Well, its a new year, with a new house, closer to the family which has been great, all, or most, of the curtain rods and blinds are hung, so now it is time to get serious about setting up the shop in its new location. This house has a very large basement, but I chose the corner with the one window in the foundation. The builder insulated the walls that are above and a few feet below grade, and I am surprised how comfortable it is even when we were in the low teens last week.
As you can see, I have "roughed in" some lights to get an idea of where I want those, and the builder was generous enough to add one, count em, one 110v outlet box on the unfinished side of the stair well wall.  Later today, I have my cousin who is a retired electrician coming over to layout the electric service (he will do anything for beer). I debated as to whether I should frame in the walls first, finish the ceiling, or just get this unpacked, set-up, and get back to using the shop. I chose the latter, and there isnt that much stuff to move around should I choose to do so later on.
The two benches  are temporary in that they will be replaced with the Benchcrafted Shaker Bench which is the first project intend to build.
When I started packing in mid-December, I was amazed as to how much "stuff" I had in the shop in Tennessee. I am even more amazed now that I have to unpack it all and figure out what to do with it in a new configuration, but that is part of the fun (I guess). I will post more as progress is made.
Its good to be home.

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Bench Build Next Steps

The bench build continues to go well, I have finished the parts for the front glide vise and I my goal is to get this installed and adjusted this weekend.

Glide vise parts

The parts above are hard maple, the chop was a challenge. It is 2 5/8" thick at the top and tapers down to 1 9/16". I tried to resaw the glue up on my band saw, but it was a struggle, so I stopped, got out the #40 scrub plane, the #6 jointer, and the #4 smoothing plane and had my workout for the day/week/month.
One thing I learned is that you can tap hard wood to accept machine screws. This may seem elementary to some of you, but I had never thought to do that before, and is suggested in the plans to do so.

bench view with leg attached

I went ahead and painted the unit, oiled the knobs and door stops and the bottom foot of the bench. The plan calls for a 4/4 foot I believe and I felt that would make the bench lower that I like so I used simple 2x4 and with the thickness of the top will put the height where I want it.  I can touch up any dings later. The finish is General Finishes Milk Paint Bayberry Green, hardware supplied in the Bench crafted hardware pack.

Additional bench view

The remainder of the work will be on the top and the tail vise. I have all the maple I need barring any major screw ups, and I had to use hard vs. the preferred soft maple. My wood monger in Indiana did not have a good selection of clear soft maple so rather than wait I switched to the hard maple. 

So far the build is going well, there are some challenges which keeps things interesting, and I am learning some new techniques along the choice.

you never know whats next

one of our long time clients brought us this mini diorama yesterday.  his cat had pushed it off its special spot on top of a corner cupboard we built for him ... apparently, he was after the bird, or was just annoyed that there was not enough space on top of the cabinet for him to stretch out.  anychoice, well fix just about any worthy old thing and this one was certainly that.  it was a masterfully constructed piece, gold leaf, thin antique glass, the ground and sky was beautifully painted, and the little fox and the thrush were stuffed and posed and perfectly preserved.  there is even a little feather in the foxs mouth.  kinda cool, but at the same time, kinda creepy to some folks too.  stuffed wildlife is not for everyone.  its headed back to its home tomorrow.  it was also an interesting lesson in minimalist display case construction ... weve built a few of them, and this one was a great example of the craft.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

in addition to the fox, we also cleaned what we think are the last items from our clients fire that happened back in 2009.  its been a long, but interesting and rewarding process as they had an unusual number of actually quite exotic items, including some of our furniture, some elephant spears and a painted six board chest that had been in the family for over 300 years.  heres the last of it ... 

 a pair of carved ivory and sandalwood letter openers ...

 this unusual triptych mirror that could be a free standing, or wall hanging object

 we never did figure out the exact medium ... it didnt seem to be paint and it didnt seem to be enamel, but whatever it was, it was beautiful, and beautifully executed ...

 and then we were taxidermists, cleaning and mounting an impala skull to a board that the client supplied.  the first step was to fill the porous skull with bondo and flatten it.  next we drilled a pilot hole using the little mdf jig and tapped it for a 1/4 x 20 stove bolt

 that tightened up nicely, but the skull still spun so we carefully added two sheetrock screws to fix it in place ... whats coming next week? you never know ...

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