New Workshop - Floor Finished

I wanted to give the floor a bit of colour as I wanted the workshop to be a nice place to work or hang out in. I decided on a light blue colour. I used two coats of a Behr primer, then two coats of their porch/floor paint. I didn't bother sanding the floor at all, but the plywood is reasonably smooth to begin with. The primer and paint pretty much cover all the screws, and the floor looks quite nice.

By the time all this was done it was time to move into the house. I'd have like to have had time to finish off the walls and ceiling but I just didn't have enough time. So I filled the workshop with all the tools and junk from the old workshop. When you don't have any shelves to load up things really pile up.

New Workshop - Floor

After much googling and forum reading I decided on the following for my floor.

Directly on top of the concrete floor I laid out a 6mil polyethylene vapour barrier. My theory was that this would prevent moisture from the concrete floor from moving up into the insulation that would come next. I found much conflicting advice on where to place the vb or whether to have on at all and went with my gut and put one down first.

Next I laid out 2x4x16 pressure treated sleepers, 4" side down, on 16" centers. I nailed this down with my somewhat-trusty Hilti DX-350. The last time I'd used the 460, it had broken and I hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. I had a Remington power hammer that I used for the few small jobs that required powder actuated fasteners (PAFs). Since I needed to put in almost 200 fasteners the power hammer was going to cut it for this job. I first tried to get Hilti parts locally, with no success so I went on to hilti.ca to order the needed parts. Naturally, I ordered the wrong part. For some reason I thought it was the piston I needed which is expensive enough at $45, but what I really needed was the fastener guide for $88 (double ouch). Oops. Shipped back the piston and got the fastener guide the next day no problem. Free shipping which is very nice.

Hilti later sent me a nice multi-tool in the hopes of getting more of my business (they probably will).

I used the DX350, 3" galvanized nails with a pre-mounted steel washer and red charges to knock in a little less than 200 fasteners. After the first hundred I found my padded bike gloves and that made the next 100 go a lot smoother for me.

In between the 2x4s I laid out 1.5" white styrofoam insulation sheets. A wee bit less R value than the blue or pink DOW sheets, but about half the price. I scored the sheets with a utility knife then snapped them while sandwiching them between 2-2x4s to keep the line straight.

On top of this I laid out 5/8" tongue and groove plywood subflooring. I realized after the second row that I should have staggered the joints but by then I was too late. I secured the plywood with PL400 subfloor adhesive and 1 3/4" PT decking screws.

Hardwood Install - Long Lost Vent Uncovered

Shortly after finishing the hardwood install in Joshua's room I figured out that I had accidently covered over one of the vents in the floor. I had a guess where it was but wasn't exactly sure. Since I didn't have access to underneath the floor I couldn't find the vent that way so I tried various other ways to find the hole. A studfinder, magnet and 'knocking' were all unsuccessful. So was turning on the A/C and waiting for condensation or feeling a cold spot.

This week Rosemary brought home toy stethoscope from her school. It also got cold enough that we needed to turn on the furnace. With the stethoscope I was able to very faintly detect where I though the vent was.

I then drilled a 3/32 hole into the floor at that point, 3/4" deep. Then a paperclip to ensure that I had drilled through where there was no subfloor. Success. I used a 1/2 spade bit to open up the hole, then the paper clip again to determine how close I was to the edge of the vent (very close). A jig saw finished up the job.

New Workshop

Our new house came with two garages, a one car attached and two car detached out back. Since there is no basement I knew from the start that I would be getting the garage out back of the house for a workshop.

The garage has a loft that is 50% usable, 50% low ceiling good for storage. I may convert the one half with a high enough ceiling into finished space for a play area for Joshua. The other half already has Christmas decorations, old baby stuff and other miscellaneous items.

