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Was riding high for a good portion of 2026 with high double digit, and sometimes low triple digit daily views and we’ve now gone back to the old standard of modest single digit views. I was ready for the inevitable drop off to swing back around, but I had hoped to clear 7,000 views before we screeched to a halt. Oh well! I guess the newest Furniture Build series has gone over like a lead balloon. No matter, I’m having fun, not only am 8 having fun but I feel energized (if a little sore) from being able to split wood in the various Wood Piles at the farm. Working up a solid sweat and feeling those old unused muscles come back to life. For just 60-90 mi utes a morning I get to be outside, by myself, and the dog gets to roam about the grounds chasing rodents and basking in the last days of the late summer sun. It’s a trip. I highly recommend it.

I’m well on my way to clearing a few stacks in Wood Pile One. There are three distinct groups, plus the waste wood pile and the bark pile. Both of those sub groups can get dumped into the tree line with a front end loader and it wouldn’t bother me none. With any luck I can move over to Wood Pile Three in October and start to split back behind the barn for a change. I will have to take a weed eater down there to do it though because the thistles and such are nine feet tall, and I would imagine just loaded with ticks. I’d love to avoid that nonsense this autumn if I can.

Which reminds me I need to trim the hedge row in the parking bay at the farm. I’d like for the nasty wasps to die off first before I waste any time prepping that job. I don’t fancy getting stung by an entire underground nest worth of aggressive yellow jackets. Little bastards. It could take a few hours so I’d like for them to have gone dormant before I vibrate the ever living shit out of their home turf with my hedge trimmer. They’d swarm me for sure! Ugh. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

Speaking of bugs, one of the logs I split yesterday had a sizeable red any population contained within it. I smudged a number of them with a hammer or my boots. I wasn’t looking to get scared off this time as I had set myself a schedule for how much I’d like to do in a week. I’ve since blown that schedule out of the water by nearly completing three whole rows rather than the two I had set out for myself. One of those rows was stacked with really thin logs that only required one swing to evenly split. Goes way faster that way. Almost makes it too fun. But I did get ahead of my planned session after 3.5 hours, so I’d like to keep up the pace if I can.

I am also going to take my fifth glue up out of the clamps today so that I can continue to make progress with the Cherry wood storage unit for the front hall next week. I have been documenting the process in another line of posts so I shan’t get too into the weeds with it here. But you can look for it around here if that’s sounds of any interest to you.

You know who I’ve seen a lot of on Facebook Reels recently? Mickey Flanagan the cockney comedian. He’s always been good for a laugh. He got right up there in terms of fame and notoriety and stepped away from it all while on top. Gotta marvel at somebody’s ability to leave well enough alone, and not try to milk things to death. I can respect that game. The leaving when at their peak, not the current desire for celebrities to milk every last drop out of their schtick before people turn on them.  There was another British comedian that did one liners named Peter Kay, whom got out of the game while he was hitting his stride, and was on top of it all. Seems more common for the Europeans than the American comedians. They seem to wait until cancelled! Ha.

It’s Saturday, and I’d like to get a climb in with my girls before the day wears on. So I best go and eat some breakfast to fuel up for the excursion. Have a wonderful weekend. Ciao Bella!

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.

If you’ve been following along since Tuesday, I’m making a Cherry wood storage unit to go behind my couch, which we can put beverages on, and store front door type stuff in, and also keep the dogs bed underneath so that I can eliminate the gigantic 24x36x48 inch crate that sits in our hallway. I had bought Cherry to make a desk, but the front entrance is more pressing a matter right this minute. So I am adjusting course and building more storage instead.

Now I originally thought I had bought all my boards at 8ft long by 12 inches wide, but that was not the reality. I fought the idea of doing some pretty extensive glue ups, but I have since given in because I want 11.5 inch wide panels to make the whole thing, so now we are in the midst of a multi stage glue up because I do not own enough clamps to do five at once, three of which are at least 67 inches long. That takes a whole lot of clamps. While I’d love to have enough to do so, I have nowhere to keep fifty extra 24-48″ clamps (or longer). Space is at a premium in my garage shop.

Funnily enough when I don’t have items in clamps the shop feels spacious (at least to me), but the second I have to glue anything the space shrinks like a reverse Tardis. Then I find I have to walk the long way around everything in order to get from one side of a panel to the other. Most unprofessional! Ha.

I am now realizing that I cut my “final” lengths far too soon, so I can foresee this unit being slightly shorter than 34 inches tall, and potentially a hair less than 68 inches long. No matter, as 68″ was the absolute maximum length that I had available, so a slight reduction won’t matter. I’m the client, and I’m building the damn thing, so nah-nah!

