RabidAlien

Awesome!! Mine's a rescue, too.

Great cut! Gotta love that feeling of designing and then cutting your own pattern!

This part of the project will probably get stained. Usually what I do for staining is put the piece in a Ziploc bag, pour some stain in, and slosh it around until all the interior parts are covered. Then pull it out, wipe it down to remove excess on the top/bottom, set it on some drying stands, and boom, done. Getting inside tiny nooks/crannies is a nightmare, even with a small paintbrush.

With the pattern still on, my wife thought I'd already painted it a sparkly silver (red pattern, printed on a B&W laserjet printer, comes out grey-ish). She liked that better than the glossy white I was planning, so this may end up silver on a dark Minwax Provincial background. Not sure. I'll have to toy with the color scheme a bit.

Finished up the harder half. The other side is all lettering, so with the exception of the dots over the "i"'s, which may or may not get left off, depending on how cranky I'm feeling at the time, I'm hopeful that the next cuts will be easier. Still have to pull the pattern off, but right now its holding on one small breakage point (between the "o" and "u"). Also had one of the bars crack off at the very end, that's been glued back on as well. All in all....two small glue spots? With all of these VERY narrow lines? I'll take it!!!!

I work out of half of our garage at home, my "heating/cooling" consists of keeping the garage door closed when its cold and running a stand-up space heater in the winter (not really adequate for heating the whole garage, but I just have it aimed at me and I don't move around a lot) and a box-fan with the garage door up in the summer. I've also got a small Honeywell desk fan that I have elevated and pointed at my scroll saw to help with dust removal...makes for chilly hands in the winter, but doubles as cooling in the summer.

Managed to remember to take pics. Mostly it was due to the paint I used. Waaaaaaaaaay too thick, and oil-based so I couldn't have gone back and thinned it with water. It didn't cover the cut areas evenly, and completely filled in the thin lines. What I was trying to do was to paint the whole thing, then sand it lightly to give it the weathered look, then cover with BLO. I'm MUCH happier with the re-cut, taking the empty spaces out instead of removing the pattern. Guess that's just the style I prefer. The pattern will not all connect without completely re-doing the whole thing, but it will be re-assembled and glued to the backer so that's not a problem. I lopped it in half for ease of cutting, my current magnifier lamp is a small desk model that required I keep moving it as the pattern turned and bumped into the neck. Rumor has it that Santa has a long-armed model that clamps to the desk with my name on it. Guess I'd better start behaving.

After having cut that one....yeah, my future patterns will be red, especially the "remove the black parts" patterns. After a while, it got hard to see where the blade was!

My WW2 history collection is larger than my local library's. My knowledge and understanding of WW1, Korea, and Vietnam are sadly lacking, though, so I thought I would expand my area of interest.

Next time you're in the States, swing down through Texass. Queso, basically, is cheese soup.

Got a small Amazon gift card at work for stepping up and taking an emergency oh-crap trip to fix some network, so of course I had to use it. These came in the mail today....

Okay, so since I hoarked up the finish on the original, I started a second one. And after some clarification emails between my wife and her friend, I started cutting it exactly opposite of how I cut it before. Instead of removing the black....I'm removing the white. Which will mean a bunch of gluing of unattached pieces to the backer, liberal use of a ruler to make sure its all straight, and lots of prayer that nothing slips. LOL Thankfully, I've had practice recently on cutting close to a thin line, with the 3D spider-web-ish piece I did. So I'm fairly confident that, provided my sanity stays where its at (what's still there, at any rate), I shouldn't have any problems with this one. I've got a fresh blade, good lumber, workable pattern, audiobook, its dark outside and I'm not wearing sunglasses....hit it.

Conan's father: "Conan, what is best in life?" Conan: " To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women! " Conan's father: "No......QUESO, you idiot!"