Though the garage was very well built, it has a few problems. It has a 60 amp sub-panel but only three outlets, a couple sets of old 2 bulb fluorescent fixtures downstairs and one fluorescent on a long extension cord upstairs. No power upstairs and all the outlets downstairs are on one wall. For some reason the previous owner had one outlet on #12 wire with a coil of about 40 ft of wire. I assume he pulled it off the wall and brought it to whatever part of the garage he needed his compressor at. It probably would have better for him to get a longer house.

A nice looking cement floor, 2x6 construction for the walls with no insulation on the inside. One window covered with a grill on the inside, one with a sheet of plywood and one apparent hole where a window used to be that is now a sheet of plywood.

On the outside there is OSB, than 1.5" foam, then house wrap and finally vertical wood siding.

My first plan is to put down a wood floor as my old workshop had concrete and I know how uncomfortable that is after a few hours.

A Tale of Two Water Heaters

Did you know that there are three types of venting for hot water heaters? I didn't which lead to the following fun activity over the weekend.

First, we have been renting a water heater since 4 the past 8 years. At a little over $220/yr, that's $1760 I've thrown away. I always intended to replace the rented with one we bought but never got around to it at the old house.

For the new house I was planning on starting out with a new purchased unit right away. Unfortunately I got some misleading information from the rental company and didn't read the purchase agreement correctly so we ended up renting the one that was already installed. When I asked the rental company how much to buy it out they told me $1100 so I told them to take a hike. They are also going to charge me $60 to close the account, and would have charged me another $100 to remove the old water heater.

I decided to remove and replace it on my own.

I'm not a plumber or pipe-fitter but I've done some plumbing in the past, mostly successful. I figured it would be a unplug the old and plug-in the new situation and I could handle it.

So Friday I drained the old 60 gallon take. Naturally there is no drain in the house below the level of the tank so I drained it into buckets then dumped the bucket outside. 1.5hrs. Turned off the water supply in the house and cut the pipes.

Soldered some threaded connectors onto the 3/4" water pipes, dropped the new one in place and hooked it up with some SS hoses. I couldn't get the sediment collection black gas pipe off the old heater and home hardware had closed for the night, so I filled it with water and called it a night.

Saturday morning I went out to home hardware, picked up the yellow teflon tape for working with gas connections, the black pipe bits I needed to hook up the gas and some ABS pipe to complete the duct work (uh oh).

At home I hooked up the gas, checked it with a soap and water spray, hooked the ABS up for the vent and fired it up. I was really happy that I'd got the whole thing done without swearing or leaking. The vent at the top seemed warm but not too bad.

Put my tools away and waited for the hot water to flow.

First sign of trouble, Rosemary says "I see smoke in the backyard". Hmm. Take a look at the water heater. The ABS that I'd bought that morning is melting. Did I buy the wrong ABS? Nope, the old stuff is melting as well. Hmm. Turn off water heater. Check manual. Check Internet. Oops.

Turns out there are three kinds of venting. Conventional, Direct & Power Venting. This site has pictures of all three. You definitely need to ensure that you have the correct type of venting for your application.

It turns out my old one was a power vent, but I'd bought a conventional vent. My fault for buying it at HD and not finding someone there to help my pick the right one.

Drained it (no fun). Returned to HD and picked up a power vent unit. First one was $599, power vent was $779 (6 yr warranty). No problems hooking it up. I laughed. I still think it's funny. Good lesson.

Deluxe Sandbox

Once the swingset was completed on the weekend my Dad and I went to work on Joshua's new 'deluxe' sandbox. You can see the plans we used here at Disney's FamilyFun site :

http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/season/feature/sandbox1/

I had purchased the lumber for the sandbox about a month ago and had it delivered with some materials for my workshop floor and the hardwood for the house. This saved us on money on having to get seperate deliveries and I figured it would give the wood a chance to dry out a bit, which will make the stain stick better.


It took us a little less than 2 hours to carry the wood over to where the sandbox will be, cut and stack it ready for assembly. Since the main frame is 2x12s, most of the cutting was done with a circular saw.


