Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Tag: Wood working

The Obligatory 2021 Year in Review Blog Post.

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These are typically the type of thing that most people don’t bother to read, and I’m cool with that. As this sort of thing is for the poster rather than the audience. There was a definite shift in my workload and type of projects this year, compared to last year at least. Usually I would devote the majority of my off time to sculpting in clay or Super Sculpey®. Of which I did do some, but no where near what I have done in years previous. By that, I mean that I produced four this year. Two in plastercine and two in Super Sculpey® that I have yet to paint, though I did manage to get them baked and cured. My day job was fairly slow in the first half of the year, but I managed to pick up two new clients that have done a fair number of projects each, plus my returning clients all had work for me to do this year, which I am very thankful for. The big To-Do this year was Wood working. I was able to get out and into my shop and do a number of new and exciting projects this year in various types of wood. I have a good portion of Ash, Spalted Maple, Walnut, Pine and Cedar sitting around so those where what I worked in primarily. I was also able to add some textile work into the mix with Felt, Faux Leather and some real Sheep Skin Leather. I used the textiles on my dice trays, tool box trays, and to line the insides of my Harry Potter® Trunks. Below is the list of wood working projects from this year.

(3) Dice Trays – Lined in Felt or Faux Leather – Spalted Maple, (1) Die Tower – Spalted Maple, (2) Dice Vaults – Spalted Maple, (3) Harry Potter® Trunks – Pine, Cedar, Elm – Lined in Felt – Trimmed out with Ash, (1) Walnut Leather Working Tool Box – With (1) matching Tool Tray lined in Faux Leather – Trimmed out with Felt, (2) Walnut paper towel holders, (1) Pine Skid/Organizer for Pool Noodles and Towels, (1) Ash wheeled cart for old table saw, (1) Cedar box joint job box, (1) Cedar Porch Tray/Shelf that fits over the railing, (1) Elm Craft Supply box – Lined in felt, (1) Mixed Wood Antique Table that I am currently refinishing, (9) Cedar routered orchard signs, (3) Cedar name plates for gifts.

I have this feeling that I did a few more projects that I can’t immediately recall because I gave some stuff away to friends this year because it took me a while to sort out how best to approach some projects and I had to make more than I needed in order to be able to throw away the first iterations that were done incorrectly. A case in point, would be to use ply wood inserts for the base of the dice trays and trunks because real wood warps and twists after it has been milled flat in such a humid province like Ontario, Canada. I always hated the look of plywood, but a 3/8’s sheet with rich, thick felt glued over the top face is super sturdy and you’d never know unless you look underneath. A few years ago I refinished a rocking chair which was a lot of work, but also very satisfying, so I’m taking a crack at an old weather beaten table that was improperly stored at the cottage. I can’t make it look brand new, but I can make it look much, much better. Something you’d be proud to have in your home for playing cards on, or having a board gaming session.

Besides those things, we have done as much as we can to stay safe from Covid-19, I qualified to get a third dose early, and our youngest are finally eligible to get their first jabs in the coming weeks. I managed to get out while the numbers were low in October, to go and see Dune® in a D-Box Atmos seat late one Sunday night, and it was pretty great. It spurned me on to finish the first Dune® book, which was pretty dense but ultimately enjoyable, as I now look forward to Part Two in 2023! I was fortunate enough to get to read a bunch of great books this year. If I can find them I will write another post about them as a heart felt recommendation. Some of them were early Science Fiction classics written decades ago, and some of them came out this year or last year, so there’s a pretty good spread of the new and old in that reading list. The holiday season is baring down on us, and the new year approaches. I wish you all well, and hope that you are all safe & sound.

I’m also going to plug my book of short stories again, available through Kindle Unlimited.

The Company – A series of interconnected space short stories: Varied works of short fiction
by Amazon.com.ca, Inc.
Learn more: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B091JB3MG7/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_QFEER8NFM58WZMAA90C6

A Slight Change of Plan.

