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Grizzly Table Saw Three Month Update

As you already surmised from the title of this post, I’ve had my new table saw (a Grizzly G1023RLW) for three months. It was a huge splurge and way more than I needed, so I was curious how I’d feel after a few months. Would I regret going big?

No way. I LOVE this saw! It’s dead accurate, or at least better than I can measure and it has gobs of power. I’ve plowed lots of different pieces of wood through it and I’ve never heard the motor change pitch. It just laughs and says, “Is that all you’ve got?” I thought I finally got it to bog down with a 2.25″ piece of walnut, but it turned out that my fence was a little bit out of alignment so I was getting a small pinch (yikes!) That was easily adjusted and the saw resumed it’s monotonous sawdust making.

I’d buy this saw again in a heartbeat. That’s a relief because I have a nasty habit of getting bored with a hobby about the time that I finally spend money on a really nice piece of equipment for it. With RC planes, I fizzled out around the time I bought a Spektrum Dx6 transmitter. With skiing, I slowed way down right after I bought brand new, high end skis. Was the same thing going to happen with the table saw? So far, the answer is no. I’ve been amazed at just how many nights I’ve used the saw and there’s no end in site for all the projects I want to build.

Maybe this is the hobby that sticks with me?

Table Saw Assembly

My new Grizzly 1023RLW table saw is assembled and ready to use. It took significantly longer than expected largely because I’ve never done anything like that before and I had to do many of the steps three or four times to get them right. Luckily, I wasn’t in much of a hurry so I was able to take my time and get it right.

I took some extra time to raise the saw up 4 1/4″ to a more comfortable height for me. That’s 3/4″ higher than I had my old table saw set at. I’m a big guy and it’s nice to have things at a level that doesn’t hurt my back when I’m out there for a couple hours.

This thing cuts like a dream. It’s silky smooth on start up and powers through boards like they aren’t even there. I’m looking for excuses just to cut boards!

Picking Up The Table Saw

I wrote last week about why I decided to buy a Grizzly 1023 table saw. The next trick was getting it to my house. Having Grizzly ship it would cost about $240 by the time I was all done. They have two showrooms and one of them happens to be 1.5 hours away in Bellingham. (The other one is in Missouri.) I wanted to check out their building anyway, so I made a plan to go get it.

Unfortunately they are only open on weekdays during normal business hours, but I was able to drive up there on Friday afternoon. I went back and forth on whether I should load it right into the truck and rent some ramps and a dolly to move it down or if I should rent a trailer with a ramp on the back. Both rentals were in the same price range so I went with the trailer because it would be lower to the ground and hopefully easier to unload.

I made good time on the drive up there but as I approached Bellingham, the temperature dropped and the rain started to have some snow in it. I was NOT eager to drag a trailer home in the snow so I hustled through the showroom and filled out the paperwork to pick up the saw. I want to go back some time and take it all in!

After getting loaded up, I wrapped it with some stretch wrap and strapped it down tightly. Thankfully the snow held off and I was able to make it home safely.

Tim and Logan stopped by to help me unload and it turned out that I really only needed one of them. It was relatively easy to just push it off the back and down the ramp. Oh well. The main box ended up being 450 pounds and then there was a second ~100 pound box containing the fence and rails.

In the next post, I’ll cover unboxing and setting it up.

New Table Saw

I got my first table saw about 3 years ago. I liked it because it was a good price and it was fun to use one of Tim’s dad’s tools. Over the years I got it dialed in and built a nicer stand for it, but at it’s core, it was still a contractor saw. You can read about the differences between contractor, hybrid and cabinet saws but the main points are accuracy and power. If you’re out on a job site ripping down plywood, it’s fine if all your cuts are within 1/8″ and you’re just cutting thin boards. And I made a LOT of projects that I’m very proud of using this simple saw. But now I’m itching for something safer and more accurate.

As part of our finances, Tyla and I give ourselves an allowance every month. I saved my pennies for a long time and my original plan was to buy a CNC machine. But around that time, I got cold feet on the CNC purchase and was really feeling like I wanted a better table saw. So I started researching table saws and landed on a Grizzly G1023RLW. Here are the things I like about the saw:

  1. It’s a 3hp 240v motor. I can’t find reliable numbers for my old saw but I think it’s either 0.75hp or 1hp. I can’t count the times when I’ve been making a cut and the motor has either bogged down or the blade has stopped. That’s horribly unsafe and made me pee my pants every time. It happens more often now that I’ve started working with thicker hardwoods.
  2. It has a riving knife and a blade guard. These features in addition to the increased power should make the new saw immensely safer. Have you ever seen kickback happen? Scary.
  3. It’s a full-blown cabinet saw which means I can perfectly align the table top, the blade and the fence to all be exactly square with each other. This not only increases accuracy but it can improve safety too.
  4. Theoretically it will offer me better dust collection but I don’t have a system powerful enough to move that much air yet.
  5. It has a built-in router table. I love the space-saving aspects of it but I’m not sure how it will compare to my dedicated bench-top router table now. I expect actual aligning and cutting aspects to be similar to what I used before but the dust collection will be worse. I’m willing to make that tradeoff to save some space and if I decide not to use it in the future, there’s no big loss other than the small additional cost.

