A new toy and an update

Last night I bought a surface planer (DeWalt 734). I can't wait to try it out tonight.

I think getting it is what I need to pull me back to the shop. Life has been busy, but with my new philosophy I posted about yesterday I am going to make it an effort to still do some wood working no mater how busy other parts of my life get.

Now for the update on the last month and a half.
Back at the end of April I mentioned having to replace a blown head gasket on my lawn mower.  That project went well and the mower is back into service. Since then I've had to replace a fuel pump on my car also. We were late getting our garden out, it didn't get planted until Memorial Day.  I think it has only rained twice since then. I put the same fence I built last year up for the kids area in the garden but this year we (my wife and daughter helped) built a small arbor for the kids garden.  We planted pole beans next to the arbor so they will climb it.

I should be posting again soon after I get to run some boards through my new planer.

A quick update

Things have been really busy lately at work and at home and I haven't had much time in the shop or time to post anything.

I spent almost a full weekend working my wife's trailblazer, it had been making a noise in the front end. So the intial plan was to replace the wheel bearings. The bearing didn't sound bad, and the noise sounded like it was coming from the upper CV joint on the drivers side.  Replacement drive axles with new CV joints are available so I decided to replace it instead of trying to fix the CV joint.  To replace the drive axle the complete suspension has to be disassembled.  I took it more apart than I had ever had the front end of any vehicle.  

 Sadly when I put the drive axle in it still made the same noise.  At that point I wasn't ready to dig any further and I put it all back together after changing the front deferential fluid.  It all went back together rather easily compared to how difficult it was to take it apart.

I've also done a little work in the garden. Last week a friend came over with a 6' tiller and tilled the garden and the sweet  corn patch.  Before he came and tilled I used my garden tractor and a small dics to break it up some.  The garden had been plowed under last fall.

 We will be planting soon.

My wood working projects are being put on hold while I repair a blown head gasket on my lawn mower. I hope to get that done this weekend so I can get back to building things.

Garden Fencing

I know this supposed to be a wood working blog, and this does kind of belong here. Gardening with a 3.5 year old can be difficult. They don't remember to watch where they are stepping, and have a tendency to step on plants. Last year we put down straw to make paths showing where it was safe to walk which helped some. Also I dug a hole in one corner and our daughter would play in it while we worked in the garden.

This year we decided when laying out the garden to give our daughter an area of her own. To start with this was marked out by some stakes and a purple rope. I mentioned to my wife that I should build a fence to define the child safe area and she liked that idea.

Saturday morning I built the 3 sections of fencing that can be seen above. I think it looks nicer than the rope and everyone seems happy, except I was told by my daughter it needs more sides and a gate. That will probably be next weekends project.