Once all five panels are glued, and clamped then I will begin the process of scraping off the glue squeeze out. That can sometimes go smoothly. Unlikely given how things have gone this far. Then I will rip them all down to the correct width of board. And then begin the process of planning the thickness down to where it all matches. Cross cut on the table saw sled to get my final_final lengths. And I can then work on cutting my box joints, and routering out some channels for the shelves to sit inside. Use my dado stack to cut shoulders on the ends of my shelves. Round over my corners and edges, sand, assemble and add a finish. Bish-bash-bosh! Done like dinner.

Follow along to see what other stupid mistakes I make while wood working in-between paid gigs. Have a laugh on me. The best part is when I get upset I can split wood before hand to smash out my anger and frustrations before I even begin. It’s all coming together man. Just you wait and see.

It may not look like much but after just two and one half hours I have managed to find my groove. I shall not lie, I was glad for yesterday’s rain delay because my back and shoulder muscles were really feeling that first day back. The trick here is not to rush, be safe, and save some for tomorrow! It’s not an all day thing, this is a mornings after a walk at the farm activity. I can only operate in September and October for the most part. Who knows maybe the super El Nino will make it reasonable to split into late November with a jacket on. It usually rains so much that I’d be afraid to lose control of the axe mid wind up, or on the follow through. Not a fun thought.

So with two visits and a bunch of wood split I am satisfied with myself. I have started my cherry wood furniture build, and my Dungeons & Lasers package arrived yesterday and I built three of the loose model kits in bags. I have enough models to build and paint all winter long. The cold weather indoor activities are locked in!

I am still a little miffed that I didn’t ride my bike, longboard, roller blades or toss a ball around to break in my new baseball glove. Oh well. Can’t have it all now can we. We’d have nothing left to strive for if we did. I could always throw the ball around by myself in the driveway like when I was a kid. Probably best to not throw my shoulder out while I adjust to swinging an axe again. Smart thinking!

Maybe when I get home I’ll start cutting down my boards for a warm weather glue up session. Sounds like a fine idea to me. Best of luck on this breezy Thursday.

My recollection of the wood was that it was more closely sized than it actually turned out to be. For some reason I thought all of my bigger boards were at least 11 inches wide by 96 inches long, but my memory was way off. Some were 8, 9, 10 and 11 inches wide, so now I need to do some glue ups so that I can finalize each board piece at 11 inches wide.

My bench top jointer and I had some disagreements today, so now I’ll need to run boards through the table saw before I can do the glue ups. More obstacles, and more delays. I can still fix everything at this point, so it’s all good.

So now I’ll trim the boards, glue them, trim them down to matching size, run them all through the planer, then I can cut my box joints, tenons and make shoulders to fit. Dry fit, and router my edges to round them over, sand everything to 200 grit, and then do a proper glue up, and lastly I can consider using my Osmo or a clear poly wipe on finish. Both get pretty stinky so it’ll have to sit in the shop for at least a week to offgas before I bring it inside and tear down the dogs crate.

I had given some considerable thought to just going to the Century Mill to buy 12 inch wide Cherry boards but that’s cost prohibitive, and I’ve all ready made some more saw cross cuts, so I’ll work with what I’ve got on the go now. No harm done. These are the mistakes I make when I go months between projects. No matter, it’s not an heirloom piece, so I can hide some mistakes here or there! That’s the beauty of wood. It can be forgiving if need be. I’d be far more upset if this was Walnut or something really exotic and expensive.

I’ll take more photos as I progress, see if I can’t get this storage unit to look how it’s supposed to be the time I’m done with it.

Yesterday the biggest snail in the tank was floating like it was dead, then sank and did nothing for 12 hours, now seems fine. The other one which was fine has now gone catatonic in the corner by a rock. Thinking the big one was dead I just bought two new small snails as replacements, one of which is up and about, the other has not moved since it came out of the tank at the store. Not sure what to think other than we might end up with four living snails, or have two dead ones of a random sort. No idea how this plays out.

It’s pouring rain today so our walk was brief but wet. I’m working after running errands and I still need to eat breakfast and it’s after ten o’clock in the morning.

Happy birthday shout-outs to my brothers Andrew & Steven, born on the same day two years apart. Have a good one today boys!

The return to school was smooth and pleasant. I saw some friends and had a brief chat. Located the correct doors and the appropriate teacher for both children. Then I toddled off to the farm to walk the dog, and then I stuck around to split wood for a full 90 minutes. A spectacular return to our normal schedule if ever I’ve experienced one. If I can get some chores under my belt and get my blood labs done I’m golden for today! The start of a good week. Might even start my furniture build later this week. Or perhaps try to start my fair sculpture instead of using an old one from when I was more prolific with ceramics. Been a touch lazy this year & last. Right now it feels as though the world is my oyster.

The wood pile isn’t laid out how I left it so for now I am just going to split wood and leave it in one pile, and once that’s done I can go back to arrange the green wire bins and stack wood for a change of pace. I was very surprised that I was able to go the full 90 minutes today. I might pay for that later! But for now — all good.

