Wooden Bandsaw Project

I came across an excellent website call Woodgears. It is by Matthias Wandel. He does an excellent job designing and documenting all kinds of woodworking projects. One of his projects is a 16" Wooden Bandsaw. After I saw it, I knew I would like to make one. Yes, you can buy a 16" bandsaw, but I thought this was a great and unique project. The plans were $21 and for what I got, that was very reasonable. He provides very detailed 3D drawings done in SketchUp as well as pictures and videos from the build process. I figure I am about 75% complete at this point. I am building the enclosure now and then will mount the motor. More to come later...

Garage Door DIY Spring Replacement

One of our garage door springs snapped a few weeks ago. My initial thought was to call someone to have it repaired. I remember reading about how dangerous a garage door spring can be under tension. Then I thought to check YouTube for videos on garage door repair. Sure enough, there was a 4 part series on fixing and repairing a garage door. Bill Farmer does an excellent job in explaining the entire process and always emphasizes safety. Even though Habpro is in Atlanta, I wanted to order the parts from there to give him my business since he provided such great free content. I did the repair over several days. One day I removed the old spring and bent bracket. I took all the measurements and ordered the parts. When it came in, I did the replacement. When it came to tensioning the spring, I was a bit nervous but everything went well. The parts cost me $72. I am not sure but it probably would have been over $200 to have someone do the repair, so this really saved me money. The door works great now.

Plywood Yard Art

It has been a very long time since my last post, so I will try to catch up on things I have done this year. One new thing I started this year was to make plywood yard art. I became interested in it from my brother in law. I made some skeletons and a zombie for Halloween. Then I made Peanuts characters skating on a pond from "A Charlie Brown Christmas". I also made a velociraptor which I put a big Santa hat on. It is fun. My Black and Decker jig saw gave out last month and I replaced it with a Bosch jigsaw. The difference was like night and day. The Bosch jigsaw is expensive, but almost a must have to anyone who cuts patterns out of large pieces of wood. I plan to do Greg Heffley from "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" next.