Jim Randolph

Sanding with Festool – Tips from Sticks in the Mud – February 2018 – Tip #1

Feb 022018
 

Welcome to “Tips From Sticks-In-The-Mud Woodshop.” I am a hobbyist who loves woodworking and writing for those who also love the craft. I have found some ways to accomplish tasks in the workshop that might be helpful to you, and I enjoy hearing your own problem-solving ideas. Please share them in the COMMENTS section of each tip.  If, in the process, I can also make you laugh, I have achieved 100% of my goals.

I have been working on a painting project every weekend for several months. Actually, it started three years ago. Brenda said, “Since we’re taking the carpet out, before Brent gets here to start putting in the oak floors, what about if we painted the living room?” You might think the operative word here is “we.” It isn’t. I started, of course, with the ceiling. Because our house is built on pilings, it moves a lot. Or, maybe we just had a sorry Sheetrock guy, but, whatever the reason, the panel joints in the ceiling were all cracked. I wasn’t going to sand them down, tape them and apply new knockdown before I painted, but I did take the time to caulk the cracks the best I could.

From there it was on to the walls, which went fast enough. When the baseboards were first installed, they weren’t properly sanded and primed, so it was time-consuming to take them all the way down to bare wood before painting. I worked every night after work, and every Saturday after we closed at noon, for months and months.

Because we have an open floor plan between the living room and kitchen, there was no painting the living room and not painting the kitchen (I painted the kitchen ceiling at the same time as the living room).

The massiveness of the millwork on the living room windows and kitchen bay windows was overwhelming.

This bank of windows is wonderful to look through, but the convoluted millwork at the bottom is an amateur painter’s nightmare. Sore fingers were a nightly feature when I was sanding them to bare wood. And, working on the floor wasn’t this hard when I was in my 30’s.

This bay window is one of Brenda’s favorite sitting spots, so it needs to look good. Willie likes it, too.

I don’t recall what interrupted me, but, at some point in 2014 I stopped painting and, despite good intentions, couldn’t get going again.

This go-round, I took a more practical approach. Rather than unrealistically working every night, I decided to devote every Saturday until I finished.

Not surprisingly, I’m not getting much woodworking in. In fact, I wonder how long one can go between projects and still call himself a woodworker.

Now, the kitchen and living room are finished and that made the adjacent foyer look dark, so we’re (there’s that word again) painting over all of the stained wood.

Nothing beats the Festool system when it comes to a sanding project like this. The CT36 Dust Extractor with a Dust Separator has made this an almost completely dust-free project. Like Steve Johnson letting his inner woodworker creep into his barn project, I couldn’t be satisfied with the machine marks left in the millwork, so I’m sanding most of it to bare wood. The dark stain needs to come off anyway for better white paint coverage. The RO125 Festool Sander is loaded with 120 grit paper, and it doesn’t take long to get down to a smooth surface. Alan Noel recommended 220 grit for a nice, painted finish, and the Festool ETS125REQ Sander, with its shorter stroke, and fine paper, makes every flat surface paint-ready.

There are plenty of nooks and crannies in this project, and the Festool RO90 Sander, with its triangular head attachment, has made short work of those spots.

This skirtboard was the place where the RO90’s triangular head made sanding the hard-to-get-to spots really easy.

There are still areas that require hand sanding, and that’s the only dust generation there has been. Disconnect the sander from the CT, switch from AUTO to MANUAL, and the dust is gone. With the separator, there is no worry of filling up those expensive Festool Dust Extractor Bags.

Dust management is one of Festool’s biggest selling points for the pros, but, it’s pretty darn nice, too, for the DIY handyman with no time to waste.

One day, all of this will be finished, and I will be proud for visitors to come through the foyer, into the living room and lounge in the kitchen.

Just stay out of the parts of the house “we” haven’t gotten to yet.

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

POLL: What Is Your Occupation?

