Apex, NC

Mom and Bill came up this weekend and they brought their pressure washer with them.  While Mom went inside and cooled off, Bill and I set up the pressure washer and started to clean the driveway where I sloppily dripped water seal and stain from the balcony.

The pressure washer did not remove all of the stain from the concrete, but it definitely lightened the stains.  Maybe a wire brush attached to the drill will take more of it off?  

Later we went over to the Red Robin restaurant here in the shopping center and we all had lunch.  After we returned to the house, they departed for home in Wilmington.

This morning, after we finished our breakfast, I took Bob's trike down from the wall and put it into our car.  We drove over to Apex Community Park and got the trike out for some exercise before temperatures and humidity got too high.

While Bob rode his bike around the lake, I walked the 2-mile-long paved trail around the lake.  Bob rode over 3 miles.

After this I was a hot and sweaty mess, so we came home.  I put the bike away, and went upstairs to shower.  I cut my hair short and I shaved.

This afternoon we went to Aldi and Food Lion for our groceries.  We were careful and we ended up with a reasonable grocery bill again.

Now we are relaxing and reading.  I have my vitamins counted out for the morning, and my clothes have been laid out on the bench to wear to work in the morning.

Here comes another week of work and here comes hot and humid August!

Miter Spline Sled

Over the past week I have put together a sled for the table saw and router table that cuts splines into the corners of boxes or picture frames.  Pieces of wood are glued into these splines to strengthen the joint at the mitered corner.

Here you can see the (almost) completed project.  I made it out of plywood, glue, screws (41), an aluminum T-track, and knob with threaded shaft and T-nut.

To you it, you clamp the wood to the moveable fence, and then move the fence to the desired position and lock it down by turning the knob clockwise.  Start up the table saw, push the shed across the blade and cut the spline into the work, pull the sled back to the beginning position, unclamp the work, rotate it 90°, re-clamp it down, and repeat until all four splines are cut.  If additional splines are needed (as in a box), move the fence down and repeat the process until all of the splines have been cut.

I said that it is almost finished because I am still working out a way to support the thin strip of wood between the kerf left by the table saw and the slot that will be cut by the router table.  I want to glue a strip of thick wood over it to support it so it will not tear out.

In the coming days I will put a box together with mitered corners just so that I can demonstrate how the sled works. 

Caught Up

Yes, I haven't posted in here in a while.  Sometimes it is hard to be motivated to write stuff everyday.  Probably the only person who reads this stuff, my mother, nagged me to get this updated.  Soooo here we go...

Since July 4, I made a holder for my chisels and mounted it on the wall above my work bench.

We have been staying inside during the baking hot weather this month and it has just been too hot to work outside in the garage.  

We lost internet service twice this month.  Now we have a fiber optic cable laying on the grass where it is in danger of being severed by the roving landscape crew that mows weekly.

Last weekend I installed a wall safe in our bedroom closet.  We bought the safe shortly after we moved in, but it took me this long to make it a priority to install it.  This safe is a biometric safe that unlocks with a finger print.

Something else that I discovered recently and am working on learning - QuickBasic has been resurrected from the dead.  QB64 runs on modern 64-bit operating systems, yet it is backward compatible with QB 4.5 and QBasic!  

The QuickBasic code is translated into C++ and then compiled.  The recompiled code runs hundreds of times faster than it did back in the 1990's!

Last weekend we went to the Aldi grocery store because ladies at work were raving about how much money they saved.  We came out of there with the highest weekly grocery bill ever.  We decided that some things in there are a bargain, but we cannot abandon Food Lion yet.

After a cold front and some strong storms came through here yesterday it was much cooler outside.  Cool enough for me to work in the garage these past two evenings.  I am making a miter spline sled for the table saw and router table.

Yesterday evening I put roller shades up in the front bedroom windows.  These are the last two windows we wanted to put shades in.  Now we have better privacy in the front of the house.

Work continues to go well.  We are working on the Twelve Hundred Pharma project.  The compound we are making is used for oncology, but the client would not tell us which organ or tissue in particular it targets.

