Wasn’t there a terrible song about Friday’s written and performed by some music executives tween child about a decade back? Oh, fun memories. Can you believe it is the fourteenth already, holy shit. This month is just a zooming on by! What a wizzer! Phfoom! Aaaand it’s gone. Can’t forget about Halloween on the way to Christmas!
Having to really think about whether we’ll wait until after remembrance day this year to put up our Christmas Tree & exterior lights. I think that if I get a nice day between Nov 1st and 11th, I’ll just go ahead and do the outside lights. I dislike putting them up in heavier winds and near freezing rains. Plus i need to check the downspouts and it’s better on a drier day for that sort of mucky business.
I took a turn on my Record brand wood lathe recently to turn a few small Walnut bases for my sculptures. Unfortunately I had already put my finished items onto permanent wooden blocks, so that means I need to do some new things to fill them up. But not just new. New and good. The Walnut, after a clear coat looks pretty top notch. So I don’t wish to waste them on generic, run of the mill silliness. I’d like a slightly higher quality bust to go one or two of them. There is no time line for these, so I can have them ready at some point next year. Though I have the bug right now, and the finger tip sensitivity you build up when you really start going again. So if I can manage it, I’ll keep going rather than wait until after another long hiatus.
I picked up some regular sculpey and it’s so sticky & oily it feels more like the soft wax clay I was using. It’s kinda nice. Could do without the dye being left on my hands, but it spreads like oil based clay, and tools nicely. If I can keep myself from rushing, or growing impatient I might make something reasonable this time around. Maybe? Maybe not. It’s just a hobby man, don’t over think it. Be present in the moment. Remember the things you’ve learned along the way, and use the reference materials you have!
The farm ran a little light on pumpkins this year. The July to mid August drought was rough on the patch. Still got a good few, but not the teaming masses of them from years previous. Need to grab some for my kids school, but it has rained a bunch and I don’t fancy slogging through all that much to grab twenty pumpkins. Hopefully we get a clear day this weekend, and I’ll grab them then.
Not much else to say, except the fridge looks to be going off – again. Not sure what the deal is there. Must have been more moisture in it than I could see, as it kicked off some ice while the fucking thing was empty. So. Yeah. Fun times. Ciao Bella!
That sounds ominous doesn’t it. No worries, the Elf in question is not a ‘Shelf’ elf but a clay bust made from Super Sculpey Firm. He’s a little battle damaged and gnarled around the edges. Once fully cured and cooled I will decide which item of the three I’ve done this year to paint for the Markham Fair 2022. Yes it’s back, and in person, fully operational once more. We’re excited for it!
The bust is roughly 1/5th scale, as far as I can tell. That’s a comfortable scale for me to work in. I am a tad rusty. I got into wood working more this year than any other one previous. There have been times when I have completed twenty or so sculpts, but this year I’m sitting at three. The Ninja Turtle was an exercise in patience, and the Apoxie Sculpt had a steep & unforgiving learning curve. So I’m back to sculpey in its various consistencies.
I wish I had the money, and the know how to mould and cast resin copies of my work. I find I enjoy using Chavant Hard the best for sculpting/modeling in clay. It’s firm and rigid, but also reusable. I like Sculpey and Apoxie because you get a solid paintable piece that’ll keep for years and years. But nothing sculpts like oil based hard clay. Atleast for me. I’m no guru or expert. I just do it for shits and giggles. Warm waxy clay that can be spread on hot, then cut away and refined cold is my jam, man!
The as of yet unbaked grisled Elf Barbarian.Baked but not yet painted Ogre Rogue.My attempt at an unnamed Ninja Turtle; full standing figure.
I have the armature wire ready to go for a fourth bust, I’m just not sure who it will be. I like the idea of a Killer Croc, from Batman. Or a cleaned up Hellboy bust wouldn’t go astray in my office. That’s a character I seem to be drawn to a bunch. I can always fall back on my goblins or ogres. My trusty monster men.
Perhaps I should try more women sculpts? I don’t know. I’m concerned that they always tend to be a showcase for tits and ass. Cleavage and ass cracks seem to dominate sculptures of the female form. I went to art school, I’m no stranger to nudes of any gender or combination. I just don’t want a bunch of hand sculpted tits floating around my office. I once did a nice clavical & up bust of the blonde woman from Vikings – Lagertha. That turned out ok. My proportions were off a bit on the size of her skull. I made it about 5mm too deep front to back, but didn’t have it in me to cut that out and reattach the two more to scale parts. She at least looks like a woman. With a slightly over sized novelty head.
