A new toy

I've been pressuring Gary to finish more slabs so we have them prepped and ready to sell, and he said sure, if I can have a new sander.  Since I'm in charge of finances and Gary has a tendency to be a kid in a candy store when it comes to tools, gadgets and very expensive machines, I finally gave him the go ahead and he decided on a Jet 16-32.    This thing was almost like having a new puppy in the house.  We couldn't wait to get it home and try it out.  

But, the thing came in 3 very huge boxes which included the stand, the sander, and an improvement to our dust collection system and barely fit in the back of the SUV. After unpacking, there was the daunting task of assembly.  Gary is a professional assembler having put together grills at Lowes for close to 3 years.  He matches all the parts to the list before he makes a move, makes sure he has the proper tools ready and actually reads the instructions.  Well, sort of, I read the instructions to him and then had to flip around the paragraphs when he skipped steps and got ahead of me. 

And it's a good thing I was getting photos of the top of his head, cause the only other choice was the other end!

We painstakenly  got it together little by little. 

And then after the stand finally the machine!

A little more tweaking and we were ready to move it to it's place in the production area. 

Notice the small dust collector cyclone system in the right corner.  Almost the rest of the day was spent reworking the ducting to make the new larger cyclone unit connect up! 

And then I finally got to put my hands on the new baby - er machine and it worked like a dream! 

Took me two hours to do what Gary said would have taken him 2 days and a sore back and shoulders with the old sander instead!   This is progress!