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A while back I was given an Amazon.com gift certificate, wasn’t quite sure what to do with it… Amazon doesn’t really appeal to me, I guess because most of the things I’d actually buy, well, I’d buy them locally; I’m also not one to buy media of any kind.

Anyway, since Petsmart has a link with Amazon I figured I’d buy the filter for my 75 gallon aquarium using that ‘gift’ …and just pay the extra out of pocket, sort of like a nice discount. An aquarium filter really isn’t much of a gift though, is it?

I won’t be needing that aquarium filter for quite a while, long past when the free shipping from Petsmart is available, but I do need tools…

I’m still working, slowly, on the aquarium stand. After more measurements and fiddling I’ve decided that it’s flat, level, etc, enough to not concern myself with making a second attempt. The bubble is still in the lines, it’s just not perfectly centered…

I also, while cleaning up the shed, found a sheet of 3/4″ plywood… nothing pretty, but definitely usable for the top & bottom plates of the aquarium stand. The big problem being that this sheet of plywood was, well, nearly a full sheet, much too large to cut on my table saw. Considering all the tools I have purchased over the last couple of years, a circular saw wasn’t one of them. Technically we had two of them, but for reasons I care not to determine neither of them actually work properly, something is wrong with them that prevents the saw blade from spinning… *shrug* and neither has spindle lock or any of the nice little features, convenience or safety related.

Saturday I bought myself a new circular saw… Hitachi, and it’s a pretty green, and of course you know that the color of the tool is all that matters… ;) I was only mildy terrified of cutting off hands and/or fingers.

I should have practiced, but it turns out I was only slightly off on the cuts… more a matter of not quite having a good grasp on how to setup the guide. When I say that I was only slightly off, I mean 1/16″ on either side, so 1/8″ in total. It’s odd, because this saw has a ‘thin kerf’ blade, so it’s 3/16″ wide, not 1/8″ so it’s not the kerf skewing the cut, directly anyway. Regardless, the cuts were close enough, so yay there. I didn’t have to buy a sheet of 3/4″ plywood, just a saw to cut it, haha. The requirement of 3/4″ plywood now lifted, I was able to buy 1/4″ bookmatched veneer plywood to skin the frame of the stand with, yay for that.

Last year I bought a router, and the table saw also works as a router table. This is brilliant, except I only ever bought two router bits and they’re basically the same… a 1/4″ straight bit and a 1/4″ plywood bit, as I soon discovered that 1/4″ plywood isn’t 1/4″ afterall.

I sat here tonight thinking “what do I need, that I won’t buy…” …which is actually a lot of things, lol, but when I took into consideration using the full amount of the gift certificate at Amazon I finally settled on getting router bits. With a nice assortment of bits I can make all sorts of little things. Yay… so I bought the Grizzly H5555 20 piece set, and the Grizzly H5559 3 piece “plywood” set. They’re a very pretty purple, lol. I was also able to completely use of the certificate, only having to pay out of pocket for the tax. I think router bits make a better ‘gift’ than a filter, don’t you? They’re still related, since I’ll use the bits to finish the aquarium stand.

I’m still unsure on how I’m going to make the frames for the doors… I really want to get a rail & stile router bit set and make ‘fancy’ doors… I could then also use them to make doors for the kitchen cabinets, but… ugh, so expensive! I suppose I have some time to figure it out.