Keezing at Last

[Clint Yeastwood]

I feel like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. "Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational beer station." The keezer is up and running.

Okay, it's not fully armed, but it's operational. The tap on the right is hooked up to my keg of ale. I didn't order enough shanks, so I have a wad of paper towel stuffed in the hole where the remaining faucet goes.

The frame is anything but square. I have learned that there are some things Kreg jigs do well and some things they do not. Maybe I'll brace the inside with steel to force it into line. If I can get it square, I can attach hardwood to the outside later so the irredeemable 2x6's are covered. I don't know if pine quality is getting worse or what. This stuff is horrible. There is no way to make it look nice.

I learned some things that could help other Magic Chef 8.7 owners.

The wire for the lid light is long enough to cross a 5-1/4" collar. You have to remove the cover on the back of the freezer, turn the cover upside-down, and run the wire out of the top instead of the bottom. The cover is held in by screws and a thin foamy adhesive. A spudger will cut the adhesive so you can pull the cover off. The cable is attached to the freezer with clips you can open so you can remove the lid and set it aside.

The plastic hinge covers and the lid handle come off without destruction. You just slide a screwdriver behind them and move it along until it pops them off. The hinges have springs, but they won't fly open violently and cause problems. They will stay in place while you screw them to your collar.

Now here is what may be the worst picture I've taken in my entire life.

 

[Broken Crow]

Looking forward to your post in the What are you drinking now? thread.
There's always something extra-special about drinking out of a system you've put together yourself.

 

[pvtpublic]

I feel like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. "Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational beer station." The keezer is up and running.

So are you saying something relatively small will take it out of commission?

The frame is anything but square. I have learned that there are some things Kreg jigs do well and some things they do not. Maybe I'll brace the inside with steel to force it into line.

Use square clamps and measure the opposing corners.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Thanks for the tips but I did use square clamps. Pocket screws pulled the collar out of square when they were tightened.

It looks like they're only good for things that square themselves up, like frames made of members that have their wide sides parallel to the planes of the frames. Steel braces would be better.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Looking forward to your post in the What are you drinking now? thread.
There's always something extra-special about drinking out of a system you've put together yourself.

Thanks for the support. It really is neat, drinking homebrew you love from a system you built.

Still need a tray.

 

[day_trippr]

I have built a lot of cabinetry, both freestanding (tables, desks, etc) and built-ins, over the years utilizing the "Kreg System" and there's zero doubt it will find every out of square cut.
So it really pays to tune table saws and jointers lest one lose his/her poopy in the end

Cheers!

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Believe it or not, my saw is tuned to the point where it can be used for joinery. I jointed two halves of a solid guitar with it. I just think there is too little wood for the joint to bear on to make it square when the screws are tightened, and maybe there are variations in the hardness of the wood that make it compress unevenly.

Also, I have very poor woodworking skills. I'm sure that's the main problem.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

Believe it or not, my saw is tuned to the point where it can be used for joinery. I jointed two halves of a solid guitar with it. I just think there is too little wood for the joint to bear on to make it square when the screws are tightened, and maybe there are variations in the hardness of the wood that make it compress unevenly.

Also, I have very poor woodworking skills. I'm sure that's the main problem.

Working with pine can be problematic. First of all, as you mentioned, the density of the wood varies greatly from spring wood to summer wood. In other words, the light colored bands are soft and the dark bands are hard. However, the main difficulties arise from the processing. Pine dimension lumber is marketed for construction where it typically just crosscut and nailed together. Therefore, there’s no reason for a conventional drying cycle (days) and conditioning at the end (to remove stress) as is done with hardwoods. Pine is typically dried at high temperatures above the boiling point of water and finishes in as little as 12 hours, leaving a a piece, while dry, that has a lot of stress built in. This is okay as long as it is used for construction as the stress stays balanced. You may have seen this happen: saw or plane one wide face of a piece of laser-line straight pine, and you produce something that looks like a rocking chair runner. By removing one side, you have unbalanced the stress. If you need to reduce the thickness of a piece of dimension lumber, you should always remove equal amounts from each side, working in increments and reversing front to back in hopes that you can keep the stresses balanced. It also helps to select pieces where the grain is closer together than wider apart, or where the dark bands are as wide as the light bands. Avoid pieces with wide light bands. The explanation for this gets down into the wood cell structure differences, so I won’t bore you any further.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I wasn't all that bored.