Because this sucker weighs in at 550 pounds, it’s expensive to ship. By the time I pay a freight company with liftgate service (to get it from the truck bed down to street level), it was going to be about $240. Thankfully one of Grizzly’s two showrooms is only 1.5 hours from here. So I’ll be driving up to Bellingham to get it and then I’ll be suckering a couple friends into helping me get it out of my truck and into the garage.

You may have heard about a company called SawStop. They have a patent on technology that instantly stops the blade if it contacts your skin. The demo videos are incredible, and given that table saws are the most common source of shop injuries, it’s a good place to make an investment. I strongly considered buying one, but in the end, I couldn’t justify more than double the price of the Grizzly for a tool that I only use lightly as a hobby. It’s a beautiful saw and if I cut my fingers off I’ll regret this choice, but I’m willing to accept the risk.

In the end, I’m buying an expensive tool that is way more than I need and it’s just for a hobby. This is clearly a luxury purchase. I’m thankful that I can have it and I’m excited to start shortening some boards with it! This could be the last table saw that I ever buy it might also be the most expensive tool that I ever buy.

(And by the way, I’ll be selling my old saw and router table if you’re interested…)

Grizzly Band Saw

grizzlyg0555lanvThis weekend I placed an order for a big tool that I’ve never used before: a band saw. Specifically, it’s a Grizzly G0555LANV 14″ Deluxe Bandsaw Anniversary Edition. As I’ve gotten more into woodworking, I’ve realized that it is an incredibly useful tool that will open up a lot of builds that just aren’t feasible right now. This is sort of a middle of the road model. It’s not a smaller benchtop unit, but it’s a fraction of the price of some of the big name brands. Grizzly makes great tools with no frills. No, it’s not the same quality as a Powermatic, but it’s also going to be a quarter or a fifth of the price. For a home woodworker like me, even the Grizzly is probably overkill.

I struggled for a long time about whether to buy this new or used. I know that I could have saved money buying a used one, but since I have almost zero experience with a band saw, I did not believe that I could accurately evaluate a used model to know if I was getting a good deal or not.

I’m lucky to be located pretty close to one of Grizzly’s three showrooms, but I still chose to have it shipped from Bellingham. I was able to get it shipped for $35 (had to pay for curb side service since I don’t have a forklift to unload it myself) and for that much money, it was hard to justify borrowing a truck and making the ~2.5 hour round trip drive.

If you’re not familiar with a band saw, you might be wondering what it is good for. In general, pretty much anything you can do on a table saw, you can do on a band saw and it’s arguably a bit safer for some tasks such as cutting dove tails or box joints. Additionally, you can cut curves and you can resaw thick lumber and save wood. When I built Tyla’s jewelry box, most of the pieces were 3/4″ thick so that’s the stock that I bought. But a couple of the pieces only needed to be 1/4″ thick. If I had a band saw, I could have cut the board in half to make two thin pieces. Since I didn’t have one, I had to run it repeatedly through the thickness planer and turn 2/3 of the board into expensive saw dust.

I’m excited to get this thing set up and learn how to use it! Stay tuned for my first projects. I have a big stack of ideas waiting for me!

2017 Year In Review

Since you’re reading this on my website, let’s start with the biggest change I’ve made on this site: I quit blogging every day. Around Memorial Day this year, I stopped forcing myself to get a post up every weekday. That ended a streak of nearly 4000 weekdays in a row with a blog post. It has felt a lot more freeing to only write when I have an idea for content instead of scrambling the night before to try and fill an empty spot in the calendar. And while this is a terrible model for driving traffic to a site, my main goal has always been a kind of “life journal” that might store some interesting nuggets in the decades. To that end, I tried to write some longer articles about memories from my childhood. Those felt like some of my better posts from the year: Childhood Christmas Gifts, Baseball Stories,  Parental Albums and Sleepwalking Stories.

The biggest change for all of us this year was the loss of Tyla’s mom to breast cancer. Nancy had been battling the cancer for years but it was pretty clear early in the year that we were crossing the point of no return and in the end, it went downhill very quickly. Those weeks and months were full of a wide range of emotions complicated still further by having a four year old in the mix. I found it really difficult to be supportive both to Tyla and Elijah at the same time. For example, many times I felt like the way I could help the most was to get Elijah out of the room/house and give him a normal day, but that meant I wasn’t there to help Tyla. But we all made it through, and because all of us believe that Jesus died for our sins, I know we’ll be reunited in heaven.

