A night, and morning of the best sleep outside of Rip Van.

And I was going to need it.

Check the market performance of AOL and CPST over the past month – you’ll see why.

I would have killed myself except that Blue Shield doesn’t cover death.

And since I’m now on a new rike schedule:  MT – W off – TFS, BFD today seemed like the right day to provision.

Trader Schmoe’s where the O’boom was on.

S&F for drab, ripe olives and a six-year’s supply of yeast.

Thence The Dump where three server racks on the lot were ripe for possession by organized-minded garage and shop arrangers (but at the exorbitant cost of $40 each) and yet bargains still temped the penurious shopper who cadged a pair of 24” drawer glides, some sort of pre-hinged shortcut to hanging inside shutters, 20 plastic clothes hangers and a rotary cheese grater all for the non-Harvey Approved cost of $7.  Say Nothing.

Slackward to Grocery Cheaplet for dead chickens, frozen veggies, freeze dried marmot glands and flensed woodpecker pituitaries.

One more stop at Ka-nob Hill for Palermo rolls, white peaches, gracknoids of opportunity, and a plenary session of the UN at the deli where I saw daylight toward the meat department cut left juked right and was in the clear to not pay $14/lb for cow muscle.

Took the bacon train out through the ice cream forest to The Shop where

Like an evolutionary dead end…

the idee fixe was build a second Box Joint Table in an attempt to atone for my grievous sins on BJT1.  Unwilling as I was to use the on-hand maple for legs, cased Lumber Lot #55 for suitable (maybe) timber at least 1 ½” thickness.  After spitting on the pile, looking at the maple, returning to the pile pulled out a turquoise-coated plank seemingly light on the knot-holes from which it seemed I could lam five 95 cm 3.7 cm square billets.

I could, I did, and it was a waste of an hour’s sawing and planing.  Kept telling myself, ‘rough, it’ll be okay rough, character, that’s what it’ll be, salvage, that’s what you like, isn’t it?’

In the end, I couldn’t abide the toss-away concrete form quality of the result.

FAIL.

Tried to jack up the planer big enough to get my head into it but there wasn’t clearance for my pelvis.

HEY!  Across the way is the guy I’ve watched for a month building gates for the ‘renovation’ of the 8^th Street entrance to the St. Angela’s Tot Screaming Center who is working on some hand-rail for the Annex.

Design by committee

Turns out that he started working in his grandfather’s shop at 13 when they were turning out replica’s of Louis XIV …. hand carving and gilt.  Said he got tired of it (which might mean either he actually DID tire of the exacting craftsmanship OR he didn’t have the chops, or seven other causes we may leave to the novelist).  When asked about the white gate amid the plain redwood he said that the entire thing (abomination, my words) was to be painted this weekend.

I return to my Minus Nothing when it occurs to me that the next project, now that the replacement and atonement for the BJT is tabled, is a tantalus.

I’ve been sitting on five amber photo lab chemical bottles for years and have for years meant to make them into a bar. Project Tantalus.

If you could see the plans clearly, they wouldn’t be tantalizing, would they?

Suddenly, I’m happily diverted from travail and for an hour work up some concept drawings including a full-scale side view to determine where the box top/bottom split ought to be so that the hinged top will clear the bottles.

I’ve 1.4 cm thick cherry for the case, I’ve planed down some scavenged redwood siding which will form the internal dividers, I’ve the nascent plan.  Now what’s needed is the Midnight Study Hall – which certainly is forthcoming given lasterslack’s suspended animation-type repose – for to sort out the box assembly protocol and more importantly, muse upon the external trim which must and shall elevate what in essence is a simple container to a Louis XIV quality bust skull dispenser.

GOODAY –

Even though you never know when it starts out.

Finally had that conversation with Harvey – We’re lolling over the grass on the front lawn of the Singing Hills place and Harvey does a mea culpa, sorry for being such a dick.  It’s not your fault, some of it, you were scared when Russ left the family when you were twelve, that had to put the hex on you….

I put the rike on me, a light program up the hill, east on Oak, turn on McClellan then homeslice for a veggie-heavy lunch.

Opinions varied as to Shop or No.  Yes won even though I know not how to proceed with Project Tantalus.

I want the frame of the box in cherry, trim TBD, but I do not want the box joints to be 45’s – insufficient strength although I considered, for a time in last nights Midnight Study Hall could I blind spline them?

No.  Figure 300 years ago the box joints would not have been, figure I’ll half lap, and eat the perceived detriment looking at the half lap when the lid it flipped.

Now – cut the cherry.  The plank wide enough (30 cm) has a grievous crack wandering amid the center longitudinally, but not all the way through or all the way lengthwise.  Mayhaps I can section the plank enough for two 30 cm long and two 20 cm long plats enough for the box.

This I do when appears at the castle gates The Professor.  I bid him enter and we discourse, a discourse made all the better by me owing him no money.

That’s he’s letting on.

BOXDAY –

But it didn’t start that way.  Started with rike 4 of 5 this calendar week.  Since I’ve already banked 120 minutes, I need only two more rikes at 15 minutes each to equal last week’s tally.  Opted for a quick tour of the local steep streets but still managed to clock an honest 25 minutes.

After the usual scum chee, chicken and olives repast, it’s down the tachyon tube to The Shop and Project Tantalus.

The Critical Path dictates a decision on joints.  45’s are right out, although they could be splined, I’d have to blind spline them in doubles to account for the box top and bottom, and I have resolved to slant the box top, not the top itself, but the meet of the top and bottom.

