Planer test and Knife Block project

I had to resist the urge to put every piece of wood in the shop through the new planer. The surface it leave is amazing. I planed down some spalted maple I had cut from a piece of firewood into 1/4" boards for a small box I plan on building. Over the weekend I took some of the walnut that my grandma had given me a started building a knife block from it. I got the plans for the knife block from Popular Woodworking.  Then plans called for 1/2" thick stock so I used the planer and planed down the walnut to 1/2" thick before cutting the parts to size.

I also did some "wood working" building a new well cap from composite deck boards. The hand pump is functional.

 A upcoming project is going to be building a chip separator to work with my shop vac. The planer creates a lot of chips and dust. The picture below is how much was created by planing the two  32"x7.5"x 3/4" pieces of walnut to a final thickness of 1/2".

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.