Provision run – the usual Trader Schmoe’s for O’boom, Grocery Cheaplet for $2.50/lb Tillamook Monterey Jack, Smart & Final for nothing (although I hoped fornon-sugar sweetened lemonade), Hodge’s’ for propane and Ka-Nob Hill for skirt steak.

Not all the squicky things emanate from the tidal zone.

At Hodge’s, I pull up to the propane loading station and Cletus, the yardman inspects my tank like a lawyer looking for a fee.  It doesn’t need the post-2002 Extra Mandated Shut-off Something and so he commences to fill the thing and asks about my blue kepi.

“What day is this?”

“Man, I just asked about your hat”  Cletus coming all over insulted, as if asking him a question was bad form.

“I’ll tell you, but today is July 2^nd, isn’t it?

“Ya, I suppose so.”

“What happened 150 years ago today?”

 – probably not the best approach, Crikey, I don’t know what happened last week, mostly –

This puts Cletus on the defensive, which was not what I intended.

What I intended was to short-circuit his train of thought.

By asking a question, you transcend the train of though and cause the brain to engage a deeper level of processing.

But I wasn’t successful in my intention and I didn’t explain all this to Cletus, both of which I regret.

Inside paying the $18 for the propane fill, the going was less uphill, turns out that the cashier man had a gggggreat grand-dad in the Civil War.

What’s in it for me?

I ask you (me)?

While we’re cogitating that, I slip down the knotted sheets to The Shop for no palpable reason. 

No, there MUST be one.

There isn’t, so I break out the Rockler Dovetail Jig for the 165^th time.

A Real Guy would do this by hand with a razor saw.

Something’s gotta break.

Sturm – Travail – Success?

After half a dozen giggerings with back fence depth, router bit height, side alignment set, genuflections toward Baal, sheer plain dumb cussed pertinacity out comes an almost acceptable set of joints. 

It’s incomprehensible – there’s nothing what I done today I ain’t  done a dozen times before.

Strange.

The Professor arrives with a half case of Red Hook.  Good Strange.

Curtis arrives with some offerings from his beer tasting club.

We taste, odd bodkins that we are, and they both leave too soon, both leaving big footprints. 

We take such pleasures as we can here in the Provinces.

FISHDAY –

Why Fred Morgenstern is driving Barnaby to the brink and over and WAAAAAAAA down black diamond ski runs in summer is lost to me, but I play along like I understand.  Until we make the Bavarian restaurant in the basement of which are Hitler hidey holes and unpredictable time travel.  I’m hungry, where’s the menu?

Where’s the rike?

Here.  Up the hill, to Hilltop Park, with 8 lb dumbbells.  I feared.  I walked.  I made it. 

Hours until I meet Tim Thomas, what to do?

What?  Build upon yesterslack’s incomprehensible dovetail jig success – Do MORE!

Lammed out some alder, split it, planed it to ¾” which was the plank thickness of yesterslack’s accomplishment – then marshaled the dovetail jig.

Only had to efface the joints once before arriving at a set of four complimentary joints which are, in the schema here nearly 89% of Desirement – fit, form, tight, right – there, sort of.

Just as I glue this experiment anon comes The Professor. 

He looks thirsty.  I feel parched.  What to do?

All too soon I must shower, put skins on and lope it down to The Row to meet Tim Thomas.

Tim Thomas who knows even more than Dennis Copeland, who knows more than any sixteen mortals the warp and weave of historic Monterey, about Monterey Bay Fish, Fishing, Fisheries, Fishermen, Fishtrade, Fish Influence, Fisherfolk and Fish Lore – yes, THAT Tim Thomas.

Tim on the Chicken Walk in front of one of the Depression Era cannery worker cabins blasting out his fire hose full of knowledge.

He’s off his 1 PM tour at 4, meet him at The Clement.  Lagunitas on tap at the bar.  Even if he doesn’t show, it’s ‘only’ $4 a draught.

He does show and puts substance to my insubstantiability.

1. Why did the Chinese establish a village here at Point Alones, why those particular Chinese which were who, from where did they come and how did they come by it?
2. When and through what occurrences did white (if you can call dagos and spics white) fishing come to The Bay, from where and how did they do what they did?

Answers – you’ll have to take the tour.

His tour, not mine, I’ll gloss over the thing.  The man’s a treasure.  He sees, no, touches the past as if it were a phone call you’d make to reserve a table at a bistro, his reach into misty incoherency has the strong hand of a ship captain steering though fog, a guide to dim shores suddenly lit with a beam of sunlight, a strong take on Polaris when the seaway was for a time unseen..

