Being Monday the early morning is spent doing paperwork. Marie had an early meeting this morning, so I was on the job my 7:15. With the early start I was done by 9:00, and gratefully headed out to the tool room.
Today we begin work on Ros’ 50 pair of bag handles. She places an order like this a few times per year, so this time, since we’re pretty well caught up on the production schedule, I’m going to work ahead a bit and mill up enough lumber to make 100 pair. We won’t get 100 pair – but that’s what I’ll shoot for.
So, I pick through the pile of lumber that I brought in for this, pull out the most suitable boards, take them to the chop saw and cut them in half lengthwise so they are easier to handle.
Then I set up the band saw for resawing and split the 1” thick boards into two (almost) ½” thick boards. This takes all afternoon. Then I set up the planer.
Now I wait.
Surface planning this much lumber is very slow if I do it by myself. I have to feed a board into the front of the planer, run around the machine to catch it as it comes out the back, set the board on a table, run back around to the front, take a board off of the table and feed it into the planer, run around to the back… Lots of running back and forth. When you’ve got 40 boards to plane and each will go through the machine about 8 times. That’s 320 times of running around and back. It goes much quicker and with less physical strain if I have a helper “catching” as I feed the boards in. We’ll get the work done in 1/3 to ¼ of the time it would take me by myself.
So I find something else to occupy my time for an hour or so, then Marie will be here and we’ll get it done quickly. When we are done the thin boards are a little thinner and much smoother. And that is that for today.
See you tomorrow.
Doug
Today we begin work on Ros’ 50 pair of bag handles. She places an order like this a few times per year, so this time, since we’re pretty well caught up on the production schedule, I’m going to work ahead a bit and mill up enough lumber to make 100 pair. We won’t get 100 pair – but that’s what I’ll shoot for.
So, I pick through the pile of lumber that I brought in for this, pull out the most suitable boards, take them to the chop saw and cut them in half lengthwise so they are easier to handle.
Then I set up the band saw for resawing and split the 1” thick boards into two (almost) ½” thick boards. This takes all afternoon. Then I set up the planer.Now I wait.
Surface planning this much lumber is very slow if I do it by myself. I have to feed a board into the front of the planer, run around the machine to catch it as it comes out the back, set the board on a table, run back around to the front, take a board off of the table and feed it into the planer, run around to the back… Lots of running back and forth. When you’ve got 40 boards to plane and each will go through the machine about 8 times. That’s 320 times of running around and back. It goes much quicker and with less physical strain if I have a helper “catching” as I feed the boards in. We’ll get the work done in 1/3 to ¼ of the time it would take me by myself.
So I find something else to occupy my time for an hour or so, then Marie will be here and we’ll get it done quickly. When we are done the thin boards are a little thinner and much smoother. And that is that for today.See you tomorrow.
Doug
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