Chopping Firewood Warms You Twice

I have some on the most awesome neighbors ever. I know a lot of people say that, but I firmly believe in mine.  One of my neighbors across the street took down a maple and a cedar and offered both up as fire wood for me to just HAVE!  Now, two trees is a lot of wood to and split and the cedar looked nasty with lots of knots and limbs.  I decided to rent a $70 hydraulic log splitter for the day and just get it done.

I showed up with a chainsaw, bar-oil, and the splitter and he had it all laid out and ready to go.  He gave me pre-mixed gas for the saw and spent 9 hours helping me bust it all up – just because!!  Even though we used the splitter, it was still HARD work and we lifted/rolled/moved/cut/shoved 2+cords of wet heavy wood around.  It was work!  I bought him lunch and a bottle of Bushmills 10yo Whiskey, but that is nowhere near enough payment for all he did!

The maple is enough to supply around a third of our wood for next winter (takes a while to season) and the cedar will make for awesome fire pit wood in the back yard and at the beach!  I am on the lookout for some oak to lay up this winter and I would commit heinous acts for a load of madrona…

Weekend in the shop

I got some serious crap done in the garage and at home this weekend:

Cleaned, swept, and put away tools for over an hour Saturday morning
Added wheels to my screw-clamp stand
Built a hammer stand – I have a lot of hammers
Organized 4 drawers on my tool cabinet
Organized a drawer for just camera mounts and cables
Hung 22 small blue U-Line organization bins
Cleaned off table saw
Installed new table saw blade
Re-tensioned bandsaw
Cleaned off bench for 1st time in MONTHS!
Put all the miscellaneous screws, bolts, and hardware in the proper organization bin
Sanded the carcass for a bathroom cabinet installation
Moved some angle-iron into the metal storage rack
Carried 2 of the 3 cabinet sections in the house
Cranked on the lathe to reduce the diameter of a dowel
Blew 30 amp breaker
Said the f-word at least 3 times
Took a look and original electrician did not fully terminate one of the “hot” wire legs, which led to the failure.
Said dirty words
Drove to Home Depot and back for breaker
Swapped out a blown breaker
Ran 75 linier feet of 12-2 Romex wiring
Installed 12 electrical boxes
Only dropped 1 on my head/face
Installed a couple of runs of CAT-6 ethernet cable for the PoE camera system
Jesus, CAT-6 is expensive!!
Moved some firewood into the house
Built and installed butcher paper roll noteboard on a cabinet front
Re-set wall clock
Worked on chipping hammer re-build
Shot a couple of videos
Sanded a couple spots on the jeep under windshield
Wished I had a bathroom in the garage at 3 different points during the weekend
Started on pizza peel build for Father-in-law