Pocket screws and router tables
Jenny and I spent the morning today delivering bread baked by the St. Anthony Guild at our parish to some of the shut-in parishioners. We volunteered to do this with a number of other people. There were a few groups there who knew Parnassus and Mt. Vernon well, so I figured we’d shoot for an outlier area and enjoy the drive and hunt for some of these houses. We ended up taking two areas. The first one I volunteered for was only five people, though they were some of the most far-flung, with the furthest resident in Oakmont. This area also included Logan’s Ferry and a few other little places. I felt bad that we were only taking five, so I asked if there were any other outlier areas that we could grab. One of the guys who had already taken an area offered his, as it included Aluminum City Terrace and some other odd places around that area. That group had twelve people, so we loaded up our box with 17 little loaves of bread and hit the road. Well, first I had to organize the cards a little bit, or else we’d be doing a lot of back-tracking. We had a good time. There were only a few places that were a little hard to find, one because of some misleading directions provided with the address, and another because the street signs for the road in question were missing. One house looked like it had been abandoned for some time–there were just a few trash bags lying around inside, and leaves were piled-up outside the door that had obviously been there for a while. That loaf of bread didn’t get left there–the place was a little scary, so we took the bread and took off. Another house looked like the resident hadn’t been there in a while–there was a notice from her borough taped to the door, and the place looked like nobody had been there in at least a few days. We left that bread there.
On our way home, we planned to stop up at Pittsburgh Mills to get lunch at Red Robin, then hit Lowes to get a piece of 1/4″ plywood so that I could finish my router table. We got up to Red Robin, and the place was packed with a sports team and a whole lot of other people waiting, so we decided to skip it and go to Ladles back home. We went over to Lowes, I got my plywood, and we headed to Ladles.
After lunch, I changed and got down to work in the basement. I had a bunch of stuff to do today, one of which was to finish my router table. I managed to get it all glued-up and ready to go today. I have the material for the top, which I need to cut to size. I have the bolts necessary to install it–I’m tapping the wood for the bolt threads. I was also working on a few other projects today. Part way through one, I took a break and came upstairs. I was trying to figure out how to make a quick stand to test something. I thought that pocket screws would do the trick, so I pulled the trigger and went back to Lowe’s to pick up a pocket screw jig. I picked up the Kreg R3 jig kit, which includes the jig, bit, driver, some pocket screws, and a few setup guides. After I came back and we had dinner (left-overs), I went back downstairs and knocked-together the test stand in a near record amount of time, especially having never used pocket screws in the past. My take on pocket screws? These are awesome!!! I really prefer to do traditional joinery on most projects, but I can really see where this jig is going to help me to build other jigs, shop furniture, and probably even help with some other projects around the house. I’m impressed. 🙂
I’ll probably be back at it again tomorrow–I have lots of stuff to do. Today was a highly satisfying day, though.
jonathan