So Elf Barbarian is in the oven at 175°, for the next 2.5 hrs. Then I’ll shut off the oven and leave the whole lot to cool down slowly inside. I might get cracks, but as of yet, no major catastrophes. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I had to bake one piece laying down and some important details got smushed flat on the baking tray I use. I was sad about that. But I fixed it with more sculpey. More of a time waster than anything else. My issue tends to be burned sculpey, as I make my pieces tall, as in floating off their base via thick wires, and the elements can burn the clay since it bakes for so long. However, as long as you prime the ceramics before the full paint job you shouldn’t get any uneven tones from the darkened burnt ceramic material. Or so I have found. Again – anecdotal don’t take it as gospel.
Oh look the sun has come out. First full day of Fall is here, and my oh my how the temperatures have changed. I’m amazed at how humid these last few days have been. But out on the east coast we are gearing up for hurricane season, so that makes more sense. Winds, hail, rain and the potential for tornados. Things are getting silly out there!
You know what movie I just bought for $5.00 from Walmart the other day? Fury. The Brad Pitt in a tank in WW2 Germany film. It’s still really good. I had totally forgotten how it starts, so it’s great to rediscover solid movies from the last 5-10 years. I was hoping to see Top Gun Maverick but Fury for $5 is hard to beat. I also picked up Morbius for cheap too. Will have to find an evening to watch that with my wife. I’m going in knowing it’s kinda bad, so low expectations here. Let’s see if it will limbo in under my low bar, or just barely hurdle it. To tell you the truth I am excited to find out one way or the other. I also brought home The Rise of Gru for the kids, and they thoroughly enjoyed that. So yeah. Would be great to get back out to the movies again with the family, that was always a great way to give my wife 3-4 hrs of alone time on a Sunday. I too liked the silly yellow Minions, nonsense and all. The kids laughed for 90 minutes, and I didn’t have to pay theater prices for snacks and drinks. That’s a win in my book.
Didn’t I start this out talking about baking a sculpture? Yes, yes I did. And somehow got all the way out here discussing cheap Movies and expensive theater snacks. Focus! I have to focus! It’s all fluff here any way. You don’t come here for political analysis or a dialectic on the duality of man. This is surface level, fun time fluff. I’m like pulp fiction magazines. A fun way to waste 3-5 minutes of your day. Like it or lump it! Ciao Bella!
I haven’t sculpted a full humanoid figure in a number of years, so starting off with a Ninja Turtle in a medium I don’t typically use was going to end up one of two ways. Either the best thing I had made to date, or a low res copy with lots of learning curve errors for the type of materials I used. Can you guess how I feel it went? Yeah, the latter and not the former. I will say this though, free standing, a plus, looks like a turtle, kinda, and now it’s done. Three pluses in its favour. A great introduction to Apoxy Sculpt. I like that I don’t have to bake it afterwards. But as I don’t sculpt full time, I’m not able to wait for things to semi harden to go back in and make crisper adjustments, like I would with Sculpey. I have six some odd pounds of sculpey so any more sculpting done this year will use it ( Super Sculpey), rather than the last 1/3 of the Apoxy sculpt I have left. I like the idea of apoxy for weapons or add ons that want to harden before I finish the figure/bust I’m working on. Green stuff is great that way too. Next steps, more sculpting – yeah! And also painting my two finished items.
Work on the shelf unit is coming along slowly, as per usual. Have the box built, and round overd applied to all front facing edges. Needs a hell of a lot more sanding, and some minor fixes on the top display surface. Then I can stain and apply finish to it. Which completes the top. The base requires twelve mortises to be cut, and I want to use my table saw for the through and throughs. The rest get hand chiseled out. Which takes forever.
Plus the actual legs are Ash, so that’s a great hard splinter wood to work with. But sturdy as all get out. Measured the top box, and it is reliably 15 ” and 15/16ths tall. I was 1/16th from my goal of 16″. Not bad, not great. I think the noted thickness for my boards was approximate and not definite, which is where my discrepancy comes from. No matter. It’ll fit under the windowsill which is my main priority. The floor could dip, cup or bow, and I’ll be glad of the extra room to maneuver when I comes time to bring the thing indoors and really get moving on cleaning up the kids toys.