Jan 082018
 

Reader Garry D. Meador writes: “I am a recent subscriber to Wood News and have a hard time waiting for the next issue. So much info presented in so many different ways. Love it. This may have been done in the past but I would like to see a poll of what woodworkers did in their former life. I was a high school band director that grew up working with Dad in wood. My first thoughts on retirement were to get really involved in wood, which I did. I see lots of different retirees that seem to be unrelated to woodworking but realize that everyone has an opportunity to return or relearn the joy of wood.”

Garry, thanks for the great suggestion. As we reflect on the end of last year and this year’s New Year’s resolutions, the time couldn’t be better to think about this exact topic.

Many woodworkers are retired. Some dream of being retired. Some are living the dream by working in wood as their vocation.

There is no pigeonholing woodworkers; our backgrounds are extremely varied. Just watching the final episode of The Highland Woodworker and seeing Charles Brock’s extensive library of interviewees shows a bit of the diversity that exists in our pastime.

Many of us worked wood with family as youngsters. Some took shop classes in junior high and high school. Home construction backgrounds are over-represented. While blue-collar foundations abound, plenty of doctors, lawyers and clergy like to express our creativity in wood.

Wood News Online has an international subscriber base. The world of woodworking is so much bigger than our United States. We get emails, questions and online comments from all over the globe. Below you’ll find a broad list of occupations, but the real results of this poll will be seen in your comments. Stories about how you came to woodworking will be most appreciated if you would like to share them in the comments below.

Venetian Blind Painting Trick – Tips from Sticks in the Mud – January 2018 – Tip #2

Jan 052018
 

No Southern-fried Southern boy wants to be called a Yankee, but we share the characteristics of shrewdness and thrift. Thus, each month we include a money-saving tip. It’s OK if you call me “cheap.”

That genius philosopher, Plato, was the smart guy who said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

On the eve of New Year’s Eve, I was painting some corner molding and found it really difficult to cut in because where it met the wall, it had a rounded profile. I needed a guard, but didn’t have a commercial one. I could have used a putty knife, but the widest knife I had was only 5″, which would have been tedious.

I remembered having one years ago that looked for all the world like a 12″ Venetian blind, but, if I still own that, I couldn’t find it.

What I could find, though, was… a Venetian blind.

When we were building our house, 22 years ago, we splurged a little on blinds for the garage windows so they would present a uniform appearance from the outside. Of course, I’m much too cheap to start cutting up blinds, but I remembered that they have two little valance slats at the top. No one would care if I borrowed one slat for a few days, would they?

See the two little slats at the top that make a valance? I borrowed one, temporarily.

Surprise! It worked so well that I forgot all about going to the store to buy a guide. The bonus is that the slat is almost 4 feet long, so it can be put in place and left there until a long piece of molding is painted.

Now I just have to make sure nothing happens to it before I get it back on the window!

This little Venetian blind slat saved the day on this painting job.

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

Wear Your Safety Glasses! – Tips from Sticks in the Mud – January 2018 – Tip #1

Jan 042018
 

Welcome to “Tips From Sticks-In-The-Mud Woodshop.” I am a hobbyist who loves woodworking and writing for those who also love the craft. I have found some ways to accomplish tasks in the workshop that might be helpful to you, and I enjoy hearing your own problem-solving ideas. Please share them in the COMMENTS section of each tip.  If, in the process, I can also make you laugh, I have achieved 100% of my goals.

One of my writing heroes is the late James J. Kilpatrick. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column, The Writer’s Art, and published a book by the same name. Famously, he had three pieces of advice for writers new and old, “Read your copy. Read your copy. Read your copy.” Simply reading one’s written material allows us to catch problems with flow, syntax, grammar, and spelling.

Today, I’m thinking of a corollary to Mr. Kilpatrick’s admonition because of an event that occurred yesterday. That warning is, “Wear your safety glasses. Wear your safety glasses. Wear your safety glasses.”

