Peter Brown's ShopTime

All parts cleaned and waiting for cabinet completion and reassembly. The fence and other "non-guts" will be done after re-assembly in an effort to maintain my sanity. Wire Wheel---- Wire Wheel---- Wire Wheel---- I'm declaring the top done for now. Once it's all resembled if the bug hits, I'll give it another goings over...

It's amazing what can be done to a decade of rust with 4 green scrubbers, a bit of WD-40 and two hours of your time. Sure it's a bit tiring, but honestly worth the effort! Before After

Now you can see what my sphere was for. I turned a cup out of some oak 1x1's glued up into a 3X3 block. Hollowed with a fortsner bit and then cleaned up and sized with a round nose scraper. Sanded to 600 and finished with Mylands. Ball is a near perfect fit witch makes the game enjoyable even for a 32 year old!

Turning a ball is more work than you think. I first tried a simple method.. Turn a blank round Form the ball Part off and sand. Clearly, not a ball... On to step two! Chuck up a chunk of walnut, and scrape out a cup... Part off for the tailstock.... Scrape out an matched set for the chuck side.. They should match up. Insert square block.. Okay. You turn off the edges, rotate your block. Turn off more edges, rotate your block. Etc. About 15-20 minutes later... You can see how I turned a way the jam chuck as I went. The closer you get to spherical, the less you remove each rotation. Like anything practice till you're happy with it!

Toppless! Disassembly. Gutted. Rust, rust and more rust! Let the cleaning begin!

I got an angle on a vintage Delta Unisaw yesterday afternoon. Called the guy about 5 minutes after the CL posting. He said it was his dads and it stopped working for him late in '09. It had been outside under a tarp since then. Rushed out to his place to buy/ checked it out. No visible cracks and most parts accounted for. Honestly there wasn't much to do, because after my call the guy got 6 other calls in 30 minutes and one fella offered him double the asking price. I pretty much was like. "Yep it's a Uni. Here's your dough." I gave him his 50 bucks he was asking and then he and I plus his two kids and his wife hoisted it up into my pickup. It was a riot! Home safe Rope was just for show. This thing wasn't going anywhere! A wee bit rusty With sawdust from 1952, or there abouts, included! I've never worked with a tool this heavy, I was flabbergasted! Unisaw extraction team. FIL, BIL, Me! I plan on a full restore. I'm in no rush to get it done. ...

This weekend, I'm in charge of the kids. It's not that I resent watching my two young daughters for the weekend, but more that I'm missing my garage. Friday I helped my brother in law paint some base boards for his house. It was fine, if not a bit of a mistake to try and use my paint gun. It died a horrible death and wasted most of the morning and afternoon. As such I have 10 12' boards drying in my garage and another 10 waiting to get painted. So... even with that unpleasant shop atmosphere, watching Backyardigans, painting princess party hats and cooking chicken nuggets is more unpleasant. Oh well. Back to the garage on Friday I hope!