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This August was my wife and my 10th anniversary. We celebrated with a little trip to Port Townsend, WA for a few days, and purchased a kinetic wind sculpture there for our anniversary present to each other. We'd wanted some kind of whirligig like this for a while, so it makes a nice...

Dennis, I like the idea of the automated/remote water shut off. I am updating the earthquake readiness of our house (Seattle is overdue for a big one) and adding a shutoff like that was not on my list, but now is.

R. Deschain - Thanks! Rich - Thanks! Coming from the builder of the Mobile Adventure Lounge, that's a high compliment. This weekend I completed the exterior of the gate/fence with the 1x2 cedar and added a hydraulic closer to the main gate. Like I did with the retaining walls previously, I...

Jay - Thanks. I learned about leveling steel from the pro's I've worked with on commercial jobs. They have all kinds of great tricks.

Assorted notes on this build: 1) Even though I assembled the 4' wide main gate on the Paulk bench and it was nice and square, not everything else was perfectly parallel, so I had to trim one end of the gate to optimize the gap between it and the post. I had to trim about 1/4" down to nothing...

For the "grocery gates" I drilled a hole in the retaining wall for a drop rod (cane bolt) to secure one side, and then put a horizontal sliding deadbolt under the gates that locks them together. This way if you are on the parking side of the gate, you can reach under the bottom of the gates to...

The plan is to have the main gate on a closer so it is always closed unless held open. I wanted a latch that you could open and pull with one hand (ie not a latch with a separate pull handle) and found a nice option at the local lumber store. It also came with a separate latch that catches the...

My wife and I went around and around on what the fence and gates would look like. We wanted somthing visually interesting, mostly obscuring sight lines, but not solid. We looked at laser cut privacy panels (not cheap) and other ideas, and landed on a mostly wood fence, finished in horizontal...

To mount the fences and gates to the columns and post, I toyed with the idea of welded tabs, but that would destroy the powder coat finish already on the columns. So I settled on drilling into the columns, threading the holes, and then bolting 2x4's on edge to the column to build off of. For...

While the post was off being powder coated, I used a wood template of the base to locate and drill (using a roto-hammer of course) the four 5/8" holes for the threaded anchor bolts to secure the post. I bolted the four anchors to the template while the epoxy was drying to ensure they stayed...

Next up was welding up the column. My little 110v Miller 140 was not nearly up to the task of welding 1/4" to 1/2", so I borrowed the bigger 220v miller welder down at The Shop (www.theshopclubs.com) for this project. Even that unit is straining to weld material this thick (a stick welder is...

As we are running the fence line along top of the retaining wall, the two steel columns will work as corner/gate posts where the fence line makes 90 degree turns. We can tie it directly into the house where it terminates on that end, but the other end terminates into the garage where one of the...

You will recall we got a dog last winter. He's not really one to bolt through a door that is left open and head for the hills, but we like to leave the back door open while we're coming and going and not have to worry about the dog. So the current project is to fence off the backyard from the...

Your timing isn’t bad. I’ll be posting in my current project shortly.

So I picked up a set of four Irwin quick clamps for $25 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001DSY4QO?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_pd_title) and a foot of .5” x .25” cold rolled steel bar for $2 (https://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=7462&step=4&showunits=inches&id=199&top_cat=197). I cut the...

Dennis, I have a set of the Festool track clamps and a set of the Makita track clamps. I have not purchased the Dewalt ones, as they won’t Fit through the holes in the MFT table (the Makita ones don’t either). I am about to make a few sets of clamps to work with the saw track, MFT holes, and my...

I did a quick cleanup sanding of the top and rails and then treated them with Howard’s Feed-N-Wax to seal the top (and down into all the holes) against stain, paint, and glue drips. That’s about it. For now I’m not going to add the lower track rails on the side. I’m not sure how much I’ll use...

Dennis, Thanks. I’m having fun with this bench build. I checked out those Kip fasteners. Those look like they’d work even better than the handles I have. Might change to them eventually. Here are some pics of my track car modified to notch into the saw track.

I can then slide this car into the track and lock it down with the big wing nut. The Omnisquare has its own thumb screw to lock and release the angle of the arm. I can use this car like this and use it as a reference stop to back the track up to it for repetitive cuts, but next is to modify...

So I used my small grinder/belt sander combo (mounted to a trailer hitch winche receiver plate used in my trailer receiver mounted on my bench) to grind down the edge of some carriage bolts to slide into the T track and drilled a pair of holes into the body of the ominisquare. The hole nearer...