Sunday, December 17, 2006

Updating Electrical

When I bought my table saw almost three years ago I had to add 220 to the garage to run the saw. After lots of research I was able to run the wire and add a new circuit breaker to the electrical box. It ended up being easier than I thought it would...just very time consuming. Then last year I replaced the outlets over the old workbench with 20 amp outlets....this also required running 12-2 wire and adding another breaker.

Well, with the recent purchase of some new tools and trying to get my shop more functional, I decided to add two more 220 outlets and run another 20 amp circuit. The far east wall had no outlets and it would be very helpful if I had outlets on that wall with the layout. So I ended up running wire from the existing 220 up into the ceiling, down the east wall and added two additional 220 outlets. There will only be one tool at a time running off of 220. At the same time, I ran new 12-2 wire and added five 20 amp outlets on the east wall. This is nothing exciting at all but will make things so much easier to not have extension cords everywhere. It also has taken almost two full days to complete. Here are some pictures...

This is where the original 220 outlet was. I updated the conduit with one inch since I am carrying two wires in the conduit. This outlet will be the new home for my Grizzly G0513x bandsaw that is currently on backorder until January.





















This is the east wall that had no outlets. You can see the conduit coming out of the ceiling. The top outlet is 220 and the bottom are 20 amp 110 outlets.

















The only item remaining is to hook the new 20 amp outlets into the box with a new breaker. The wire is hanging in front of the box but I was too tired to complete everything.

The next project is to build a rolling cart for the Delta 22-580 planer with storage below and to clean and organize everything. I would also like to build a tool cabinet above my woodworking bench for my hand tools. I also need to build some organization units for Colleen's room so she can get her scrapbooking organized....and the list goes on and on and on....

Saturday, December 16, 2006

First Real Wood Purchase

The other weekend I made my first Real wood purchase from a sawyer on the west side of the state. I bought 75 board feet of soft maple, 50 board feet of quarter sawn white oak and 30 board feet of rift sawn white oak. I was only able to pick up the soft maple as the white oak is still drying. This is very exciting as the wood is much better than what you can get at the BORG (Big Orange Box Store) and about 3 to 4 times cheaper. Here are some pictures of the soft maple.

































The wood is rough sawn so that means we will have to invest in a jointer and planer to make life much easier. I do not mind as the cost savings on just this purchase almost pays for both pieces of machinery. I just have to make room in the garage and do more electrical.

The Shop and Projects

I thought I would start a blog for my woodworking to show the progress of my shop and post items I have made. So far, I have mostly made things for the shop such as cabinets, workbench, bench hook, etc. Here are some current pictures of my workshop and some items I have made.

Here is the workbench I made. This should be one of the first projects for any beginning woodworker. It is very important to have a good bench to clamp work down as I learned the hard way when I had a chisel slip and burried it into my hand requiring 12 stitches. Ouch!

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Here are a couple of pictures of my bench hook. This is a very helpful jig to square boards with a hand plane. The second picture is squaring the legs and cleaning the tenons of the base for the bench I made above
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Here is a box I made for my niece and filled it with wood blocks. I made the entire box with only hand tools and no power tools. This was a great learning experience!

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Here are some cabinets I made for storage. They are huge but very functional.

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I have recently been expanding my shop extensively. There will be a bunch of pictures to come to show the new tools, shop organization and projects.