linking to the wiki and posts on various forums, and just commenting on woodworking in general.

Make sure to put your post in the correct category on the right or create your own new category. You can also use tags to help categorize the entries. I’m tagging this one as testing and instructional.

Test post, now isnt this all cool?

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

As often happens, an innocent tool upgrade has had far-reaching repurcussions in the shop. Found a deal on a new air compressor (sale price + coupon + gift cards = oh yeah), and that created the need for a new 220V electrical line to it's new location in the garage. My shop circuits were fed from my main house panel, and that's sub-optimal in a few ways. It's a long run for wire from the panel to the shop, the breaker slots are almost full (although I could always retrofit tandems), and that doesn't easily permit cutting off power to the shop to protect curious little kiddies.

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and install a new subpanel that feeds the shop. The subpanel cures all the ills above, but it's not a trivial task and with today's copper prices it's not cheap. So we bought a panel, #6 feeder cable, and a few odds and ends and took the time to rewire all the power to the shop. All is now done, and I'm glad I spent the money and time. I've got new capacity for growth (not sure why I'll need that though...), but the best part is with the flip of one switch I can cut power to the entire shop. Makes me feel much safer now that the rugrats can't go accidentally pressing pretty green switches on daddies big shop tools.