Soooo Clooooose!

I have had a real burst of activity in the shop the past week. The Hammond Glider is now rebuilt! Hurray! Now I've got the motor taken apart and taken it in for media blasting, then I will paint it myself and put it back together. I've got a new blade on order from Forrest, it takes custom blades due to the unique arbor. Won't be long now (I hope!) until I'm making sawdust with it.

The VFD for the General Planer arrived, and I tested it out on the planer - it worked great! I then wired the VFD into my shop. I need to get the planer moved from the garage into the shop now, get its knives sharpened, and do some minor cleanup and setup on it.

I finally got my recent load of slabs dried and out of the kiln, after a major struggle with the a/c unit. I reloaded it with about 400 bf of mostly oak, plus a few other odd 'n ends. I was planing to let the oak air dry another year, then I noticed that it was starting to split in the middle so I thought I had nothing to lose by throwing it in the kiln. A number of pieces are 30 inches wide, I guess if I cut them in half they'll still be decent.  However, I am running out of room in the garage now for dried slabs!!

I'm hoping for a major day of slabbing on Friday, some friends will be joining me, hopefully we'll get three saws milling at once!