Good Monday Morning Patriot Woodworkers! September 25th, 2017

[John Morris]

Good Monday Morning!

Good Monday Patriot Woodworkers! What did you get done over the weekend, and what have you planned for the week ahead! Inquiring minds want to know. Please tell us what's happening in your shops, your life, and any events going on with you. Thank you for being here folks!

     

New members

Please drop by and give the following new members a grand welcome: @rfbritt3, @BillyJack, @Larry Schweitzer,  Thanks for joining folks!

 

You may have missed

• "About Us". Check in to our About Us page and read a brief of who we are and why we are. See more at  http://thepatriotwoodworker.com/about_us/
• "Member Map". Plot your general location on our Member Map, let others know they have a woodworking buddy in their area. See more at http://thepatriotwoodworker.com/membermap/
• "Activity". Did you know you can create your own customized Activity Stream? Hover your cursor over "Activity" and select "My Activity Streams" and create your own customized stream, you can also RSS your stream to your home mail inbox.

 

The Patriot Woodwiki

It's not dead! We are still working on getting it live. There have been many challenges and hurdles with the open source software that makes a wiki, and we are working on it to get it up and live for you to contribute your knowledge within many subjects. For a sneak peek of the wiki, go to http://thepatriotwoodwiki.org/HomePage

Keep in mind it's not fully functional, you will more than likely run into empty pages, but you will see where we are headed!

     

What's It

Our September "What's It" will be cancelled due to MWTCA's issues with their own website. They are working feverishly to get their site back in full working order so we can extract some of their What's It images for your viewing pleasure.

We will resume our "What's It" for OCtober 1st. And there will be a wonderful grand prize for the member who accurately names the "What's It" through research and verifiable references.

     

Featured image of the week

Eggenburg ( Lower Austria ). Krahuletz-Museum: Neolithic adze.

By Wolfgang Sauber (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

[Ron Dudelston]

Good Morning, y'all!  September has vaporized just like August and the leaves will be falling in the Midwest sooner than I like to think.  My weekly shop time will be spent building a cradle for a client.  Both sides are finished and the ends are going together today.  I need to get it out of the shop to start four other projects that are in the queue.  Have a great week folks.

[John Morris]

1 minute ago, Ron Dudelston said:

September has vaporized just like August and the leaves will be falling in the Midwest sooner than I like to think. 

Boy it sure flew by, and thanks goodness! The heat was getting really old. We had a nice cool week last week, this week is supposed to be summer again, then back to cooling off. Little hiccups of summer will show up through mid October in these parts, then by end of October, cool sailing till next June!

I bet that cradle is going to look beautiful Ron!

[DAB]

Hey! You found my axe!

[Gene Howe]

Still doing rifle cases. Methinks my artistic (?) visions have overwhelmed my limited skill set. Oh well, it's all fun.

[Allen Worsham]

My woodworking for the past week and this week is to finish getting all the tree branches hauled to the dump. We have 4 pepper trees (which I hate) with 2 on the front slope and 2 on the back slope. The front slope trees were easy to deal with as they are smaller and pretty well groomed. The back slope trees......well.....they have a mind of their own and grow willy-nilly in different directions. They were about 30' tall and were a real pain in the bee-hind to deal with. After getting the lower branches trimmed so I could actually get to the trunks, there was no way that I could trim them up properly as they had overgrown so much and had big branches hanging over the neighbor's yard. So I decided to cut them all the way down and remove them completely. So I went to Harbor Freight and bought a electric chain saw that is on a long expandable pole. It was cheap and really worked good to get the branches up to 3"-4". But then I had to go to Home Depot and buy a 14" electric chain saw to deal with the large branches. Between those to chain saws I got everything cut down. I took a couple of days off to recover as my back was killing me, so today I will start loading up the truck to make a number of runs to the County Dump. One of these days I will actually get back to doing woodworking in my shop as I got a bunch of things that need to get done.

[Grandpadave52]

As for weekend...nada done...we experienced record breaking temperatures ~94^o plus the last three days with a couple more in the works...too hot for shop work...need to finish up some mowing...three volleyball matches on tap for the week plus a tourney next Saturday and the usual daily transportation services. There may be some garage activity after Wednesday with a cool down forecast on the way.

