Tag Archives: table saw

Wednesday 24th June 2015 – MANY YEARS AGO …

… I was engaged for a short while to a girl called Liz (you’ve no idea how many people called Liz have featured in my life). It didn’t last too long, mainly for the reason that I wasn’t ready for such a commitment – and I’m probably still not ready even now.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … last night when I was on my nocturnal ramblings, we met up again and resolved to get back together. We arranged to meet up at a park entrance somewhere but we didn’t think about which particular entrance. It was a huge park too, with quite a few entrances so I was constantly driving from one entrance to the next to see if I could find her. Also featuring in this voyage were a very old friend of mine and his wife, a woman with whom I don’t particularly see eye-to-eye. They were constantly interrupting me as I was driving around and I was starting to panic that I would never ever meet up with Liz at this rate (and indeed I didn’t)

What was strange about this is that I was reading a story last night, just before I went to bed, about a couple who had rekindled their relationship after 22 years apart. And it also brought to my mind an occasion in the mid 1990s when I had to meet someone at an Underground station in London, but there were so many exits to this station that we didn’t meet up. However, I’d given no thought at all to this ever since – until I awoke this morning.

What this couple were doing in this story I really don’t know. But it’s bizarre that these couple of events in real life should become entangled in one of my nocturnal voyages.

With all of this going on, I was up and about at about 06:50, long before the alarm went off. And after breakfast I cracked on with the radio programme. It’s all done now, all 7,000-odd words of it. 41kbs that works out at, or about 13 weeks of text discussion. That should really keep me out of mischief for a while.

door frame shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the door frame, that’s not only started but finished (please excuse the photo – the flash on this phone-cam is not up to all that much). I cut down a couple of floorboards with the table-top saw (which struggled with this -the poor thing couldn’t quite manage properly) and I found an offcut in the barn that I cut down to give me all that I needed.

There’s a batten in there too. That’s for a shelf support as there is going to be a shelf there and that’s where the towels will live. I didn’t have a batten that size but when I installed the flying staircase down to the ground floor, I just used chevrons in a standard length for the columns without regard to what was actually needed. Cutting one down to size gave me more than enough to make the batten.

I just had to sand it down, and the new belt sander that I bought a couple of months ago did that for me.

I was so engrossed by this that I hadn’t noticed the time and it was 19:25 by the time that I knocked off. Really carried away, I was.

So tomorrow, I might have a go at fitting the hinges for the door, and then cutting the door down to fit. I’d love to have that fitted and working by the end of the week.

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Tuesday 3rd March 2015 – I HAD A GOOD DAY …

… at work today, for a change. Although, as usual, you wouldn’t really notice.

I was up early enough and after breakfast had a good crack on at the laptop. As well as the Radio Anglais programmes, I’ve restarted work on my website again. I’ve done almost nothing on it during the winter but now Spring is here and it’s time to come out of hibernation and get a wiggle on

upper doors fitted wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn the bedroom I spent some of the morning finishing off the second door on the upper part of the wardrobe, cutting out the lets for the hinges and fitting them, and then fitting the door handle and the magnetic catch. Once I’d done all of that, I could hang the door.

And then take the door off, file down part of the edges so that it would fit better and then rehang it.

Off to Caliburn next, to fetch another pack of floorboarding and bring that upstairs. Then I could make up a board out of seven planks, ready to cut down to make doors 3,4,5 and 6.

After lunch, I cut two strips 770mm wide out of the board that I had made. 770mm is the height of the upper doors (give or take a millimetre or two) and these two strips will form the four doors that I mentioned just now.

One of the strips I cut down to make two doors of exactly the right width for doors 3 and 4, and then fitted the reinforcing battens. I had to cut down some wood for the battens, and the table saw that I bought in Commentry a couple of months ago did the job expertly. In fact, I was running the electricity and power tools today (the circular saw, the belt sander and the table saw) until 18:40 today without significantly draining the batteries and I’m well pleased with that.

So now the two doors are ready to be hung tomorrow morning, and then I can crack on with cutting down doors 5 and 6. When they are done, there will be just door 7 to fit, and then the upper fascia panels and then I can varnish the wardrobe.

Tonight, I didn’t light a fire. 17.8°C in the attic it was, which was impressive for this time of year. I cooked tea on the single burner camping stove that I use for making coffee and as well as working perfectly (a good plan making these huge curries and packing them into individual portions – they don’t take much heating) it warmed up the place by 1°C.

On the subject of electricity, I noticed that at one stage we were having 42 amp-hours of surplus electricity. It didn’t last long but it pumped uop the heat in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load.

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Friday 16th January 2015 – AFTER ALL THAT I SAID LAST NIGHT …

… about having loads of sun so that I could sand down the floor of the shower room, then I woke up this morning to a hanging cloud. I suppose that that was odds-on, wasn’t it?

So having put the kybosh on the sanding, first thing this morning was to put the second coat of wood treatment on the old exposed beams. That didn’t take too long, From there, I attacked the floor on the landing on the first floor.