I’m not totally sold on painting the shelf unit white. I’d like to stain it dark, like Walnut, to match the rest of the furniture. We’ll see how it looks unfinished once totally assembled. I can make my decisions then. That’s future me’s problem to wrangle with. My reasoning is, as I can’t let this go right now, is that white paint will show dirty finger prints and scuffs, and hard wear, whereas the dark stain will just start to look more rustic and worn. Which will match the state of the house – ha. I know it’ll get beat up, so why try to draw attention to that by being a brilliant white?
As an aside : I really should put wheels on the toy box so it can get moved into the room to aid cleaning up too. Just a thought.
Today is Friday, and a warm hello to two of my older brothers whom both have birthdays today. If I recall it is #45 & #47! Happy birthday Amigos. Here we are last year on the hottest day of August playing Swamp Golf at the Thunderbird course in Kanata Ottawa. Our father melting in the background.
Every great show winds up having a clip episode where you get to revisit some of the funniest or most poignant portions of a television show. Usually it’s pretty deep into the later seasons when most of the story arcs are near completion, but they’ve been contractually obligated to provide 22 episodes per season and need to pad one out a bit. So, now I’m going to go through and update some current projects, rather than try to come up with anything new to say.
First off is the Ninja Turtle sculpt. One which I have worked up and torn back down three times so far. I’ve since decided to work the whole thing in Apoxy Sculpt rather than intermingle with Super Sculpey firm. The self drying, uber sticky substance is pretty wild. I’m not going to lie, I struggle with it. I don’t typically sculpt for hours on end, so staying with the apoxy as it gets slightly stiffer to rework it isn’t what I’m doing. I should change my working style to meet the medium, but I haven’t, so I may not. At least where this turtle is involved. It’s in very rough form, but it has a full body, arms and head. The feet are going to appear to be in standing water, so they are just lumps for the most part. Needs a lot of refining, smoothing and details yet. A work in progress that could take a few dedicated days to finish, or at my current pace, two more months in dribs and drabs.
The second project update is the shelving unit being built using dowel construction instead of my usual mitered box corners, or box joints. So a shit tonne of butt joints. Bland, but hopefully sturdy. So far so good. The plans I drew up call for eight inch high legs, and the outer most dimensions of the top box to be sixteen inches high and seventy two inches wide, by sixteen inches deep. All made with three quarter inch Pine. Except for the 1.75″ x 1.75″ x 8″ Ash legs or feet. It should stand twenty four inches tall, which gives me a quarter inch of room to slot in under the window sill. My true goal is to have the final build meet the pre-determined spec’s on the drawings, without having made any major edits on the fly. Not that that is a deal breaker, but if I can get better at building to plans that would make me happier. It’s pretty humid around here, so warped wood is something I really have to be aware of. Could funge the whole project if I leave it in the shop for too much longer. The top box is cut and dry fitted together, but needs to be sanded, glued, rounded over and stained, and have final finish put on it. I have a ways to go with the base portion. Cut my pieces, and did the round overs on the legs. But I have a lot of mortises to cut. Twelve of them to be exact. I probably need to round over the stretchers along the base too. More work! If I treat it with respect I hope to have a decent looking bit of furniture to have in the living room. Could be a fun reveal if all goes to plan.
The third project, is a doozy. It encompasses the whole house, mainly because it’s my fall clean up as the kids go back to school, and my wife off to work. I started with a bang, cleaned the appliances, counter tops, cabinets, both inside and out. The hall walls, door frames and doors, as well as the base boards. Washed the floors but did not polish them. In socks you’ll fall over and slip if I polish the floors. Lesson learned with bumped knees and one bruised tail bone. Ouch! I have a paper purge coming. I’ll sort the girls best artwork into a binder, and the rest can go to recycling. Between the two kids we have a seventeen inch tall stack of school work just sitting in the dining room. That’s gotta go. Plus I want to purge broken toys, and remove stuff to the cottage, which doesn’t get played with at home. My niece and nephew are both still small, and would love to play with that stuff still. Oh the memories. I got a jump on it, sure. But the real work will start once school starts again next week. I went through their closets, so that too is done, for now. Growing kids, so clothes and shoes will be a consistent issue for years to come. Ha. Lots to do around here.
Lastly is paid work. I have a solid line up of projects between now and November, so I am very happy about that. I have the room to slot in other projects inbetween my planned work, which is handy. And I’m ok if one or two drop off the map until next year. Next year? Yes. Only four months left of 2022, can you believe it!?! Every so often I think about going out and gathering up more clients, and then when I see what I actually have in the pipeline during the summer & fall, I’m glad I haven’t done so. Busy is great, run off my feet is no good. Creativity suffers when I’m too stressed. Have a solid work life balance right now. Love it!
