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Saturday, February 5th, 2005
A month ago I posted the story of a glue-up gone wrong. Today I glued up a second similar cabinet and thanks to input from the gang at WoodCentral, it went much better. The key difference: as advised by William Duffield, I did not put the backer boards in slots, but instead cut a rabbett and will nail them in place after the frame is dry. This means in the glue-up, I only have to worry about four boards instead of ten, much more reasonable. Also I thought through my clamping beforehand, so it was easy to get everything put together once the glue was on; and I made pinch sticks to measure the diagonals of the cabinet. I think these will be my most successful dovetails to date, which is not saying too much but is a good feeling anyways.
posted evening of February 5th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, January 30th, 2005
The wall unit for Sylvia's room is coming along nicely (though I expect to be done in March now, not February) -- tonight while I was cutting dovetails for the remaining section of it, Ellen and Sylvia were painting one of the completed sections. Sylvia and I went over to Mark's house today, where Christine and Bill also came to visit. We had a great time, including watching Harold Lloyd movies and learning from Bill how to play "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues".
posted evening of January 30th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, December 30th, 2004
This evening I glued up the frame for a section of the wall unit I am building -- I described cutting the dovetails in my previous post. The end result is pretty good (if slightly off square); but the glueing-up process can only be described as a failure. The plan was as follows: - Lay the right-hand side board on the bench top, outer face down.
- Put (Elmer's white) glue on the right-hand pins of the top and bottom boards, and join them to the side board.
- Slide the backing boards into the grooves cut in the top and bottom boards.
- Put glue on the left-hand pins of the top and bottom boards, and join the left-hand side board to them.
Straightforward enough -- what I didn't realize was I needed something to hold the top and bottom boards close to each other as I was sliding in the backing boards... I see now that what I should have done, after about the first three backing boards were in place, was fix a clamp to hold everything in place. (I think but am not sure, that my longest bar clamp would be just about long enough to do the job.) Instead, when the backing boards started falling out, I ran upstairs and started screaming bloody murder for Ellen to come help me hold boards in place. And she did, and everything came out all right in the end, except I wish I could keep my head on straight when a problem comes up.
posted evening of December 30th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, December 29th, 2004
I've been working for a while now on a wall unit/desk for Sylvia's room; making pretty good progress. I'd say I'm a little ways past the halfway point which means delivery around February. Right now I am framing the upper level of shelf units (the piece is made up of 2 lower units, 2 upper units, the desk, and some smaller "cubby" pieces), and using dovetails to join the frames together. This is about the 4th time I have cut dovetails, and the first I am using them somewhere they will not be visible. (Which is actually probably the better thing to do first -- but it did not work out that way.) I cut all the pins yesterday and the day before, and last night did my first set of tails, second set this morning. It is going pretty quick and the results are noticeably better than any I have previously done (with one possible exception -- the cherry dovetails I did for a jewelry box came out pretty nice but those don't count because (a) they took me a really long time and (b) I never finished building the jewelry box). They fit, quite tight, with very little adjustment. ("Adjustment" = "messing around with a chisel, trying to make the dovetails fit even though the cuts were not in the proper place".) I'm a little surprised because the cuts are visibly not exactly straight nor square, and the marking imprecise; my conclusion is that dovetails (at least in softwood) are a forgiving joint. Update: Finished the 3rd and 4th sets of tails, an hour and a half from marking to fitting. And very little messing around with a chisel.
posted morning of December 29th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004
In the course of remodeling our bathroom, which will happen next month, I will be installing an on-demand hot water recirculation pump I bought from Advanced Conservation Technology of Costa Mesa, CA. I am just speaking on supposition right now as I have not used the pump yet; but it just seems like a really good thing to do without any downside -- you get your hot water without standing around waiting; and you avoid wasting ~10,000 gallons of water/year that would otherwise run down the drain while you're waiting. So I'm encouraging anyone who owns their own home to do this. It's not very expensive (~$350) or difficult to install. ACT is not the only company that sells these pumps. BuildingGreen.com has an article about them.
