grats
Nice tits, dude!
I spent the day shimming and shamming. Actually, I only spent the last hour or so shimming. In between shamming, I used all sorts of manly power-tools: 12" abrasion cut-off wheel attached to my compound miter-saw, a gnarly old ???hp metal-grinder/brush wheel thing with no safety guards, a hand-held jigsaw, a table-top scroll saw, a table saw with a scary-as-fuck 7-in Adjustable Dado Blade, a finish blade attached to my compound miter-saw and probably some other shit I forget.
Forgive the Falkie-esque squalor pictured above, I have had a mad scramble this past week or so trying to figure out where to stick and stack this green lumber for the next two years or so. I have elected for most of the front room and part of the dining room. Hanz II approves, as you can see.
The shimming was under those 4"x4"x4" dado'd blocks that are holding up the 44" long 1" pipes I had to cut up, that took most of the morning due to using the abrasion cut-off wheel.
I bought an abrasion wheel that was 1/4" thick, since I was mounting it on my compound miter saw, which is
not really designed for the cutting of metal; but it works in a pinch. Due to the varying types of steel that the pipes I was using were made of, some of the cuts went like a hot knife through butter while others took a bit longer. They were old chain-link fence rails I have accumulated for my eventual geodesic greenhouse project; that I cut them into 44" sections is no big deal as none of the triangles for the greenhouse will have sides anywhere near that.
As an added bonus: I found all the bent sections and eliminated them from that future equation, so there is that little
langiappe or
petit cadeau... how exquisitely
droll!
I digress; my next step was to begin dado-ing the 4"x4"'s so that the 1" pipe sections would fit snugly into them without rolling off while stacking the two tons of Red Oak stock and beams on them. That was just a bit scarier than the mis-use of the compound miter as a metal saw; I decided since it was rough work I would break out the old trusty Craftsman 7" Adjustable Dado Blade:
That is where the scroll-saw came in: I needed to fabricate a custom throat-plate for the table-saw that was wide enough for that gnarly thing... YIKES! I quickly found out that I would have to cut the 8'x4"x4" posts down as my improvised extensions weren't doing the job, and were frankly a bit dangerous. I had to switch out the abrasion cut-off metal cut-off wheel for the finish blade on the miter-saw (
the hours lost yesterday trying to find the arbor wrenches for both the table saw and miter-saw I will not go into, other than to say that I eventually remembered that I had stuck them in with the router when I loaned it to my brother years ago as I couldn't be bothered to check which of the wrenches went the router,) I digress... a thing which would be necessary to cut the 8' into 4" sections pictured above.
For mystical wood-working reasons that we are both well aware of, I of course did the dado-work
before I broke out the grinding wheel/wire brush bench grinder to put finish on the razor-sharp rough-cut ends of those 1" steel pipes: I wouldn't want Hanz II, Flipper or Mongo to cut a paw accidentally while frolicking around the slowly drying lumber.
Speaking of the router, I could probably have more safely dado'd the 4"x4"'s with that, only I haven't built a table for it yet, nor do I have a router-bit (
that I know of) capable of the job. I think in the spirit of week-old fresh-cut green-wood expediency this method worked out better on the risk/reward & thyme/money fronts; I do still have all my fingers and toes after all.
After "chunking" out the 4"x4"'s into nice little ~4" cubes, I next had to cut the shims (
after much shamming); for this I used the miter-saw and fabricated a temporary butt-stop so that I could knock out 1/8",1/4" & 1/2" shims. I think I made about two dozen of each; which if you do the math comes out to half a
grosse of shims!
Wunderbar!It has been a long day: I think I made my first cut at about 730 (
after shamming with coffee and plants in the backyard for an hour or so) and finished the shims around 2030 or so. At which point I cracked my well-earned
Pilsner Urquell, and began shimming the base.
Now THAT was probably a mistake! Due to multiple factors (
one-hundred plus year-old house settling, lack of a twelve-foot straight edge {~four foot was the best I could muster on that front} and a dumb box of hammers) this "leveling" of the base would probably have best been done sober and on a full stomach (
my pot-roast dinner gently simmers in the oven as I type).
I am confident that I got everything into ±1/16" of true; perhaps not strictly "level," but from end-to-end I do not think I will end up with
wavy-bacon Red Oak beams, posts and stock after the requisite two years of waiting for it to dry.
I think I may turn some of the board-stock into flooring as I think the house is mostly Red Oak in the first place, although someone at some point made the unfortunate decision to put dark stain on the trim (
where they didn't slather crappy latex paint on it). Or perhaps I could redo some of the baseboard trim in places where it was ignominiously butchered for reasons only known to meth- and/or crack-heads.
Crown molding? Maybe split the kitchen-door into one of those cool split-level things:
THat wood be pretty cool for the eventual restaurant! Hmm.
Have I typed too much? (
Axing for a fiend)
Nautical Shore.
ediot: I completely forgot to mention that all of today's
shimming and shamming was in preparation for tomorrow's
crack-of-dawn mission to bring all that lumber:
To the front-room drying-rack I just built today... Sheesh, more than a week since it was cut! I hope it hasn't dried out too much in all this Midwest heat, oh well: It will be what it will be.
