Last quiet days of school are upon us, and I have some hobby stuff to finish prior to my next report coming in. Decided to recut my cross braces, as I sanded them too vigorously and the snap fit became too loose. So I recut those four pieces and sanded the two faces only that don’t affect their fit. I have it all broken down and am just waiting for the danish oil to soak in and dry. Then a quick glue up and this project is done! The oil really makes it pop. The Osmo I ordered came in, so maybe I’ll polish this up with some later on? Not certain. I’ll be holding off on furniture building until September anyway. So now rush now it’s just about built, and I can keep it inside where it is temperature controlled and the humidity is under wraps.
Not even ten am yet. What a great day. Glad I had enough material laying around to recut those braces, as i was pretty mad at myself for the overzealous sanding. The Walnut stain really does bring it all together though. Love it.
I’m going to close down for a bit, give this a chance to dry without interference from me. Glue up next! Weeee!
The final Monday of the 2021/2022 school year, oh how time flies when you forget about all those endless long days from before. And yet, here we are. 3.5 days from the end of term, oh my! We’ve got a cooler day today for a bit of a change up. It’s lovely outside. Sunny, with partial cloud cover and not quite 20°C. An intermittent breeze and lots of bird song.
Actually had to cut my grass today too. Well, more so the weeds and crabbe grass that grows regardless of rain water. Everything else is heading towards the beige/yellow crispy straw that we keep short for eight or nine weeks. It’ll go green again come September/October & November.
It’s a Monday, which means yet another swing at the Domestic Duties inherent to household maintenance. Laundry, dishes, tidying up, vacuuming & mopping the floors. I tackle toilets, sinks and the tub as needed, so every couple of days with these youngling savages that I live with. Also known as children under eight years of age. I foresee a great purge come September, as we have far too much stuff yet again. I keep on clearing it out, and they continue to bring new stuff in. Maddening! Madness! Miscarriage of justice I say.
Heading towards another long weekend which means fire works, food trucks and local town events. Perhaps even a funnel cake to look forward too! Icecream, powdered sugar, and all the fried waffle batter strings you can ingest before acid reflux kicks in your throat. Delicious! Truly some gourmet shit fit for kings.
I am indulging in a late breakfast. Had errands to run after school drop off. Then I started laundry before heading out side to mow the lawn. So I’m now both hungry & thirsty after working a bit without eating yet. Not as bad as shoveling sixteen plus inches of deep wet snow without having eaten first. I now know that that is a huge no-no for me as I am middle aged ( or there abouts) and my body doesn’t take kindly to that sort of shock/strain. The truce with the fridge remains as tentative as ever. Risked use of the ice machine which threatened a cascading failure like before, but we were watching, and backed off, shut down the ice maker and staved off disaster. It was tense there for a few hours. Luckily it did not dampen our date for our wedding anniversary and movie night. Much obliged Kitchenaid refrigerator.
The best I can say was it felt muddled, over long and gave Wanda a real shitty send off. Far too focused on spectacle and not much in the way of story telling, or character development. It was bright and colorful but empty. Perhaps my tastes have altered after nearly 30 MCU films now that I have seen. They just aren’t geared to my age demographic, which is fine. That’s how I felt about the first two of the new Spider man movies too. No Way Home felt a little more mature in tone, and it spoke to me. But Dr Strange felt like a crazy, busy, meandering puzzle box that ended up being empty at the end anyway. Cameo heavy and ultimately unimportant. Phew.
It wasn’t all bad, I enjoyed parts of it. But I don’t feel as though there was any kind of suitable outcome. It could have all been a dream, and we’d still be where we left off after Spiderman NWH.
But now I’m up and awake after 11:00pm again, with another domestic duties Monday on the way, with 3.5 school days left for this term. Temperatures are rising, the rains didn’t show up, so we’ll have to start actively watering crops at the farm. I started off on rows of tomatoes today. Beets and potatoes and peppers to get watered next. My Saturday sunburn was not happy that I decided to spend any part of today outdoors. IV rash guards will have to get dug out of storage. Not a blunder I wish to repeat anytime soon.
There are more than a few daily entries which i don’t recall writing, nor do I remember what is contained within them several weeks or months later. It’s a real trip to get notified of a new like for something that doesn’t ring a bell. Then I go back and read it and I’m like, yeah – I totally wrote that, I drips of me. Reeks of my sensibilities. I might write on the daily, but it sure isn’t about quality at this point. More to the point, it’s just about the act of doing. I’m so close to 200 days now. I can just about taste it.
