My Workbench

My Workbench

Jan 24

 

 

bench_web

 

This isn’t staged, this is honestly what my workbench currently looks like.

 

I’m working on one of my signature skull nutcrackers to take to the 2016 Nutcracker Convention which will be held in Virginia this year. I’m also working on a new skull nutcracker which will be a screw type. I’m making it from an older blank that’s too big to be a lever type (far right).

 

In the foreground (front center) is a repair in progress for one of the Nutcracker Club members. The rest of the pieces are there for reference as I carve the skulls. I switch from piece to piece as glue dries and each is ready for different stages of carving, repair, etc…

 

Everything is sitting on a downdraft table I built years ago that pulls all the dust down and into the dust collector at the back of the shop. This keeps my shop clean and the dust away from me. It works very well.

 

 I decided to take a picture and share it because I was working in another area, looked over, and realized my workbench probably doesn’t look like most people’s workbenches. What I see every day and consider normal, might be unique and interesting to others.

 

I love the unique pieces I get to get to work on and the cool stuff I have the opportunity to create.

 

Many Hats

Many Hats

Nov 24

 

My little workshop has to be flexible and wear many hats.

 

Today was no exception. Today’s task was to convert it to an electronic repair shop to see if I can resurrect an old 22″ Dell monitor they were throwing out at work.

 

I disassembled the monitor, pulled the power board and found 4 bad capacitors which is typical in Dell hardware.

 

1– Power board on the bench being diagnosed –

2– Bad Capacitors (domed tops) –

So after about 30 minutes of my time and 4 new capacitors (56 cents total), I have a nice large Dell monitor for my home PC. Nice!

 

3

– It’s Alive! –

This was a nice little project that yielded a nice much larger computer monitor for my home PC for next to nothing.

 

Awesome!

 

BTW – Yes that’s a VCR under the monitor. I use it to transfer VHS tapes to digital media, and the pint glass you see has Thirsty Dog’s 12 Dogs of Christmas Ale in it which I highly recommend. 🙂

 

Adding a Little Glow

Adding a Little Glow

Sep 26

 

 

Decided to take a little time away from woodworking to dress up the outside of the shop.

I’m a sucker for cool signage and vintage lighting. So I decided to finally wire my vintage porcelain sign light (center) and backlight my Pegasus Mobil sign with some red led strips off of Amazon.

 

Here are some before and after shots. They honestly don’t do it justice. It looks awesome at night.

 

Mobil Pegasus

Before the lighting was all hooked up

 

 

Mobil Pegasus

New lights!

 

 

Mobil Pegasus

Mobil Pegasus at night