Once all the cutting was complete, it took me another 1.5hrs to assemble all the sandbox, including the lid sections. On one end of the sand box is a hinged lid for the toybox, the other side is open to allow storage of the lid sections.

I'm going to sand the sandbox with some 80 grit sandpaper to take off the mill glaze, then we'll apply a couple of coats of a deck stain to improve the appearance of the PT wood. 6 yards of sand and then we'll be in business.

Swingset Completed

My Dad helped over the weekend to finish putting together Joshua's $100 playset. It took a lot less time than I thought it would, we had it reassembled before lunch.

I still need to replace a few screws that are holding the slide up, I've been through three stores looking for #10 1.5" exterior (PT) deck screws but haven't found them yet. I'm going to try a 'real' hardware store next.

Last night I picked up a new belt sander to clean up the playset before we stain it this weekend.

Hardwood Complete

Actually done late last week, but I'm happy to have finally finished off installing around 1600 square feet of pre-finished hardwood flooring in our house.

We took about a month to install it, working some nights and weekends. I think my actual install rate was about 60ft/hr, faster or slower depending on closets and corners. That puts the total at 26+ hours which seems right. There was lots of other stuff going on at the same time which is why it took us so long.

The next thing I have to finish up is adding all of the baseboards. Since the house had none I'm starting from scratch. It'll be a mixture of stained and painted but we haven't figured out the details yet.

Here's the view from Joshua's room towards the sitting area (his play area) and the master bedroom upstairs.

Things to look for after you move in

Since we've moved into the new place I've been changing out all of the incandescent bults to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). The CFLs are cooler (temperature wise) and use much less energy than the incandescent bulbs. Though more expensive initially they'll more than pay for themselves in the long run.

Once the CFLs do burn out (5 years?), our local recycling center will take the CFLs and dispose of them properly, so the environmental issues (mercury) is not a concern for me.

The light fixture in my new office was flickering while I was working, leading me to wonder if it was the electrical, the fixture or the bulbs. Here's what I found when I pulled the glass cover off to change it to CFLs :

Probably the clown renters decided to put two 100 watt bulbs in a fixture that was rated for 40 watts. Idiots. I'm glad the house didn't burn down before I decided to change these out. I immediately when and checked the rest of the fixtures, luckily this was the only one that had the wrong bulbs.

We had an extra fixture from one we replaced earlier so I threw the damaged one in the trash and now my office light is back to normal.

Back to Woodworking

The new house has a nice big 2 car garage out back for my woodworking shop. About 24x24, 9ft ceiling. It's uninsulated and had a concrete floor, one window and a loft for storage. The loft has about 7-8ft of space with full standing height, the rest slopes down to 4ft in the back, 1 ft in the front. The loft will store our Christmas decorations, camping equipment, and anything else that is rarely used.

Before moving in I put in a plywood subfloor over 2x4 sleepers. We even put a coat of paint down to make it easier on the eyes.

Though the shop is still a disaster area as everything is spread around on the floor, I wanted to get some more work done on Joshua's new bunk bed so I did a bit of sanding and glued up the other bottom panel this morning.

I've got more hardwood flooring and trim to install in the house, but I can't do that while Joshua is sleeping and it was nice to take a break from home renovation to do some 'real' woodworking again.

Hardwood Floor Install - Oops

I finished installing hardwood floor in Joshua's bedroom last night. I'm about halfway done the 1800 sq ft install (2nd bedroom + hallway are left). It's gone really well and I am very pleased how it is turning out.

The flooring is 3.25" prefinished Bruce, stained cherry. Not the best quality but a good price and it looks nice once installed.

I've been laying down 15# felt atop the plywood subfloor, usually one 3 ft row of felt at a time, tacking it in place then laying the hardwood before laying the next row of felt out.

Once the floor was complete I realized that there should be one of these :

Somewhere here :

Oops.

Hardwood Patching / Refinishing

Over the weekend, I finished up the last time sensitive project that I had to complete. The original hardwood floors downstairs needed to be refinished, but before we could do that there was some patching to do.

