You were warned! The first thread where I started this project is here
Because it was asked for! Note: I hosted these pictures on my defunct website and saved them as jpg and not png so the quality isn't the best but I tried to keep the file sizes down and limited to 1000px. Native pic size is 4032x3024 so it took me a whole day to process them and put this together. I wrote most of this last night and didn't proofread it before posting. I'm hoping for the longest and most obnoxious thread evar award!
OH CRAP - No warning when previewing but error posting with more than 10 pics so I am going to have to break this into multiple posts.
Where to start catching up?
Last update ended with our intrepid wannabe woodworker getting setup with a jointer and discovering indeed, some sort of dust collection was going to be mandatory.
Enter The Dustopper – a cyclonic dust separator that attaches to a bucket powered by a shop vac that was connected to my ex-husband’s machine lathe in the kitchen that I snagged for my own use. The jointer makes a nice cole slaw and practically nothing ends up in the shop vac. It smells delightful!
I had only used a jointer once before 100 years ago but did not realize how physically hard it was going to be especially trying to joint 8’ 2x4s and 2x6s. I had to pick up a couple roller stands to even do long boards but it was a good investment because I’ve needed them for other things more than I imagined.
Trying to force 8 foot long crappy Home Depot lumber flat against the jointer table absolutely killed my noodley old lady arms. With one side milled flat and one edge milled square, I really wasn’t looking forward to trying to flatten the other side. It was exhausting.
I knew I needed a planer but balked at the $780 for a Dewalt so I spent days researching alternatives and watching videos and settled on something closer to $400 with stellar reviews a Wen (with 13” w/ spiral cutterhead) I’ve always wanted a planer and I’m not getting any younger and was fortunately in a position to act so I clicked the button and had it the next day with free delivery. I was lucky to already have an isolated 20-amp circuit available but had to buy a quality $30 14ga extension cord.
But damn, the planer weighs 80 pounds and getting it unboxed and on a table liked to kill me. Not having the luxury of an indoor working space, the ability to move things to a secure location in case of weather was paramount so I scrounged around through my redneck surroundings and found a rusty old metal cart with busted wheels.
It was quite the effort sanding it down, mounting new wheels, painting it and cutting a piece or ¾” plywood, then getting the mounting holes marked and drilled (I had to lift the damn planer again twice) but it came out great and is super functional. With a couple laminate flooring planks on a steel table that weighs about 900 pounds (The 900 Pound Bench™), the outfeed lines up perfectly.
This is absolutely fun to use and my favorite thing so far. With boards milled flat on one side, running them through the planer makes the other side flat and parallel then running them through on their one flat edge makes the other edge perfect. Between the jointer and the planer, I used up five 55 gallon black trash bags for shavings with about as much as they could hold without bursting. The Dustopper thing works great but the bucket requires emptying more often than I would like.
After 3 bags of planer/jointer shavings, I checked the inside of the crusty old Rigid shop vac and found this much. The Dustopper really surprised me at its effectiveness. It’s kind of a pain to empty it all the time and I have to move the hose to each machine as needed but I can only imagine the mess I would have made without it.
I milled (jointed & planed) eight 2x6s and six 2x4s. It took me a long time because I could only do a few at a time due to being old and puny then it came time to cut everything to length which presented the next problem.
I had made an oversize cross-cut sled for my old cheapo table saw I thought would help but it didn’t. Eight foot boards were just too long and unwieldy even with trying to use the roller stands or that metal bench for support. I probably could have jigged something up and just used a circular saw or gasp, even a hand saw but I wanted square and perfect cuts and got frustrated for a while thinking I was out of my mind to try and build something so big.
With hours and hours watching YouTube woodworking videos, the answer was clear, I needed a miter saw. I used to have an ancient Sears radial arm saw but I donated it to Goodwill when I moved because it sucked and was limited in what it could do. With more time spent researching options for the features I wanted and the price, I again went with a WEN 12” dual bevel sliding compound miter saw. Couldn’t see spending $550 to $850 for the name brands just to get my foot in the door and the WEN was just the ticket for a hobbiest. I also got an 80 tooth blade for finer cuts but haven’t used it yet.
