7 days till our house warming party - 7 days to refinish our oak kitchen table.

Our little house warming party will be in 7 days and one of my projects on the Honey-Do-List is to refinish our kittchen table, which we inherited from the previous owner of this house.

So step 1 is to sand it down...

some of the finish removed, still lot's togo

The next big step is to figure out what kind of finish was on it to begin with and stain it so it matches all the other parts of the table.

Right now I bought 'golden oak', which seems to be the wrong stain...

Finishing the dog house roof supports

after we cut the tenons and mortises last week, it was now time to put all these pieces together using cross lab joints.

Like these, except that there is a mortise in the middle. We need some overlap in these joints, to avoid the wood splitting while the glue is drying.

Now there are several methods of doing these joints. You can use a saw, chisel and bull nose plane, but since I was short this kind of plane I needed another method. So instead we used a small trimm router and a 1/2 mortise bit. Kinda the wrong bit for the job, but I had this laying around so...

one of our mortises from the last week

the lower part of the cut lap joint

all the assembled joints.

 Next step is cutting the rabbits for the siding and start working on the rafters.

can't sleep...

so for some reason I'm so busy with work and all my little projects recently that I can't really sleep and wind down or relax.

So I started a late night/midnight project called building a workbench top with only the use of classic hand tools  Which I collected over the years.

Also I'm using mostly scrap wood that is highly bowed, warped and twisted. Just to make it more of a challenge...

jointing the 2x2x96" studs 

gluing the studs and leaving some space for 'dog holes' 

planning the top to get it somewhat level

So the basic idea is to get some support in the future for cutting mortises, tenons and other stuff. Still need to somehow figure out how to build a vise.

Cutting mortise and tenon joints

recently the work on the doghouse slowed down a bit, since for the love of it I could not figure out how to create the roofing support.

Now after reading a couple of more books about this topic I came to the conclusion that I will need a couple of joints for this.

• a couple mortise/tenon joint
• a couple half lap joints
• a bunch of birdmouth joints

So the first step is right now to create the mortises for our tenons and settled on using a drill press as the best possible method, with some help from my chisels to square them up.

after measuring the proportions we remove the waste

square it up with a chisel

fit it slightly loose to leave a bit of space for the glue later

Now I only have to make 15 more and than start working on the lap joints to make the corners fit.

my little woodshop

during the process of building our doghouse, I acquired more or less a complete little wood working shop in our garage and notice that it's really really handy to have all these tools available. For example, a couple of days ago our couch broke:

broken plywood support

and it was really easy to fix using a slab of Mahogany I had laying around (which was supposed to be transformed into something entirely different...)

fixed frame, after removing millions of staples

Granted it took me several hours, most of them removing staples from the couch. But it was so nice to have a thickness planer to just dimension the wood down to the thickness you need to make it fit

Also surprisingly it's not really the tools which are the expensive parts, it's all the tiny accessories you need with the tools. Be it a saw-blade or just a square/precision ruler/etc.

Next project is to install two additional 15A circuits into the garage and hopefully a system to collect air bone dust for health regions.

Also slowly making progress with the doghouse, everything is still level and working the roofing joint's next.

Dog House - foundation mostly done

I'm finally making some progress with the dog house and finished most of the flooring and foundation tonight.

rabbited supports for the roofing and siding, still need some more joints

glueing and doweling the corners together

glueing the cross brackets for the flooring

used joint for the foundation and roof support

after the flooring is installed ant the roofsupports are glued in

finished the reloading press mounts

so the mounting boards out of cedar and mahogany, needed to be slightly modified to allow for the press to be mounted. Since the bolt's were looking out under it.

But the result looks rather nice.

all setup and now only needs to be adjusted

support for a reloading press

over the last couple of months I started to assemble an AR-15 precission rifle and got slighlty burned by the cost of ammunition. So the only possible way to support this hobby was to start reloading my own ammunition.

So the first step was to aquire a reloading press and in my case I wanted to have one, which can easily produce pistol and rifle ammunition. Because let's face it, at some point we will by a .45 1911 and 9mm Highpower pistol. Basically once John moves away and we loose the access to it.

Anyway, once you have a reloading press you need to mount it to a sturdy support and since I don't really have the space for a dedicated reloading shop (or the financial means), it had to be a simple sturdy board, which has the press mounted to it and can be clamped to a table, when the need to reload arrives.

we start with some rough white cedar and rough mahogany boards

the boards are cut down to 16" length each and planed to 3/4" thickness

after combining the cedar with the mahogany using a spline joint, we just sand them for a bit 400 and 600 grit sandpaper and add 4 coats of mineral oil. And they are finished and waiting for the press to be mounted on it tomorrow.

Since I plan on selling cutting boards with my little company rather soonish, I decided to join the cedar to the mahogany using a simple spline joint, cut on the table saw. The joint was made from a scrap piece of redwood, I had laying around and it turned out to be simpler than planned, but stil took about 90 minutes to make these boards. I really need an orbital sander...

example of a splined joined, in our case we are joining the mahogany to the cedar using a piece of scrap redwood.

Building a doghouse

over the last couple of weeks, I was starting to plan how to build a doghouse for our puppies...

