Peter Brown's ShopTime

Last week sometime I went to turn on my newly restored Delta Uni and found nothing but the strange and unsatisfying click of the switch. "Click." "What the hell?" "Click, click click." Where was my warm soothing hum and the sound of wind whipping through the gullets of my newly purchased saw blade? I love that sound. This unnerving click that had replaced it, was quite upsetting. I checked the power outlet by plugging in a palm sander. The hope was a bad electrical outlet. That I could manage. I could not manage having spent 10 months and $400 on a saw that, while pretty, would not turn on! To my utter dissatisfaction, the sander worked fine. Crap. I then did the grown up thing. I cursed. After I got that out of my system I wept. Clearly I wasn't in a good state of mind for further troubleshooting. I walked away. I was pissed but knew I wasn't going to fix it that night. The a few days later I decided to try again. Now that I was in a much calmer s...

So... I picked up a 1980's era Radial Arm Saw on CL a while back. The owner was giving it away and I have a hard time refusing new tools. It's been sitting in a corner unused. Mostly because I know nothing about them. I had heard about the Emerson safety recall a while back and decided to check it out. Turns out my saw qualified. I was sent out a new MDF table and a safety retrofit. This included a blade guard and trigger mechanism. For a newbie RAS user like me, this was a godsend. This weekend I setup the saw in new location. With access to both the duct collector and bench. I've used it now for a couple of cuts and can say that I see definite use for it, especially in making angled cross cut as well as half laps and dado joints!

I can't believe it's finally over...

I picked up a free table on Craigslist in mid January. It was a solid oak dining table in pretty bad shape. It had a broken leg, and the tabletop was in serious trouble. I wish I had gotten a picture of it before, but I was just to eager to get going... Got it home and dissembled it. I decided not to re-finish the whole thing. Just the top. The rest of it looked, okay. Used but fine. The leg was a glued up blank, that was just falling apart. A chisel and a few mallet whacks and the whole thing was in pieces. I had to re-flatten all the parts on the jointer, and then re-glue. No biggie and it looked great! Next to the top. Brought it down to bare wood with 40grit paper in about 15 minutes. Then worked my way back up 80, 100, 190, 220. 2 coats of poly (320 grit in between) and then posted it up on Craigslist for $85. Got a call the next day and we settled for $80. All in all, I had it in the shop for about 5 days I think. Already looking for my next flip.