Of course, it had to weigh 55 pounds and of course I needed some sort of a mobile base for it so I got busy making one. The result was functional but the design is unfinished. I plan to make fold up extension wings on either side for supporting long boards and I was going to put some drawers in it until I got a new router table (used to have one of these too but sold it about 15 years ago to buy drugs) that fits neatly underneath. Sorta killed two birds with one stone there and moving the router table off to a bench when I want to use it isn’t that hard. For those 8 footers, I still needed to use those handy roller stands and I am so glad I bought them
It is super cool to make a bunch of cuts and have them come out perfect
I finally got started on building things. The four 86” long legs consist of a 2x6 connected to a 2x4 for each leg. My idea was to have the legs be smooth and free of fasteners and I thought about dowels but decided to go with sunken screws and plugs. This part was pretty fun.
I had purchased an oddball set of countersinks, hole and plug cutters that worked super perfect. I marked things out in the 2x6s, drilled a pilot hole then a hole for the plug. Then I cut the plugs from a piece of cutoff scrap and was tickled how well they came out and how fun it was popping them out.
Then things were glued up, clamped and the screws tightened. Then I glued in the plugs I had cut.
After sanding, where the plugged screws are, nothing is visible. I didn’t bother to line up the grain because everything was being painted but was really happy how this came out.
I used my palm /trim router to put a nice round over on all the corners. Then on the inside of each leg, I added 2x4 stops that will serve as under supports for the three layers and assist in keeping the layers level. Next came my adventure in priming.
It has taken me forever to get things done because I keep stopping to research stuff and this time it was what primer to use. I had always used something like Kilz but wanted to make sure what variety because I wanted something that would seal any knots and prevent any sap leaking through this crappy lumber and ruining my paint job.
I found a product all the pros were raving about, Zinsser B-I-N, a shellac based primer that covers and seals anything. It dries to the touch in 15 minutes and can be top coated after 45 minutes and everyone was raving about its capabilities but it cost an absolutely ridiculous $75 a gallon but I decided YOLO, right? It indeed is special but a little tricky to work with as it dries so fast. I applied it with a short nap roller and ended up with more texture than I wanted which frustrated me and I took a couple days off to sulk but then I sanded it and went over it with a foam roller and it turned our really nice.
-continued next post
Because it was asked for! Note: I hosted these pictures on my defunct website and saved them as jpg and not png so the quality isn't the best but I tried to keep the file sizes down and limited to 1000px. Native pic size is 4032x3024 so it took me a whole day to process them and put this together. I wrote most of this last night and didn't proofread it before posting. I'm hoping for the longest and most obnoxious thread evar award!
OH CRAP - No warning when previewing but error posting with more than 10 pics so I am going to have to break this into multiple posts.
Where to start catching up?
Last update ended with our intrepid wannabe woodworker getting setup with a jointer and discovering indeed, some sort of dust collection was going to be mandatory.
Enter The Dustopper – a cyclonic dust separator that attaches to a bucket powered by a shop vac that was connected to my ex-husband’s machine lathe in the kitchen that I snagged for my own use. The jointer makes a nice cole slaw and practically nothing ends up in the shop vac. It smells delightful!
I had only used a jointer once before 100 years ago but did not realize how physically hard it was going to be especially trying to joint 8’ 2x4s and 2x6s. I had to pick up a couple roller stands to even do long boards but it was a good investment because I’ve needed them for other things more than I imagined.
Trying to force 8 foot long crappy Home Depot lumber flat against the jointer table absolutely killed my noodley old lady arms. With one side milled flat and one edge milled square, I really wasn’t looking forward to trying to flatten the other side. It was exhausting.
I knew I needed a planer but balked at the $780 for a Dewalt so I spent days researching alternatives and watching videos and settled on something closer to $400 with stellar reviews a Wen (with 13” w/ spiral cutterhead) I’ve always wanted a planer and I’m not getting any younger and was fortunately in a position to act so I clicked the button and had it the next day with free delivery. I was lucky to already have an isolated 20-amp circuit available but had to buy a quality $30 14ga extension cord.
But damn, the planer weighs 80 pounds and getting it unboxed and on a table liked to kill me. Not having the luxury of an indoor working space, the ability to move things to a secure location in case of weather was paramount so I scrounged around through my redneck surroundings and found a rusty old metal cart with busted wheels.