After all they look kinda unhappy in there kennel right now and don't have that much shade:

get me some shade...

rough cad drawing of the doggie house

let's start with a 4"x4"x8' long piece of raw lumber and rip it on the tables aw

cut it to 4"x0.5"x8' strips and plan them to .4" on the thickness planer

so that our puppies have a hardwood floor to lay on during the day... 

Long time no news...

well for a lot time there were no posts, basically the reason is that we were very simple incredible busy and there were some slight changes. First we were running around and tried to find a patio furniture set for our backyard since about 2-3 months and finally found one

our backyard is coming together

We also finally manage to sell the motorcycle and now I'm trying to learn to live without one.

there goes 'rose'

And sadly I do miss it, even if I haven't really ridden it in the last 12 months for safety reasons...

I also attended a fundraiser for ovarian cancer with Robin and managed to finished 8th in my age group in a 5k run.

place 8 in my age group (30-35) and 169 overal out of  ~1000 attending people

I also spend a lot of time reading about how to build a doghouse for our puppies and somehow got a bit carried away and started to put a little woodworking shop together, but more about this in a future post.

we got a table saw, miter saw and thickness planer. Only the lathe, drill press and joiner are missing now...

And we finally managed to order a small little keggorator and a 50L keg of Franziskaner.

Why we love our 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee

now over the last 8 days of owning our new car we put exactly 500 miles on it so far and did several trips to stores like Home depot or other 'let us keep you money' stores. To work on our house and compliment it.

Now reasons why we love the jeep:

buying a bbq for the backyard - it fits

space for two adorable puppies

space for a out door patio furniture set

space for several 100 pounds of wood and stuff

and the gas bill for 450 miles of driving was not even to bad

Needless to say we are rather happy with it!

And our backyard looks nicer and nicer.

The magical transformation of a 2013 Porsche Boxser into a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee

So Robin and I were dead set on buying a new 2013 Porsche Boxster in the next 3-6 months, because owning a Porsche was always something, which I never thought would be possible to obtain for me.

Well about 3 days ago, I got hit on the freeway by another Car, which totaled my 1996 Pathfinder/Puppy Car and made it not safe to drive anymore.

damage after getting hit by 4800lbs F150 Pickup Truck, the frame seems to be bend to and it's not really safe to drive anymore

So Robin and I set down trying to figure out what we need and a sexy sports car, was not really a possibility, since we need a useful car to transport our puppies (which are getting bigger and bigger) and get stuff for our house.

what we wanted to buy ~55k$

So we decided to get instead a car, which fulfills the following criteria:

• AWD or 4WD to be able to drive in Snow and go camping in offsite campgrounds
• not more than 5 seats
• enough space for the dogs in the back and 2 people + stuff
• load capacity of around 1000 lbs for House supplies
• able to tow a small trailer or jet skies, if we ever require it
• possible to have a roof rack installed
• somewhat fuel efficient (no V8 for me... I guess I will never own one now, since car makers are stopping to produce them)
• not more than 400$ a month payment

Now after I started my research and pointed out a couple of car's to Robin:

1500 Dogde Ram Quad Cab Pickup ~22k

2013 Toyota 4-Runner 4WD ~40k

2013 Toyota Tacoma 4WD ~35k

2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee AWD ~30k

And we decided to go with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, since all the Toyotas used to much Gasoline and the Dogde was the worst by far with a estimate gas mileage of ~17l on 100km and the Grand Cherokee was the best with about ~12l on 100km. It was a bit more expensive than the Dogde, but had all the features we wanted and satellite radio.

Now this sounds a bit funny to choose a car by a feature called Satellite Radio, but after using it for 5 minutes and discovering a dozen of stations I loved, It was a must have for me and Robin just loved the look and features of the Grand Cherokee and considered the Ram 1500 Pickup just too big.

Robin: The grand cherokee is a boat, but the Dodge is a flipping Cruise Liner...

She also found this cute 2013 Jeep Compass, which was a nice litte SUV and was just great gas mileage wise, but it was just to small for me and optical as physical (I did not fit behind the wheel) and so it was never an option. It was 10k$ cheaper than the Grand Cherokee, but if I don't fit...

So we ended up with this beautiful 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which has all the features we wanted and needed, for an acceptable price and is able to tow up to 5000lbs, if we ever need to and install a Class IV Hitch to it.

from the front, in our Drive Way

from the side

next to our Pathfinder, I assume it's going to be picked up by the insurance company soonish. The Jeep is significant larger

Now we are just looking forward to our next camping trip, with the Jeep. After all, it's already Basil approved.

Basil seems to like the large rear window

Pearl Habour

during my stay in Hawaii, I had togo to Pearl Habor, since this has been one of the most significant places in the States and especially the State of Hawaii in the last 100 years.

And sadly the security guidelines were so strict, that I could not bring my long lenses into the memorial to take pictures and was so limited to using a 10-20mm wide angle lens. Which basically means that I could get only one decent shot.

one of the old submarines in front of the memorial of the submarines, which sunk/disappeared during the second world war.

I actually really learned a lot at this particular part, for example that the average service live of a submarine was only 6-8 Month (just a guess based on the numbers, no statistical evidence available), before it 'disappeared' during the war. Yes there were some, which survived for 2-3 years. But most of them were lost on sea during the first 6 months of there service.