So there it is. The clip show of what’s going on around here. I could mention, though it’s a bit late. That I also have a model kit I built more than a year ago on my desk that needs panel lining and it’s water slide decals placed on it. This thing has more than two hundred decals to place on a twelve inch tall 1/100 Gundam model kit. Going to be at that project for about eight hours or more. Will look great when done, but ugh. That’s a commitment I’m reticent to make right this second. Stuffed in a box in the closet is a much larger 1/60 scale resin kit that needs weeks worth of work. I lean into my model kits over the winter months when my garage is too cold to work in. Keeps me occupied when not working or cleaning, or shoveling snow.
Lastly is the childrens book I wrote and am currently illustrating (poorly I might add). That’s another item I’ll leave for the winter months when I can’t work outdoors. I have eight more background illustrations to complete, and then I need to tackle the two main characters. It fell off the radar, kind of on purpose, but still I’ll be glad when I get it done. Which reminds me. I’m not entirely certain if I will write a third novellas worth of short stories this winter. I never officially published book two on Kindle Unlimited. I probably should do it. Accompany book one so it doesn’t look so lonely. I sold one copy. In the UK. I believe it was to one of my cousins. It was great to write it all, edit it and then collect all those stories together into one unified thing. Felt amazing to have actually done a thing on my bucket list. Now with book two I’ve written more than 100,000 words worth of short fiction. I’m proud of that. Regardless of whether or not it sold any copies.
How do you describe to someone what it feels like to have fundamentally changed a behaviour of your own. Nothing as monumental as say, quiting smoking, or getting sober. But, rather adding one tiny element into every single day, rain or shine, power or no, connection notwithstanding. Feels a little self indulgent. Sounds a tad self righteous. Kinda seems more like a small shadowy facet of OCD. But no!, we call it discipline, and over the long run you get better at the thing you do a little of every single day, regardless of quality. Or not. I don’t think I have it in me to read all of the posts from Day 1 through Day 250, to see if I formulate better sentences, or have become more concise. Or even if my vocabulary has shrunk or grown during the process. A word art map would likely tell me which words I use most often. That would be funny to see. May show some insight into the inner working, bias of my mind. I’m sure that I write too passively. That I switch from first, to third person constantly. That all of my characters sound like me, saying the things that I woukd say in every single interaction. Snark, nonsense and all. I still find it fun though, so there is that.
In other news, I managed to bulk out my Ninja Turtle and add the shell to the main body. It is giving me some grief. But I don’t do free standing full figures any more. I have been focused on chest and head busts for the last few years. Also Apoxy Sculpt is really different from the clay, or sculpey that I’m used to working in. Hell of a learning curve with this stuff. However, forward progress is being made! Yahoo! When I get the shell covered, and the face put together on the skull I will show pictures of it. The WIP is just a bit too rough, if you know what I mean. Next time, perhaps.
Had a brain wave the other day about building a walnut side table that was hollow, but could accept the floating bottom walnut drawer I had made a few months ago. Make it tall, on thin Hickory legs, do a thicker walnut skirt, and try a tapered edge on the legs. Round it all over, and then see how close i got to my plans. I’ll draw it out first, and then see if i was actually able to pull it off. That should give me a sense of where i am making my mistakes. I also need to finish by June 30th, before 11:00am, as that’s when schools out for the summer. Pushing against a dead line, and following a plan. Could be fun. But i have a report coming late this week, so that’ll cut into my time significantly. Chop chop, quite literally.
So I have cut up four Hickory legs, the last substantial portion of my slabs. I milled and cut up some rough walnut, and have glued up a single four foot long panel, which will be chopped down into my hollow top. I cut two inch strips for skirting too. I need to figure out a jig for careful, and repeatable tapered legs. Dado out my leg slots to hold the skirting on. I’ll keep the legs poking up above it, to tenon into the hollow top. Then it’ll be round overs on round overs, and sanding until my hands go numb. A quick and easy project.
Walnut skirting and the as of yet un tapered Hickory legs. Followed by a four foot long walnut panel glue up. Didn’t skimp on the clamps this time around.
Here’s how my other table build turned out. Doesn’t look too out of place in the basement. Good height for the sofa that’s there anyway.