Regret is a terrible thing. The crazy part of this story is that, as I was walking across the shop to perform the function that led to my injury, I was thinking, “I’m going to be working over my head. I should protect myself, especially my eyes.”

I was putting up some new hatches in the place I store empty Festool Systainers and Festool hand tools not currently in use.  In the process of making these hatches, screws for the hatch side of the hinge are invariably too long and have to be shortened. Now, I could do that in some really neat, fancy fashion, but my want is to get it over with quickly, so I use a 4″ angle grinder. There is about a quarter of an inch of screw sticking through, and it takes about three seconds to grind it off. The process, however, creates a hot little remnant that sometimes burns right into the wood and sometimes goes flying who-knows-where. That’s typically not a problem when working on a benchtop, but, above your head? That’s a different matter!

The craziest part of all was, in my advance thinking, I even thought, “Man, if that slag got on my cornea (clear part of the eye), it would be curtains for that eye.”

But, I was in a big hurry, as I usually am, and I had reading glasses on and, having planned ahead, I thought I’d be really careful.

Yeah, right.

I squinted so hard that the upper lids were pressed against my face just below my right eye, causing the hot screw tip to burn me in three places.

There were 4 screws to grind down, and the first three went flawlessly. Few things are more dangerous to one’s behavior than success, and the success on those three screws may have led to some complacency. Whatever the cause, I got to the fourth one and ZING! Out flies the hot piece of metal, and it’s headed straight for my right eye. Thank God in Heaven for the autonomic nervous system, the complex network that controls all of the body’s functions that we don’t think about: breathing, heartbeat, and our bodies’ functions in the face of danger. Before I even knew there was a problem, my eyelid had slammed shut, leading to the three burn marks you see, which represent folds in the heavily-squinted eyelid.

I went upstairs to get a good look in the bathroom mirror, praying all the way, and was impressed with how little damage was present. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much pain, either. And, thankfully, there was no damage to the actual eyeball.

Clearly, it could have been much worse. And, much more painful.

There was a little more grinding to do, so I reached for the nearby safety glasses, this time, and finished the job.

Right after I said a prayer of thanks for my deliverance.

Happy New Year!

The stupidest part? Safety glasses were right next to the table saw, just two steps away.

New hatches, not yet assigned Festool equipment.

Now, if I’d been really smart, I would have put on my face shield for full protection!

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

POLL: What Woodworking-Related Gifts Do You Get for the Holidays?

Dec 052017
 

 

I love surprises.

My sweet wife, Brenda, hates surprises.

We agree on one surprise area, though, and that is neither of us likes gift surprises. We know what we like, we know what we want, and we don’t see the point of getting something we can’t use or don’t like.

For example, one family who brings their two Dachshunds to us has a delightful jewelry store. A few years ago they ran an ad for a ring and, when Brenda saw it, she said she just had to have it.

Obviously, I got it. I love her too much to say no.

Recently, the wife of the couple was in the clinic with her little girl Dachshund. At the end of the visit she said, “Come get Brenda some nice earrings to go with that ring.”

That night, Brenda and I were talking about Christmas presents, and I mentioned what the lady said. “That wouldn’t interest me,” Brenda opined, “because I want something I can hold out in front of me and see, like a bracelet.”

See what I mean? Why spend money in jewelry-sized aliquots of dough, just to have it be something she doesn’t like?

Brenda quit buying me surprise gifts when she discovered that I was secretly returning them for credit and getting something else. I mean, what if your wife bought you a left-tilt table saw when you wanted a right-tilt? You’d never be completely happy with it.

If you’re going to spend $3000 on a tablesaw, you might as well get what you actually want, and forget the surprise component.

To me, the principle is the same whether you’re spending $14 on a premium paint brush or $500 on a professional Earlex 3-stage Spray System. I don’t want a one-stage sprayer, and, if I get one, I’m going to trade it in toward the unit I actually want, even if I have to save up and do without until I can afford it.

Now, I’m off to print out the photo of the 14″ Rikon Bandsaw and leave it lying around.