Do NOT look at that 1 mm gap

Resolved: the joints shall be overlap/insert.  It’s a kind of mortise and tenon; the sides of the box have a top to bottom groove into which fits the compensatory ‘tenon’ on either ends of the box front and back.

You see this kind of joint today in drawers, but it has a long history.  I’ve seen this joint on a mid-19^th Century laptop, portable desk in Colton Hall.

It’s strong and relatively simple to make.  Except that nothing here at JohnsonArts seems simple.  And yet the joints came about, somehow.

So much for the easy part of today’s program.

The not-so-easy-part is kerfing the inside of the box.  Kerfs into which will fit three dividers making six partitions.

Trepidation aside, we are pleased to report that our router table performed admirably, special kudo’s to the ¼” bit and the fence and temp stop setup.

After a rough sand of the box parts, it’s a return to the table saw to length cut the three divider parts, rabbet the ends to slide into the just-created router kerfs, then cross cut the notches by which the dividers will fit together.  This happens with only 10 minutes of re-work when the long span had to be redone due to insufficient sneaking up on it.

Dry fit follows.  Some joint adjustments necessary.  Dividers fit sufficiently.  In spite of significant bow in the cherry my shipyard jack screws bring the convexity to heel.

Is there a reason why I shouldn’t glue up the box?  I cannot think of one, so there must be one, or two reasons.  So I stand down for the day, all fingers still attached, to the hands, even.

PARTYDAY –

But first, the fifth rike of the week, an handsome 35 minutes including a ¼ steady uphill.  Two cats greeted, one pet; one dog greeted, one bite.  More of a warning snap as Louie’s owner says that he doesn’t like his head touched.  Me neither, but I don’t bite.  Much.

Glue up isn’t as simple as it doesn’t look…

Not much to do in The Shop save deconstruct yesterslack’s Tantalus dry fit, which wasn’t easy and then glue it up for real, which wasn’t easy either.

But nothing here is, except the soiree at The Professor’s to which I invited the Lovely Kelly – first time I’ve seen her in over a year.

Several Cavalry Members at the do, one surprised that I was not a Cavalry member.  Likely this seed was lost, but seed it is.  Got to talking with a guy who was the dive master in Fiji what taught the Prof and his not-yet-wife how to.  The night before, he and his wife, who is now in the upper echelon of Gallo, attended a ship christening in San Francisco.  One of the new, titanic 1,200 foot Maersk container jobs.  He said that the show accompanying the customary bottle breaking out-Vegased Vegas.

I sometimes miss being part of the world.

Got to talking with …. or more accurately, listening to …. Tom Long, the contractor responsible for The Prof’s home renovation who could throw some work my way, which he hasn’t, if only he remembers I exist, which he doesn’t.  My job to keep reminding him, I reckon.

BLUESKYDAY –

As summer as ever it gets here in the Peninsula of Pacific Winds.  Warm enough for all the nudists.

This item in the morning’s Freecycle:

Is anyone interested in spent grains? We brew beer so generally end up with 10 pounds or so that are rehydrated after our mashing process. I use them for wonderful homemade bread, but it’s WAY more than I can use before we brew again! Many folks also feed them to chickens or pigs or whatever. Let me know if interested. I have a few now, but would really like to build a little base of folks who would be interested long-term as we brew about once a month!

Got my attention – could not the Bullet Proof Bread Recipe use spent wort?  Wort a try.

I arrange a pickup of some grains at 1 PM, enough time to slip into Trader Jammed Parking lot for a brace of O’booms, then out to the Del Monte Golf Course, nearly.  I’m early and so have time to stand around outside the gates of Sylvan Road, found jay feather and a mockingbird feather, and four golf balls.

HEY!  Here’s Charlski with the grains.  I stifle my impertinent desire to invite myself to their next brewing, but I so ask about their equipment.  It turns out that she and her husband minimize the brewing infrastructure – they mash in a (what seems to me tiny) 4 gallon range top kettle, don’t filter, transfer the wort into a carboy, let it ferment for a week, then siphon this first fermentation into a second carboy.  A week later, they bottle.  Hence come the gratis grains.

Charski lets loose that she also bakes bread and so I offer up the Bullet Proof Recipe.

Meanwhile, back to the Castle, there across the moat is the renowned Tony Cardoso setting up a brace of charcoal grills next the St. Angela’s Parish Annex.  I chat him up, give him the high sign (the feast in support of the Church’s youth outreach/brainwashing) and he graciously invites me partake.

I do not impose, being neither a youth or in need of philosophical brain cell killing.

HEY!  Here’s The Prof with some redwood trim from the shop of Tom Long, who continues to forget I exist.  I give him the four golf balls in exchange.

Later, when Tony’s cleaning up from the grill session, I Do Impose by letting him tell me all about how PG no longer has a Wood Shop class, of which he was formerly the teacher, his travails in attempting to extract surplus shop equipment, and looking at some pictures of lovely box creations by one of his adult students.

Arrives his brother-in-law driving a Monterey City Fire Truck and we all gab about the Yosemite conflagration, on which these lads were deployed in support, and Tony’s justifiable worry about evac should Pebble Beach erupt similarly.  It’s been a dry winter.

And in the end of our (my listening to him rave) conversation, I thank him and relate that he is with me on every project.

I’m sneaking up on it Tony, I’m sneaking up on it!