The Ninja Turtle is progressing. I like the Apoxie Sculpt, a tad sticky though. But fast to work with. I may still end up detailing it out with Super Sculpey, but for now I’m enjoying the process with Apoxie Sculpt. This could potentially sit for months if need be before I come back to it. I’ll focus primarily on the furniture build, as that can warp, buckle and twist if I don’t build it sooner rather than later. Learned that lesson the hard way with my screen door.
Today is domestic duties Monday, so I need to get the second load of laundry in, run the dish washer, vacuum and tidy up a bit today. I’ll need to sort and hang the laundry too. I hear the temperature is on the rise through this week. Going to feel like 40 °C for several days in a row. Yikes. Also need to get rolling on my youngest child’s birthday party later this week. Busy – busy. Ciao Bella!
Now we are staring down the barrel at the possibility of a 200 day writing streak, and I’m at a loss for words. Now the question becomes, can I reach 250, 300, 365? Can I do a whole calendar year of writing every single day? I don’t know. I just don’t know at this point. It has definitely become a part of my day. Same with lifting weights either first thing as I wake up, or last before I pop into bed. Making time for stuff is kinda getting easier? I’m not sure how to say it. I don’t believe it to be outside the realm of possible to do at least 5 minutes of whatever you like, almost every single day.
But a caveat may be prudent here. I for one, am self employed, and I work from home. I have my hours set up so that I can take my kids to school in the morning, and pick them up at the end of the day. I have a small list of clients, and I don’t work more than 40 hrs on a busy week. The rest of my days are far lighter on average. So I’m not single (for starters), I do a lot of the cleaning, and household work because I am home, and I have the time to do so. And my spouse makes pretty good money, so my wages are offset by what we save for not doing before and after school care for two children. Plus I take them to appointments and look after them on their sick days, so my spouse doesn’t have to miss work, unless it was communicable and she ended up catching it too.
So knowing all that. I can safely say, I find it possible, under my current circumstances (one of privilege) that if I put my mind to it, I can read, write, sculpt, do some wood working, and play my guitar, dance and sing with my kids every day, if only for 5 minutes, because that makes me happy, and life a joy to behold in those moments. When I was working in house for sixty plus hours a week, that was not the case. So there is a continuum or sliding scale. Depending on my work load I may do all of the above in a one hour stretch, because I need to work the rest of the time, but that’s the exceptional busy week that comes and goes as the quarters pass.
I should take this time to mention how much I enjoy working with Apoxie Sculpt. My second run at my Ninja Turtle has been far more enjoyable in epoxy, than the Super Sculpey firm. Which, in these parts at least, comes to your door as a crumbly hard mass that needs to be worked heavily prior to use. I tend to add one firm block to two regular pink blocks to make a pliable medium stiffness in bulk. I always use more than I think I will. Probably not filling out my rough forms with enough tin foil or tape. At $27 a block for sculpey, the $3 tin foil is better used to bulk things out. Live and learn I guess. I look forward to working on the turtle! He is shaping up to be a bit of all right. I won’t put anything like 200 hours into it, but maybe 20-30 hours will do it. I don’t reach that level of polish on any of my sculpts. That level of detail doesn’t tickle my cockles. I’ll leave that to the professionals. When it’s done, if I don’t hate it again, I’ll show you what it looks like. Stay tuned. Ciao Bella!
I get subcontracted to produce marketing reports on the semi regular (when Covid isn’t being super shitty) and one of the external clients produces some of the most consistently amazing photos that I get to see. I don’t go to these events, but after reviewing the photo sets, oh boy, sometimes it feels like I went. The colours and composition is just fantastic. I tell you, paying a good photographer real money to capture your event is worth its weight in visual gold. You could live off of these photos for weeks if not months, building social media engagement, advertising, internal intranet posts, newsletters and what not. Don’t skimp. Just because most folks can afford an SLR now, doesn’t mean they know how to frame up a shot or get the best out of the available lighting. It makes a real difference when I get photography from a paid professional, vs a bunch of volunteers snapping random shots, that are blurry, poorly composed, or the lighting is flat, too dark, to bright. I can only do so much to remedy that on my end. But these bad mamma jammas are legit. Can’t show none of it to anybody but the client, but woah buddy, you’d like these pictures of the events.
The same thing applies to product photography. Get your shit infront of a professional, don’t try to do it yourself. Or failing a real photographer get the best 3D model/rendering you can afford. Will beat a cell phone image any day of the week. But I digress.
