Day: September 11, 2026

Hard to make a 67 inch long board glue up look interesting, but here we are. After nearly six hours I took board four out of the clamps and replaced it with board five instead. Not the most glamorous of jobs but the glue is spread evenly and the clamps have gone on smooth as ever. Nice! So that means at some point tomorrow or Sunday I will remove these freshly cranked down clamps and next week I can begin the various other steps involved.

We’re a long ways from finished yet, so stay tuned for more woodshop fun, follies and foibles.

On a lighter note I finally got out to play catch with one of my children. I was hoping to be able to break in my new mitt this year, but it might have to wait until later on this fall or possibly next spring. Who knows. It smells like brand new leather and is just as rigid & stiff as can be. Hand on the hands.

The piles of bark waste, split wood and discarded chunks is growing on a near daily basis. With any luck the addition of swinging an axe several times a week will strengthen my grip and allow me to climb more difficult routes at the gym on the days that I can get there. I have high hopes for climbing tomorrow morning, and then spending the afternoon running around Canada’s Wonderland riding as many big rides as we can manage.

Sorry if it feels like I am spamming you all with this furniture build, and wood splitting shenanigans. It’s my current obsession, next to the Archon Studios Dungeons & Lasers miniature figure builds that I started on Tuesday. I’m only three in, but I have about a hundred left to go. I’ll be sure to post photos of how that’s going as well.

Ciao Bella!

Surprisingly I am ever so slightly ahead of schedule because just as mentioned above, I was able to pull the side panels out of their clamps after six hours, and glue up one of the three sets of longer boards. That lucky dog got to sit in clamps for sixteen hours, so it should be set up and ready to roll in another day or two.

There isn’t all that much difference between the two images so I left the glue bottle in frame so I could tell the difference in the thumbnails. I’m not sponsored by LePage, and this isn’t an ad. I’m not that sort of creator/influencer. With any luck I will be able to put the third pair into clamps this evening before leaving for Taekwondo, and then on Monday I can rip these boards down to 11.5″ wide, and start the long, and laborious process of thickness planing them all to match one another.

After that long and drawn out step is complete I will do my round overs, and start the even longer process of sanding each surface. I’ll likely need to start at a 40 or 60 grit because I do see some surface marring that I’d like to be rid of, at least for the top panel and the two sides. I’ll go up to 250 grit and call it a day. This ain’t no heirloom quality piece, so why bother going to 400 grit or beyond.

Then I can cut my box joints and router out my notches for the shelves. I’ll need to use the table saw to make the shelf shoulders that fit those routered notches, and pretty soon after that I can dry fit it all together, make some tweaks if need be (I can assure you need will be) and then glue it together and add a final finish of which I haven’t decided yet. Bingo-bango-bongo and Bob’s your aunty. At least that’s how I see it playing out in my mind.

Also it is Friday, the end of the kids first week back at school. I have gotten a fair bit done around here of which I am mostly satisfied. I meant to get to far more of the recycling, but I can do that on Monday in preparation for Tuesday’s blue bin pick up. The girl’s extracurriculars are slowly coming back online. Afternoons are going to fill up real quick around here before you know it.