After much research – I finally ended up buying my own grain mill. My three favorite foods (bread, pasta, and pizza, and any combination thereof) are primarily made of this amazing thing called flour so I figured it would be fun to learn how to mill my own. After much research – I landed on…
Day 1 of the “new plan”
I’m not sure what it is – but I feel like I just don’t get as much stuff done as I used to. It sort of feels like I just don’t have as much time to get things done. The one immediate thought I had was that if I could get up earlier, I’d have…
Finishing one side of the top
This past week I finished laminating the top and got one side of it pretty well flat. Some of my theories about the lamination proved wrong but Im relatively happy with how it turned out. The last glue up went pretty well… My theory had been that doing the laminations in small pieces would be…
Back at it
Hi folks. Long time no talk. Im going to try and post an update at least once a week here and see how that goes. A lot has changed since I last posted. I have a new job, we have another kid, and life in general just seems busier. That said – I’m going to…
Trimming the top
So I have the top mostly flat. I’ll admit that it looks good – but Im still learning my way around planes and I wasn’t getting the results I thought I should be getting. In either case – I think it’s good enough. So now that I have a sharp crosscut saw – it was…
A 2nd mortise and tenon
I found a couple of scraps of poplar in the basement and attempted my 2nd mortise and tenon. I have to say – Im much more pleased with this one. Its far from perfect – but it turned out way better than my first one. Working in hardwoods was much much easier than in whitewood….
My fist mortise and tenon
So I don’t mind admitting that I’ve become frustrated with the top Im building for the work bench. My decision to make one large flat surface by joining my two panels has left me stuck. I’ve been trying to smooth out two sides to glue up and have been failing miserably. So I decided to…
Making the 2nd top
Well – as things go – the 2nd top appears to be more difficult than the 1st top. I ran into all sorts of issues. I thought I had the hang of smoothing the edges of the boards before the glue up – and on some the process went quite quickly. However – on others…
The (extensive) hand planing begins…
So after my first lamination finished drying I took off the clamps and looked at what I had. I was a little disappointed in my clamping. Some of the boards appeared to have slid a little bit and I was initially worried that this meant that I wouldn’t be able to plane the boards smooth….