I said things declined rapidly. Just the weekend before she died, we were all camping at Cape Disappointment. It’s a beautiful park right along the ocean. I thought it was healthy for Tyla’s family to spend that time together, have time for long talks, and have one last outing with Nancy. Elijah had a lot of fun riding his bike around the campground and sleeping in the tent. Whenever we ask him what he wants to do for vacation next summer, he asks to do that trip again.

Our other summer vacations included Memorial Day weekend at Discovery Bay, a week in Indiana, and our long road trip to Fort Peck, MT. Spending 4 out of 6 days on the road with a four year old turned out about as perfectly as it could (aside from the crazy car trouble at 4am as we were trying to leave.) He did fantastic and now it has us thinking about some other road trips that we might take.Between the funeral and the Brandt family reunion, we got to spend a lot of time with Tyla’s extended family. I finally feel like I know most of the kind people who send us Christmas cards every year! It was nice for them all to meet Elijah too.

At the 2016 Christmas party, Logan mentioned that it was his “man mission” to climb to Camp Muir. The guy he was talking to said, “I’ll go with you!” In the blink of an eye, we had a crew of people ready to hike up there with him. I had been there back in 2010, but it was such a great hike that I knew I wanted to do it again. Half the fun of hiking Camp Muir is all the training hikes you need to do ahead of time! We hit a lot of great trails including: Little Mt. Si, Lime Kiln Trail, Mt. Pilchuck, Lake Melakwa, Mason Lake and Little Bandera Mountain. I had Elijah in my backpack for a lot of those hikes. Next year he’ll be too big and it will be time for him to hoof it himself.

Hiking Camp Muir with a group that big and vary different schedules means that you randomly pick a date on the calendar and pray for good weather. Thankfully, the weather was PERFECT. The smoke from the wildfires cleared out and we had blue skies and perfect temperatures. I beat my previous time by 40 minute (16%) so I was very happy about that. I didn’t feel nearly as tired the next day either so I’d say our hikes leading up to this one were chosen well. The only downside to the day was that Tim was planning to come with us but he got injured shortly before the hike. So that just means we’ll be doing it again. Tim, let us know when you’re ready and we’ll put it on the calendar!

I continued on with the woodworking hobby, and in the beginning of the year, I made my biggest tool investment yet: a beefy new Grizzly table saw. That continues to be solid purchase in my book and it gets a lot of use. Projects this year included a set of wooden blocks, a plant bench, a Washington bottle cap map, an anniversary photo printed on wood for my parents, piano book shelves, a couple Mother’s Day signs, the Instagram photo frame (my favorite project of the year!), magnetic coasters, laser cut decorations for Elijah’s birthday, a cutting board, a jewelry holder tree, two wood signs carved with a router, a storage closet makeover, a wood semi with two trailers, a marquetry butterfly, and a drum. I feel productive when I read that! Even with all those things checked off the list, my project idea list has grown so I better keep going.

See you in 2018!

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

Shapeoko 3 XXL Initial Thoughts

After years of hemming and hawing, I jumped on the Shapeoko Black Friday deal this year. It took me a while to get around to unboxing and assembling it because I was finishing up some Christmas gifts, but now that I’ve gotten started on my CNC journey, I want to share some thoughts.

  • Cost – There’s no getting around the fact that this is expensive. I mean, this is a high tech piece of equipment that would have been completely out my grasp 10 years ago, but I think the cost part that bothers me is that this isn’t going to hold it’s value like a table saw. This is a point-in-time snapshot of technology and new models will continue to outpace what I have today. Most of my hobbies have a point where I spend a bunch of money on something fancy and then lose interest and kind of regret my big purchased. I’m really hoping that this CNC purchase isn’t that point for woodworking.
  • Size – I went for the XXL version, which, as the name implies, is the biggest one they sell. The cutting area of the smallest one is 16″x16″ but my version is 33″x33″. I still haven’t decided if that was a good move or not. It’s huge and my shop is not. I’m starting to feel better about the choice now that I’ve built a shelf that flips up against the wall. Storing it vertically is probably not idea in terms of fine tuning the machine, but there aren’t a lot of good options available in my small shop. It’s a beast to raise and lower though. I think the whole machine and table probably way at least 120 pounds.
  • Complexity – While setup of this machine is dramatically easier than something like an XCarve, it’s still not a turn-key solution (that’s one of the reasons why it’s cheaper than other options.) The time from purchase to first success is a LOT longer than any other tool in my shop. I spent probably three or four hours getting it “set up” but that’s really only the start of the journey. Want a way to hold down your material? You need to figure that out and implement it. Want to make sure your bed is flat? You can create a job to do that but you oh wait, if your spindle isn’t perfectly square to your bed you won’t have good results. Want to make sure your spindle is square to your bed? Build or buy a tramming device and spend a long time shimming and tweaking. And even once you plow through all of that, you need to get familiar with the software and spend a good chunk of time drawing out your design using vector art on the computer, setting up the correct tool path for the machine, getting your feed rate correct so you don’t cut off a bit, etc. As I’m going through all of this, I kept comparing it to my table saw upgrade which was in a similar price category. The table saw had a similar unboxing time requirement but then I was instantly more productive. That’s far from the case with a CNC machine. If you’re not up for a massive amount of learning and experimenting, CNC is not for you or rather, the DIY end of CNC isn’t for you. There are other products like the Nomad from the same company which are a much easier experience. With those tools, you can focus more of your effort on the programming/drawing side of things but you also pay for that privilege.