The wall moving and a suspected dog stain meant two high traffic areas needed to be patched. There was also a hole in the closet, likely from the original floor plan being modified that needed a few boards to patch as well.

The first step was removing all the cut pieces around the area where the wall was in the now hallway. I used a circular saw to cut the pieces where they disappeared under the tiled bathroom floor and then a pry bar and hammer to pull them out as intact as possible.

Many of the pieces were unusable due to excessive nail or screw holes from the carpet or the closet hardware. Salvageable pieces I pulled the nails out and cut the ends square so they could be reused.

I ended up needing 20 more square feet to patch the blank areas. I could only find one local hardwood dealer that carried unfinished red oak flooring which naturally cost more than the prefinished Bruce oak that we are installing in the rest of the house. Having now installed both the prefinished and unfinished I can see the quality is much higher in the unfinished. The lack of the v-groove is also very nice. Since the floor has not been finished yet I don't know for sure, but it seemed to me that the unfinished floor will turn out much nicer than the pre-finished.

The dog stain area was a PITA to patch as it was in the middle of the floor. More than one flooring person who came to quote our job told us that it would have to be patched, that it was likely the stain was deep in the wood. I thought about sanding it down a bit and checking before patching but never got around to it. When I cut the old boards out I could immediately see that they did not need to be ripped out. By then it was too late and they were in pieces. The dog stain had not penetrated at all into the wood. Nuts.

Before and after pictures of the hallway. The after is only sanded, with no finish yet. I am amazed at how well the old and new wood blends.

My Electrical Nightmare

The wiring in this house seems to have been done by a drunken monkey. Most of the switches are not where you think they should be (near the room entrance) and don't turn-on/off the lights you think they should.

The only saving grace is that it seems to be all copper and it's a 200amp panel. I just have to go through and label all the switches. Or maybe it's worse than that.

I was trying to figure out what all the switches did and how to get all the light fixtures lit up. I couldn't get three of the wall sconses to light up no matter what switch combination I used. I pulled the sconces off the wall and found they weren't hooked up. Just hanging there, looking ugly.

There are two switches below one of the sconces. Since I couldn't figure out what they do, I pulled off the cover plate to see if they were hooked up at all. Here's what I found (bad).

Illegible duct tape labels and bare wires. Nice.

Hardwood Install - Done?

95% finished anyways. Long day yesterday and more time this morning, but the living room is done except for the nosing on one stair. I'll finish that up tonight and move the tools back up the stairs.

Close to crunch time

Move day is Saturday. I've got 500/1800 sq ft of hardwood installed and no time left to install it all. We've prioritized the list and decided that the family room must be completed so that we can put all the couches and bookshelves in there on Saturday.

So of course that's the hardest room to get ready for hardwood.

Actually, the room itself is not to bad as it has almost all square corners and no closet to install hardwood in. Problem is that it has (had) carpet with a tile surround.

The carpet ripped up easily, and Rosemary pulled out the staples fairly quickly. We took 3 hours to bash and then clean out the tile with a 5lb sledge and a hammer.

This left the original plywood subfloor covered with the grout and thinset used to put the tile on. The monkey that installed in used at least three kinds of thinset and they bonded with varying degrees of success to the plywood.

I flipped a quarter and decided to try and remove the thinset rather than rip out and replace the plywood. I asked a couple of flooring guys and ended up renting a Hilti TE 905-AVR Breaker Hammer. This is one bad ass tool. I got it with a 5" and 3" bit. It took me about 3 hours to clean off all the plywood to get it to a flush enough surface for the hardwood install. Well worth the rental. I think it was $50 for 4 hours. The rental place also sold the tool - $2000.

The right tool for the job.

The family room is only 400 ft so even allowing time for screwing down the subfloor, laying the felt, priming one section to cover up a dog piss smell, we should be able to get this done tonight and tomorrow. Then I get back to work on Joshua's bedroom.

