October 1997 - Well, work on the new shop has started, albeit behind schedule. An electrician has come in and installed a 60 amp subpanel for me and ran power to my table saw. Now I'm in the process of doing some more wiring around the "shop" and then the drywall comes before I can actually MAKE anything useful! I do have a picture of what I plan on my new shop looking like when it's finished. If you want to take a look see - here it is! The picture is around 63K in size. I'll let you know how things go.

June 1997 - O.k. - so things aren't really that exciting here at Figure One Woodworking! My shop is still out of commission. I really do plan on getting it rolling again come July. I've already worked up some shop layout drawings. Next step is to get an electrician to add some power to the basement. The existing breaker panel for the house is completely maxed out (poor planning by the builder) and I can't "steal" any from somewhere. Anybody know a reliable, "inexpensive" electrician in the Maryland area?

I'm still amazed by the number of folks who drop by my page and send me e-mail just to say hello. Thanks ! It has actually helped to keep me motivated to get the shop back going.

October 1996 - I had a link to a free guestbook. It was nice to hear from people from all around the US and other countries. Thanks to everybody that stopped by. Unfortunately, I got what I paid for ! The free guestbook site has been having massive problems keeping registrations and guestbook entries from being lost. As a result - I no longer have a list of folks who have stopped by. For those of you that I didn't get a chance to write back to before your data was lost - sorry about that , but thanks for stopping by ! If you want to contact me - send me an E-mail and I'll be sure it doesn't get lost ! Needless to say - I'm not using the free guestbook anymore and will be trying to write my own (hey, I got a new HTML book - I gotta experiment on someone !)

July 1996 - Due to some personal circumstances, my shop is now disassembled and in boxes. Eventually I'll be back up and cranking out that massive volume of 2 or 3 projects a year, just like the good old days !

May 1996 - Well, I've just recently purchased a new table saw ! A JET JTAS-10 now sits proudly in my even more cramped shop. I waited years before finally convincing myself that I deserved a good quality, stand-alone table saw. Up til now, I had been working with my Shopsmith. Not that there is anything wrong with Shopsmith - it did me fine for many years. I'll still be keeping it around to power my joiner and bandsaw and it's works pretty well in the drill press configuration. The tilting table (instead of arbor) just doesn't cut it for a table saw anymore. I got a good deal on the new saw. I bought the side extension table and an HTC mobile base for it as well.

My biggest complaint was trying to get a correct answer out of them as to what were the power requirements. 240 volt, ?? Amps. It's not rocket science, why can't they just say -"you'll need a 240Volt, 30 Amp circuit and we recommend XX gauge wire and YY type plug/socket" ???