As you can tell, I’m still nervous about whether this was a good purchase or not. One thing I realized is that every time I hit another step, I’d go online to try and learn from people who had gone before. That’s generally helpful but it can also be a quagmire of indecision as there are a ridiculous number of different ideas about how to do something that seems as simple as holding your work piece safely to the bed so it doesn’t fly off when the spindle touches it. I finally gave up on trying to do a “smarter” version of every single step and decided to just plow forward with something that seems good now. I’ll learn and redo things as I go. There’s just too much knowledge to ingest without some background experience.

My first big step was drilling a bunch of holes into my waste board. I bought a pack of 50 threaded inserts from Amazon and drilled a pattern of holes all the way through the waste board. Then I installed the threaded inserts from the bottom of the waste board. Now I can use those as mounting points for hold down clamps (which I still need to fabricate.) A tutorial on the Shapeoko website was really helpful for that project and I’ll probably use their hold down clamp tutorial too.

My first project is going to be a zero clearance insert for the table saw. I have a fancy one from Grizzly that works well for most cuts, but it’s nice to have the zero clearance inserts for the dado stack, angled cuts, etc. Once I have down the work to program it all on the CNC, I can whip out new ones very quickly and cheaply. This is kind of a silly project because I can make one by hand in probably 20 minutes or so, but it seemed like a useful project with a low level of difficulty before I jump into something more complex like making a sign.

Disneyland Review

Ever since Elijah was born, Tyla and I have talked about if and when we’ll go to Disneyland for vacation. We know that we’re probably not going to end up being frequent Disneyland visitors so we hemmed and hawed a lot about what year would be a good one, but eventually, we pulled the trigger and put Disneyland into the 2018 budget.

This post is going to be a bit like when a relative sits down with a huge photo album, but hey, at least you can skip through this without hurting my feelings. Note that you can click on any of the photos for a bigger version.

Preparation

Planning a trip to a Disney resort felt overwhelming. Neither one of us has ever been there. (I was at Disneyworld when I was in kindergarten.) So many people have been there and they all have opinions. Searching around on the web reveals endless websites, videos and podcasts telling you the right way to do it. I ended up reading The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland mostly because it had good reviews on Amazon and it was available for free as an ebook from our library. I got so much out of it, that I ended up purchasing a physical copy of the book too. The book covers everything from hotels to rides to food and more. There’s an incredible level of detail if you really want to maximize your trip (for example, stand in entry line X when entering the park because people end up forming one line but when you get to the tree it splits into two lines so it moves twice as fast.) But for me, it was simply nice have a full picture from a single source. I took lots of notes on my first read of the book and then went back to reread some of the sections again.

We decided to pony up for one of the official Disney hotels and we booked a room at Disneyland Hotel. We even upgraded one notch to get a pool view instead of a parking lot view. If you stay outside the park, you can stay close and get a bad pool or stay farther away and get a better pool. Staying in the park gives you both. A good pool was important because our plan was to spend two days in the park with a day at the hotel/pool in between. Staying in a Disney hotel also gives you early access to the parks on certain days.

To figure out dates for the trip, I went back to the book, or rather, to the website associated with the book: touringplans.com. I spent a couple bucks and bought a one year pass to the website. They’re a bunch of data science geeks who happen to love Disney so they have built up a sophisticated model to predict traffic at the various resorts and even wait times on every ride. I used their data to pick relatively low traffic periods (and low hotel price periods) that coincided with our availability.

Once I had the dates, I found our flights and a shuttle service between the airport to the hotel that wouldn’t require us to bring a car seat for Elijah.

The next step in the planning process was going through all the various rides and trying to come up with some sort of a plan going in. I narrowed it down to the rides that I thought Elijah would enjoy (nothing to dark, nothing scary, nothing too intense, etc.) Then I plugged them all into the Touring Plans website and it created an optimized route for us based on our walking speed, predicted waits for every ride, etc.

The final step of planning was figuring out food. I heard from multiple people that you need to make reservations for your meals if you’re planning to sit down and eat. I picked out one character dinner for our day off and then booked a meal at a restaurant in each park for dinner.