Hot one today. My friend who works in weather forecasting says we have potential for tornadoes in southern Ontario again, today. As well as a wind storm front passing through here tomorrow. Going to be a wild couple of days around here. Hopefully not another Derecho. Because that shit tore through our farm property and did six figures worth of damage is not more. Yikes.
Getting very close to final assembly and glue up of my small multi purpose table. I have a slight issue to fix with the shelf, but otherwise should be good to move forward and complete it sooner rather than later. I also stripped my ninja turtle sculpt back down to the armature. I hated the pose, and then a bunch of stuff was miss proportioned, so as I have no dead line nor client in mind, I took it back down to bare wire, and reposed the armature. Had to drill out new holes, but I’m ok with that. I may add water or sewer features to the base to hide the extra unused holes. A chance for some mixed media materials to be incorporated. Fun times!
I figure I will wait until my turtle is done before I do any painting. My Ogre is baked and based. Ready and waiting on my turtle to get done. Ciao Bella!
I am turning the corner on my Ogre bust sculpt. Adding in the clothes and details. I have a modified war hammer axe in the works to pin onto the left shoulder. Should have an attached left hand to go with it to finish off the silhouette. Haven’t sculpted hands in a while. Should be a frustratingly difficult addition to my project.
Dashing pretty boy Ogre Rogue.
I think I’m going to tackle a Ninja Turtle next. I have done a bunch in clay over the years, eight or so to he more precise. But never in Super Sculpey. I’ll do one up so that I can paint it. Maybe a full figure and not just an armless bust this time around? I’ve got months to figure it out. I’m in no rush.
Also my table build is progressing at a good pace. Still cutting down and building the pieces. Going to be a lot of sanding to do before final assembly and then moving on to finishing. Flat slab top, thin drawer below, with a slatted shelf near the bottom. A mixed utility small table. Adapt and move forward!
Took the kids for a two hour play at the Tree Top Trekking village, which they loved thoroughly, and I was able to participate and enjoy the obstacle course aswell, even masked up. Then we had a big group lunch where they played for another hour or so, all told it was four hours of fun from start to finish.
After a brief rest at home we finally got to meet our newest nephew outside, while masking up to protect the 7 day old newborn. Can’t be too careful! He’s a sleepy cutie pie, who didn’t make a sound. The kids were enthralled by him, though my youngest got bored of the baby lump action and went for an hour long trampoline jump-a-thon to stay busy in the warm and welcome sunshine.
I need to go do a smaller grocery shop in a few minutes, so I’ll cut this short. Much as I predicted, I have done nothing with my illustrated book this weekend. I did build an armature for my next sculpture. I finished off my other bust a day or two ago. Trying to bring the memory back to my hands. I think I’ll either do a ninja turtle in Super Sculpey or a Killer Croc bust. I have several clay ninja turtles, but nothing in ceramics, or polymer clay which you bake to harden. But I’ve never done a DC’s Killer Croc before. Might be fun to try something outside the usual for me.
I have made headway on my screen door build. I put the dado blades on my table saw for the first time, ever. And made the tenons for my three cross braces of the door. It’s a very tight press fit, so I’m shaving them down a touch so it won’t shatter or explode from the stress. I see a lot of wood filler, sanding, additional planing and painting in my future. I had hoped to stain the door, but my prowess with wood is low, so thick primer to cover my various failings it’ll be! Gotta love it. I’m glad I got over my fear of the dado blade set up. Cut like a hot knife through butter. Better than I’d have done with a hand saw or my tiny Skil bandsaw. Which is a glorified scroll saw at this point. Not good for anything more than .5″ thick hard woods. My doors are 2″ thick, and 4″ wide. So the Skil bandsaw isn’t really an option.
I will most likely need to mill up more thin strips to line the inside panels of the screen doors, so I can sandwich the stapled on mesh material. So I have a fair few steps left to go. Plus I still need to drill and chisel out the mortise for the center cross brace. But the tenons are shorter, so I don’t have as much to dig out, hopefully. I’m definitely going to need to pin the top and bottom braces in place with dowels to not have to rely solely on the press fit and glue holding. I have a handle, push plate, and hook latch to add after it’s all sanded & painted. Plus I’ll be cutting in the hinge plates to the side of the door, and the frame at the back out the house. Maybe a router jig would be better for that? Not too sure. I have weather stripping for the door to butt up against so it won’t swing inwards and get wedged in place. Good lord I hope this all works out. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this door these last few years! Bah! At least at this point I’m spending time and not money on the project. Happy Lazy Sunday to you all.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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