Shop update #72 (3-13-19)
It was a very productive week. I got several plaques finished, cut some new ones, and held 3 – 2 hour Pinewood Derby clinics for my younger son’s Cub Scout pack. I also got an order for 5 Adventure Pin plaques for the older boy’s old Cub Scout pack.
A friend at work is a big Smokey Bear fan so I made up an image and cut it out on my CNC machine on Thursday night.
One of the ladies that ordered an Elephant for her daughter also added an order for a Minitruckin’ plaque for her husband so I cut that and another Forbidden Fantasy sign out on Friday night.
Saturday morning I stopped by Home depot and picked up 6 – 8ft 2 x 3’s and 2 – 6ft 1 x 12’s and some supplies for the 3 Pinewood derby buildings clinics that I held at my house. 2 on Saturday and 1 on sunday, 2 hours each.
After I got home and ate lunch I got everything ready for the first PWD clinic. I set up the bandsaw next to the 8 ft workbench on the side of my house. I also setup the 1″ strip sander/5″ disc sander, the drill press, a scale, some washers as weights, and some home made sanding block on the workbench. The 4 ft adult size picnic had templates to to draw on and cut out and the kid sized picnic table had painting supplies.
Between the 2 clinics on Saturday we made about 15 cars. The kids drew the templates and cut them out. They then brought them to me and watched me cut them out on the bandsaw. We then sanded them together on the 1″ sander. I then gave them a sandpaper block and they finish sanded them and painted them. Once the paint was dry, we weighed the car, axles, wheels, 1″ drywall screw on the scale. We added washers until we got to 4.9 oz. We then drill out a 1.25″ hole in the bottom of the car right in front of the rear axles and screwed in the washers. They then mounted the wheels with the help of their parents. It is up to the scouts and their families to get as close to 5 oz as possible without going over.
After they left I sanded the black paint from the top of the 2 wood badge plaques and gave them a coat of Golden Oak stain.
Sunday morning I broke down the 2 – 1 x 12’s up into 6 – 16″ lengths clear of knots and 2 – 18″ lengths with 1 or 2 knots each. I had to go through around 15 boards at the store to find the 2 that I bought.
I then gave the Smokey, minitruckin, and an FWW logo plaques a coat of black spray. I set those out to dry and gave the wood badge plaques 3 coats of spray polyurethane waiting 15 to 20 minutes between coats.
The next PWD clinic was from 2:00 to 4:00 and we got 6 more cars done including my son’s. The PWD cars need to be turned in on April 7th, and these were the only clinics that I had time for this month. One of the other dads in the pack is also a woodworker and he is holding a total of 4 clinics this month on 2 separate weekends so we should be good to go.
Once the scouts left I sanded down the other 4 plaques that I made last weekend and got them stained. I tried leaving some of the paint on the elephant with no name and then stained it but I’m not sure that I like the look. I will run it by the customer this week and see if she wants me to sand it all down.
I got the plaques put away under the rear patio cover and cut the 6 – 8 ft 2 x 3’s into 7.5″ lengths. A couple of them had some chewed up areas that I missed so I only got 63 pieces when I had hoped to get about 70. Can you guess what I am making?
Sunday was International Ranch Dressing day so I made sure to have some on my salad with dinner. (I’m usually a Thousand Island guy)
After using the acrylic paint with the writing tip on it last week I ordered some little squeezy bottles with fine point tips and they arrived on Saturday. I filled one up with some mettalic blue paint and filled in the last Forbidden Fantasy sign that I made on Friday. It worked very well but the bottle took a little more force to squeeze than I expected and it used more paint than normal because I pretty much filled in the whole cavity with paint.
