Missed a week in there somewhere...

So, it's been a couple of weeks. Last weekend I was in NJ, helping my best friend get hitched. Great time had by all. :)

No pictures this week, because I'm retarded, and haven't taken any. I'll try to get a few put up on Monday. Basically, we've moved into the bench room, and the nice clean floor now has stuff on it, like benches and work tables. We also put up a loft on top of the finishing room... and promptly got noticed by Jim, who pointed out that we might need to get sprinklers inside, once the loft was up. The way it was before, it was an office, with a drop ceiling, that had dissolvable panels, in case the sprinklers went off. So we made a few calls, and it looks like we're going to need to get sprinklers installed in the finishing room. It's the right thing to do, but it's going to be expensive. Oops.

And another thing... while Chris was sawing panels for the floor for the loft, I noticed that the nice new floor got slippery pretty quickly with dust on it. We're still talking about redoing the floor in the machine room... but I think that if we do, we're going to have to mix some sand in with the finish. It won't go down as easily, I don't think, with sand in it, but it'll keep the floor nice and grippy... which is important when you're standing at a machine.

Harvey has been notably reclusive this week, and we're starting to wonder what he's up to. Normally he hangs out on the peak of (what I'm guessing is) the elevator shaft of the building across the way, and we can see him up there looking around at his demesne. But lately at dusk there have been huge murders of crows flying by, and he just hasn't been in plain sight. It's possible that the pair has migrated away, but this late in the season...? Who knows. Maybe they just moved to a different building that has a more convenient heating vent. I just did a quick bit of research... turns out Peregrines were taken off of the endangered species list 9 years ago. Still, it's good to see them around.

What else is going on...

Chris took one of the armatures out of his Oliver table saw. When we fired it up this week, it made an awful sound, turns out it had a bad bearing. So Chris dismantled the motor for that arbor, and pulled the bearing off on Friday night. I was impressed... it's a huge bearing. Certainly bigger than the wheel bearings on my pickup truck. Chris' saw is a really impressive piece of work in general, and I have to say, I'm a little envious. I'll put up a post about that later this week, even though it's not my saw, so I feel a little weird writing about it. Still, it's part of the shop, and I think it's cool. And really, Harvey doesn't belong to me either, but I don't feel bad writing about him.

We've in the final stages of setting up shop. We're putting up ductwork for dust collection. Wiring of the space is almost complete, we're just waiting on HPS lights for the machine room, since it's still really dark as the sun goes down. This afternoon I dropped in and transferred my lumber from a pallet, up onto the lumber racks that we stabilized on Friday. And I put some shelves up by my space in the bench room. We have a small list of things that we want or have to do, but it's a shrinking list. It's looking like the shop will be up and running in the very near future.

Then I get to start building things again.