posted afternoon of December 22nd, 2004: Respond
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Sunday, August 8th, 2004
The saga of repairing my patio continues... The story so far: when we moved into this house it had a broken-up, uneven bluestone patio in the back yard, and I thought I would like to learn how to fix it, make it flat and even. Ellen's cousin Danny came over and offered to donate some slate flagstones he had in his side yard toward the cause. (At that point I thought the patio was made of slate.) After getting them home I realized they would not work in the back yard, and decided instead to build a walkway/garden border in the front yard. I did that last summer -- it came out really well (or at least "really well for a first masonry project by someone who didn't have much of a clue") and I had some slate left over. This spring I extended the walkway back past the side of our house, next to the garage. And I was ready to start on the patio itself! So two weeks ago I drove down to Brick, NJ, where there is Bedrock Stone, excellent stone yard that I recommend wholeheartedly. Bought a pallette of 1 1/2" rectangular bluestone and a pallette of broken bluestone pieces; and on the way home I stopped at Maplewood Garden Supply to get 3 cubic yards of bluestone dust. (Note: the dump truck which brought the dust would not have been able to get into our back yard, were it not for the new gate I built. Nice feeling.) That stuff has been sitting in our driveway for the past 2 weeks; and when my father came to town this weekend, I asked if he'd like to help me work on the patio. He was game, and we completed the work I was hoping to get done -- namely, the narrow part of the patio (4' X 27') that runs from the driveway to the main patio. This part had previously been extremely broken up -- hence the new flag stones -- and repaired in patches with slate. We put in a layer of dust to even the ground beneath it, and laid in new stones, and built a low border from the broken stone pieces. The old flag stones that I could salvage are stacked in the driveway, waiting to be used in extending the main part of the patio back into the yard a little ways, which may happen as soon as this fall. First I need to get to evening up the main part of the patio, where the stones are mostly whole or else cleanly broken, so I will be able to use the existing stones. (This is good because they are 1" thick and thus possible for me to lift without a second person.) That will be happening at the end of the month, if all goes according to plan.
posted evening of August 8th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, June 18th, 2004
We went to a Kerry house party tonight, at Mark and Marina's place. It was a very nice time -- not quite inspirational, but definitely encouraging. Kerry's elder sister Peggy spoke about the campaign, and about her brother's commitment to getting the U.S. out of the hole it's presently in. Ellen and I decided to do some volunteer work over the summer. Lots of digging in store for me tomorrow! I hope it is not too hot -- Ellen has a lot of plants for me to put in the ground, plus two large bushes for me to take out of it. (One is dead, and the other needs to be transplanted.) And I want to make a start at extending my stone path back along the side of the house, underneath the gate I built. Tomorrow afternoon there will be a going away party for Jim (who is moving to Vermont).
posted evening of June 18th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, May 20th, 2004
I've been working for a little while (about a week since I bought the lumber I guess) on building a new pair of gates for our driveway. The old ones were poorly designed -- two 5' gates hung from metal poles at either side of the driveway and meeting in the middle, swinging toward the back of the driveway. The problem was, they did not actually swing; the wooden gates were far too heavy for the hinges to support, so they were actually resting on the bottom corner at the center of the driveway. When you wanted to open a gate you had to either lift it up, or drag it along the asphalt -- either one is a hassle. So here's my bright idea: One 8' gate hanging from the pole on the outside of the driveway (i.e. the side away from the house). It has a caster on the side that is not on hinges; so instead of swinging it rolls open and closed. Additionally it has a drop bar to anchor it in the closed position. The pole on the inside of the driveway comes out as does the short fence from the house to the pole, and a 3' gate hangs from the fence post at the side of the house. It swings toward the front of the driveway. So the deal is, you usually keep the big gate closed, with the drop bar in the ground, and go in and out through the little gate. I finished building the big gate on Tuesday, and today I hung it on the pole. It looks pretty good, and it rolls just fine. (I may at some point need to replace the cheapo caster with something more durable though.) Ready to start work on the little gate. I will rent a jack-hammer from Home Depot to take the pole out of the ground -- this is kind of exciting as I have never used a jack-hammer before.
posted evening of May 20th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, April 14th, 2004
I have not blogged about woodworking for a long time because, well, I have not been doing any of it. But I am hoping to change that. A couple of nights this week I was in the basement, working on Ellen's bookcase -- she has given me a deadline of September to finish it or she buys one, and I believe I can do it. Also I got the garage cleaned out and have made some stabs towards planning the workbenches I want to build in there. In other home improvement news, Ellen is repainting the sitting room and boy, does it look good! (This is the room where I built in my windowseat, and it has looked funny unpainted ever since.) The color scheme is: sage green walls, bone white trim and doors and ceiling. There is a lot of trim in the room, doing it all took nearly two weeks (of quite intermittent painting). The walls and ceiling are going a lot faster. When she finishes I will put the final bit of molding on the windowseat (a cove between the top of the seat and the wall behind it) and put shades on the windows, and the room will get more use than it had in the past -- our plan is to have that be our general room for congregating in the evenings, instead of our bedroom.
posted evening of April 14th, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, March 25th, 2004
What fun! this evening Sylvia and I planted some forsythias, she with her trowel and I with my spade. When I came home I asked if she would like to help me do it and she quickly said, "No." Then a few more "no"s while I was putting on jeans and work shoes and walking downstairs, followed by a sudden "I want to help!" as I opened the door. So we went outside (very warm today, I think in the 60's) and dug up some holes, and filled them with plants and soil. This weekend I will be acquiring my next big power tool; it is a 6" jointer, which I am buying from Matt Prusik (a former president of CJWA). The weekend is busy -- on Saturday morning we are going to the nursery to get bushes and trees, and in the afternoon getting a start on cleaning the garage; on Sunday morning I will drive down to South Amboy where Matt lives and back, and in the afternoon I'll be trying to set it up. The jointer may not be usable immediately as I think the power supply to the garage might be too small and need rewiring.
posted evening of March 25th, 2004: Respond
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