Did you know Highland Woodworking has a Wish List feature? Just click here to access the Help page  that will walk you through the registration process. You can also print your Wish List, making it easy for your sweetie to order exactly what you want.

Airline Internet Reads – Tips from Sticks in the Mud – December 2017 – Tip #2

Dec 042017
 

No Southern-fried Southern boy wants to be called a Yankee, but we share the characteristics of shrewdness and thrift. Thus, each month we include a money-saving tip. It’s OK if you call me “cheap.”

If you’re really cheap, like me, you don’t like paying for internet access when you’re away from home or work. When I’m traveling, I usually write in the airport and write on the plane. There’s not much else to do and I’m not bothered by distractions.

However, sometimes I’m in the mood for being entertained by some good old woodworking reading. Now, that’s easy if the terminal has free WiFi, but you’re not going to get free WiFi once you board the plane, unless you’re in first class, in which case, you ain’t cheap!

To get around that, I’ll open a browser, and enough browser pages to fill my flight time with reading.

Key point: You can still power down your device if you put it in “Sleep Mode,” because, when you restore power, everything will load just like you left it. If you simply shut down the entire computer, you’ll lose everything you loaded.

It may take a few minutes to load enough pages for a two-hour flight, but it’s free!

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.

Finishing Funnels and Containers Storage Tip – Tips from Sticks in the Mud – December 2017 – Tip #1

Dec 012017
 

Welcome to “Tips From Sticks-In-The-Mud Woodshop.” I am a hobbyist who loves woodworking and writing for those who also love the craft. I have found some ways to accomplish tasks in the workshop that might be helpful to you, and I enjoy hearing your own problem-solving ideas. Please share them in the COMMENTS section of each tip.  If, in the process, I can also make you laugh, I have achieved 100% of my goals.

Why do we pour finish from the can into a separate container? Because we know that dipping our brush into the original container, applying finish to our project, then dipping into the container again will carry debris from the project surface back into the can.

It’s a practice that can lead to some waste if you have finish left in the secondary container, but it’s better than ruining an entire quart or gallon of expensive varnish or paint. To say nothing of ruining the surface of your project!

Still, what if, when transferring finish, you introduce dirt or dust? That really defeats the purpose of the extra step, doesn’t it? There are some things you can do.

For example, when you finish cleaning your funnels, don’t just toss them onto a shelf to collect dust. Small and medium funnels will fit into zipper-locking bags and be fresh and clean the next time you need them.

Wider and longer funnels may require a different approach. For example, with my long, black funnel I put a used paper towel over the top, secured by a rubber band. The little end is sealed with a portion of a sheet of paper towel forced into the opening.

No dust is getting into this baby. Even though I don’t have a Ziploc bag large enough for it, the funnel is effectively protected by a used paper towel on top and a smidgen of a towel blocking the exit.

And, what of the container decanted into? Leave that lying around and it’s going to be full of dust, cobwebs and insects. Maybe even worse.

For that reason, I save only containers with lids. They can be stored indefinitely and still be clean inside.

I try to save every jar I can, especially if the lid is rust free. After they leave the dishwasher, I turn them upside down on this ventilated shelving for a couple of weeks to allow them to dry completely. Then, the lid goes on and they wait for their opportunity to serve.

Jim Randolph is a veterinarian in Long Beach, Mississippi. His earlier careers as lawn mower, dairy farmer, automobile mechanic, microwave communications electronics instructor and journeyman carpenter all influence his approach to woodworking. His favorite projects are furniture built for his wife, Brenda, and for their children and grandchildren. His and Brenda’s home, nicknamed Sticks-In-The-Mud, is built on pilings (sticks) near the wetlands (mud) on a bayou off Jourdan River. His shop is in the lower level of their home.Questions and comments on woodworking may be written below in the comments section. Questions about pet care should be directed to his blog on pet care, www.MyPetsDoctor.com. We regret that, because of high volume, not all inquiries can be answered personally.