This is a bad time to be a woodworker. Good, affordable lumber seems to be gone for good.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

I wasn't all that bored.

This is a bad time to be a woodworker. Good, affordable lumber seems to be gone for good.

Not entirely. The forest industry has encountered the same challenges as the rest of the economy in the recent years; labor issues and transportation in particular. The government paying people to sit at home caused issues in the processing plants. The biggest problems came with trucking. Restrictions on air travel also had the unintended effect of restricting movement of goods that also traveled in the belly of those planes. Much was diverted to ships. The problem is, planes could land in any state fairly near destinations. However, ships have to stop at the coast. Therefore, a high demand for trucking was generated to haul goods from ports to inland destinations. Truck drivers who had hauled logs from the woods to mill for decades were hired away with bonuses and pay that was just to tempting to pass up. I actually visited a logging crew onsite with logs stacked up all around the loader all the equipment shut down. When I asked what was going on, the reply was; “We can’t get a truck in here to haul the wood, and there’s no point cutting any more ‘cause we have no more room to stack it!”
Things are slowly getting back to normal. Its still a problem, but less so. It is also true that while everyone was stuck at home, there was high demand for wood products as folks decided to tackle all those projects they wanted to do. Prices for wood should come back down as that subsides.

 

[pvtpublic]

I wasn't all that bored.

Correction; you weren't all that board

 

[Gozie Boy]

All the pine i have seen for years has been virtually useless for this purpose. I just bite the bullet and pay more for a more decent cut. I've used Douglas Fir for my 2x6's in my last two keezers. I'm not a lumber or woodworking expert, but I found it, it was straight, good quality and expensive but not outrageous. I suppose there may be several other wood breeds to consider, but this has worked well for me. (I paint it, and don't "veneer" it. Looks very presentable!).

 

[Closet Fermenter]

All the pine i have seen for years has been virtually useless for this purpose. I just bite the bullet and pay more for a more decent cut. I've used Douglas Fir for my 2x6's in my last two keezers. I'm not a lumber or woodworking expert, but I found it, it was straight, good quality and expensive but not outrageous. I suppose there may be several other wood breeds to consider, but this has worked well for me. (I paint it, and don't "veneer" it. Looks very presentable!).

I don’t often see Doug fir; it’s not native to the Souteast, so any that’s here has high transportation costs built in. One problem I do encounter is much of the dimension lumber available; especially 2x4’s and 2x6’s are not actually pine, but rather imported Canadian spruce. It is a softer, lighter wood that house builders favor, and who cares what it looks like when it’s hidden inside the walls, attic, and crawl spaces where the ultimate homebuyer never looks! Even here, in the heart of the South, you often have to look at 2x8’s before you actually find a true southern yellow pine piece of lumber.

 

[Gozie Boy]

I don’t often see Doug fir; it’s not native to the Souteast, so any that’s here has high transportation costs built in. One problem I do encounter is much of the dimension lumber available; especially 2x4’s and 2x6’s are not actually pine, but rather imported Canadian spruce. It is a softer, lighter wood that house builders favor, and who cares what it looks like when it’s hidden inside the walls, attic, and crawl spaces where the ultimate homebuyer never looks! Even here, in the heart of the South, you often have to look at 2x8’s before you actually find a true southern yellow pine piece of lumber.

Got mine in Greenville, SC. Probably paid too much , but it was only about 12 ft.

 

[day_trippr]

All of ^that^ is why I splurged on hard maple for my custom keezer lid fabrication...

Cheers!

 

[Closet Fermenter]

Got mine in Greenville, SC. Probably paid too much , but it was only about 12 ft.

Sir, I am about 100 miles due East you, so I feel your pain! However, there’s no such thing as too high a price as long as you are happy with what you received for what you paid. Just smile, and have another brew!