The Case of the Missing Saw Nuts
In my last post I talked about creating handles for two new saw plates. I mentioned that I had saw nuts somewhere in my shop but that I didn’t know where they were. I do hereby confess to the crime of understatement as “not knowing where they are” doesn’t quite cover the energy I expended to find them.
Like most “where are they” stories I started rummaging through cabinets, opening drawers, shoving stuff here and there. When I had done that to every cabinet and drawer I stood in the middle of the room, hands on my head, looking around. Where could they be?. I repeated the process – twice. After an hour of looking I said… No, I’d better not say what I said. Anyways, I gave up and scuttled off to do something else.
The next morning I decided to take drastic action. I went to the same cabinets, the same drawers. Only this time I emptied them onto my workbench. When that was full I covered my assembly table, that used to be my table saw, with stuff.
When that table was covered with debris I did the only useful thing of the entire venture. I “invented” a takedown table. I set up my shop bents and snapped together some tongue ‘n groove pine slabs and created a new table. I will, forever more keep these pieces of pine around for just this purpose as it works great as a take-down table.
Eventually, after three hours of emptying and another hour of replacing everything, I found my saw nuts. They were in a ziplock bag, wadded up such that they didn’t look like saw nuts. They didn’t look like anything. As Sherlock Holmes once said, “You simply remove everything that is not a saw nut and what remains must be the saw nuts.” I might be paraphrasing here. Anyways, victory was mine.
Not exactly victory. I learned that, as the philosopher said, “time sifts” and in this case, the memory I had of my saw nuts was different from reality. Here they are in all their, uhm…glory.
As you can see, these are saw nuts with slotted, ugly heads. They’re also quite the worse for wear. The arrow points at one I tried to clean up and it is possible to get them to shine but quite impossible to remove the deep scratches without distorting the heads as to make them worthless, if you can make them any more worthless than they are (grin).
And so I did what any self-respecting woodworker would do. No, I didn’t make them. It is certainly possible to do so but I needed half a dozen and without a machine shop, doing them one at a time by hand would take me more time than I cared to spend. Rather, I headed to Wenzloff & Son’s website. There I could buy saw nuts that match those in my Wenzloff saws, which are beautiful. And I did. They haven’t arrived yet but this is what they’ll look like when they do.
Cheers — Larry
Where Did November Go????
It’s been nearly two months since I’ve posted. I could say that this was in honor of Kari Hultman’s hiatus but I don’t think you’d believe me. The fact that it’s not true, of course, is irrelevant as I’m a 21st Century kind of guy.
The truth is, fall is a tough time for me as there is a lot of “batten down the hatches” stuff that has to happen when you live on planet Quebec City. We know cold, wind and ice are coming; we’re just not sure when. In addition to those tasks, though, I decided to write a novel… and I did, at least the first draft of one.
But I always miss woodworking when I can’t do it so it was good to finally get into the shop on Saturday. Well, it was sort of good. I learned something about myself. When I’m woodworking, I’m sort of a neatnik. I make messes – I clean them up. I want my shop ready for the next project. I want my tools in their places.
When I’m not woodworking, however, it appears that all bets are off and the results are what faced me Saturday morning. I thought I’d take you on a tour of the mess as a warning. Don’t let this happen to your shop.
My last post about my shop told the tale of a small river running from the hot water heater to the drain. Here’s what remains of that disaster. You can see my finishes cabinet still pulled out from the wall and a pipe wrench still laying by the drain.
Careful, don’t trip. That’s the top of my shop-vac, turned into a leaf blower and then left to clutter the shop floor.
Under here is my sharpening station. The box is a reminder of the rush project to replace a space heater in the upstairs bathroom so my daughter would stop complaining. Kids.
When I went looking for my workbench I found this. Oh yeah, that was the time I needed to get the snowblower out of the shed and the lock had frozen solid. The other end of the bench was covered with some wood dumped there during the flood and an abandoned project that was to replace the arms on a bowsaw. At least it was woodworking.
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My tablesaw is generally my assembly table but it serves other purposes when I’m not woodworking. I packed and shipped a box. Why I needed a level to do that is a mystery.
An outfeed table is a handy place to drop a torch after you’ve played plumber, don’tcha think? I must have.
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But these are the sad photos. They expose an addiction – my addiction. The one on the left is the result of a day when I just had to cut some wood, so I came into the shop, grabbed some scraps and just ‘cut to the line’ a time or two. Just to take the edge off you understand. The photo on the right shows a night when I came in and got a hit off my #7. I think the wood was maple. Doesn’t matter. It calmed the shakes, at least temporarily. It’s tough dealing with an addiction. Feel sorry for me.
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I spent some time picking up and putting away. I dusted everything and waved a broom at the floor. And finally, once again, I had my meager shop ready for action.
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get time to do any real woodworking, though I enjoyed the time fondling tools anyway. My principle tool for the day was this one.
But, I’m back, and it feels good.
Cheers — Larry
WoodnBits Gets a New Power Tool
Recently I lamented that I hadn’t been in my shop in some time. I’m here to tell you today that I got to spend several hours there yesterday. Sometimes an example of ‘careful what you wish for’ smacks you in the face.
I had a 10AM meeting yesterday. At 9AM I went in to the basement to get a notepad to take to that meeting. I happened to look into my shop. My floor mats were floating on a shallow lake. All sorts of stuff that shouldn’t have been was submerged was. I think I said “Eeek.”
I quickly opened a drain plug and the water subsided – all but a small, slow-flowing “creek” that ran across the room. I hiked upstream to the headwaters, bent down, and found the water warm. Not surprising to anyone reading this, the headwaters were coming from the water heater 
Here’s a couple shots of my shop in its current condition. I’m not a happy camper.
Yep…everything has been shoved into two piles. I’ve got to clean up a bunch of things, break out the jojoba oil and try to fight back the inevitable rust. But we woodworkers are all about tools, right? Well, here’s the new power tool in my shop. It’s humming along fine and it’s so squeeky clean. Oh fun.
Cheers — Larry
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