Aaaaaaaaaaand then I totally hoarked up the end-game. Got the backer and frame all cut, and decided to try a "rustic/faded whitewash" look. Yeah...should've used a scrap piece first. The paint I used brushed on waaaaaaaaay too thick and got into and clogged up all the thin-cut lines. Live and learn, I guess. We'll chalk this up as "practice cutting a good frame". So I'll be cutting a second one. My wife emailed some pictures of other stuff I've done to her friend, and her friend decided she loved the unicorn cuts I did for my daughter. Those were cut out and glued to the backer, they do not touch the frame themselves. Which means I've had to modify this pattern a tad to reconnect most of the bars to notes, connect the trebel-clef back, and remove the bridge in the "o" and the "e". Not a difficult pattern to modify, and it may make it easier to cut with my saw (more pilot holes to drill, but fewer tight turns for my blade). Live and learn, live and learn....curse myself heartily for pulling a stupid rookie mistake like that, but....live and learn.

Also had two hand-held sanders, one Black & Decker "Mouse" sanders that was probably 15 years old, and a new DeWalt sander. Good thing I got the DeWalt...the B&D started throwing plastic pieces from inside, and then the motor seized up. 15 years, though, that's a pretty good lifespan for a palm sander.

Made it. Its up in the pattern library if you want.

Kinda what I figured, as well, due to the feel and color of the dust.

Cut another of my patterns today, just to make sure it was possible. One word of caution....be careful sanding the "Queso" portion. Mine cracked into three pieces, the "u" breaking off from the "Q" AND from the "e", and the "s" separating from the "O". Nothing terribly hard to fix, just annoying as I wanted it to be in the process of stain drying, not glue drying. Cut from 1" mystery board, found in the attic of my old house and snuck into the moving van, one of the few pieces of wood I managed to bring down south. I'd say cedar, due to the orange-ish dust it gives off when sanded, but there's so much other stuff soaked into the wood from its time in the attic, that I honestly couldn't tell you. It is, though, rather fragile as it turns out. LOL

Cut the musical note version today. 1/2" oak ply. Letters were no problem, the notes/bars on the right pushed the limits of my saw. But....it performed like a champ and we got it done. Tomorrow...well...tomorrow will see some Advil, some sanding, and a frame.

Gage is a rebel....he's wearing his all-black tie upside-down. ::fistbumps a penguin:: Nice projects!!

Thanksgiving is almost here, so I needed something to replace the Thanksgiving Trivet (Steve Good) hanging on the wall at work. So....another Steve Good pattern. The dude is so good, the word "good" was named after him. (sorry, been a long day, that's the best I could come up with. No worries, I won't quit my day job) 1/2" Oak ply, cut amazingly well with few feathers to clean up afterwards. Also planning on working a couple of my own patterns this weekend, the "It Is Well With My Soul" pattern with the musical notes for one of my wife's friends, and the "Queso IS Life" just because queso deserves the recognition. Haven't decided if I'm going to try painting the little blob of queso on the "e" or not.

Heh....that group photo reminds me of those Calvin-n-Hobbes cartoons where he's faced with a mob of zombie snowmen or something. Nicely cut!

I have one working scroll saw, band saw, table saw, skill saw, reciprocating saw, drill press, two cordless drills. I have a vintage router that may or may not work, the power cord is so cracked I'm afraid to turn it on without serious rubber matting between myself and the ground. I also have five old planes, anywhere from 1960's Sears to something that was probably handed down from my wife's grandfather's grandfather, all of which are in dire need of cleaning/restoration and sharpening. My wife asks why I have them if I don't use them.....then gets mad when I ask her why she has shoes she hasn't worn in a year or more. THEY'RE VINTAGE, AND EFFIN' COOL!!!

I've always wanted to make a wooden clock, since middle school and hearing a story about a freed slave who borrowed a pocket watch from a white friend, disassembled it, and carved all the gears with a pocket knife to replicate the clock. Something like that, anyway. I've got several plans I found online somewhere, haven't made one yet since I don't have the weights or other brass parts (shafts, bearings, etc). Anyone know a good source for those parts? I can find clocks all day long, but not the weights.