Shop update #25 (4-18-18)
Last week was all about building my new X-Carve CNC machine. It is made by a company named Inventables. (Affiliate Link here)
They gave me one of the 2nd generation machines at the end of 2015. I used it for a year and half and then worked out a deal with them to give me one of the 3rd generation machine and to make a build video about it. I don’t have room for 2 CNC machines so I gave the old one to Shawn Jolicoeur from the GeekBuilders YouTube channel. I then proceeded to get appendicitis and be on bed rest for 2 weeks and light duty for another month or so and totally lost all initiative in getting it built.
One of the last major projects I made with the old machine was some Super Achiever awards for my son’s Cub Scout Pack. Fast forward to the beginning of April of this year and they contacted me about making some more for this year’s bridging on June 21st. My schedule was totally booked up for the start of the month and I was finally able to start working on it at 10:00 pm on Tuesday, April 10th. I put about 2 hours in each night on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I got out there about 11:00 pm on Friday night and got it working by 2:00 am.
I spent the day at a Minecraft convention with my son on Saturday. We stopped on the way home at Home Depot and then Lowes to find a decent 6ft 1×12 to use for the awards. On Sunday I met with a couple about shooting photography at their wedding in June and finally got into the shop about 2:00 pm. I ran a couple more tests on the CNC and then cut the 1×12 into 3 usable pieces. 2 at 16″ and 1 at about 26″. The rest was full of knots and not good for awards. I made the 2 awards and a tester fun project. The awards took about an hour and 10 minutes each and the fun project ran while I was out cutting the 1×12 into usable lengths. I went to the Cub Scout den leader’s house and dropped off our 3 Pinewood Derby cars while the second one was getting cutout. I gave both of them a good sanding once they were finished.
I put on a good coat of medium walnut Danish Oil Monday night and let it soak in well before I rubbed off all the excess. They should be ready for pickup tonight after the Pinewood Derby.