Two Days Before We Left

I was on my way home from work on Friday when I got a text from Tyla telling me to come straight inside as soon as I got home because Elijah had a big accident on his bike. He was zooming down the hill in front of our house and ended up going over his handlebars. He scraped his face across the pavement and came to a stop. He ended up with pretty bad cuts around his eye and a big swollen lip.

Thankfully there was no permanent damage (other than a slightly chipped tooth which we did get checked out when we got back). That was less less than 48 hours before our plane was scheduled to leave so you’ll see some sores on his face in the pictures. It was incredible to see how quickly he healed. Seven days later, you could barely tell he’d had an accident!

Hotel Review

There are three Disney hotels and Disneyland is the second closest to the park entrance. It has a nice pool with some good water slides. In our final minutes of swimming on the trip, Elijah finally got up the courage to try the yellow one (the middle of the three intensities.) He did great and wanted to do it a million more times.

We were in Frontier Tower on the third floor facing the pool. It was a reasonably nice view and we were able to see some of the fireworks in the park every evening. The room felt nice and big. The highlight was the big headboard that stretched across both beds. It had the castle drawn into it and when you flipped a switch on the nearby lamp, lights came on that looked like fireworks.

One of the buildings that was part of the hotel also housed Goofy’s Kitchen which was the site of our character dinner. We did that on our day at the hotel/pool so it was convenient to not have to go very far for dinner. The dinner was the most expensive frozen kid’s food that I’ll ever eat, but it was fine if I thought of it as private time with 5 characters. As a surprise bonus, Mickey was there and we got to take our picture with him as we checked in with the hostess. Throughout the meal we got to take pictures with Goofy, Minnie, Pluto, Chip and Dale. If I had that to do over again, I’d probably book breakfast or lunch since I think the characters are similar but the meal is a little cheaper.

Disneyland Park Review

We arrived at the hotel Sunday afternoon and then spent all of Monday in the park. The park opened up at 9am (no Magic Hour early entry that day). We had decided to use the park’s stroller rental instead of other options, so we walked from the hotel to the park entrance and arrived at about 8:30. We picked up our stroller and walked into the park around the time it opened. (The stroller rental opened a bit later than normal for some reason.)

We walked up Main Street with smiles on our faces and headed through the castle for our first ride: Peter Pan. No deal. I think all the people and excitement were too much for Elijah. Looking back, I shouldn’t have been quite so ambitious on the first attempt. There’s no way for him to see what he’s getting into with that ride since it’s all inside. No worries. We scrapped that and moved on. We were there for a fun family time, not to ride every awesome ride. Here’s how the rest of our day shaped up. It’s pretty close to what I had planned on the Touring Plans website, but we definitely moved slower than I thought we would. No problem though, I was able to use the app to re-optimize our remaining rides. That app saved us a lot of steps and a lot of time.

