Gimmee Gimmee Gimmee...

The economy in the US is in such shambles there's a ton of deals on woodworking/metalworking equipment as more and more factories and shops close their doors. If shipping didn't cost so damned much I'd be buying machines left and right. Check out this bad-ass boring machine for $1000. Put an XY table on it and you'd have the mother of all mortising machines.

Quickie

Not much progress to report on for this weekend's work. I actually had to plow snow in my yard most of the day today, the weather here has been crazy. I finally had to do something when a drift ate my truck this morning.


I love these little right angle clamp fixtures. They're far cheaper than a dedicated edge clamp and they work great in places where either a bar clamp can't reach or there isn't a parallel side to clamp to, like this 45 degree edge on my microwave shelf. Which, speak of the devil, is done.



As previously mentioned, now that my wall cabinets are complete I'm switching gears for couple weeks before I dive into the base cabinets.

Till then...

Well Hung

I finally got my wall cabinets hung this weekend, minus the microwave cabinet - which I haven't built yet. Hanging the cabinets wasn't as simple as I thought it would be. My house is 120 years old and isn't very square, plumb, or level. Therefore each cabinet had to be scribed and fit to the wall. The first cabinet I hung took me a loooong time and didn't end up fitting very well (although I'm sure I'll be the only one who ever notices) but as I worked away it got quicker and I became very ninja like.


This cabinet is the one above the fridge, and has a finished side that fits tight to the wall and flush to the door on the front. It gives the door a bit more room to swing open before hitting the wall. I measured the inside corner of my walls with a bevel gauge and transferred that angle to the cabinet. You can see how out of square the walls were. I intended to use my belt sander to remove the material but once I had it scribed and saw how much sanding there would be, I took the piece off and used my bandsaw. Resawing 12" of plywood on the bandsaw was no fun and completely did in a new blade. Sorry, I didn't take an 'after' shot.


Here's my sweet set up for holding the cabinets in place while scribing - a shitty wood box on a ladder. Textbook! This is my 'blind corner' which hides the transformer for the undercabinet lights. The wall that this cabinet is mounted to is a tad out of plumb so after getting it mounted I had to scribe and sand the corner piece so it would fit tight against the other cabinet.


Over the 36" height of the cabinet this totalled about 3/16" of difference top to bottom.


After scribing the plumb line I removed the bulk of the waste with a belt sander. I 'heart' my belt sander.


Once I had it close to the line I switched to a jointer plane to ensure it was straight. It always seems kinda blasphemous to handplane plywood, like farting in church. Well, I've never actually been to church... or farted.

It's nice to have these on the wall and out of the way. Space is at a bit of a premium it seems. I'll try to get the microwave cabinet (which is going to the left of the window) put together this week and then I'm going to take a break from cabinets to get some other stuff done in the house.