It was quite the effort sanding it down, mounting new wheels, painting it and cutting a piece or ¾” plywood, then getting the mounting holes marked and drilled (I had to lift the damn planer again twice) but it came out great and is super functional. With a couple laminate flooring planks on a steel table that weighs about 900 pounds (The 900 Pound Bench™), the outfeed lines up perfectly.
This is absolutely fun to use and my favorite thing so far. With boards milled flat on one side, running them through the planer makes the other side flat and parallel then running them through on their one flat edge makes the other edge perfect. Between the jointer and the planer, I used up five 55 gallon black trash bags for shavings with about as much as they could hold without bursting. The Dustopper thing works great but the bucket requires emptying more often than I would like.
After 3 bags of planer/jointer shavings, I checked the inside of the crusty old Rigid shop vac and found this much. The Dustopper really surprised me at its effectiveness. It’s kind of a pain to empty it all the time and I have to move the hose to each machine as needed but I can only imagine the mess I would have made without it.
I milled (jointed & planed) eight 2x6s and six 2x4s. It took me a long time because I could only do a few at a time due to being old and puny then it came time to cut everything to length which presented the next problem.
I had made an oversize cross-cut sled for my old cheapo table saw I thought would help but it didn’t. Eight foot boards were just too long and unwieldy even with trying to use the roller stands or that metal bench for support. I probably could have jigged something up and just used a circular saw or gasp, even a hand saw but I wanted square and perfect cuts and got frustrated for a while thinking I was out of my mind to try and build something so big.
With hours and hours watching YouTube woodworking videos, the answer was clear, I needed a miter saw. I used to have an ancient Sears radial arm saw but I donated it to Goodwill when I moved because it sucked and was limited in what it could do. With more time spent researching options for the features I wanted and the price, I again went with a WEN 12” dual bevel sliding compound miter saw. Couldn’t see spending $550 to $850 for the name brands just to get my foot in the door and the WEN was just the ticket for a hobbiest. I also got an 80 tooth blade for finer cuts but haven’t used it yet.
Of course, it had to weigh 55 pounds and of course I needed some sort of a mobile base for it so I got busy making one. The result was functional but the design is unfinished. I plan to make fold up extension wings on either side for supporting long boards and I was going to put some drawers in it until I got a new router table (used to have one of these too but sold it about 15 years ago to buy drugs) that fits neatly underneath. Sorta killed two birds with one stone there and moving the router table off to a bench when I want to use it isn’t that hard. For those 8 footers, I still needed to use those handy roller stands and I am so glad I bought them
It is super cool to make a bunch of cuts and have them come out perfect
I finally got started on building things. The four 86” long legs consist of a 2x6 connected to a 2x4 for each leg. My idea was to have the legs be smooth and free of fasteners and I thought about dowels but decided to go with sunken screws and plugs. This part was pretty fun.
I had purchased an oddball set of countersinks, hole and plug cutters that worked super perfect. I marked things out in the 2x6s, drilled a pilot hole then a hole for the plug. Then I cut the plugs from a piece of cutoff scrap and was tickled how well they came out and how fun it was popping them out.
Then things were glued up, clamped and the screws tightened. Then I glued in the plugs I had cut.
After sanding, where the plugged screws are, nothing is visible. I didn’t bother to line up the grain because everything was being painted but was really happy how this came out.
I used my palm /trim router to put a nice round over on all the corners. Then on the inside of each leg, I added 2x4 stops that will serve as under supports for the three layers and assist in keeping the layers level. Next came my adventure in priming.
It has taken me forever to get things done because I keep stopping to research stuff and this time it was what primer to use. I had always used something like Kilz but wanted to make sure what variety because I wanted something that would seal any knots and prevent any sap leaking through this crappy lumber and ruining my paint job.
I found a product all the pros were raving about, Zinsser B-I-N, a shellac based primer that covers and seals anything. It dries to the touch in 15 minutes and can be top coated after 45 minutes and everyone was raving about its capabilities but it cost an absolutely ridiculous $75 a gallon but I decided YOLO, right? It indeed is special but a little tricky to work with as it dries so fast. I applied it with a short nap roller and ended up with more texture than I wanted which frustrated me and I took a couple days off to sulk but then I sanded it and went over it with a foam roller and it turned our really nice.
-continued next post
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.