In the garden

skil-saw tablesaw

For some tasks the tool needed is a table saw.
Ripping (cutting with the grain in a long dimension) is such a task. I needed to rip a kerf-wide channel in some 2x2 redwood boards for some garden fence I'm building.
Doing this job with a skil saw by hand would be tedious, imprecise and more dangerous than with a table saw.
Adapting my router table to a table saw to use with a standard skil saw is a fairly simple proposition.

1) Cut a kerf in the table, from the bottom (My table is not fastened to it's carraige. I just flipped it over.)
2) Drill a hole in each corner of the baseplate of the skil saw, and mark their location on the bottom side of the table.

3) Drill through and countersink from the table top, and install screws through the table top through the saw baseplate and secure with lockwashers and nuts.

4) I set the saw depth adjustment and strapped the trigger to the "on" position, and plugged the saw into a footswitch attachment so I could control on & off with my foot.

5) Attached a 'fence' to the table and ripped 18 pieces of wood about 5 feet long in under 10 minutes with a significant margin of safety, accuracy and speed over doing the same work with a skil saw in the conventional manner.

For those occasions when a table saw is indispensable, this set up was fast, simple and very effective. So satisfying. :) (Warning: power tools are inherently dangerous. The foregoing is not intended as advisable or recommended generally as safe practice. Power tools should only be used as intended by the manufacturer and specified in manufacturer's operator's manuals.)

Efflorescence repair

Infilterating rainwater migrates through the granite & mortar walls, and the interior plaster, driving salts left in the plaster sand out through the interior paint in blisters that bubble the surface of the walls in many places throughout the house.

The exterior has been mostly waterproofed, so I can begin to make cosmetic repairs to selected areas in turn. This involves scraping and peeling away all affected plastered surfaces,

applying an efflorescence treatment and primer coat of paint,

patching pitted areas with new plaster,

wet sanding and hand-rubbing the new plaster to smooth it...

a second coat with textured primer, and final color coats to match existing finished surfaces. Wow, amazing how easy it is to fit all that into one sentence...wish it was that easy to actually do!
Here is the "before" picture:

and the "after":

Fireplace tools

Iron weapons of this size ought not to be leaning precariously against the marble fireplace, so I had Stefan the local smithy forge us a right proper tool stand.