Wow it is hard to imagine that we are bringing August to an end and it won't be long till we move into the fall weather. I love those cool morning and warm days of fall. Makes me want to get out and spend some time in the shop, like I don't spend any time there anyway.

I finished up the six edge grain cutting boards and got the final glue up done for five end grain cutting boards. We have several sanding projects that need finishing this weekend and get as much material made as we can as we have four shows coming up during the month of October.

So what about the rest of you, what is on your agenda this weekend? We here at TPW love to see your projects and the progress you are makiing.

So post those projects and projects.

 

We're heading into the festival season here in the midwest and that means lots of sales and auctions.  This weekend I'll be hitting a few sales and watching a bit of football.  Life of retirement is OK John.

Speaking of summer coming to end, I just realized it's time to start thinking about making Christmas gifts. Usually, I try to make mostly the same thing for everyone- with a couple of exceptions. This year, maybe not- I saw some really nice turned coffee scoops made from two types of wood. I was also thinking of making some shallow bowls from a piece of the thick walnut left over from the humidor project. Mimi wants me to make a few more of the "zig-zag" trays, too.

I might get restarted on my 1930's Delta combo setup, now that I've got the makings of a movable bench for it.

Let's see how many machines I can power from one motor. 

Working on getting some things cleaned up around the house. After the summer trips, I finally got some long over due weeding done as well as trying to get some of the front lawn looking a bit more civilized as we deal with the "California Drought" and on mandatory water rationing for exterior usage. We can only run our sprinklers 3 days per week for a maximum of 10 minutes per station, so pretty much every one has some degree of brown lawns as we deal with our daily temps from the mid 80's to low 100's. I got my garage cleaned up (for the most part) so I can start working on some projects. I just have to clear off my main workbench as all the odds & ends that I need to keep that were on the other workbenches have to be put in their appropriate places. 

On Wednesday afternoon I came down stairs and heard the AC unit running outside and I heard a clanging sound out of it which is not a good thing. That clanging sound was the final death sounds of the compressor, so I called a friend from church who runs an AC shop and he came by and confirmed my diagnosis that the compressor was dead. So now we have to replace the compressor which will be $1,700 for parts and labor. The biggest issue is that ours is an older unit (2000-2001) and runs R22 Refrigerant which had been banned by the State of California a few years back for residential use as they are phasing it out completely to "protect the environment". So now R22 can only be used in commercial uses and they are working at getting it banned all together. So if I had to replace the whole unit to meet with the California laws, I would have to replace both the exterior unit and the interior unit in the attic as well as replace all the lines from the exterior to the interior units. So that would be about $7,000 which is not a good thing for me. So it won't be replaced until Monday and we have to deal with a warm house. I have 3 box fans that I use in the garage for when I do spray finish for ventilation and they were covered in dust. So I removed the front and back grills from the fans and hosed them off as well as cleaning out the crud on the inside of the fan and the blades so that we could use them in the house. The downstairs stays pretty cool in the mid 80's but the upstairs is much warmer so having the extra fans to blow on us while we sleep makes things easier.  

Oh Well, 

I guess it's not going to happen today, the weather just doesn't want to cooperate.