It’s amazing what you can do with just some gloves, an axe, a hammer, and a hookaroon (to save your back). My goal here is to remain occupied so I’m not shopping for “stuff“. I also like that it exercises my grip strength, back, shoulders and core. I’m not a machine, I’m nearing fifty and have some limitations, but it’s a good strength conditioner, and I have high hopes it can aid my climbing after several weeks of doing both activities multiple times per week. That being climbing, and splitting wood by hand with my 8 lbs maul made by Fiskars. I have a 6 lbs from Husky that works really well too, I have it taped up just how I like it, but when it comes to the nitty gritty stuff I need the added weight from the Fiskars maul to get through the well & truly fibrous stuff.

I did capture some before school pics of my kids, but I’m reluctant to keep posting that stuff because people are getting weird with AI, and I don’t want that kind of smoke for my kids. But, that being said most of the folks that see my photography have had to seek me out on this blog which isn’t optimised for SEO and Google kinda skips over me. No problem there! I’m kinda niche anyway. Best to stay that way I think.

I hope all of you with littles heading off to their very first day of school have a wonderful morning. Welcome back to everybody else. Cheers!

It’s official, school starts tomorrow and that means just one thing. Today is the very last day of Summer Break 2026. Time to double check the backpacks and lunch bags to see if we did in fact clean them out on the last half day of school back in June. I have lots of things to do this week coming because it’ll be October with the Fair, Thanksgiving, break week, and Halloween before you can blink ten times in a row!

I’ve got wood to split, models to paint, furniture to build, a sculpture to start & complete for the fair, and tonnes of cleaning to do around the house to make up for the lackadaisical approach we use during the summer months. Time to sort toys and purge those throw away McDonald’s items that pile up over the summer. Broken items, torn clothes, and cardboard can be tossed. I need to sort the shoes, boots and coats, and also the snow pants again. I don’t even want to think about the glove situation. I foresee the donation bins being full to overflowing once we’re done with them. Actually, second thought. The school will do a coat drive and we can load them up with all of it instead. Plus then their classroom gets rewarded as well. Two birds one stone sort of a thing.

The kids have really started to enjoy their time at the cottage more. I’m happy for them that this place has become a core memory for them. I’m still far more of a home body because I hate traffic, and leaving all my hobbies behind, but I can deal with it. Not much of a hardship at this point in my life. Once the kids are in school I will have many hours to fill if work doesn’t pick up in the fall. Hence the wood splitting as hobby/activity and the fair entry work, not to mention house DIY projects, cleaning and my all time favourite activity PURGING!

Oh an afternoon dedicated to a household purge is truly a wonderful thing. So cathartic! No spot left untouched. Wrappers, boxes, broken items that are unfixable in their current state, outgrown clothes, you name it, I’m looking for it and coming after all of it. The last thing I want to do is suddenly leave my kids with piles of shit to have to sort through. Random closets packed with junk are my mortal enemy. I have reduced our communal junk spaces to barren empty voids, and I like it like that. Don’t you worry the other members of the family are constantly working to refill those voids. It’s a constant cycle of struggle. Ha. Love it.

Only problem I can see now is that we have an entire summer’s worth of clothes to wash for the return to school and all of it is going to fall to me. I’m not going to be able to get through all of it today, so it will also be on my schedule this week. I have the floors, walls and kitchen to tackle first. Then clothes clothes clothes until I’m out of detergent or time. Given the trend in weather the kids may not require actual shorts for too much longer, but capris are helpful for cool mornings, and hotter mid day sun, followed by cool evenings. Layers and zippers are our friends now.

It was a good summer. We travelled outside of the province to see some of my side of the family. All four of us went this time, so it was less stressful for me. I did a fair amount of driving, and we saw many of our usual sights. Wonderland, cottage, inlaws pool, farm, beaches, indoor play places, cousins houses and such. We came back to the mines again, and did some shopping in Bancroft too. Saw friends and even attended a party or two. It was great. Tiring but great. Hell we even went to an all new (to us) waterpark called Calypso in Ottawa. That was a good deal of fun for all of us.

So many not lost but rather paused until next summer. All the best to you out there!

The August fireworks were postponed due to the potential storm (that never came) so the rescheduled date was last night. A far better evening for them since now that we are in September the nights are cool, making the wearing of long sleeves and pants to avoid the bugs not absolute torture. No more sweating profusely just to avoid a bunch of bites. I far prefer these early fall temperatures to the sweltering oppressive heat done we endure all summer long.

The show itself was a bit odd. It lasted seventeen minutes which is a little over long, and it suffered from a pacing issue. Started too strong, fizzled, sputtered, had long pauses, and the finale was shorter than usual. Still looked good, and those cracking booms Echo up and down the lake which is fun to experience out on the open water.

The weather was lovely yesterday, even if the lake is down to 70° F. A bit chilly if you ask me. My puppy was enjoying himself immensely. Here he is smiling like a dope curled up between my legs.

It is now Sunday. Just today and tomorrow until school starts. Let us hope for a safe return to school for everybody!