Craigslist Treasures & The Deck is done.

Marlys was in Minnesota at the lake with her friends this weekend, which left me with time to finish the deck and work (play) with some items I picked up off of Criagslist this week.

I only had the cap rails to complete on the deck so it went pretty quickly, I also got out the router and bull nosed all of the end edges. The deck turned out pretty nice, but that mostly goes to the design, which is pretty basic.

After reading a book I picked up on furniture design, I have come to the conclusion that I need much work in this area. Luckily there are a lot of plans and pictures that I can use to build items.

Speaking of building, last Monday morning at 6:40 I checked Craigslist to see what may have been posted over the weekend. I noticed an ad for clamps that had been placed just a few minutes before. The ad had a picture of a table filled with bar clamps and a price of $1-$3 per clamp.

I may not have a great deal of woodworking experience, but I have become a believer in the adage that you can never have enough clamps.

The ad said to call after 5:30PM. I figured though that someone had placed these ads just a few minutes ago so I would give it a try. Lucky me, someone answered and I said I would take all of the clamps. She asked if there was anything else. I went back to CL and I noticed a series of ads with everything normally in a well equipped wood shop, so I asked the reason for sale and she said they were moving to Mexico and didn't want to store the equipment.

Quickly looking through the ad's I said I would take the jointer and the radial arm saw too.

Marlys, Derek and I picked everything up on Monday evening.

Derek was looking at a dismantled downdraft kiln that was beside the workshop. His art classes must be paying off because it just looked like a pile of bricks, chimney liner and some type of tile tome. It could have been a BBQ for all I knew.

There ended up being 48 clamps in all and the price was $50. So I spent Saturday building a rack to hold these along with those already in the inventory.

I had to come up in with my own design because as mentioned above I am challenged in that area.

I had a nice clamp rack plan, but I think it is in Minnesota at the aforementioned lake in the hands of "Bill the Consultant".

He also got me started on looking for a shop liquidations as a place to pick up good gear. Most of his shop came from a cabinet maker, who if I recall right was retiring or upgrading. Any way I have been on the look out for one of these sales for a long time, kinda like the legend of the Corvette, in the snow bank with the smell.

This shop also had a couple year old Unisaw with a complete station and cabinets for sale at agreat price, but I have a hard time getting everything out of my current saw, so this would be way beyond my skill level.

After finishing the deck I unloaded the truck and setup the gear.

The radial arm saw is a vintage 1960's Dewalt 925. It still had the original trunk finish green paint. I paid $25 for it and the table it sat on. Ray said the motor was starting to bog and it would probably need to be re-wound.

I am not sure about that, because I made allot of saw dust with it this weekend and am amazed at how well it works.

This RAS is so old that it doesn't even have a trigger switch on the handle, but a key that is mounted on the arm to turn it on.

The other piece is a 6" Grizzly Jointer. My current jointer is an old off brand that needs a tune-up badly, so picking up a 3 year old jointer for $70 seemed like a good buy. Ya, 70 bucks. Ray said to watch the blades as they were new. I made some saw dust with this on Saturday too. Actually a lot of saw dust.

The jointer is really one of the keystones of good woodworking in that if you don't start with flat, square material it is just about impossible to end up with a good item.

So I spent the weekend throwing the ball for Dusty, having a few Modelo's and playing with the new gear. And Marlys thought I was going to have a lonely weekend with the high point being beans and franks for dinner.