Greatwall Studios Graphic Design

Wife called up Hydro One and they turned up several hours later on a Sunday afternoon, got us sorted out real quick. I don’t think they were here much more than an hour. Pulled the meter and checked our hook ups front to back. Our connection on the roof was corroded and blackened from the heat build up due to excess resistance. Was why our voltages would jump from a regular 115-120V up to 413 on Saturday morning. It was a nasty jolt that nearly tried my wife’s sleep apnea unit. That was the last straw. Weird flashing lights and constant rolling brown outs localized to our home were one thing, but a fried piece of life saving equipment was a whole new level.

Good thing is it seems to be sorted out now. They did tell us we could look into replacing the stack & meter since ours are original to the house.

They also suggested upping our service and panel to a 200 amp service. The new wire to the road would be about $600.00 to Hydro One, and likely about $2,000.00 of parts and labour for the electrician. So not a crazy expense on the panel portion. Nobody wanted to venture a guess about the stack and meter replacement though, so I might need to start saving up for that within the next year or two. A 200 amp service would run the house and leave room to add extra things over time, like a deep freezer, new refrigerator, and an updated and larger air conditioner. Would probably make some of the busier circuits able to be split so as to not overload them at all.

Glad they could come out on such short notice and get us fixed up. I’m just at the garage waiting on an oil change. I guess I’ll buzz down to the farm for a good walk once the van is all wrapped up.

Welcome to Monday!

We did in fact go climbing yesterday morning (which was a lot of fun) and we both got through six climbs each. Going only a few times this summer means that nearly all of the routes have changed and we had a variety to choose from. If you go too often I find things can feel a little stale, but on the flip side if you struggle with one course you have the ability to come back to it repeatedly to try and better yourself and your technique against it. So take what I say with that in mind. We’ll need to get back into fighting chapel if we want to do the 59’s or the 510’s. My grip strength and my core are both floundering right now. Needs work, is what I’m getting at. Anyway, we went climbing in the morning with the expectation that we’d go to Wonderland in the afternoon. My thinking was go climb, have a leisurely lunch with the inlaws where the kids can swim, then head to the park at three and ride what we can, have a meal and several beverages and enjoy our Saturday. Well it seems everybody else felt the same way. I also forgot Oktoberfest was on, do that brought in a load of people with it.

The park was full of team events (think U14 soccer clubs and hockey teams). The place was far busier than I was expecting. We stayed for four hours and got on two rides. It was much warmer in Vaughan than at home, and the wasps were ever present. Food service was slow, and all ride lines were over an hour wait. We certainly got our steps in walking around and standing up in the queues. By six o’clock our ankles and feet were done and we had to find a proper seat and beverages. We were accosted by more wasps and then decided to make our way to the exits and go home to rest.

I do hope if we go on a Thursday evening it’ll be both cooler in temperature and less busy. One can hope anyway!

Welcome to Sunday.

It’s currently after midnight and we’ve had power outages three days in a row because I’ve had to reset my clock from flashing on three consecutive mornings. Every light flickers, flashes, and goes too bright every single night. It’s been going on for months. I’m trying to narrow down whether one of our appliances is doing it, or if the town’s grid on our side is bad. I’m no electrician so I’m mostly guessing in the strobe lights here. Could be a loose neutral wire on the panel (according to google), and it’s definitely not the dehumidifier which isn’t capable of adding power back into the house. So at some point soon I need to get an electrician in here to look over the panel and tell me if our wiring is faulty,or if this portion of the town’s grid is dog shit. I bought a gas generator, and a solar panel/battery unit because we lose power so often in Stouffville. I’m hoping it’s external (and not a fire hazard) but I also hope it’s fixable without a major expense. I imagine neither will be true. Wheeeee!

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!