today in the woodshop...

This morning we delivered the toy cars to our local food bank. The photo shows the first and second grade class with Food Bank director Pat Kasner. It is important for the children to begin thinking of others early in their lives, and they were proud to show off the cars they had made.

Yesterday I had an adventure. I am always hesitant to buy new tools for a couple reasons. First, as an author, I think it is important to share with my readers the concept that having the newest and best tools is not required, and that craftsmen throughout history have used what they have had available to create whatever they want.

The other reason I have been hesitant in acquiring new tools is that I have limited space for them. It can get crazy. Buy something new and the whole woodshop needs to be rearranged and something gets bumped.

So yesterday, I got word from the freight company that my new Grizzly table saw was arriving at the bottom of the hill. I got on the tractor and headed down to meet it. The long gravel road to our house is no-semi zone. Trucks won't come here. So with the tractor, I lifted the main part of the saw into the bucket and strapped it in place. I loaded the rest of the saw on the forks at the back and brought them home, ever so grateful that the front loader would hold the weight as I bounced slowly up our long hill.

This would have been the normal time to enlist lots of helpers, but I like the challenge of doing things myself. The tractor carried the saw up to the side door of the shop. Then I had to build a ramp of 2 x 6 boards to carry the weight of the saw up the low step and scoot the saw onto a 4 wheel dolly. All that sounds simple in retrospect, but at the time, it was not. Now the challenge will be to sell some old equipment and as you can see in the photo below, I have a new table saw to be thankful for, and that will serve well for many years to come. I bought the new saw because of tax incentives, but also because I have been having troubles with an aging elbow and my old saws had become difficult to crank up and down and offer insufficient dust collection capacity. The new saw has a riving knife for greater safety. So, feast your eyes on something that doesn't happen often in my shop.