  • Dumbo was our first ride. That was a big hit and it was a good one to start with since it was something like what he’s seen at the fair. This ride was my first taste of not feeling awkward riding a kid’s ride by myself. Dumbo only seats 2 comfortably. At the fair we would have just had one of us go with him, but at Disneyland, they just ask you how many cars/elephants/etc you need for your party and that’s how many you get. Plenty of adults ride the kid rides by themselves so it doesn’t feel weird. That proved to be very nice since we actually got to participate (even if the rides weren’t super thrilling) without feeling awkward.
  • Autotopia was a lot of fun. I rode with Elijah and Tyla got her own car. He thought it was pretty funny to let go of the steering wheel and let it bonk off the center rail. I think he was a little short to see over the front but he had it mostly figured out looking around the side.
  • Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage – Elijah was fine waiting in line, but as soon as we got down into the submarine, Elijah asked if we could get off. That wasn’t a great start. He asked lots of questions but was ok with most of it until we got to some of the scarier parts. I held him on my lap, put my hand over his eyes and tried to explain what was happening. He was putting on his brave act but he did ask nicely if we could not do any more submarine rides.
  • Mark Twain Riverboat – It was time for something a little more low key before lunch. We walked over to the riverboat. If I could skip one ride, I think this would be it. The boat was beautiful and the ride was fine, but honestly it was better to see the riverboat from the shore than to be on it.
  • I had planned for us to have lunch at the Hungry Bear restaurant before the crowds got to big, but just as we got there, they had a power outage and had to reset the equipment. Instead we headed over to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. We were next in line and… ride malfunction. It was improvisation time. Thankfully we spotted some characters out for a meet and greet and the line wasn’t too long. We got to take pictures with Eeyore, Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh. Elijah got autographs from all of them. Kudos to Tyla for making simple autograph book out of note cards.
  • By the time we finished that, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was working again so we took a ride on that. It was ok but not super special.
  • I was more than ready for food at this point and thankfully the Hungry Bear was in action again. Unfortunately the line was much longer and probably waited 30 minutes, but we finally got what turned out to be a good lunch.
  • After lunch, we hoofed it back to the Fantasyland Theater to watch Mickey and Magical Map. I think we all gave it two thumbs up and it was a nice way to let our lunch settle.
  • I had previously snagged a Fastpass (yay for Max Pass!) for It’s a Small World and we rode that next. Elijah was hesitant for an indoor ride but I told him there couldn’t possibly be a less scary ride in the whole park. But as I was riding through, I thought about how it could easily be turned into a torture device. Imagine being on a nonstop loop with that music…
  • By this point it was around 3:30 or so and we had early dinner reservations at 5pm. We spent some time over on Tom Sawyer’s Island walking around the Pirate’s Lair. There are some great views of the riverboat there and they play area is huge and impressive. It’s a good thing it’s an island though because it would be very easy to lose track of your kid in all those tunnels and passageways.
  • Dinner was at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street. I made an early reservation so that we’d be done in time to watch the parade at 6pm. We weren’t terribly hungry since we had a late lunch but the food was good and it was fun to eat outside right on Main Street.
  • We finished dinner at about 5:45 and then set off to find a spot along the street to watch the parade. Some nice people made a little room for us and we got a great viewing spot. We were near the end of the parade route so we probably waited about half an hour and Elijah was getting pretty worn out, but we survived the wait and boy was it worth it. The Pixar Play Parade is a new parade for Pixar Fest and we had a blast watching all the characters go past. All those dancers must be completely wiped by the end of the route but they didn’t show it.
  • Elijah was toast. We were hoping to get him on Jungle Cruise but no deal. Instead we rode the train around to Tomorrowland and got on the Monorail to ride back to the west side of Downtown Disney for the short walk back to the hotel. I think he finally got into bed a little after 9pm and was instantly asleep.

Disney California Adventure Park Review

As I mentioned earlier, Tuesday was our day to rest, hang out in the pools and go to the character dinner. Wednesday was another park day and this time we got to use the Magic Hour at Disney California Adventure. We were near the front of the line and got to walk into the park with the first wave of people.

Our first ride was in Cars Land and before I get to the rides, I have to stop and talk about how amazing Cars Land is. That movie has gotten a lot of air time in our house, so maybe we’re biased, but I think all three of us would pick that as our favorite area of either park. The detail is incredible and it’s a blast to walk through the town that looks so much like the movie!