Now you see it...

This is part of the floor plan for the first floor of the new house. Like the carpet that covered the hardwood in the office, I knew right away that I was going to change this. Closet C3 and door #2 for the bathroom didn't make any sense and had to go. After verifying that the wall in back of C3 was not load bearing, I attacked it with a hammer.

Removing the drywall was not difficult, the cleanup was a bit of a pain though. I filled up a couple of garbage cans and boxes with debris. Part of the wall I removed was the original plaster which is of course heavier than drywall.

I spent way too much time attempting to pry and cut out the wall and closet header with a hammer, pry bar and hand saw. I eventually gave in and ran down to Home Depot to pick up a corded Dewalt Sawzall. I actually went to get the Ridgid saw, but they were out so the sales guy gave me the Dewalt for the same price ($20 difference). It came with 5 extra blades and a stainless steel coffee mug that I'll never use.

10 minutes after plugging the saw in, the wall and header were gone and the area is ready to be reframed and drywalled.

I should write this on my hand so I don't forget it. Don't waste time working with the wrong tools, buy (borrow or rent if you have to) the right tool for the job!

(pictures below taken from the arrow in the layout diagram above)

Long Weekend Work

We took possession of the new house a week ago and this past weekend was our chance to get some work done. I forgot the camera at the house so I don't have any pictures, but here's what we've completed with the help of Rosemary's parents.

• tear out two (extra) bathroom doors and frame / drywall the opening
• tear out a closet wall to open up a hallway and frame another opening beside it
• tear out 260 sq ft of tile and the carpet in the family room
• tear out carpet in the master and two other bedrooms upstairs
• removal of many weeds and bushes around the property
• one load of construction debris to the dump (200kg = $20)
• 90% installed new plywood flooring in attached garage for workshop (more to follow)
• 2 upstairs bedrooms mostly painted

Last night and this morning I started pulling up some of the flooring in the downstairs office that needs to be patched. It'll take at least a box (22 sq ft) of unfinished flooring to patch the holes left from tearing out the closet.

We're trying now to find someone to finish up the taping and mud for the drywall as my mud/taping skills leave a lot to be desired.

The future garage/workshop looks really great...

Hiding under the carpet

After moving a truckload of boxes into the kitchen, I walked around the house to take a closer look at the hardwood I was planning on ripping out. I hadn't been in the house since we last checked it out a month ago and from memory I had thought it was prefinished, bleached oak 2 1/4" hardwood. Since we don't like the light colour and it is difficult to change the colour on prefinished flooring I figured on ripping out that hardwood and replacing it all with new, darker oak (prefinished).

On the weekend Home Depot at a 10% off sale if you opened a credit card (max $300) + 6 months no interest on any purchase over $450 (no fees). The local store also had a special on Bruce 3 1/4" cherry stained oak for $3.99/sq ft which was the dark colour we were looking for. I had taken some rough room measurements so I knew we need about 1000 sq ft to replace the wood in the living room, the carpet in the attached office and the tile/carpet in the attached family room.

Well, I no longer need that wood for the living room as we are going to get it refinished. Taking another look at the new carpet in the office I quickly realized it was hardwood underneath. 10 minutes later I had the new carpet and padding torn out and the dirty original hardwood exposed.

It looks like the office and the living room are the original (1947) floors. A couple of walls have moved around in the office so there is some patchwork to do, but refinishing will save us time and money.

This also means that I can either return the hardwood to Home Depot or use it upstairs. Now that all the furniture from the renter's is gone we can see how bad the carpet is up there. So we've decided to put down hardwood in the 3 bedrooms + hallway upstairs. We've got to order some extra hardwood (30 boxes) but now's the best time to do it, since we've got 17 more days until we move in.

Yesterday we had a delivery from HD. 55 boxes of hardwood @ 50 lbs per box is 2750 pounds. I moved all those boxes to from the garage where they were dropped into the attached breezeway so they can aclimitize. Later on I'll have to move all 55 boxes through two doors and up the stairs (13 stairs) for the install. Good fun.

