der5er

No, this post is not about Cuddles, the new cat in our household.  I would not take a tool anywhere near a kitten.

This is about the Ryobi Corner Cat.  The Corner Cat is my newest acquisition, and helped me (and Sarah) with the digital picture frame project. 

Since I last wrote about the frame, I’ve actually purchased the wood–’select pine’ from Lowes because I’m cheap.  I’ve cut the pieces and assembled the main body of the frame.  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to sand it because I’m lazy and hate sanding.  But, the pine (as I should have known) wasn’t taking the stain evenly, and I wasn’t getting a finish that was as dark as I wanted.  So, Monday night I headed off to Home Depot with the remnants of a gift card and a plan to buy sand-paper.  My plans were foiled by all the pretty lights and tool displays.  Instead, I walked out with the Ryobi Corner Cat. 

The Corner Cat was inexpensive and came with a selection of sand papers that I thought would at least get me through this job without having to buy more paper.  I liked the “LiveTool Indicator” which is really just a light that glows on the top of the tool when it’s plugged in.  This is a handy little feature.  When looking at the Corner Cat in the store, I thought (and was correct) that the dust collection port would be easily adaptable to the central vacuum in the house. 

• Tip for all you aspiring wood workers out there: If you can’t justify a full fledged ‘dust collection’ system for your shop–talk your wife into a central vac and make sure there’s a port in your wood shop!  If your wood shop is in your garage, you’ll be able to further justify this addition by promising to vacuum the family car!

The Corner Cat has lots of other features, but all I really cared about was the dust collection.  You can ask Christi and she’ll verify this next statement: I hate cleaning up after myself in the garage.  I prefer to leave it messy, and this usually leaves us at odds over the state of cleanliness in the garage.

The last nice thing I’ll mention about the Corner Cat is actually applicable to all detail and random-orbit sanders.  They don’t have too many moving parts and no blades for an 8 year old to hurt themselves on!  I felt confident letting Sarah take the first passes with it, even using the aggressive 60-grit paper.  Sarah moved the Corner Cat around the frame like she’d been sanding for years, staying with the grain and not once losing control.  Of course, this isn’t the first time she’s used a sander.  She helped in the past sanding old finish off a desk for Leanna.  But it has been a while.  The only noise she complained about was the central vac, which is better than my last sander.  Of course, that may only have been because the vac was so loud you couldn’t hear the sander.  Sarah stayed with it until the front of the frame was finished and worked on a couple of the sides.  I could tell that she felt a little nervous here on the sides, but she didn’t give up until I told her to knock the corners down a bit.  She didn’t feel comfortable with that task, so I finished everything from there.

The Corner Cat did it’s job well, and-true to it’s name-worked perfectly on the inside corners, getting right up to the very smallest parts of the corners and leaving nothing for lazy me to sand by hand!  I did not try the little dust bag that came with it, I actually had the central vac hooked up and running before the first time we turned it on!  Those dust bags, in my experience, don’t hold more than 5 minutes worth of dust anyway.

All-in-all, I think the Corner Cat is a good value, and I’m glad I purchased it!

We have a pile of pallets in the parking lot at work.  They keep accumulating and we can’t seem to get rid of them.  So, this week we decided to throw them in the dumpster.  This led me to bring Stanley’s FUBAR to work! 

I brought it in on Tuesday, carried it around to show it off, and displayed it proudly on my desk.  For some unknown (and possibly unrelated) reason, all of my employees began finishing projects prior to deadline.  I highly recommend this method of motivation to all supervisors and managers!

Today was the first chance we had to try it out.  Charlie had a crow bar and I had the FUBAR.  I felt bad watching Charlie pry at pallets while I was simply twisting them apart with the FUBAR.  I’m not going to tell you that the FUBAR did all the work for me, but I will say that Charlie finished the job today wishing he had used my FUBAR.  At the end of the session, I had completely finished tearing apart 4 pallets while Charlie only pried apart 2 with his crow bar.

Operation of the FUBAR is straight-forward and simple.  I’ve also got to say that it was a little fun, but then, who doesn’t like demolition!  For tearing apart pallets I used the FUBAR’s open jaw to hook the pallet and drag it near the dumpster, then I grabbed each board on top with the jaw and, with a couple of twists, lifted each board away from it’s nails.  For the last 3 boards and 3 2×4′s on the bottom, a few quick whacks with the hammer face dislodged these and they were soon flying into the dumpster.  I’ll grant that this whole job was easier because the wood was well soaked from yesterdays ‘wintry mix’ of precipitation, but I still had a much easier time of it than Charlie had with the crow bar.

Unfortunately, no one had a camera on hand, so there are no action shots.  Maybe next time.

I think Charlie is going to buy a FUBAR after today!  I recommend you buy one too!  I think I want to find a house to demolish!