When life gives you lemons then your make lemonade.  Or at least try to make lemonade.
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_lemonade/

    Today I am going to talk about shop safety and New Year’s Resolutions, because I am so full of Cold Medication that I dare not get any closer to a power tool than looking at them on the Internet.

   So, for the New Year let us resolve to work safe by:

- wearing a dust mask.  Probably we should wear one all of the time but the perfect mask that doesn’t fog my glasses has yet to be found.  We need to take care of our lungs.

-continuing to replace those old machines with terrible dust collection with new machines designed to hook up to our shop vacs.

-rolling up our sleeves.

-keeping our tools sharp

-using  the correct tool for the job

-protecting our eyes

-not mixing work shops (or motorcycles) and alcohol. The beer is the reward for a good day’s work, not the lubricant that makes it happen.

-not working in our shop when we are really tired, honestly, no project is worth a finger. Projects will grow back, fingers....not so much.

Now for the Do’s:

-do try and learn a new technique this year.  Adding a new skill will broaden the range of projects you can make.

-do try and build something that you’ve never built before and were not sure that you could build at all, make it your Masterpiece for 2012.

- encourage someone to give wood working a try, especially a young person.  We are getting to be a grey haired group and new blood means new ideas, and new ideas are good.

-do some wood carving.

-volunteer, make some toys to give away, or use your skills as a D.I.Y guy to help your church or your neighbour or something outside of yourself and bigger than you are.

Work Safe, Have a Good Time and a Happy and Healthy 2012.

Tuning up A Spokeshave

 

 tuning up a spoke shave

 The spoke shave is a great tool and one that I should turn to more often.  The reason that I don't use it much now,is that somehow, somewhere my good spoke shave went A.W.O.L.  Now I have a low cost, tool that does not work.  So, my New Year's resolution is to tune up the spoke shave I have so that it will be a good and useful tool.
 
   The link to tuning up a spoke shave shows what to do to fix up your old, or budget tool and improve its performance.  The link at the bottom of the page is for a low cost spoke shave at thetoolstore.ca in case you want to buy your own shave and give tuning it up a try.

   It is a week with the grand kids so there is not much shop time going on this week.  No matter, the grand kids won't be fun little people of long, I hope they become workshop working people as they get older. 

 Samona-Spoke-Shave