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Due to my missing a summer and early fall deadline for my hand built screen door build, I’m going to shift gears for a bit and move on to refinishing a table for my in-laws that has some water damage, fifteen layers of paint and needs some TLC. I’m going to break it down into the smallest allowable pieces and then sand the hell out of it, before I decide if I’m going to repaint it white, or stain it to make it look a little more classy. I had hoped to get further along on my screen door build, but my hand cut mortise and tenons are taking forever, and I can’t seem to cut a straight line for shit. On the up side, the reason I didn’t meet my warm weather deadline to hang the screen door, was because I used those eight weeks of school term without kids around to tackle every other home DIY project, so I’m not too upset about it. I may very well be worth it for me, to practice some of those mortises before committing to an exterior door. If I can remember to i will attempt to take some photos of the table to be finished, but I doubt I’ll remember. I was fortunate enough to get through one of this weeks two marketing reports over the weekend, freeing up some time to do more woodworking. I thought I’d have to wait to start until next week, but nope! I hauled ass, and did page by page proofing as I went. It also helps that I spent some time on the front end building up my pages so it could be a smooth process to build out my reports with actual, factual data sets. Time to clean up the yard, and put away the summer toys, as we’re in Canada and it could start to snow at any minute, and we’ll not come out of it until late April. Cheers! to you all!

The bug has hit…

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Storyboarding out the next five additions to my interconnected space short stories. It has been more than six months since I have contributed to the series, besides a one off short I released yesterday, which ultimately seemed to dislodge some cobwebs and allow me, mentally, to align my thoughts and make a coherent story emerge out of my head. But don’t worry, my themes of isolation, confusion, future technology are all going to be well represented. I looked over my notes which kept on getting longer and longer and realized that instead of one ridiculous seven thousand word dump of text, I could break it down into smaller and more manageable pieces and explore each new chapter of the story with aplomb. I had tried several times over the last half of 2020 to plot out some new work and the dastardly covid fugue, or pandemic fatigue was making that near impossible. I don’t know how long this kick in the pants will last but I feel better all ready.

Plot outline for new chapters.

I’m guessing this new literary kick started because I now have three pounds of clay on my desk with a new armature built, and designs for several wood working projects for my wife and children ready to start. We’re into a new lockdown with nowhere to go, so I guess this is how I will try to remain sane with the whole family home 24/7 , and the coldest stretch of the year upon our doorstep keeping us indoors for much of the day. Isolation was far simpler when you could just go swimming in the sunshine to while away a few hours each and everyday. Not so much fun when it gets down to minus twenty degrees with the windchill. Anyway, not that I have an enormous readership, or that there are more than a handful who have read all of the interconnected series from cover to cover, but I’ll be back at it soon enough. I hope you’ll join the returning cast and crew of The Company: A Series of Interconnected Short Stories.

Don’t get discouraged if I pepper in some non-fiction(ish) one off stories in amongst the serialized stuff. Some times my kids do funny or relatable stuff that makes for humorous micro short stories. Wheels up!

Slow down on the work front

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Seems as though the Pandemic has finally interrupted my work flow. I just completed the last project that I had on the books earlier today, and now I have to wait on several invoices to be paid, and hold up for a while. Not great that this happened at tax time, as that’ll cut off a nice piece of savings from last year (though it isn’t mine to begin with, that’s why it’s called taxes). I just preferred to hold on to it in my accounts for a bit longer.

So now that the day job has ground to a halt, I will turn my attention towards completing some things around the house. I just built my youngest a step stool, with guard rails (because she’s a very petite nearly three year old). I have a mother’s day gift 95% completed, all that is left is final assembly and a protective finish. Then I will tackle a set of Corn Hole boards, and a wooden box to guard our trash bins and recycling from those gods be damned raccoons. Then we’ll strip, sand and finish the back deck. paint our downstairs hallway, and then I’ll attempt to build some scroll saw rustic wooden signs my wife asked me for last year. I will be completing most of these items with stock I had laying around all ready. As I don’t wish to spend money on materials, as clearing out old off cuts could really help me clean up my shop space. Plus I do need to tidy up in the shop, vacuum and sweep up the saw dust, and throw away old rags with varnish and other finishes soaked into them.

Plus we have some items I can hang up indoors for both girls that I need to do, but haven’t had the motivation to do. Wish I had some polymer clay laying around, but I do have other raw materials for self curing sculptures that I can try out for the first time.

On a side note, we spent a good portion of the last seven quarantine weeks building Lego® sets for the girls, and I ordered one off of Wish that I have yet to put together for myself. It’s a Technic® Mack Truck with container and trailer. Looks cool. Hard to do Lego® without the girls wanting to help, and this has tonnes of small, easy to loose, very important, structural pieces. Might have to be done at night in the evenings after the girls have gone off to bed. We’ll see. Anyway, hope this finds you well. If you have children, small children at that, I wish you the best of luck in the coming weeks, and for those that have all ready passed us by.