Troy's Blog

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I'm just a typical Dad. I have a good wife of 20+ years and 2 good kids. All 3, at times, contribute to my hair graying or falling out.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

1st trestle piece made and a template

A couple of years ago I got a ton of boards that are 1/4" thick, 4" wide and 3' long. Now I have found a use for them. In my goal to build a trestle without spending (much) money, it is coming together. I cut the boards into 1/4 x 1/4 inch x 36" pieces, plus some 1/4 x 1/8 x 36". The 1/4 by 1/4 are the main beams and the thinner ones are the cross members. Above is how they look after being ripped lenghwise.
This is the first trestle support that I made (laying on its side if you look at it this way). It took 4 evenings to get 4 pieces on. I had to square it up and wait for the glue to dry. I decided piss on that and started using the hot glue gun. It bonds in 1-2 seconds and I built the rest of this in one evening.

When I got done with the first one and was showing off my accomplishment, I actually kinda got a compliment from Kaitlyn. She said "huh......I didn't think you could do it". Apparently the plans looked complicated and she thought it was beyond my talents. The "huh" was the compliment part.

I have about 19 of these to make. But first I have to cut all the wood for them.
This is the same support from the side.
This is the template I made for assembling the rest of them. Of course now that I have the template made, I've thought of a couple of things I should have changed.
This is how the pieces will lay in the template.
This is my sander. I can't use it for these small pieces, those I have to sand by hand. I just knew you wanted to see a picture of my sander. I love it. For those of you that use those fancy stones for the hard skin your feet, this would do the trick much quicker. But get your own, you're not using my sander for your feet. The round sliver disc also holds a sanding pad. You could use that on your toe nails.

Turn your head for this one, too. Does anyone know how to rotate pictures? This is my band saw. I use it to cut all of the small pieces. I love it, too. It makes just the coolest noise when it starts up and shuts off. You can actually feel the power. I have been warned by several people that it is really easy to cut a finger off with one of these. Because you work so close to the blade and are always moving your hands toward it....I guess some people have learned the hard way. Hopefully you don't seen any pictures of me at Innovis Hospital.


Off the trestle subject for now. This is one of the braces that will be screwed to the main frame and support the non trestled portions of the 2nd level. These get put together in about 5 minutes but it takes a day for the glue to dry. Because they will have more of a load, I can't use hot glue for them. I have about 17 of these to make. All of the pieces are cut for these.




This is how it looks standing up.
That's all for now. I don't want to overload anyone with info.
One thing that I do have to brag about......I update my blog more often than Kaitlyn & Sean do theirs.


7 comments:

KJ said...

I'm not quite sure what to say. Impressive? Interesting? Confusing? Mind-Numbing? Take your pick I guess.

Anonymous said...

thank you for finally doing something with that wood. it was taking up space.
one picture of the trestle really would have been fine.
we've all seen sanders before.
and band saws.
we think it would be kinda funny to see you with 5 or less fingers. we wouldn't hold your hand ever though.
and who cares if you update yours more? we have better information on ours.

Anonymous said...

we mean less than 5 fingers.

Anonymous said...

Grandpa Bowerman would be so impressed with your abilities. I, on the other hand, fell asleep.

Jed said...

Poor Troy. Everyone in picking on him and all he is trying to do is live up to his woodworking idol, Monek.

Laurel said...

GREAT. It's taken me like 14 years and 2 therapists to get that visual OUT of my mind. Thanks, Jed.
On the other hand -- Troy, you have WAAAYY more patience than I do!! Keep it up -- I'll keep looking for the 'after' pictures!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm surprised the camera didn't fall asleep.
Jeff