Studio711

Wooden Skid Steer

I’ve made a project in the woodshop every year of Elijah’s life. That’s kind of a hard trend to break. The first year was a table and chairs and ever since then, I’ve made something from the Wood Magazine construction sets (end loader, dump truck, semi lowboy and dump trailer). I stuck with that theme this year and made the skid steer. I was crunched for time and it was a small project so it seemed like a good fit. Thanks to Tim for giving me some scrap maple so I didn’t have to make a run to the lumber store. Follow him on Instagram under the @woodscreekwoodworks account.

The project went pretty smoothly, but, again, I felt like the instructions could have been better. There was too much precise cutting and hoping that stuff lined up later. Why not just leave it all a little long and then flush it up later? I need to get better at building stuff in my head to recognize these opportunities.

I bought the kit that provided all the hardware and wheels and it came together pretty quickly. With these toys, I’ve learned to mill up lots of extra wood so that I can have another crack at it when things go wrong and that skill proved useful here.

Some day I won’t be able to post this stuff early, but for now, Elijah doesn’t read my blog so I can show you a picture early. Merry Christmas!

benmartens December 10, 2018 Woodworking No Comments

Milling Wood

Years ago, I didn’t understand how wood got milled to the right dimensions. When I planned out Tyla’s jewelry box,I spent an unreasonable number of hours trying to figure out how to get wood that was the right thickness. Fast forward a few years and I’m now much more comfortable with buying any sized chunk of wood and getting it to the right thickness, width and length.

There are four tools generally involved in the way that I do it:

  1. First I use the jointer to get two flat and 90 degree faces on the board. These give me good (and safe) reference points to use other tools.
  2. If the wood is much thicker than I need, I’ll use the bandsaw next. This lets me slice down the length of the board to make two thinner boards.It’s less wasteful than turning all the extra thickness into sawdust.
  3. The bandsaw isn’t incredibly precise and it leaves some saw marks, so the next step is the planer. I use the jointed face on the bottom as a reference and then make the top face parallel and get the board to exactly the right thickness.
  4. The final step is the last edge and that can be easily trimmed up on the table saw.

When I started building Elijah’s Christmas present, I took a video of that process of milling one board. It was only about 1″ thick and I need a 1 1/2″ thick board so I milled it down to 3/4″, cut it in half and glued the two halves together.

benmartens December 7, 2018 Woodworking No Comments

Fantasy Football – Week 13

That was a fun Seahawks game to watch. The defense looked great with lots of great drive ending stops and takeaways. It was even better knowing that the Seahawks play the 49ers again in a couple weeks. Hopefully that game is similar.

More importantly, the Seahawks kept their “scorigami” streak alive. In 9 straight seasons, they have had one game where they were involved in a game that had a score that had never happened in the NFL before.

This week and next week are a bit of a lull in our league as the playoff teams are already set. All we’re doing right now is figuring out the seeding. Logan’s reign of terror ended, but maybe he’s just sandbagging so we feel better? I had the unenviable honor of putting up the second most points and losing. I should keep track of how many times that happens as I feel like it’s happened to a couple other people this year as well. The standings remain totally unchanged from last week except that now Logan and Andy have the same record so it’s possible they’ll swap places. Next week the top four teams play the bottom four teams and then we’re off to the playoffs. Thanks for keeping your rosters full!

Andy has fallen out of the top of the power rankings and Nick has shot up into fourth.

1. Logan (Goat Roapers)
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
3. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) +1
4. Nick +2

On to the weekly records:

This Week This Season All Time
Highest Team Score Tyler had 156.20 Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Luke had 88.58 Tim had 72.47 (Week 10) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Dad beat Luke by 28.85 Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Andy beat Tim by 5.77 Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (Week 12) Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018)
Highest Scoring Player Patrick Mahomes had 41.00 for Ben Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Tyler has a 2 game winning streak Andy, Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks. Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
Longest Active Losing Streak Tim has a 6 game losing streak Was: Tim and Dad had 5 game losing streaks Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)
benmartens December 5, 2018 Fantasy Sports No Comments

Fantasy Football – Week 12

I hope you got a chance to catch the Seahawks at the Panthers. What a game! One lowlight was Wilson missing another pass to an open Doug Baldwin in the endzone. It sailed right over his head just like last week. What happened to the chemistry those two used to have? On the other side of the ball, Christian McCaffrey was making the Seahawks look silly. He finished with 125 yards rushing, 112 receiving yards and 2 touchdowns! It’s not often that a running back has the most points in all of fantasy football for the week. The fourth quarter had plenty of drama including a missed field goal by the Panthers with less than two minutes less and a game winning drive and field goal by the Seahawks. As Pete Carroll said before the game, this was a playoff game. It really put the Seahawks into a great spot to make the playoffs and I think they have have a great chance at topping my 8-8 prediction since 3 of their remaining games are against teams with 2 wins. Hopefully nothing silly happens there.

Our league wasn’t devoid of drama either.Logan topped 170 points for the fourth week in a row securing a spot in the playoffs. Andy also secured his spot even though he lost. But the most amazing game was easily the one between Tyler and Nick. Nick entered Monday night with a 60% chance of winning with Deandre Hopkins only needing about 10 points to put Nick on top. With 10 minutes left in the game, Nick was 0.01 behind. That’s not a typo. The closest game in the history of our league was 0.12 back in 2012. Surely he’d get at least one more yard, right? Nope! The game ended with Nick down by 0.01. With a score that close, it’s not really over yet. Stat corrections come in by Thursday and though it’s unlikely, if a correction hits either team, it could easily change the outcome of that matchup which would have big playoff implications. A win for Nick gives him a real shot at the playoffs while a loss makes it almost impossible. (And in case you’re curious, it is possible to tie in the regular season in our league.)

Next week, Tyler and I do battle with the winner clinching the third playoff spot, although realistically we’re both in. Even if Nick wins the remaining two games and one of us loses both games, we’d still beat Nick in a points tie breaker.

Thank you all for keeping your rosters full even if you’re not going to make the playoffs! It helps keep the league fair if we’re all filling the rosters each week.

Whew. I need some oxygen. Let’s look at the power rankings:

1. Logan (Goat Roapers)
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid) +1
3. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) -1
4. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck)

On to the weekly records:

This Week This Season All Time
Highest Team Score Logan had 178.74 Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8) Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score Andy had 93.99 Tim had 72.47 (Week 10) Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout Logan beat Dad by 78.97 Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8) Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 Was: Tyler beat Ben by 1.55 (Week 6) Was: Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player Christian McCaffrey had 41.20 for Logan Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4) Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak Logan has a 4 game winning streak. Andy, Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks. Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
Longest Active Losing Streak Tim has a 5 game losing streak. Dad has a 5 game losing streak. (Week 9) Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011)

UPDATE: Logan noted I had incorrectly listed Tyler as the owner of Christian McCaffrey.

benmartens November 28, 2018 Fantasy Sports 1 Comment