For fee, I bought him a brace of Lagunitas.  I had 493.  Yummy.

So too the hike home, knee felt less like warm cream cheese between rusty hinge plates than oven cleaning scrapings underneath your pillow.

You get plucky sometimes.

EPISODE –

The Master emails me, say’s he’s landed a truckload of wine barrel staves, would I like some?

I’d like, ask him to next time he’s coming to the village, toss one or two into his truck so’s I can take a look at them and can I afford 50?

He replies that he will and that the entire shebang cost him only $75.

This day I do not open The Shop as there’s a fandango out to 99 Rancho, and when I debouch, there’s two dozen gorgeous oak staves, the curve sensuous, the inside coated with burgundy and sugar.  Soft Jonny I’ll be if I can’t put them to superb use.

FAILDAY –

But nothing having to do with a major bodily organ.

It’s a return to the dovetail jig – why are the joints not consistent?  Same could be said for myself.

Here’s why, and this was today’s only non-failure: the toothed template that guides the router bit was not plumb to the stop fence.  There’s one for our side.

Then, like a beautiful dream crushed by the alarm clock, whatever jig mojo I’d summoned departed.

I set the template to plumb, then iterated depth of stop fence and height of bit – if the joint is loose, you raise the router base plate to expose more bit; if the tails of the joint stand proud, you back the stop fence away.  So write the Solons.

But there’s still something wrong with my setup.  Moving the stop fence should NOT change the router profile of the tails, yet it seems to do so, and so I’m trying to manage two unknowns simultaneously.  Or so it seems.  And this makes me think the jig is still lacking some fundamental setup detail which I’ve overlooked.

And then it got worse.

Lammed out some bamboo flooring as I wanted to cut half-blind dovetails in ½” thick stock, or nearly ½”.  And in particular wanted to explore how to make dovetails in ANY thickness between, say 3/8” and ¾”.  I don’t want to be limited to either ½” or ¾”, which seems to be Rockler’s idea of the only two thicknesses anyone would want to use.

Anyway, planed the bamboo, cut them proto-box to the two lengths – long and short sides – with plenty, I thought, spare stock for setup.

Here again I cannot but think that my jig setup is flawed as I’m almost cutting completely through the pin side of the joint to get a solid match of tail to pin.  That doesn’t seem right.  What’s worse is that once I thought I had the proper back stop fence position and router bit depth of cut, I didn’t.

There are four sets of joints as there are four corners to a rectangular box.  You number then 1, 2, 3, and 4 to keep track because Joints 1 and 3 are made on the left side of the jig, Joints 2 and 4 are made on the right side of the jig.  I’m only delving into this level of detail because what happened next was and still is incomprehensible.

Joint 1 was acceptable, both in joint tightness and flush.

Joint 2 was the same.

Joint 3 – which uses the same side of the jig as Joint 1, was FUBAR – tail indented nearly a ¼”   WHHAAAAA!  How can this be!!???

Joint 4 was loose – this same side of the jig as Joint 2, which was okay.

I’m gobsmacked.

I admit total and abject failure.

And tomorrow, I’ll try again.

CONTENDERDAY –

Where all was black, there came a single, bright ray …. except for the dreams.

120 minutes total rike this week, two with 8 pound dumbbells – Monday it’s back to the 5 lb dumbbells as I’ll strap 10 pounds onto the waist belt.

After truck-riking to TJ’s for Sudden Near-Emergency O’boom’s its down the grotto glide to The Shop and the dovetail jig.

Once a mook gets the jig set, its the work of lemurs to rip out dozens, hundreds, thousands of half-blind joints.

Today out on the slack deck where the Router Gods can better hear my pleas.  As it was, I actually read (again) the jig instructions, which made 12.3% more sense this iteration, but there wasn’t any Magic Moment where the Aha! happened.  There was, however, an admonishment I’d overlooked – for half-blind dovetails – the baby steps of dovetail joining – you want to use the 14 degree dovetail bit, not the 8 degree bit I’d been employing.  From an acorn …. 

It made a difference: the 14 degree bit need only penetrate about half the wood thickness.  For the physics on that, I called Caltech, but they were all at CERN cracking neutrinos and drinking absinthe mojitos.

There was, in the Official Rockler Instructions one shortcoming upon which I stumbled.  The ORI would have the dovetailer do the routs on the left side of the intended box/drawer at the Left Side Of The Jig, and then do the right side On The Right Side Of The Jig.

This I tried and my mistook was in treating my sides as fronts and my fronts and backs as sides, according to the ORI nomenclature.  In hindsight, it is obvious that you want the front and back to have the tails because in pulling on the drawer you’re pulling against the taper of the tails instead of pulling apart the joint.  Hindsight = 12 hours later. 

So I returned to my original SIOP of doing corners 1 and 3 on the left and corners 2 and 4 on the right.

This produced a set of half-blind dovetails that when joined and glued, might, just bloody well might be the first graduate of a long line of such school of joints.

EPISODE – As I’m shutting down for the day, where dovetail victory tastes like Key Lime sorbet, there walks past the Castle precinct a lassie with two …. two creatures both of which stop and stare at me.  Perhaps they are dogs.  Built like bowling balls with legs, I ask what they are. “French bulldog’s” comes the answer and the two chien wrap their leashes about my legs in a furor of happy glee.  They look almost as pugs, but larger, stockier and I don’t know from pugs, but these two – one near all black, the other tiger stripped but in black and sable – are insatiable in wanting smootchies and scratchings.  They know I once was dog.

Another Dog – The movie John Carter, apparently a bow-wow bupkis at the box office.

What didn’t the movie-going gabble like?

Goy meets Girl in exotic location, sinister priesthood, noble Ares Romans, usurpers aided by the sinister, all this leavened with green, ectomorphic polydactyl Martians AND a good, faithful monster doggie!  Main warrior wench pronounces – and I melt – the American inflection for ‘planet’ the same way I pronounce using oxy-acetylene to join metal.  How did it miss?

BOXDAY –

I could have slouched around (more than usual) but no, Boxville calls.  Took the polo giraffe for a ride down to The Shop where the order of the day was dovetail box lid and floor.

Figured both the lid and the floor to be something edge banded in a contrasting color wood.  The key issue to be addressed by The Design Bureau was this: hinge or no for the lid.

No.

Instead, crafted the lid edge banding, which is a delicious crimson, confused grain mid-hard log dumped here by the Asilomar Wood Faerie, about 1/8” less in height than the poplar of the lid.  Intention: that offset will nestle into the top of the box.  Right, won’t be suitable for the wagon train or airline carry-on, but that’s not the point.  Point –  aside from chipping away at my Tower Of Ignorance, is a wedding present for one of The Professor’s crony’s, and so as long as it looks better than a mass-produced Taiwanese cutlery case from Target, I’ll have delivered.

I grooved the mate surfaces of both the lid and the edge banding to accept a thin slat which will aid in securing the butt joint.  Forming the 45’s and sneaking up on the trim lengths is the exacting business and no matter how well I think it looks in glue-up, I haven’t yet known until the clamps are removed was I close enough for sanding tolerances and are the joints tight, right and line of sight.

Next, the floor.  In this case some ¾” ply with the same gorgeous crimson (free) wood as trim.  But in this circumstance, the joint between the ply and the trim will be under the lower edges of the box and so not as critical as is the lid.  Okay, okay, I’m not trying to get out of after school detention, I’m just saying…..

Same soup on the floor as with the lid with the grooves and slats, same not knowing how It’ll look even though it seems righteous in the clamps. 

Knowing – it’s over-rated.

DAY –

I and a hundred others RIF’ed from Rockwell.  Cool about it as they loaded us on railroad flatcars for the trip through and out the plant because, in lieu of severance pay, we got to collect whatever was lying loose.  Scooping up some choice laboratory glassware when some diva, the car ahead, began to sing this.  I melted.

Flowed with the log flume down to The Shop to address the pile of wreckage that might be the dovetail box, but don’t place your bets, it’s only top of the 5^th Inning.

After sanding out most of the dents, holes, scars, demerits, and shot-peening those ludicrous aspects of the Left Wing of the Democratic Party, it came time for chamfering.  BIG Chamfer on the upper, outer edges of the base and the lid.  Turns out I have a raised panel bit I’ve never used.  Until now.

Now: drill out the base in four locations around the periphery and pre-drill the corresponding holes in the dovetail box – this will affix the box to the base. 

Next Now: form some feet.  Why? 

Sitting on the base the thing just looked too squat, and so some kind of elevation seemed desirable.  Squared some alder to about 3.8 cm, cut 45’s on all four edges, then sliced it off a 2 cm to render a set of four peds.  The bottom side of which were countersunk, then glue/screwed to the underside of the base. 

We’re getting close, very close to assembly.  There remained only even more sanding and even then I couldn’t see all the defects, and won’t until the first coat of tung oil.  I’ve accepted the reality of this.  You should too.

From left to right: lid, box, floor, feet and out of view and below my psychological support coelacanth.

Screwed on the box to the base, now we’re getting somewhere, I’m keen to see how the various woods will take and show the tung, and well taken and well shown they do.  Just then, the intended consumer of the thing rides up on his griffon, well no, actually it was a mountain bike, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had.  He was just in time to take a first look at the possible wedding gift.  He rightly defers judgment until I’m satisfied with the number of coats of tung.  He and his griffon soar off.

And yet return. 

Just as I’m tucking into my first bevutainment of the creatively sufficient evening comes a ring to the castle gates …. Why it’s Congo with a ½ case of black, foamy medicinal elixir guaranteed to make us stronger.

As we negotiate philosophies upon the outer, otter battlements comes yet another strangeness: Snnaacck.  The Snaaacck who has not cadged a bread crust in lo these many weeks not only swoops in for a single touch, but two. 

We watch the doings down the hill at St. Angela’s Brainwashing Center where gangs of men are extracting tons of sand which heretofore cushioned the falls of the tots from the playground equipment.  We can only speculate that perhaps overzealous concern about playing in a giant cat litter box has the parish spending all this money, likely to replace the sand with mats.  Difficult to see how JohnsonArts could horn in on the action….

My Guinness Cup runneth over (into my yap).

JOINTDAY –

My own and several others of a wooden coming together in a better manner box variety.

Second rike this week with 10 pounds on the belt and 5 pound dumbbells – to the top of Lobos Street.  Sometimes you got to play hurt.

No hurt taking the Geezer Suit down to The Shop where the many, many defects in the dovetail box were manifest, most remediated, and then another coat of tung slathered on.  It’s a pleasure to apply and the finest finish I know.

Now – some makework.  The spare table saw blades need a home other than that tatty Harbor Freight plastic case.  And since the dovetail jig is set up for ½” stock, why not ram out another set?

Plane some scavenged redwood siding down to the requisite thickness (and it pained me to remove the tongue and groove), then let fly the dogs of dovetail.  With two hunks of thin ply – the floor inset in kerfs, the top glued and lashed on with round-head brads to lend a sort of bondage and discipline tone – I’ve a box for the blades and my fingers never left my hands.

Actually, that’s a premature assertion.  It is a box, but until the dovetail glue dries, it’s a hollow box without any way in.  When the glue dries, I’ll form two parts thanks to my friend Mr. Table Saw, might even practice slicing off a single frequency of the dovetail tail and pin (I wish I knew which was which) so as to preserve the pattern.

FILLDAY –

Filling the larder and a long-yawning pit as well.

Another pit: Harvey has plundered my tchotchke cabinet and sold most of it off.  Why?  I don’t even get that far – whether gambling debts or mortgage payments – I’m convulsed in a sputtering fit of rage and shock.  I’d rather not dream about dead people.

After the usual Thursday provisioning trek to Trader Joe’s (my favorite parking spot open!), Grocery Cheaplet for cheeses of opportunity and low price, Smart & Final for coffee beans, olives and protracted standing in line while complex financial transactions involving signed and witnessed writs, lengthy personal testimony and repeated consultations with the Management lead to Ka-Nob Hill where I’m bilked less than usual (but not really, its just that I didn’t stock up on $2/lb apples or pluquats), it’s back to the Castle to leave.

Word is that 99 Rancho has some choice wood products for which I have first (and last) dibs.

I leave the coast wearing three layers.  Carmel Valley – 16 miles inland – and I’m looking to dance naked in the sprinklers. 

Here, there for the swagging tasty wood indeed, in the main largish swaths of ¾” beech faced ply remnants all lumped together maybe a full sheet.  This leavened with some pine, two 2×4 foot translucent panels (think future indirect tabletop lamp screens) and some odds and sods.  Plus extensive Muttski scratchings which are incomprehensibly also free.

Back to the coast for lunch, some woodpile re-arrangement to accommodate the 23.7% inventory improvement, then to shirk.

Just as I’m putting another coat of tung to the dovetail box up the path next the Castle comes a dual-axle laden with sand just removed from the St. Angela’s playzone, the guy parks the behemoth just in front of the garden and even before I figure this is my best change to cadge free sand, he half-apologizes for spotting the truck there while he moves Truck #2 into loading position.  I point out to Louie the long-annoying dip in the pavers upside of the drive and can he lend me a shovel? 