Had a great day with my youngest’s birthday party. Spent four hours in the pool, and my skin is shouting its obscenities at me now. I didn’t know it would go on for four hours of the mid day high uv sun, but it did. It was a blast. Then tonight I had a drink round my friends house, chatting on the porch. Got three healthy Rye’s in and now I’m watching The Watchmen, in an attempt to not get the spins when I flop into bed. I also napped for an hour or so today, due to all of the sun exposure and I’m not as tired as I would be otherwise. Could be worse. The aloe came to my rescue. I’m not lobster red, but I feel it, even after several cool water plunges to take the worst of the radiant heat out of my back & shoulders. Kids all had fun, and no one got hurt. A win all around. I’ll take it.
My wedding anniversary is coming up asap. We hope to have a lunch or dinner together to celebrate. Been a few years since we’ve had a childless date. I think we saw Jerry Seinfeld in Oshawa a few years ago. That was a fun evening, no bad seats in such a small venue. Oh, pre Covid times, how I miss you so.
As much as I love the look of Walnut, it comes with a fair few issues to work through. Namely gouges and tear out during milling, and chunks coming loose when hand chiseling. I will have quite a few places to patch when it comes time to do a final sanding. I need to glue it all up first, then make a Walnut dust paste to patch all of the imperfections. I hope it doesn’t ruin the overall project.
I used packing tape on the outside mitered corners, and painter’s tape on the inside edges of each glue up. See fig 1. And fig 2.
Fig 1. & fig 2.
I used a good amount of LePage glue in the joints, which I spread with an acid brush. I folded it all up into a box, and added additional painter’s tape to the final corner. I used two box clamps and a set square to keep the hollow Walnut box as square as I can get it. See fig 3. And fig 4.
Fig 3. & fig 4.
I also clamped around the middle of the box to make sure it didn’t bulge or have the seams pop open or slide around.
After the box had dried in the 27°C heat of the day for several hours I unclamped the hollow Walnut box and began to cut in my Hickory splines. I chose to do three per corner edge on the top. And depending on how the experience goes, I might add two more on both bottom edges too. I started with a Crown Dovetail saw, cutting just inside my marked lines, and then used a .25″ chisel, cutting along a 45° angle from both the top & bottom to remove the gap where my Hickory splines will rest. If you’re legit, you’d take note of grain orientations and how your boards were sawn, and grain patterns, but I’m just trying to get something done here. Two of the three had good pressure fits, but a possible gap situation might have occured from a too deep of a run with the Dovetail saw. More Walnut dust paste will be needed. See Fig 5 & fig 6.
Fig 7 shows the glued in splines.
I only managed to cut in three splines on one side and glue them in yesterday evening. See fig 7. Once the top panel has three more glued in I can flush cut them off. I added them purely for visual interest and not for strength. Though, they may help in that respect.
I had managed to complete a dry fit test and have it all stand up on its own. I will take that as a win at this point. I know I have several hours of touch ups to do after the build up and assembly is done.
Parts layout. Still so much sanding left to do!
Once I complete the top portion I will shift focus back to the legs and skirting braces. Lots of sanding to do here. I think I will finish it off with some Danish Oil to tie the whole thing together. Ciao Bella!
Lots to do, lots & lots to do in preparation for tomorrow’s birthday festivities. First up, earlier in the week was a provisions shop. Juice boxes of five different flavours, fruit gushers for the adventurous, three types & brands of chips to be voraciously consumed. A suitable candle to mark the occasion! My wife ordered the take home goodie bag contents, and paper plates. We’ve had confirmation for all expected attending guests. Pizza will be delivered, and beverages for adults are currently chilling waiting to go over to the venue.
Today I will go over to clean up the shrubbery and grass. And next on the docket is to wrap gifts of asymmetrical design and packaging. I long for the days of rectilinear boxes with 90° angles and few to no curves, domes or jutting angles. But I will not be so fortunate this day. A true test will be if my kids haven’t secretly used up all of my cello tape on private art works leaving me in the lurch… Fear Not! I have enough (I just checked).