They also dropped off some lumber for Joshua's sandbox and my shop. Luckily they were able to drop the 24x5/8" plywood for the shop floor in the back, but the pressure treated lumber was too long to fit through the gate on the forklift. I had to move those 42-2x4x12s, 7-2x12x12 + other misc into the back with the truck. Two big loads. A good workout.

Our New (Old) House

Yesterday we took possession of our new house. Above you can see the front of the new house, that's my holding Joshua and my Mother-in-law beside me. The house was originally built in 1947, and major renovations were done in the late 80s and early 90s, adding approximately 1500 sq ft to the home.

We are very happy with our new old house - our other house was built in 1987 and has no character. This new house is in a much nicer part of town, on a larger lot and quieter street. We've already met the neighbours on both sides and across the street and they all seem very nice. One of the neighbours has two young children that are close in age to Joshua so he's already got some new friends to play with!

The previous owners had moved out a year ago and so the house was occupied by renters. They moved out most of their stuff over the past two days and left two huge piles at the curb. Last night we moved a few boxes of our stuff over and dumped the rest of their stuff at the curb. Luckily this morning was garbage day and it is now all gone.

We have also sold our other home but don't close on that one until August 20th. So we have almost three weeks to get in and get some work done on this house. It will be a very busy three weeks.

Below you can see the back of the house, with a nice large stamped concrete patio. Also in the back of the lot is a detached two car garage...soon to be my new shop. It's so nice I'm jealous of future Mark who get's to work in it :)

Silence is Golden

The vast majority of my woodworking is done with powertools. The mitre saw to cut to rough length, the table saw to rip to rough width. Flatten two sides using the 6" jointer, then plane to the final thickness.

Back to the table saw to rip it to the final width and the mitre saw to the correct length. Depending on the piece it may be sanded before or after assembly with a 5" random orbital sander. Maybe I'll need to add a profile or dado using the router, pocket holes using a drill or biscuit slots with a biscuit cutter.

All these tools are noisy and generate lots of dust. I attempt to catch most of the dust at the source with a shop vac or the 1hp dust collection system. There's also an air filtration unit hanging in the middle of the shop to catch more of the fine particles.

I always wear safety glasses (prescription for me) and over the ear hearing protection when using these tools. I'm happy that these tools perform well and allow me to do more woodworking in the little time that I have available to do it.

However once in awhile I get to do a little bit of work with my meager collection of hand tools. Yesterday while I waiting for some glued up panels to dry I used my bargain basement hand plane to ease the edges on the rails and styles of the head/footboards.

Just two or three swipes of the plane produces some fine shavings and eased corners. No noise or dust. Nice.

Panel Dry Fit

It's good to see some real progress being made.

I recalibrated my mitre saw using the method described in this post, then cut all the rails and stiles to length.

Next, I cut the 3/8" panel groove in all the rails and stiles using my Canadian Tire dado blade - it's an okay blade but don't buy it unless it's on sale for 50% off - this usually happens at least twice a year.

Finally I planed three of the large panels to fit the groove, then trimmed them to fit into the frames. The rails and stiles are joined with loose tenons which seems a great way to join them, much easier than cutting the tenons on the rails/stiles. This is the first time I've used a loose tenon and I think it's my new favourite (too soon to tell for sure).

I still have to sand the panels before I actually glue this panel up. 3 more to go after this one. As well, I still have to glue up 6 more panels.

Stock Preperation

I spent a few hours prepping rail and style stock, cutting the mattress support boards and then gluing up half the panels for the frame-n-panels headboard/footboards. Generated another two or three bags full of sawdust. The work is progressing nicely.

Mortise x 7

Finished up cutting the next 7 mortises for the safety rails on the bunk bed legs. Cleaned up some sawdust and that was it for the night.

