Back Home Again.

  It seems that the last two months have flown by in a whirlwind of world travelling.  My wife and I just returned from twelve days in Sweden with our children and two grand daughters.  The kids are nice, but the 1 1/2 and 3 1/2 year old girls  are the real reason for making the trip. After a long but uneventful trip home yesterday, I've completed my unpacking and am returning to routine.  One of my favourite routines is shop time.

  This morning after breakfasting and dealing with laundry I went down to my shop, made a coffee and a plan.  You can see my drip coffee maker in the back ground and my wooden coffee spoon in the fore ground. The coffee is great in Sweden but coffee at home just tastes that little bit better. 
   

  I thought I should get working on something, just to see if I remember how.

  In the garage by the back door is a small shelving unit upon which we store fruit and vegetables. The unit is  from a flat pack store and you can see we use left over refrigerator trays for storage.  This morning I decided I needed to make a couple of drawers to use up the rest of the space more efficiently, 'cause we need it? no. 'Cause I like making boxes, and stuff that has a use. 

  If you are going to make boxes one of the best tools to have is a router table and rabbeting bits. 

  Second only to a round over bit I use my set of rabbeting bits most frequently. It is nice to travel, but it is nice to be back too.

   These drawers are being made from plywood and lumber from the 'left over' bin.  I like box joints but they turn out better when you begin with solid wood rather than plywood.  Maybe the next project will have nicer wood.

   cheers, Ian

Sweden looks like Muskoka Ontario to me.

Thursday' Project - continuing the Spring Cleaning Theme.

    On the wall above my sliding mitre saw is a shelf unit that I built four or five years ago.  The unit began life as a prototype for my Grandson's room.  Lucky it was a prototype made from mixed materials because once done it turned out to be the wrong size and shape after all.  Being ever thrifty I brought it home and nailed it to wall in my shop after adding a couple more shelves. The whole thing is a saw dust covered mess most of the time, and not very well organized at the best of time.

  This afternoon I went down to my shop and invested a couple of hours making and organizing.

  After I cleaned off the shelve unit and made a plan I built a small set of shelves using 1/2 inch and 1/8 Baltic birch plywood. The plywood is off cuts from the Great Cajon kit build, I never throw away a piece of wood that maybe useful one day. (that is part of the reason my shop is a bit untidy).

 I cut the dados with my 10 inch Bosch sliding mitre saw. The saw blade was not 1/8 thick so I had to cut tiny rabbets on the edge of each shelf board.

   

  To cut the rabbets I used my 1/2 shoulder plane.  I held a piece of 1/2 plywood slightly back from the edge of the 1/8 plywood as a fence when planning the thinner wood. It only took a couple of passes of the plane to thin the board to make it fit.

  The final result after glueing and nailing was a purpose built self.

 Once I sorted, consolidated and tossed some stuff from the big shelf unit I put the new small shelves in place.  The drills stand up, the bit and pieces have proper homes and it will be easier to vacuum in the future.

 

  I have a couple of other sets of shelves that could use this attention too.

 cheers, Ianw