A little bit of shop time, and spring fever.

Mar 13

Posted by

I finally spent a little time in the workshop this past weekend, but not much.   After fixing the humidifier on the furnace and repairing our vacuum, I got to spend a little bit of time working on the band saw box project again.

I cut two S-curved pulls for the drawers out of some of the ebony that I had purchased for the pegs on the desk project.  The pulls turned out very well.  I like the ebony a lot. I attached the pulls to the drawers on the band saw box, and the entire box is now ready for final sanding and finishing.  I am pleased with how it looks considering it is my first project of this type.  I hope to do the final sanding and finishing in the next couple of days.  I think I will use a clear danish oil finish on the box.  I’m also going to try to "flock" the interior of the drawers with green-felt flocking.  This will be my first attempt at flocking.

I also spent some time in the yard yesterday getting spring fever, and planning the garden railroad expansion for this spring and summer    I want to extend the small loop of track that we installed last year by running a straight run of track for most of the entire length of our back fence to the left of our garage.  This will be about 120 linear feet of track with a small loop at one end to return the train to the other direction (on a single track).   The other end of the track will enter the garage through the small "hatch" that we had built into the wall when we built the garage, and then a small turn-around loop will be placed between the two cars in the garage (right on the concrete floor).   The "straight" run of track along the back fence will be suspended about 2 feet above the ground on a shelf attached to the fence.  I think I will make the shelf out of pressure-treated lumber for simplicity and low cost.  The far loop of track will use the raised "stringer" method of trackbed that I installed last year and talked about previously in this blog.  I have been very pleased with how the loop installed last summer performed through the winter.  This seems to be a very stable and weather and heave resistant construction method.

My goal will to have the new rail line built by June.  The two lines (last year’s line and this year’s line) will be able to run independently, so we will be able to run two trains at a time without conflicts.

About mattsanf

Matt Sanfilippo is the Chief Partnership Officer (CPO) for the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Co-Director of its Engineering Research Accelerator. In this role, Matt coordinates and enables strategic and sponsored research opportunities across the college, and stewards the development of proposals for major research opportunities along strategic themes. Additionally, he enables collaboration among the college's research institute/center executive directors, and industrial and government relations personnel in the pursuit of opportunities with industry, federal and state governments. Before becoming CPO for the College, Matt was the Senior Executive Director for Research Initiatives, the Executive Director of CMU's SII (Smart Infrastructure Institute) and ICES (Institute for Complex Engineered Systems), and Associate Director of PITA (Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance) and RAMP (Research for Advanced Manufacturing in Pennsylvania). Before CMU, Matt was Managing Director of Applied Technology for Michael Baker Corporation, an engineering and energy services firm. Matt managed Baker's technology division including Geographic Information System (GIS), software and web development, multimedia, virtual reality, visualization, Global Positioning System (GPS), mapping and surveying services. Before joining Baker, Matt was an Innovation Director for Redleaf Group, a Venture Capital/Operating Company focused on information security, supply chain and mobility solutions. While at Redleaf, Matt managed technical due diligence for seed-stage investments and coordinated relationships between Redleaf and their partner companies. Prior to Redleaf, Matt was CIO of GZA GeoEnvironmental Technologies, an infrastructure engineering firm, and operations manager for their Internet start-up that focused on web-technologies for health and safety and manufacturing metrics. Matt is on the board of Larson Design Group (LDG), past Chairman of the Board for the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, current board member of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation (PHLF), current Vice President of the Sewickley Heights Gun Club (SHGC) and former member of the Information Sciences and Technology Advisory Board for the Pennsylvania State University Beaver. Matt is also former Vice President of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Association of Internet Professionals and former Vice President of the Board of Trustees for Baker Combined Charity of Pennsylvania.

Posted on March 13, 2006, in Garden Trains, House Projects, Woodworking. Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on A little bit of shop time, and spring fever..

Comments are closed.

%d bloggers like this: