SOLSTICE –

The chronic knee needs to be worked out.  It’s been a week since the last CRICCK and had a tentative 6-hill rike early in the week.  The muscles WANTED to the work, so much so that I actually broke into a lope up 6^th Street.

And so this morning’s effort was more toward more hills, a solid 40 minutes wandering south abusing all the crows which had the fortitude to withstand my scorn.

In the hills above PG and Monterey there are stunning views, views spanning not only the entire bay with a peak into Godhead itself.  What’s surprising is that for the value of some properties, there perched upon $1M worth of land is a shithole built 50 years ago and not painted since.  Or the uncontrolled foliage obscures the view.  Or that Jeep Wagoneer up on blocks half blocks the closing of the garage door.  White Trash – they’re everywhere …. but none so wealthy as here.

White Slash here maintains focus, focus on the Doom Frame.

The key element the student of this diagram needs pay close attention to is the lower right corner to which most of the streams flow.

It’s a chart foisted upon me lo these many years ago in The Dump parking lot by some wild-eyed zealot which shows, nay Proves that the true and only path to salvation is a narrow course indeed.

This needed a frame for proper display which would foster further scrutiny.

Plenty of lovely alder to hand as The Professor, earlier this week dropped off 5 board feet of his contractor Tom’s cast-offs.  Cast-offs too short or windy for his custom-made doors.

It’s alder like I don’t get from Jackel Hardwood.  More knots and inclusions – which Tom works into his handsome doors – but more oily looking, more shiny out the planer, more wander grain and smooth finish under the sandpaper.  Good thing there’s no woman around to be jealous at the way I look at it….

Yesterslack hacked out the alder for the frame, cut the 45’s and glued it up.  Taking not too much overwroughtness about how – how?  Nailed the sumbitch.  From the top corners where the two nail holes from the gun wouldn’t attract much attention.

Cut the matte for the chart … and now what?

Something is missing.

This is the Chart of Doom!  A bland, boring (if handsome alder frame) just is NOT sufficient for Doom Involking.

It didn’t occur to me until this morning’s rike what that something ought be: Flames.

Ideally, the frame would come with a remote control where at the press of a button, tendrils of fire would issue forth.

Perhaps a bit ambitious.

For this incarnation, masonite simulations must suffice.

Repaired to the scroll saw to cut flame-like shapes – a front and a back – which when properly dosed in shades of red and yellow sufficient to inspire the Admiration of Satan and then inserted in slots cut into the frame top, might, just might cause the viewer to re-up their catechism Frequent Supplicant Card.

Rigging the frame with actual fire was thought by the Home Safety Committee to be a tad over the top.

Amid this happy genuflection and Doom Avoidance comes The Professor bearing not more beautiful alder, but a prescription.  He thinks I look sallow, weak.  There’s only one medication which can restore me: Guinness.  Ad libitum.

SLACKTERDAY –

I tell myself every night before collapse: If you have a job, you’re dreaming.  Even so, this morning I’m hunting up the Men’s Room at Rockwell proud to be carrying a standard 45 pound weight lifting bar, which doesn’t make fitting into the stalls easy.

You could call easy having not major project on the bench.  I call it horror.  Thinking about an 18^th Century laptop – a portable writing desk.  Folds open with a laptop-writing surface and storage for your inkbottles, quill pens, paper, and opium.  Still thinking.

While not thinking, get back on the Doom Frame, specifically get them flames painted better and the frame slicked up.

Brushing on the color to the scroll-hacked flames isn’t getting it.  Happily, the Rustoleum gloss red spray can spritzes – it’s always the nozzle problem.  But not today.  Three coats and the faux flames are good to go – good to have their masonite edges deftly painted yellow.  Yes.

Yet obstacles remain.  The finish on the newly tinged Pecan Gold frame itself.  Busted out of the Toxic Cabinet several flasks of What IS THIS? until I found a tumbrel of something that didn’t smell like Tung oil, but worked on fine, left a handsome sheen and wiped off almost like you’d like.

In Sum: Frame finishing finishing up.  Flame masonite looking cartoonish.

You get lucky sometimes.

ANDTHENYOUDONTDAY –

I’ve been summoned to San Jose to perform the second-most important civic duty to which a citozen of our fair Republic can be called: Jury Service.  I plan to wear my chicken costume with the Flaming Beard.

Never been to a Fed House, never had to face the prospect of a 160-mile round-trip.  Daily.  For 10 days.

So much for the Perfect Life.

There’s a call-in/website feature.  I’m asked to report tomorrow, 6/24 to the Big House, downtown.

And there’s rain in the forecast.

Joy.

Amid these mirthful tidings, I convert the budding, soon-to-be-deployed new JohnsonArts website (thanks to the energies and acumen of TodDesign, without which I could not have hoped to reach the first stone of the Pyramids) to the latest version …. Which had the effect of effacing all the Product Galleries I’ve painstakingly assembled over the past two months.

Surely, a .357 slug could cure my ails.

But suddenly arrives The Prof returning my loan of the 7^th Most Soporific Book About the 18^th Most Interesting Historical Period In Western Civilization and has time for some decktop bevutainment.

It actually sprinkles from the sky.  Precip.  In June.

But these are Strange Days.

COURTDAY –

The worst of it was lying awake half the night thinking about the drive to the Federal Courthouse in San Jose.  And it was going to be in the rain.  Yes, rain here in June.  Figures.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to be at the jury room until noon, and while the early miles were misty it was only 20 minutes into the slog when suddenly, It Was All Right.  Felt good to be out of my introspective rut, out on the road, no matter why, no matter where to.

The drive was easy, the parking was comped and the courthouse, while reeking of forms, structure, violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, and doom, was just across the light rail tracks.

Second and San Carlos Street in San Jose – security modest, architecture severe.

As I was an hour early I easily snagged half the only electrical outlet I could find in the jury assembly room and so spent the prelude adding content to the new version of the JohnsonArts website.

Anon.  There’s an orientation period and a well-crafted video that demonstrates some aspects of the voir dire as well as ably inspires, we should hope,  the sense of civil responsibility, honor and duty of the dragooned proletariat.

My view:  The most felicitatious outcome I could hope for was to actually GET impaneled, then via subtle and not-so subtle clues inspire either the prosecution or the defense (both if the chicken costume worked its magic) to toss me off the jury.  If I wasn’t seated on the panel, there was the chance I’d have to keep showing up in the pool for the duration of my 10 day sentence.

It’s a 136 mile round trip.

Finally, the crowd is shanghaied into the chamber of justice for the voir dire.  I figured my odds were 1 in 5 of getting a seat as there were about 60 in the pool.  And a fine cross-section of the San Jose area they were, too.  White, yellow, brown, black, some handsome, some not, some skinny, some fat, a tattoo here, an ill-considered ensemble there.  America.

But my odds were improved as Judge Whyte wanted 30 empanelled even though the total end size would be 12 with 2 alternates.  #21 was my summons.  Now, time to work that blood drool gag interspersed with rolling on the carpet speaking in tongues.

Actually didn’t have to.  During the prelim, the Judge asked if any of us would experience severe hardship – and since the trial was projected to last a month – I piped in.  “While I don’t make the 80 mile exclusion radius, every session would entail a nearly One Hundred and Forty Mile roundtrip.”

“Mr. Johnson is excused.”

YES!!!

Now, lest you accuse me of being a malingering, goldbricking cynic (I am not a full-fledged, card-carrying Cynic) I will state here for the record that I feel jury duty is the second most important role a civilian can play and enact for the benefit of one of the better, more noble aspects of our maligned, fractious, magnificent Republic.  So there.

But – It’s a 136 mile round trip.

The case?  Nothing salacious or educational, I fear.  Fraud.  Immigration bunco – the defendant duped (allegedly) illegals by promising them naturalization papers for a fee.

Of a moment the evening when the eye seems its never seen these colors these colors before wrapped and rapped up against each other the orange blue and the black grey white sheen melding and merging challenging the eye that never saw these colors together before.

YAYDAY –

But it didn’t start that way.

Just after I tided up the Collins yard (maybe Sandra will come around), I lope up the hill and everything has changed.  Curbs, pavement, drains and strangest of all, the Singing Hills house has been morphed into a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright and George Jetson.  I flop onto my ass in stupefaction, but at the same time imagining changes I would make to this makeover, which actually isn’t all that bad.  What was bad I won’t even relate except to say that when I woke, resolved not to sleep in anymore.

Schlepping out necessitated by the Zero to Negative Zero quanta of O’boom in stock.

The traffic, even before the holiday gut-clutching, well, for here.

Beer nailed, next Grocery Cheaplet for a sack of chicken, cheeses of slackportunity and happy patter with the voluble bagger.

To Smart of WaitlonginLinel for a prospector sized bag of flour, and a watermelon.

With Deflectors on Redline, penetrate the PG Vector stopping only for apricots and more life-killing standing in line at Ka-nob Hill Market.

Took the ostrich sulky down to The Shop.

New Project: The 18^th Century Laptop.

Specifically, either the travel desk of The Founding Fathers, or a contemporary laptop enclosure, don’t know which yet.

What I know is that I need practice in joining up slats to make cutting board sized parcels.

Why?

There are three good reasons:

1. the ancient geniuses did it
2. They did it because it was easier to saw small pieces from a great log than saw medium sized planks from a great log
3. They did it to use otherwise useless scrap pieces
4. It’s a good idea, structurally.

Number 4 is the teller – the larger the chunk of wood, the more it may bend, warp, wind, contract and otherwise distort.  But by building up larger planks from smaller pieces the extent to which any one piece will tend to distort the overall piece will diminish as one piece might contract to north while the other to south thus canceling out the ferk up.

Okay, okay, I made that up, but it seems reasonable, and I’ve still got Numbers 1 and 2 to fall back upon.

Und zo, having bounteous quantities of superb quality alder thanks to The Prof and Tom Long intercepted at the burn pile, I can begin my glue-up education.

Plane to a uniform thickness two suitable cast-off chunks, then slice them into 9/16”ish thick slats.

I’d like to tell you that my home-brew planer knife sharpening system (a block of wood cut to 45 degrees, a hone and some diamond files) adequately re-sharpened worn planer knives.  Yes, not only would I LIKE to tell you that, but I actually can.  The planer was hacking and grooving where no hacking and grooving was wanted, so I installed three knives I ‘sharpened’ me own self

Looking down into the action element of the planer, you can see one of the three double-edged knives, one that I’ve sharpened.

and By Isis! they shaved fine.

Plane the slats to remove saw marks, then choose three (two for employment and one for spare) the two flanking sides.  Groove these, then install the dado blade to notch the tenons of the spanning slats.

I am happily, as it turned out, interrupted.

There’s a bloke at the portal – what can I do for him?

Martine was captivated by The Shop, apparently was just driving by and stopped for a better look.  Do I have anything for sale?  I do, but only if you have money.

“How much do you want for the Library sign on the refrigerator?”

I channel Full-On Harvey.

“What do you think it is worth to you?”  Expecting that I’ll have to juice him up from a tenner to at least $15.

“Um, how about $40?”

The aluminum was still too hot to hold as I pocketed his two Jack from making Mach 12 off the fridge and into his hands. Couldn’t come at a better time.

Martine spends half an hour soaking in the man cave, trailed by his obviously intelligent 7 year old daughter Remy – and her Chihuahua Valentine which was a nice enough insect, not like the usual whacked-out nerve endings and spent its time in The Shop performing normal dog actions like rooting around, twisting on its leash and sniffing my crack – whose every sentence was: “Can I have that? Can I get this?  Can I have that?”  Are all 7 year old girls so acquisitive?  But maybe she was reflecting her father, and if so it will work to JohnsonArts benefit in the long run.