Perhaps an early morning pool vacuuming will be in order, so I have that to look forward to tomorrow at 9:00am. Looks to be great weather, warm and sunny. Perhaps tonight I’ll bake a cake for the occasion? Who knows, maybe I actually will. You never can tell.
Yesterday I completed a dry fit test for my end table. Now I need to sand the interior and glue up the top box. I ordered dome clear satin Osmo to finish it off, but delivery tells me I could have to wait until July 12th for it to arrive. So maybe more Danish oil to finish it off? Time will tell. I do have parts of next week to work on it, assuming my next report comes in today or this weekend at some point. I do have hours of sanding to look forward to so best get cracking! Ciao Bella!
Slept like shit for some reason, youngest was having multiple tantrums this morning. She popped a lense out of her new sunglasses, and had a wobbly over not having them to wear anymore, even though she threw them, dislodging the lense. Finally got them to school with only moments to spare before the bell. Now I’ve pulled the car apart looking for this mirrored lense and I can’t find it. Twenty plus minutes later and the damnable thing eludes me. Fuck. Brand new pair of children’s sunglasses too. Hopefully it’ll pop up sometime soon. Couldn’t have gone far, unless it flopped out of the car on a shoe or backpack. Then it’ll be gone but good.
Only have an hour to tinker today, as it’s volunteer day with youngest’s class trip. Which is about four hours of middle of the day. I’m happy to see her interact with all the other minions. Should be a lovely day for it. Yesterday was awful hot, today the humidity is way down, and it feels almost cool in comparison. The difference a day can make. Huh.
May try to cut some more mortise edges today, but I don’t think I’ll get very far. Had some terrific news on the marketing report side of paid work. A potential for six reports over the course of the summer and into the fall. That’s great news for me. Not so much my wife! Means I’ll be tied up working over the summer holidays, but it means cash on hand for our little family trip in October. Fingers crossed they all go off without a hitch, even with Sar2 Covid BA/5.a or where ever we are at now. They sort of stopped giving it a name after Omicron came through. Still mutating, and still a major problem. Stay safe out there people. Ciao Bella!
It all started when I was gifted some Ash boards from the family farm, that were rough sawn, and stored in a shed for twenty plus years. I gladly took them home after sawing the sixteen footers in half by hand, and tossing those heavy suckers in my van.
I planed them for what felt like hours, and then had to man handle them across my jointer. Which took forever to do. This was back when I had my tiny 10″ Ryobi table saw, which kicked on full tilt, and scared me to death. Cutting 2 inch thick ash boards that were 80 plus inches in length took some doing, and set my heart to pounding. I settled on four inch wide boards by roughly eighty inches long, and two inches thick.
I then cut down four cross members, two in Ash, and two in a douglas fir that was pretty heavily knotted. It was at this point that I began to run out of warm season, and all my flat, square milled lumber got shut away in the garage for seven months.
The following spring I dug out my lumber, which was still square and decided to hand cut some mortises for the top and bottom of the door uprights. I first used a circular saw to cut two slices through the end grain about four inches deep. This was super sketchy, and my super old school, under powered Kawasaki circular saw died after a cut & a half – twice. So I finished it off with a Stanley hand saw. You know the old kind that weirdos play with a violin bow to make high pitched whiney muzak. I had to climb up on my work bench in order to get this to work.
I gathered up my chisels and a hammer and got dug in cutting away the channel where the cross members would rest. This would prove a difficult and arduous task. It took several days, and my channel was not straight, nor were they even. I took a file to them, and worked that for a few days too. It was at this point that I started to refinish a rocking chair for my very pregnant sister in law, and that took my whole season.
The following year ( this year 2022) I took some rasps to my channels, and evened them out a fair bit. I then used a brand new Dado blade to cut some even tenons for the cross members. It was an endless cycle of dry fit testing, rasping, filing, and planing until I had a suitable snug fit. Then I measured out my center line, and cut out two mortises for the third, and final center cross member. I hugged it out with a forstner bit, then used a multi tool to cut through the rest, and then hand chiseled it to a clear rectangular hole. It worked quite well. After assembling it all as a dry fit, I noticed my angles were all wonky, and then realized my flat, square lumber, was now bowed, and twisting ever so noticeably. But as I was about to begin sanding I hit the most egregious spots with a hand plane, and sort of made the best of it.
