Latest Shop Addition: Router Table

After using a lot of make shift router tables to build my shoe cabinet, I decided to buy a router table. Router tables are very versatile and woodworkers often build their own (much like building a workbench is a rite of passage), but this time I decided that I'd rather just buy one and use my time on building other things instead. Instead of a full size router table, I went with a portable benchtop model because my space is limited so I went with the Benchdog contractor's table.

It wasn't difficult to setup and the table top and fence is pretty nice. It is a benchtop version so it has to sit on something or it is pretty low to the ground. Putting it on top of my workbench would make it too high to comfortably work with so I decided to build a mobile base for it which will also give me some extra storage for all my router related stuff while letting me move the table around the shop easily.

I used plywood that was left over from another, bought 3 inch casters and spent an afternoon working on it.  Compared to how long it took me to build the shoe cabinet, making this cabinet went lightning fast.  Having the router table to help create the dado and rabbits definitely made things go much faster. 

Straightening Warped Ikea Solid Wood Table Top Part 1

Ikea, mostly known for its modern Scandinavian design particle board furniture, also sells some solid wood products such as counter tops and table tops.  They aren't expensive hardwoods but cheaper woods such as pine and beech, but if you don't have the equipment or time to mill your own stock (thickness planer, jointer, etc.) and laminate them together then Ikea might be an alternative.

That was my thinking since I wanted to have wood table in the office that can take some abuse, but I don't have the equipment to do it from rough stock.  Telling She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed that I'm going to spend $800 on equipment to build a $100 table won't end pretty so for $79, I picked up the beech wood table top and a few legs.

The table top looks nice, but to my dismay when I opened up the box it was obviously slightly warped.  My wife didn't seem to notice but I took out my 4' level and sure enough there was a slight curve around 1/8th of an inch.  My first thought was to go exchange it but transporting the sucker is a pain.  After some googling, I settled on an "old timer's" method.

Take the table top and put it on grass that is slightly damp during a sunny day with the concave side facing down.  This will let one side absorb some moisture and the sun will dry/pull moisture through the other side.  The idea is to balance the moisture content in the wood so that it will flatten.  After leaving it out for about 3 hours, the wood had indeed flattened.  Actually it started to warp a little in the other way so I had to flip it one more time and keep a more careful eye on it.

Once it was flat, I took it into the garage but sometime can up and I had to leave it there for a few hours.  When I returned, the table was warped again but not as bad as before.  My idea was to sand the table when it was flat so that I can immediately apply some polyurethane varnish to seal the moisture so that it won't warp again, but couldn't get to it in time so it looks like I will have to try this again next weekend.

Some Garage Organization

The July 4th weekend gave me a chance to tackle organizing the garage.  It is a 2-cars garage and it was important for us to be able to park at least one car in and not use everything for storage and the workshop.    After some research, I went with the RubberMaid FastTrack system for the walls since they aren't too expensive and can be installed by one person.

This is the "parking" side of the garage.  The alcove in the back corner was a perfect fit for the wing-chun stand and the wood cart was exactly the right depth that I can push it against the wall still be able to fold down the steps up to the attic.  The kids' bikes and stroller hangs off one fast track.

This is the "workshop" side of the garage.  It is still not completely done but right now it allows me to keep stuff somewhere without them getting underfoot.

I need to get some more hooks and I'm planning to add some shelving above the workbench.  The floor is pretty sloped and took a lot of shims to get it leveled.

Setting up VNC on Fedora 14

As part of going down the wrong path to debug another problem, I found myself trying to set up VNC Server on my new Fedora 14 machine.  Setting up VNC itself is pretty simple with yum and instructions can be found here including configuring the firewall to accept it:  How to Setup VNC.

Of couse, once you have VNC running, Fedora don't actually let you access it from a client and eventually I found this post which answered how to configure SELinux to allow remote connection to VNC: Fedora 14 and SSH port forwarding.

I love Linux, but sometimes it's things like these that can drive general users away.

Getting a DHCP Linux Host to Broadcast Its Name

When set to using DHCP, the IP address of the machine can change.  When running a server that can be annoying so in the past, I've generally assigned it a static IP and edit all the other machines' /etc/hosts file to give a name that points to the server.  Instead of keep doing this, I decided to have the Linux server broadcast its name to the local network.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 by adding DHCP_HOSTNAME=<your machine name here>.

This is the location for Fedora so your distribution might be different.  ifcfg-eth0 is dependent on whatever network adaptor you want to config (i.e. if you're using a wireless adaptor it'll have a different name).

Finally, restart the network and your server should be found by your other machines simply by its name.

Why it is easy to hate LeBron?

Since the NBA Finals ended there has been tons of articles about LeBron by both his fans and his distractors including some that said they felt sorry for LeBron by all the criticism.  Seriously, how bad are the criticism when most of them usually inject praise like how he is an unbelievable talent and that eventually he will win a championship.  I sure wouldn't mind if my performance reviews all included "You're totally awesome!"  In his career, I'm sure there's been more far more praise then critiques.  But I digress.  The question is why is it so easy to hate LeBron?

It's an easy question to answer (in my mind at least).  LeBron himself kind of answered it when he said after the Finals how we fans will go back to our miserable lives and he will enjoy his.  Because in the end, we don't know LeBron the person and only know LeBron the brand.  Fans hate the arrogant spoiled modern athlete.  People like the simple story of good vs. evil, hero vs villian.  LeBron embodies the modern spoiled athlete.  King James is a public figure and his profession is to provide excitement and sports drama.  It happens that his basketball character is the evil bad guy and aren't we suppose to dislike the antagonist while cheering on the protagonist?

It is easy to hate the antagonist.

Sandbox with Seating

I had promised that once we have completed the house that I would build a sandbox in the backyard.  A sandbox is pretty easy to build since it's essentially a box.  A few things to consider when building a sandbox is whether there are cats and other animals around since you don't want your child's sandbox to become an oversized litter box.

Because there are cats in our neighborhood, I knew we needed to have a lid of some sort for the sandbox.  The dimensions of the box is 8' x 4' so a single lid that span the whole sandbox might be too heavy for the little ones to lift.  I decided to divide the sandbox into two 4' x 4' sections.

I built the lids to fold on top of each other so they become a seating bench when opened.  It still offers plenty of play area for the kids, easy for them to open while keeping neighborhood animals out.