Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Today was Jesus’ birthday as well as my sister’s and cousin’s. We had a nice small family visit last night and today, which was largely dominated by my 3 year old niece and her excitement for the first Christmas that she is old enough to really understand what’s going on. Opening presents certainly is a big deal for a little girl.

Things around the household are going pretty smooth, and the state of the shop is alright. A new fire was lit under my butt last week by a friend/apprentice who really wants things to get rolling faster and more efficiently.  I am excited to make a few changes, build some new workstations and tools, and start putting the big CNC machine to work.

The website got quite a few updates over the last month, but I haven’t made the time to do a youtube video for a while.

Today and yesterday I did some grinding on hardened AEBL stainless steel blades using a NOGA mist coolant system on my Wilmont grinder. I didn’t use my dust collector because it seems that the misty air causes the filter to clog up faster than dry dust.  Instead, I put a furnace filter in front of a cheap box fan which seems to be doing a really good job of keeping dust contained as the belt grinder moves things around. I used the Green, recycled cut to fit filter material I got at Home Depot because I figured it would stay more permeable as the outside layer got caked with moist steel dust.

See these videos to understand the concept and start enjoying a cleaner shop sooner than later.

I didn’t mean to embed these videos, but I can’t figure out how to undo it.

There’s a lot on the list for the next few weeks, and I hope to make enough progress so I feel good about posting  a new shop update video.