Day: September 5, 2025

Made from Walnut I sourced from KJP out of Napean, near Ottawa. It came in two heavy boxes in the mail about a year or so ago. Possibly longer than that, I have a bad habit of moving on from projects once I hit a snag that requires me to wait on materials. But nevermind that.

I started out with several skip planned boards that border on being S4S quality, a near miss. Which is a good thing because I did not pay S4S prices for this rustic Walnut. So I have eight or ten four foot lengths that are all one inch thick, and varying widths. Some four, some six, some are even eight inches wide. I ordered twenty board feet and if you mix n’ match them all together you get what I needed out of it. All is good.

But the project 8 have in mind is delicate, decorative and doesn’t require one inch thick pieces. And, because I do not own a handsaw with more than three inches of resaw capacity, I turned to my table saw, fence, tape measure and about twenty passes to cut two thick boards into four book matched thinner boards. Those I ran through the planer here to get a somewhat consistent thickness across all of my pieces. The table saw resaw is a tad sketchy when you have the blade all the way up, as you lead a four foot length of board through it on its narrow side. Huge potential for life altering, nay, life ending calamity. Some of those accidents are diabolical. Yikes. Viewer discretion is advised.

Next I cut those four boards into the appropriate widths to form the two backbone pieces, and ten plates that will eventually sit flush inside those two backbones. I rounded over the four corners of those ten plates on my bench top sanding machine. My trusty old WEN. It has a four inch wide by thirty six inch long belt running on it, and made short work of the round overs. Not particularly consistent, but that’s more my error than the machines. Ha.

Today I set up the dado stack on my table saw, along with the wider blade guides, removed the riving knife, and used my dado stack table top sled to give me a reference surface, and a way to get out of sight of those spinning collection of blades. I measured out the gaps I needed with the ten plates and a set of calipers. Marked off what was to go, and what needed saving, and tapped the backbones together and had at it. I followed along with my vice and a small hand plane to get everything to fit. As with all my table saw dado work, some were loose, some were right, and some were perfect. I’m not talented, but a three way 33% split has got to count for something! Ha.

I have to figure out my top panel. It was going to have my daughter’s name on it, or just say “Belts” or “Taekwondo” routered into a shaped panel. But I have not made a panel yet, and the shorter the routed text the better. So I have a glue up to do, and then some shaping before I can even think of how to add text to it.

Then it will require dowel pins for the belts to be drilled in and glued, and/or elastics too. Plus hours of sanding, and at least two layers of a satin clear coat finish, with a mild scuff in between to knock down any raised grain fibers. It’s a process. I’ve made progress today so I will quit while I have all of my fingers, toes, and both eyeballs in working order. A win! Yes.

If I remember to I will post again once I make even more headway on this project that I started back in June.

Or a singular fish, or a whole school of them, I’m not entirely sure. All I know is is that I had to locate my wife’s old tank, which the kids used last year to hatch Monarch butterflies, and then promptly discarded, and filled it with junk. So I found it yesterday evening in my inlaws basement, along with the lid and light fixture. As well as the MDF veneered stand covered in tin foil astrological stickers. Those have since come home and been brought inside. The stand at least. The glass tank has been hosed off, scrubbed, rinsed, and is now drying itself off. Then it’ll come inside, unless the threat of rain makes me bring it indoors sooner than later.

Now I have never owned fish so I am not 100% certain of the level of care they require. Feeding them daily I get, but filter maintenance, bubblers, cleaning the tanks, adding items into the water, oxygenation levels, pH level testing, is all unknown to me. I had dogs, a rat, a hamster, and later on a veiled chameleon. My family had rabbits and a brother had gerbils. So I’ve known pets, and their various modes of care. But aquatic life is beyond me at this point. I’m a noob, such as it is, with fish anyway.

I’m under the impression we can’t use tap water unless it has been left to offgas for at least 7-10 days depending on the quantity. So to fill the tank and soak all the elements and enrichment items and let that work itself out might require about two weeks of set up and processing time before we can even think about getting fish, and adding them in together in the one tank. I have a separate smaller tank made of plastic where I can house them if I have to do any major clean outs of the big tank. But again, that will need to be scrubbed and cleaned before any fresh water fish come out way.

My wife apparently has her eye on a cool tank of her own so now we might end up with two full time tanks, plus the third and much smaller holding tank in the kitchen. This is looking like it might spiral out of control quickly. We still need bubblers, filters, rocks, plants & grasses, food, nets, snails and/or shrimp, logs, caves, and whatever else they can sell us easy & eager marks. I know when I’ve got a bullseye painted on my forehead, believe you me. They’ll smell us coming from a mile away.

Oh yeah this holding tank needs a major scrubbing.

So unless I get any work e-mail this morning I am going to be otherwise engaged in cleaning these up ready for our new semi permanent house guests. Who knows how long any of them will survive in this house along with us! I see a raising fish for dummies book in my near future.