  • Radiator Springs Racers is one of the most popular rides in the park and our optimized plan said that we should hit that first. Since we were some of the first people in the park, we only waited 5-10 minutes. I knew this would be a stretch for Elijah, but he loves Cars and had already spent a day going on rides, so I thought we could pull it off. It was fun to be on a more adult ride and all three of us enjoyed it. We should have sat in the front instead of the back so Elijah could see better, but he never complained about his view (or lack of it.) In the ride photo, you can see him looking out the side of the car.
  • Next up was Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters. We all crammed into one car and laughed as the cars danced around each other.
  • Mater’s Junkyard Jamoboree wasn’t on my list but Elijah wanted to try it. Imagine small tractors going in figure 8 patterns with a trailer behind that flings side to side. We couldn’t all fit in one trailer so I took Elijah and Tyla got her own. During the ride, Mater sings a song as the tractors dance around. Elijah loved that one and we ended up coming back for a second round later in the day.
  • We walked over to Bugs Land which has a set of relatively unimpressive rides for very young children. Elijah wanted to try the bumper cars (Tuck and Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies) so we waited in a long line for that but it was worth it to see him cracking up as we bonked into each other.
  • We hit another simple ride called Francis’ Ladybug Boogie which is a slow teacup style ride.
  • Then it was time for lunch so we went back to Cars Land and had lunch at Flo’s V8 Cafe. Tyla found us a nice spot in the air conditioning by a window looking out over the Radiator Springs Racers ride. We beat the rush and didn’t wait long at all to get our food.
  • Earlier, I had acquired a Fast Pass for Toy Story Midway Mania so after lunch, we went through Pacific Wharf to Paradise Pier. Much of the pier is under construction for its conversion to Pixar Pier, but we found the Toy Story ride with no problem and our Fast Pass shot us to the front of the line. The ride is a fun ride through a midway shooting style video game. I had to keep reaching over and helping Elijah aim but I still managed to rack up 142K points which i think is respectable. I would have liked to try that one again.
  • From there we headed to The Little Mermaid ride. Elijah was nervous that it was going to be underwater again. He doesn’t know much about the movie and was a little scared by the witch, but it was an ok ride. It reminded me of It’s A Small World.
  • We walked over to the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail in Grizzly Peak. It’s a big playground type area with lots of rope bridges and things to climb up.
  • It was time for ice cream and since we liked Cars Land so much, we decided to get it from the Cozy Cone motel area. The line wasn’t very long bug ugh, we waited a very long time in the hot sun. Getting ice cream there was a bad choice,
  • Next we walked back down Buena Vista Street to Turtle Talk With Crush. I didn’t know much about it, but it ended up being a big hit with Elijah. It’s a small theater with a big screen in the front. Crush (the older turtle from Finding Nemo) comes on the screen and interacts with the kids. There’s a voice actor talking and animating Crush as he talks so he can actually say the kids’ names and answer their questions. Elijah liked this so much that he ended up choosing a Crush ornament for his souvenir. It was the only souvenir he asked for on the whole trip!
  • We had a little time to kill before dinner so we went back to Bugs Land and rode the bumper cars again.
  • We also waited for Flik’s Flyers which is kind of a bunch of buckets that lift up and swing around. We all fit in the same bucket which was nice.
  • One final ride on Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree brought us to our dinner reservation time.
  • Dinner was at Wine Country Trattoria at the Golden Vine Winery. The food was good and we got to sit outside as the clock wound down on our vacation at Disney.
  • Elijah had been asking to ride the monorail again so we walked back to the Downtown Disney stop and hopped on the monorail back into Disneyland. We thought we could just ride a full loop but they made us get off at Tomorrowland and get back in line. I was a little nervous because they were closing the monorail at 7:30 in preparation for the fireworks show but we made it back on.
  • Actually only Tyla and Elijah made it back on. Earlier in the afternoon, I had snagged a Fast Pass for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride. I had no idea what it was, but the building was huge and I like the movies so I thought that would be fun. Tyla gave me her blessing so I hopped out of line and hoofed it back over to Disney California Adventure, used the Fast Pass and jumped to the front of the line. As I strapped into the ride, I still didn’t know what it was, but it turns out that it’s basically a giant elevator that goes up and down randomly in pitch black. It was awesome! The ride stops periodically and doors open to reveal the Guardians of the Galaxy talking to you. I was cracking up the whole time. Great ride! It was dark by the time I finished the ride so I walked through Cars Land one more time to see all the neon lit up at night.
  • Tyla and Elijah ended up with a magical monorail ride. There are a couple seats up with the monorail driver. Tyla asked if it was possible to ride with him and was told yes! So Elijah go to sit in the driver seat and ask a bunch of questions on the ride back to Downtown Disney. I’m sorry I missed that!

Throughout the day, we took a lot of photos including Lightning McQueen, Mater and Red. The cars must have had people inside to drive them because they could also hear what the kids were saying and use canned movie quotes to respond to the kids. Elijah loved Lightning and Red but I think he was a little intimidated by Mater’s big teeth.

Final Thoughts

That was a lot of detail about a bunch of rides that you maybe have never heard of. How about some more general impressions?

  • I was prepared to spend a boat load of money every time we needed to eat. Tyla did a good job packing snacks and we made oatmeal for breakfast at the hotel, but I knew we’d still be shelling out for lunch and dinner. But to my surprise, the prices were quite reasonable. For example, the three of us ate lunch one day for $27! As long as you avoid the wine, beer, $3.95 pop or $7 souvenir cups and drink water, the prices weren’t that far off from what you’d pay at a normal restaurant. They also had some reasonably healthy options at most of the food counter service and sit down restaurants. We planned to avoid French Fries and other greasy food and didn’t have a hard time following that plan.
  • Elijah was amazing. I couldn’t believe how long we got to spend in the park each day. He got a little whiny here and there but nothing out of the norm for a four year old. And I expected him to be asking for every souvenir in sight, but he only asked for cotton candy and the Crush ornament.
  • I was blown away by the cleanliness of the park.The cast members are obsessed with picking up any stray pieces of trash, and the trash cans all feed into a central vacuum system so people don’t have to walk around emptying the trash cans. The cleanliness is infectious. I watched numerous visitors pick up random pieces of trash. When’s the last time you saw that walking through the streets of your city?
  • The design of the various park areas was beautiful. It struck me how three dimensional everything was. I had to keep reminding myself to look up because there was so much more to see. Never once did we see outside of the park and the transitions from area to area were complete. I’d walk a few steps into a new area and realize that the music was totally different, yet I never remembered hearing both types of music overlapping each other. Meticulous doesn’t begin to describe it.
  • We were warned by multiple people to make reservations ahead of time and boy was that important. Dinner at a sit-down restaurant in either park is basically impossible without a reservation. It’s pretty difficult in Downtown Disney too. You can make the reservations online up to 60 days in advance. This also gives you the advantage of sitting with your guidebook and figuring out what kind of food you want to eat.
  • We splurged for both Max Pass and Park Hopper add-ons for our tickets. The Park Hopper ended up not being too useful. We basically just used it to ride the monorail on Wednesday. The Max Pass was excellent though and I’d definitely do that again. It lets you use your phone to collect Fast Passes instead of running all over the park and it also gives you free Photo Pass. Whenever you get your photo taken by one of the numerous professional photographers, they scan your phone and a few minutes later the pictures appear in your account.
  • There are lots of options for strollers from the park’s service to 3rd parties that deliver to your door to bringing your own. There are proponents of each with the park’s stroller rental seeming to be the least recommended, but we were quite happy with it. It was really nice to not stress at all about the stroller being lost in the stroller swarm. We knew we could just pick up another one. We never lost ours though, largely thanks to the bright orange dollar store lei that Tyla hung from it. Stroller pickup and dropoff was painless. You basically just leave it wherever it’s convenient and they will collect it. Elijah will probably be too big for it next time, but I don’t have a problem recommending it to others.

