Making Sandwiches

Since I know my parents check in on this blog from time to time . . . .Happy Mothers Day Mom. Love you. (yup that pic would be me, been bald most of my life now it seems...)

Now there are not any real pictures to share from the shop today. Nothing terribly interesting going on anyway, just cutting some of the boards I ripped to 40" length and continuing to glue them up in pairs, wait 4 to 6 hours and glue those pairs together. Once I have them all joined 4 boards thick I', going to clean up squeeze out and give them the first joining. Why then? Nothing really scientific, it just feels right. I will then continue to glue until the whole thing is assembled and repeat the squeeze out - clean out dance, and rejoint everything flat again. Then, the top will be done. How quickly it happens will depend on the weather. It has been very rainy and cold (to cold to glue!) here in western Wisconsin  most of the last week, but nobody really has that much control over that kind of stuff.

Naomi, the girls, and I went out to visit my mom for mothers day this evening, this allowed me a chance to get some before pics of my father's shed that I will be converting into yet another version of the Oldwolf Workshop. I'm beginning to call this one Version 5.0. We'll see if the name sticks.

It's a metal shed on a concrete pad, It's 32 feet long by 12 feet wide on the outside. You lose some of that to the metal studs on the inside. It has a full length lean-to on one side and a small auxiliary shed attached to the other side. The lean-to also houses a play house for the grand kids.

I will not get to use the full length, as they still need some for storage room. I will get about 20 feet or so, That's a hell of a lot more than I have now so you will hear no complaining from me. My father has used it as a workshop himself but has decided to move his operation into the basement of their house, because it is more convenient. I would have to say I am probably mostly to blame for this too.

Following is a series of pics inside the shed. The big pile of stuff covered by tarps is already the rest of the Oldwolf Workshop. The table saw, drill press, lathe and joiner. Empty and full tool boxes, shop vac, rolling tools stand and machinist vise. Halogen lights, wood stove, router table and anvil. When we moved back from Maine, everything went into a storage shed for a couple of months. When we got into our current apartment and started emptying out the shed, my dad offered to house the tools I had no room for here. Later he offered to let me use the shed for the shop, I have thought about it for quite a while as this would be the first time I have not lived on the same property my shop is on. The prospect has both pros and cons but finally I have decided to move in . . . a little more permanently.

The real caveat is that I have to resolve to leave enough room by the roll up door for him to continue to park the beloved John Deere lawn tractor. I don't think that will be a problem. But as you can see by the pictures, there is a good amount of organization and clean up that has to go on before I can settle in. There is also the question of heating this puppy in the winter. I may have to talk him into letting me hook up the wood stove for this, though shop fires scare the living hell out of me, I think I can get it set up safely, I have a friend who has heated his house with wood heat for years, Installed it into every house he's moved into. I'll talk him into helping me get things set up if dad agrees.

I couldn't help myself tonight after I took some pics, I started moving some lumber scraps out and under the lean to. There is two things I'm looking forward to with this project:

1) Getting a full sized shop back, where I can set up my big workbench and some of the other tools that I am used to working with.

2) Getting to spend some time with my dad working on the initial stages at least. I also kind of like the fact that my dad will have access to my shop if he wants, there are tools I own that I know he has use for from time to time, but has never bothered to buy. We can both get some use out of it, and really, that's all very cool to me.

Cheers

Oldwolf