Each plank of decking was 20 feet long. They’re made out of a composite of wood fiber and plastic, and the longer they sit in the sun the more bendy they are. Imagine carrying a spaghetti noodle that weighs about 70 pounds. You get the picture. Just getting them into the shop so I could chop them to length was a challenge. It wasn’t until the deck was almost done that I realized I could have probably just set up my saw outside near the planks.
Oh my!
It’s what I’m here for!
Seems like when you (1) live on an Island where everything has to be shipped, and (2) are building a house where you need lots of things, you’re going to get copious amounts of cardboard. Turns out it’s useful for a variety of things, such as making template forms for the stair stringers so you can fit them to the stairs.
This is everything I’ll need to do the stairs: stair treads, risers, runners and trim pieces. Everything is laid out and properly slathered with polyurethane. Those 1×12 boards go up and down either side of the stairs and are a bit of a challenge as they need to fit in a snug space and they’re 13 feet long. Big and unwieldy and they need to be cut to length and be accurate within around 1/8 of an inch. This will be a magic trick if I can pull it off.
Before, if you wanted a nail gun you’d have to hook it up to an air compressor which makes all sorts of obnoxious noise while it’s running, and run a high pressure air hose to the nail gun. The hose would try to trip you and sometimes succeed.
Now, they’re battery powered. This one can drive 2″ nails into solid oak. All day. I’ve been using it for installing finish trim. I have yet to run the battery out.
This is going to change everything.
Because I am the Master of Doing Things the Hard Way
Just add doors and a drawer and maybe a countertop.
I filled three 39 gallon trash bags full of sawdust doing this.
Here’s a math problem I don’t want to do: what percentage of wood that I purchase actually ends up in the thing I’m making vs. the percentage that ends up as sawdust / firewood / scrap / trash / sits on my wood rack for decades doing nothing.