4300 words later you’ve probably gotten the idea that we did a lot of planning for this trip and it turned out even better than we hoped. The plan let us ignore a lot of the stuff that didn’t fit our family goals and focus on the areas that would be fun for us. I didn’t have to constantly worry that we might be missing something fantastic and we knew that with two days in two parks, we’d never come close to seeing it all. The goal was to leave wanting more and we succeeded, but I also think that a third day in the park might have been too much. Two was perfect for us at this point in our lives, and while I don’t expect us to do this again soon, I bet we’ll be back at some point.

Thank you to all the wonderful people at Disneyland for making our trip so memorable!

New Crosscut Sled

I’ve written before about making a crosscut sled for the table saw. I used the first one so much that it kind of wore out and I had ideas for improvements so I made another. They’re incredibly convenient especially for the smaller toy projects that I was doing. It’s a very safe and precise way to cut small pieces (among other things.)

My new table saw had miter slots that were a different width so I needed to build another sled. This time I incorporated some t-track and a flip stop that slides in that track. This allows me to get repeatable cuts with the stop but I can also flip it up after I set the position of the piece to avoid any binding between the blade and the stop.

The process was pretty much the same as previous builds, but because I had a much more precise saw, I decided to spend extra time squaring up the fence to get perfect 90 degree cuts.

I used my big square to get it initially set close to 90 and then did the 5 cut test to see how far off I was. Watch that link to see it in action, but basically you make a cut, rotate the piece, make a cut, rotate, etc. You do that 5 times and then you measure the width of the last slice at the top and the bottom. That helps you calculate how much out of square your sled is because it really magnifies the error. I was so far off that it was plainly visible to the naked eye. How could that be when my square said I was spot on? I futzed with it for quite a while and then got frustrated and walked away. During my break, I realized that the only explanation was that my square wasn’t square. Indeed it wasn’t! So I changed up my method of dialing it in and got it to a point where over a 40″ cut, I only deviate by 0.001″ from being perfectly square. That’s insanely perfect. In fact, it’s so good that I suspect I’m within the margin of error for my setup and my measuring tools. Plenty good enough for me.

Oscillating Spindle Sander

spindlesanderI’m really enjoying my Grizzly band saw. It comes in handy on almost every single project. Now that I have the band saw, I find myself cutting a lot more curves. Curves were tricky to sand with my existing tools so that meant a lot of sanding by hand. With pine or other soft woods, that’s not too bad, but sanding walnut and maple can take a lot of effort.

To speed things up, I purchased an oscillating spindle sander. You install cylinders of various sizes into the machine. Each cylinder is covered in sand paper and it spins around. That’s the basic idea, but if it stopped there, the place where the sandpaper connected with the wood would fill up with dust very quickly and reduce the effectiveness of the sandpaper. In addition to spinning, this machine also moves the cylinder up and down which gives the sandpaper a chance to “breathe” and throw off some of the dust. There’s also a dust collection port which pulls in dust right around the cylinder so it keeps the air pretty clean.

This setup is really handy for sanding curves. Even if you don’t have a cylinder that matches your curve exactly, it will still be better than using a flat sanding surface.

I picked this one up at Harbor Freight for $99 with a coupon. I figure this is a great tool to buy from them because it doesn’t need to be super precise or perfect.

My shop is pretty well-stocked for tools now. This was the last power tool on my list. Obviously there are always more tools you can buy, but I feel like I’m well-equipped to handle most of the projects that I’m interested in. I’d still love some kind of a CNC machine or 3D printer, but I keep reminding myself that I have access to them for free through work and I haven’t even taken advantage of that yet. Those purchases are going to be a ways down the road which is fine because it will give the technology more time to mature.

Now I need to get started on some shop furniture. My jointer, planer, router table, drum sander and this new spindle sander don’t really have a good home and they each alternate between the floor and a folding table. I’m planning a few more rolling carts with storage underneath.