Soon the car will be due for its annual safety inspection.  I am going to have to buy two driver's side tires so that it will pass.  These tires are the original tires and they are down to the tread safety bars.  I will see if I can open an account at Mr. Tire or Firestone.

Becky and Bill are coming up this Saturday.  They are bringing their pressure washer with them so that I can clean my drive way.  I am going to finally get the stain and water seal spots off of the concrete!

Independence Day Weekend

Last Wednesday we lost our Internet connection.  AT&T was installing a new box in our neighborhood and they had to disconnect everyone to do it.  After the box was installed, the technician did not know who was paying for internet and who was not, so he left everyone disconnected!  Because of the holiday, a technician was not able to return until Saturday afternoon! 

 

On Independence Day I cleared boxes of old books away from our French doors in the dining room and I prepared to hang voile sheers on the doors.  I was afraid that the curtains would be too big when we purchased them, but as it turns out, they were just big enough to cover the windows!

 

We put the extensible rod through the pocket at the top and using the cordless driver, screwed the brackets in so that the rod was just above the window trim.  At the bottom we had to put the rod through the hem.  Again we screwed the brackets to the door so that the rod was just below the lower window trim.  

 

Finally, we attempted to put the sash on the curtain, but it was much too small!  There were two sashes - one for each curtain, so I got the sewing machine out, cut the sashes, stitched them together, and made on good sash for the door that opens.  This way the door handle and deadbolt latch are uncovered and easy to use.

I am very happy with the way they turned out.  Light can still filter into the house through these windows, but we have enhanced privacy now.  This is important since we have neighbors right across the alley from us now.

We put the flag out on Independence Day, but it began to rain, so we brought it back inside.

Later, we went to LongHorn Steakhouse for dinner.  I had a 12-ounce ribeye with a side salad and steamed broccoli.  While this was expensive, the portions were much more generous than the miserable little steaks we had at Chili's.

The shopping center in front of our community put on a fireworks show, so there was plenty of sound in the evening.

On Friday we had lunch at Wing Stop.  We had a big low-carb lunch of chicken wings and we felt full for the rest of the day!  We donated our boxes of old books.  We shopped at Woodcraft, and we shopped at Barnes & Noble books.  We came home, but we did not eat dinner because we still felt full.

Friday evening I went to Lowe's and got some two-by-fours and some plywood to build a storage shelf in the corner of the garage under the stairs.  Bob came out to the garage to help me with this project.  We were out there in the warm garage until about 9:00 pm, but we got the job done.  This corner now holds my router table, our portable generator, my Forney welder, my pancake air compressor and nail gun, my Delta thickness planer, an old Craftsman stick welder, all of the tools in blow molded boxes, a small steel anvil, and my Ryobi bench grinder.

There is now ample space in the front of the garage for Bob to do wood turning on his lathe.  We also had to sand the feet down on his grinder stand to stop it from rocking.  I want to build a small cabinet for the wall behind his lathe to hold his chisels and other turning tools.

I brought all of our CD music, DVDs, photo albums, and stereo equipment into the basement.  I put the albums away and we are holding on to the media until we go to Ikea and get some new media storage cabinets.  I put my reflector telescope together and took it up to the spare bedroom.  I managed to toss about six cardboard boxes plus packing into the trash.

Today I went through a box holding our old personal computers.  We are going to repurpose my old Dell Vostro as a Network Attached Storage device and media server.  We just have to get a couple of solid state drives to install in it.  Bob's old computer will be donated.  I pulled all of the hard disk drives out of both computers, disassembled them, and destroyed the HDD platters to protect our privacy.  We are going to keep the larger of the two computer monitors for use in a future project.

This morning I put together a tool holder to hold my Narex chisels.  I used 3/8" square dowel, and 1/8" plywood glued together to make a custom holder.  I mounted this on the board above my work bench.  It looks really nice. 

We went to Food Lion today and bought our weekly haul of groceries.  We are spending more money lately trying to eat better and it is worth it - this morning I weighed myself and found about 10 pounds gone!

Back to the grindstone of work tomorrow.