And cutting the first floorboard took almost all of the morning. It needed three lets cut in it so that it could fit around the verticals, and they had to be cut pretty precisely. Once that had been done, I had to cut a couple of countersinks into it so that the hinges that fit into it will be flush with the surface.

go on table saw bricomarche commentry les guis virlet puy de dome franceI needed to cut some floorboarding planks into 50mm lengths to make a framework for the trapdoor, and so despite the absence of electricity I decided to put the new table saw to use.

As I suspected, it is a cheap rubbishy thing (as I suspected) but it did the job well enough once I’d worked out how to fit the guide rail. But in news that will surprise most people, but not the more cynical amongst us, the built-in measure is reading 4mm short. Good job I measure up after I cut the first one, isn’t it?

After lunch, I filed down the offcuts that I had cut so that they made a neat line, and then went off to look at the painting. My masking isn’t up to much, it seems, as I have plenty of white spaces where the masking tpe prevented the wallpaper from reching, and also some of the wood treatment on the old beams has filtered down behind the tape. I’ll have some touching up to do on Monday.

Last job tonight was to cut the second “long” plant to size. That needed trimming off and a couple of lets cut into it to fit around the verticals. That’s now done and so on Monday, another thing that I can be doing is to cut out the trap door in the lower layer of floorboards. Whnen that’s done, I can fit the last two sheets of plasterboard on the studding on the landing, and then cut out the trap on the upper layer of floorboards.

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Monday 12th January 2015 – WOO HOOOO!

Yes, I’ve finished the wallpaper in the stairwell this afternoon. It doesn’t look particularly pretty but at least it’s all on and it will be staying on now, and that is that.

I had something of a little lie-in this morning so it was about 10:30 when I started work. First job was to vacuum up the dust with the soot-sucker. It didn’t half clog up the filter, but I’ve had experience of this in the past and it didn’t take very long to sort it out.

And in news that will startle almost everyone, I didn’t knock off for lunch until 14:30 – 30 minutes after my usual time. Working later than the normal knocking-off time (18:00 in winter, 19:00 in summer) is not an unusual event, but to work on past the lunchtime break is absolutely unheard-of.

However today, it was 13:45, too early to knock off and a piece of blank wall looked so inviting. As I was on a roll, I threw caution to the winds and pushed on. And I’m glad that I did too, because after lunch and I cracked on, I was done by 17:30 and that was that.

I spent the remaining time doing a few odd jobs, including changing over the plug on the new table saw (I use British plugs and sockets here as you know, because the plugs are fused. By 18:15 I was done and dusted, and that was that.

I can’t paint the wallpaper for a day or two as the paste needs to dry thoroughly. It looks like Wednesday to make a start on that. Tomorrow therefore I’ll push on and do all of the masking-off and catch up with a couple of other jobs that need to be sorted out

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Saturday 10th January 2015 – I’M A FIRM BELIEVER …

… that if a thing is destined to happen, it will happen. Regardless of however much input one puts (or doesn’t put) into the whole procedure. It seems to happen time and time again and the only secret of this is, as Jacqueline De Bellefort said in Death on The Nile – “You have to follow your star wherever it leads, even to death itself”.
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And with this in mind, I went off to Commentry this afternoon.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t.

I had made a stunning breakthrough with this 3D program that I’ve been playing with. I had totally given up on the modern version of it ages ago and had gone back to an ancient version, and there I was last night trying to make a 4th Generation character work properly when, all of a sudden, it all clicked into place and I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was 06:00 this morning before I realised it, and I hadn’t had any tea either.

Consequently, it was 11:20 when I crawled out of my stinking pit and seeing the bright sunlight and clear sky I resolved to go to Commentry and the swimming baths. Pausing only to add a little more filler to the wall where there was a hole or two, at 13:30 I was off on the road.

The pool was a little (just a little) warmer than last time, practically empty and the shower was just as delicious, even though the private showers were closed for maintenance. And seeing that I was only half a mile from Bricomarché, I went off in search of some sunken hinges – I’ll need these for the trapdoor that I’ll be making in a week or so.

While I was there, not only did I find siome hinges that will do the job, I solved the problem of the handrail for the stairs. Some huge screwed eyes, with 16mm holes, and a 2-metre length of some very nice 14mm hemp rope – that will make a lovely handrail.

But here’s the exciting bit, that relates to what I was talking about earlier. I was thinking again about these wooden ends for the plasterboarding. Cutting up pine boards was my original idea but at Montlucon the other week the stuff on offer was rubbish. At Bricomarché the stuff is so much better, the staff is so much more friendly and they have cutting facilities too.

So while I was wandering around turning things over in my mind, I came across the tool sale, and there on offer at just €44:00, was a cheap 600-watt table saw. It was the last one in stock too.

It’s not the ideal thing, but it’s the nearest that I can find and i’ll need to build a table for it if I’m going to cut doors down doors and things like this, but for what I want to do at the moment it’s ideal. I can soon trim down half a dozen floorboards with this.

I went to the new NOZ at Commentry too. I didn’t buy anything exciting but nevertheless it was a good opportunity to have a look round.

Back here, nice and clean for once, I crashed out for an hour or two. And I’m not surprised either. And I’m off to bed in a minute with nice, clean bedding too. And as it’s Sunday tomorrow, I ccan have a nice lie-in.

But I’m glad I followed my star all the way to Bricomarché at Commentry today.

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