I took the time to glue the frame together. Then in each corner I drilled out a 3/8ths hole and glued some dowels through the joints. Flush cut those, and then did endless rounds up through the grits on every single surface of the door. I stopped to add copious amounts of filler, which meant no more natural wood look, but I was now going to have to paint it all white, to match the house trim.
I used an oil based primer to paint on four coats of pristine paint. Then I cut down some Cedar strips, 16 lengths in all, which would sandwich my screen mesh in place, for the two openings on my screen door. After much cutting and sanding i put the first layer in place. Cutting the mesh material was far simpler than i was imagining it would be. So i put those in place, and pin nailed my last strips on, holding the mesh as tight as i could get it.
It was at this point I placed my hardware on the door. Pilot drilling holes for the handle and a push plate. I also then hand cut in my hinge recesses. Drilled and attached those. Fought with the door for an afternoon to cut in the receiving hinge slots on the house, and hung the door single handedly (do not reccomend). I then added backing trim to stop the door swinging too far inwards and binding. Added a latch, and an extra handle, and Bob’s your uncle. Done like dinner.
I didn’t take any photos while cutting the cross member tenons, but they’re there, and I did them myself.
This time around I thought I’d go a little bit fancy. Which is, or course, a relative term. To me that meant attempting repeatable tapered Hickory legs. Which required me to build a whole new jig/sled to accomplish exactly that. And would you look at that it worked. I was duly impressed with myself.
Then I cut down my skirting, and added a relief to the underside, which recieved a round over, to soften it up a bit. Followed by setting up the dado blade as fat as it’ll go, and cutting the slots for said skirting, and adding the .75″ long tenons to the end of each leg.
I rounded over all four faces to each leg, and did a test fit of the skirting. Wouldn’t you know, three of the four were spot on, and the first was a touch loose. Not a big deal. I can manage.
The glue up of the three Walnut boards to make one large panel was mostly uneventful. I had to joint a bunch of complementary edges, and RIP off the bark, or ruined portions. Use thirteen clamps to wrestle the twist out of the boards. Scrape the excess glue off, and then move through a series of hand planers, and my Bosch electric hand planer to even out the end product. I also took my card scraper for a spin to get a better starting surface once I complete the structural elements and begin the sanding process.
I saw a tutorial somewhere that said for tighter outside edges on a mitered box, you should over shoot 45°, for something like 44.8°. But my table saw doesn’t do that, perhaps a higher priced Cabinet saw would, but mine does not. So a straight 45 it was. Praying for no slips or binding against the fence. We will only know during the glue up.
I used a 1″ forstner bit to hog out the bulk of my mortises. I had intended to chisel out the rest, but I cracked an edge, so had to pause to blow glue into it, and reclamp it. Switched over to a coping saw to save any undue stress on the base piece of Walnut.
I will progress through, 60 / 80 / 100/ 120/ 150 / 220 / 320 grits with an random oribtal sander. Then after I glue up and I need to do touch ups, the very top most surface with get a hand sanding at 400 grit.
After assembly of the hollow top, I will cut in eight (8) splines on all four corners, to add some visual interest. Then round it all over to look a bit cleaner. The tenons of the legs are through & throughs on the base. So a pocket of colour should be seen when you get up close to it. Not finished yet, but you get the gist of it.
Going to be a hot, wet & humid day on the books today. A real damp in the wool, sweater of a day. Dribbles and rivulets of stinky stuff down your back, collecting in your socks kind of a day. Have mercy!
Looks as though I’ll be working on my end table today, which is cool. I sorted out a tapered jig yesterday, which allowed me to safely make repeatable cuts on the table saw. Which is nice! Going to do some more structural building today. I like the idea of keeping everything in pieces for sanding, and then doing the glue up in stages to try to correct for any errors I’ve made. It’s not fast, but it yields better end results. A Win-win for yours truly.
After I get through this Walnut end table, I’m going to go on hiatus until September, as I’ll have the kids around, and my report building schedule will pick up a bit. Doesn’t look as though it’ll be peak 2018 numbers, but better than last year, if I’m lucky.
My random post from before is still getting random likes from people/bots that didn’t read it. Which is weird. Lots of Crypto Bro types, or bots from those sorts of people. But as they say, it’s doing numbers. Just not authentic human engagement. But it’s doing numbers!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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