Updates – A project has been completed, shop changes

My dining room cabinet is finally done! Hard to believe it even as I read it here. After a long and winding road, the installers were here today to add the stone top to the built in cabinet that I made (with a big assist from my father) for my dining room. You can read all about it in the projects section of the site, or go to https://sawdusting.com/portfolio/built-in-dining-room-cabinet/

I am very hopeful that my next projects will not take so long. The eagle eyed among you have probably noticed that I haven’t posted much lately. I generally keep to posts about my projects, or what I have done in the shop – but I haven’t completed any projects recently. That’s because my shop isn’t really functional at the moment, but will be soon – better than ever. Let me explain.

Last month my lovely wife surprised me with a new saw for my birthday. Well, not exactly any old saw, it’s a SAWSTOP!!! Best Wife Ever. Now I can stop lusting over them on the woodworkers websites and actually use one. Well, soon. You see this particular model requires 220v power, and since this was a surprise, I had not arranged for the electrician yet. It is currently assembled and ready to go – but I can’t plug it in. I am very excited and can’t wait to cut things (that are not my fingers) on it – just as soon as I can plug it in.

Getting the saw also led me to pull the trigger on another purchase I had been holding off on – a proper dust collector. That too is now assembled and ready to go – but let’s just say I had a big disagreement with Laguna about their misleading, well, I would say false advertising, that Woodcraft is working to resolve. In the end, that one comes down to electrical power as well. I think it is all sorted, and the electrician is coming again this week to look at everything. Hopefully in the next few weeks, we can get it all running and I can start making things again. Maybe by then I will have calmed down enough to write about the experience of dealing with Laguna.

As if all that wasn’t enough, given the new toys in my shop, I also decided to put down a dricore floor to keep all the tools off the cement floor. You can see it in the above pictures as the floor is all wood now, with special plastic feet underneath to create space for the water. You may have seen my previous posts about the water I get on the floor from time to time, so this way the tools stay dry – but it also meant I had to move virtually everything in the shop multiple times as I put down the flooring. I plan to paint it, so everything will need to move around a few more times as well. I am really, really looking forward to getting this things done, and actually using my new saw – but that’s probably still a few weeks away.

Once all of this is done, I have a kumiko project to finish, and I will need to make changes to my outfeed table. It is too tall for this saw, so I have to change the casters and make a new top that will align with the miter slots on this saw. Those will be fun projects. I also have plans to replace the rolling table that holds my miter saw, with a proper set of cabinets and maybe a router table down the road. Of course those are just shop projects. With the new saw, I am eager to try new patterned plywood projects as well as more kumiko. After that, we’ll just have to see what catches my fancy. Can’t wait to get going on it all. Deep breaths. The electrician will make it all better soon and then away we go. Don’t forget to go read about the built in cabinet in my dining room that is finally finished. https://sawdusting.com/portfolio/built-in-dining-room-cabinet/