Mortise Jig #2

The legs in the bunk bed each need two 1-1/8"x 4-1/8" x 1-1/4" mortises to recieve the safety rails for the top bunk. Though I could cut these with the router using an edge guide, I prefer to use a patterning bit and a custom jig to make sure I don't make any mistakes.

I use my Freud FT2000e plunge router, along with the template guide kit and 3/8" spiral upcut bit. The 3/4" (external diameter) adapter means I need to add 3/16" on each side of the mortise template to get it the correct size.

So the 1-1/8" width needs to be 1-1/2" in the template, the 4-1/8" needs to be 4-1/2". Here's a sketchup model of the jig I made up using 5/8" hardboard.

Here are the pieces cut and ready to be glued up and below you can see the first mortise cut and the jig clamped to the leg ready for the next mortise.

Clean up, clean up, everybody do their share

That's the song we sing at the end of the night when we are at playgroup for my son. Last night I cleaned up the piles of shavings from yesterday's planing. Ended up with another 2 full garbage bags, so I've got 4 total from this project. Lots more to follow.

I also put a 45 degree chamfer on the all four edges of each leg. I used a chamfer bit in my handheld Porter Cable 690 router (this one). What a great little router. Another one of those tools that puts a smile on your face everytime you use it. It's well designed and a pleasure to use.

One accessory I'd like to try for this router is the D-Handle base. (See it on amazon here) I see Norm using it all the time and it looks like it would be really handy.

Bags and Bags of Shavings

The author of the article that I am following to build the bunk bed mentions that you'll have to do a lot of work with the planer for this project and after last nights work I can see what he meant.

First I had to glue up the leg caps which just about drained what is left of my 4L jug of glue. Since I've had that jug for 5 or 6 years I guess I can't complain. I stacked the legs one atop another to distribute the clamping pressure and used all my Bessey + one old pipe clamp to hold them together. Similarily to when I laminated the legs up I could have used a few more clamps - when will Lee Valley have another sale???

Once the glue was dry I used the table saw to cut the oversized leg caps a little closer to the size of the legs, so that there was about 1/8" leftover. Then I used the router and a flush trim bit to trim the caps flush.

I should mention before I glued up the leg caps that I ran all the legs through the jointer to clean up two faces, than through the table saw to cut them close to width, than finally the planer to get the width correct before adding the caps. Running the 7' leg through the jointer was challenging in my small shop area.

The last step was to plane all of the legs down to 3 5/8". This is what generated another two garbage cans full of shavings and clogged up the dang dryer hose I use to connect the planer to the dust collection pipe. I eventually gave up clearing the hose and just pulled the dust collection bit off the planer and let the shavings fly. I ended up with quite a pile of shavings, but all four legs are squared up and ready to go.

Milling Leg Caps

The solid legs for the bunk bed are made up of three laminated boards, which leaves two sides of the leg with lamination lines that are to be covered with leg cap strips. These strips will be cut from a 2x10 and planed down to 1/4" before being glued to the legs.

The glued up legs are rough cut to 7', 4 1/2" wide so I started with a 4 1/2"x7' piece of 2X lumber which is actually 1 1/2" thick. I used the tablesaw to resaw this into 3x3/8" caps. I took three cuts for the resaw, the first cut was a little less than halfway through. I used a featherboard to keep the wood tight against the fence and a push block (upper left of picture) to finish off the cut.

For the second cut, I flipped the board and again used the featherboard and push block to cut less than halfway through the board. This left about 3/8" of material to cut away.

Finally I raised the blade and cut through the remaining bit of wood. After pushing the start of the piece through the blade I inserted a scrap wedge to act as a splitter (I should have one installed on the insert).

I cut up three boards and ended up with 9 leg cap strips. For me this was a 'scary' operation on the tablesaw. Raising the blade high and running long pieces through it is a bit nerve-racking. I took my time and made sure to use the pushblock anytime I got near the end of the piece, and also kept myself away from the back of the board in case of kickback. In the end I had no problems and am glad it's over.