[Chips N Dust]

I had to work Saturday - a little side job that could not be done during the week. In the shop, I finished wiring all of the last circuits I installed into the box and closed up the wall above the box. I closed up the last section of ceiling on the 2nd half of the shop (I needed the access to get the exhaust fan in) and laid out for the locations of the new light fixtures. Also, a trip to HD to get the fixtures and paraphernalia for the fixtures. Hopefully, I will get the lights up this week since DEER SEASON starts on Saturday. Hunting may not be to good this weekend as it is supposed to warm up to the high 80's/low 90's.

[Larry Schweitzer]

Worked on making a form to bend some 3/8" polycarbonate on. Will heat form it using our 3x8' oven this week.

[Stick486]

2 hours ago, Larry Schweitzer said:

Worked on making a form to bend some 3/8" polycarbonate on. Will heat form it using our 3x8' oven this week.

 

too much heat will degrade and cloudy the polycarbonate..

bending too cold will craze and micro fracture the poly..

polycarbonate is nick sensitive..

keep in mind that polycarbonate is hydroscopic and must be predried before forming.. 3/8'' will take 15~20 minuets before you start your processes...

sharp angle bends are done w/ a heat strip..

most bends are done w/ a heat blankets on both sides....

larger forms are done in an oven and a male/female mold plus vacuum....

140°C is pretty hot for ploycarbonate... it will plasticize at a very thin threshold...

do not water or air cool...

edging is done w/ progressive sanding to extra fine wet/dry or finer and finished by fuming w/ MEC..

 

search ''shaping GE Lexan manuals''

Edited September 25, 2017 by Stick486

[Larry Schweitzer]

Yup, been there. Worked in a sign shop long time ago. We did quite a lot of Polycarbonate, tough stuff. I've got a 5x10 vacuum table attached to a 40hp Quincy pump (shared with the router.) Have made a male/female mold for this job. The stuff has a short working time. Good to have lots of vacuum flow. The cloudy comes from the moisture trapped in it. If you soak it @ about 200F for a couple of days you drive that out and it remains clear. You can see the vacuum table in the center of this image. (Red edge) There is a grid cut into the table top and the frame (black) lowers the urethane membrane over the work and is clamped to the table.

[Ron Dudelston]

Allen, your back yard looks naked now.

[Grandpadave52]

@Larry Schweitzer...WOW! What a shop.

[John Moody]

Well my weekend started last Tuesday evening with several men and ladies from our church coming over and we worked on cutting, planing and sanding the pieces of Poplar for the benches. This was a project to work with a few at risk kids and give them a chance to build something and take it home with them.

 

Tuesday Evening,

 

 

While a couple of us continued to rough cut some pieces, others started planing boards I had already cut before they got there.

 

 

 

They had quite an assembly line going before long.

 

 

Thursday

 

On Thursday, I finished up what wasn't done and drilled all of the Pocket Holes in all the pieces.

 

To make it easier to transport and to let each boy pick his project, I shrink wrapped them into a complete bench with the four pieces needed to build it.

 

 

Saturday

 

We met with the five young guys and before any of the assembly started, I gave a short devotion to them.

 

 

We then let them pick out their bench package and we divided up so that one man was working with each boy.

 

We let them do the marking of where the stretcher would go and shared with them why you need to learn math.

 

 

Most of these boys had never used a drill and they got so excited.

 

While we were working with them on building their own bench, our wives were making homemade pizza and cookies for them.

 

They seemed to really enjoy building the bench and was so excited when they found out the got to keep it and take it home.

 

 

I shared with the boys that the lumber for these came from a tree that was blown down in a storm and that we took it to a sawmill and had it cut into lumber. One of the boys said he though boards just came from Lowe's, he didn't know they came from trees!

 

And easy project but was very special t them.

 

 

When they were being taken back to their homes, one of them ask if we could help take it in his house so no one would get it.

 

Breaks you heart sometimes, but I was so thankful that I could be a part of this.

 

This week it is back to working on other projects in the shop and starting to ramp up for Christmas, yes I said it Christmas! Wow it is hard to believe it is just around the corner.

 

[Grandpadave52]

@John Moody...AWESOME!!! Blessings to all of you for sharing & caring, planting a seed and taking time to make a difference.

 

Making a field trip to the sawmill might be a fun learning experience too for these little guys especially with a stop at the ice cream shop afterwards.

[Chips N Dust]

@John Moody - AWESOME project. Hopefully that project will help these kids, in many ways.

[John Moody]

9 hours ago, Grandpadave52 said:

 

 

Making a field trip to the sawmill might be a fun learning experience too for these little guys especially with a stop at the ice cream shop afterwards.

 

I like your thinking @Grandpadave52 Especially the ice cream part.