Harvey frets that it isn’t the long-gone tree stump rotting that is causing the subsidence, but a leaky water main. Me too.

Louie can do better than that, he’ll have the guy driving the front end loader scoop me up a bucket and dump it right there.  Zounds!  Chop chop pull up two dozen pavers, which was more work than I’m used to in a month, and up the deer trail comes Dennis.  I Kentucky windage the amount I have him dump into the depression and give thanks to the gods of Good Sand.  All I need now is a rake.  Light off the Batman Beacon, but in the silhouette of a rake.

It’s back to the dovetail box which gets more tung, then to finalize the table saw blade storage box.

Finalization means cutting the thing into a bottom and a lid – the technique I use is to round the box 1 or 2 mm less than the full cut and then knife the parts free, this method keeps the box intact on the table saw, which is, believe me, what you want – smoothing forth the fissure on both bottom and lid, and then putting hinges to, a center dowel of and tung oil toward.

Suddenly, without warning, a rake arrives, and he bears garden tools.

Hasn’t time to linger while I smooth out the sand, then replace the pavers.  It looks and IS 69% better, although, at first go, meriting -23.6 Harvey Points for not sifting the sand free of clumps or using a transit to level the raked surface.

The table saw blade storage box is done, the dovetail box still needs more tung oil, maybe 1, maybe 2 more coats.

And a haiku.

MEETDAY –

I and two other Pacific Biological Labs docents were summoned to The Ed Ricketts Lab this day by Dr. Dennis Copeland, the City archivist, historian, Knower of All That Is Written And Much That Is Not Written.  Is this a group hug, or is there some alternate agenda?  Never know with bureaucrats.

Ostensibly, it is to share what works in the tours, exchange ideas and pose suggestions to Dennis. 

Ed’s back … er, tanks.

He and the other two, Robbie and Jonathan have a tough job: they know so much, Robbie knows Ricketts down to his DNA, that it’s a hindrance rather than an asset.  The urge with all that information is to try to share it, they WANT to share it; but in an hour, with a mixed bag of people from seniors down to kids, with interest levels from Full-on Ed-head to being dragged along by a spouse or parent, that just isn’t possible, or even a good idea. 

I’ve got it easy, since I don’t know dick, I can easily synopsize, and have done so, those tendrils of history that might entertain the new-to-Ed and possibly enlighten the old-time Cannery Row aficionado.  And tomorrow I’ve two shows, one at 10:30 and the second, a matinee at 12:30.

After the hike back to the Castle and luncheon, it’s down the time tunnel to The Shop where another coat, likely the final coat, goes on the dovetail box.

Now, it’s time to imagineer on the Master’s barrel staves.  Actually, the Midnight Study Hall offered a suggestion: form a tiered cabinet – one drawer atop, two drawers beneath that, and three drawers below that tier all with extensions forming shelves – the whole shebang set up on two pairs of staves formed into two arches, front and back.  How this can be artfully, if I may abuse the term, set together, along with the usual litany of know unknowns is entirely unknown.

Amid this happy set of tasty unknowns arrives The Professor who approves of the dovetail box – it’s going to be a wedding present for one of his former students – but reserves judgment on the sand/paver’s makeover. 

You win a few, you lose a few.

SHOWDAY –

A little nervous, but I’d be nervous if I wasn’t nervous.

Early to The Lab, but didn’t catch any of Jonathan’s opening act as he and his tour were boodling about in the basement. 

I summon my chi.

The 10:30 show was sparse in attendance, but noble in personalities as it included Curtis and Kathleen to whom in large I owe my nascent role as docent as it was they who were gracious enough to invite me to my first tour of The Lab, a year and half ago.  This led to my friendship with The Professor – no small thing –  and it was he who introduced me to the PBL Club and as if that wasn’t enough, was instrumental in me taking the City sponsored training to become a docent.

Showtime – I busk, shuck and jive, then had the lunch break before the 12:30 Matinee, for which the crowd was SRO. 

And in the end, seemingly appreciative.  It’s not for me to say. 

Lope homeslice along The Bay to drop into The Castle and delightful lassitude.  I’m always exhausted after a performance.  I don’t know how teachers to it – they’re ON for seven or eight hours 5 days a week.  I’m knackered after 2 hours on one Saturday a month.

Send magnetic kidney suppositories.

Just as I’m tucking into the pre-evening O’boom comes The Professor.  We retire to the northward facing widow’s walk for philosophical inquires, literate criticism, and flagons of delicious beverages.

What do you want from life?

Chicken, bacon, a grill, a view.