I give Martine my card, bid him case the website, then get rid of him.

Get back to slicing off the tenons to the spanning slats.

Now what?

It’s a complicated glue-up, complicated because the 8 or 9 slats must seat into the grooves of the two side flanking slats, yet must be butt-joined to each other.  I work it this way: apply the glue to the butt joints of the slats and loosely clamp

If wrestling is OUT of the Olympics and sand castle carving is IN – why not Three Dimensional Slat Glue-Up?

them.  Then put the glue to the two flanking slats in the groove and on the faces where the tenon shoulders meet it.  Loosen the clamps across the spanning slats to allow them to some movement then Clamp HARD across the two side slats to bring them into the tenon shoulders.  Once the two flanking sides are bone-crunching clamped, re-tighten the clamps across the spanning slats.  Joy.

It doesn’t look good. There’s far too much shred on the tenon shoulders and too much off-square gap where the lengths of the shoulders meet the flank.  I’ve GOT to get proficient in this technique, not just for project unplanned, but if I were ever to do another Jefferson’s Revolving Bookstand, this would be the method by which I’d form the bookstand angled leaves.

Amid this joy I meet the two mutts of the couple renting the Little Blue Cottage.  Untoward greetings as they escape the back porch.  Sub-Labrador sized, but embodying much of that noble breed, they’re pound pooches; rescued from the melt and know and show how grateful they are.  Many smoochies, many scratchings.  I name them Firpo and Poocho in spite of their Alpha Dog introducing one of them as …. don’t blame me if you ralph: Cody.  Mutts, what is more American?  You could have a Tuna Melt, or you could have a Hoagie.  The one meritorious in its narrow compass, the other emblematic of North to South Pole and everything between.  Mutts.

RIKEDAY –

On a WWII era C-47 in for a landing that turned into a troop train.  A troop train of memory.  Not mine, but the young men and women overseas fighting the war.  Whoever was on the train became them, shared their ignorance, glee, fear, loss and the unquenchable simplicity of a 20 year old grown into a man beyond his years.

First rike the knee allowed in a week, did the multi-hill program.

The multi-shop program followed.  Finish the Frame of Doom!

The Tung oil I used was fault, wouldn’t dry properly, so effaced it with nuclear radiation.  Put the two flame silhouettes into the grooves on the top, installed the screw eyes and hung it.  Waugh.  It looks pretty stupid, but then again, it reflects its contents.

Hurray!  Here’s UPS with $50 worth of screws from McFeeley’s.  But they’re not $50 worth of screws, they are $1000 worth of utility for what they help create.

Close up gawk at the edge chatter on one of the side-to-side slats. No Goodski.

Unclamped the glue-up of yesterslack and sanded it – Get a B+ for the side-to-side butt joints, but the Bulgarian Judge docks me a D- for the chatter on the shoulders of the tenons which show like barnacle on a ball gown.

What gets me is that the dado blade used to make the tenons, and that caused the chatter

hasn’t been used more than a dozen times.  A fix would be to hand saw a millimeter or two in at the shoulder and THEN turn to the dado blade.

HEATDAY –

Temps soared into the mid-70’s.

I soared into The Shop for Take #2 at slat glue-up.  It was the usual: plane the alder blanks for the butt-joint surface, slice off the slats then plane them to a uniform thickness – in this case just a snig over ½”, and then groove the two side slats to accept the tenons of the cross-slats.

To the left are the two side pieces, to the right the side-to-side slats, each on gently cut by the band saw at the tenon shoulder.

Here, I took my own advice from yesterslack: after cutting all the cross-slats to the same (nearly) length, I turned to the band saw where I set up stops and then using the mitre gauge slid each slat, both ends and both sides, into the blade so as to make a cut a few millimeters deep.

Then to the table saw where, once I adjusted the fence and offset so that the dado blade would cut to the band saw cut, snuck up on the height of the blade until the tenon cheeks were a tight fit into the side slats groove.

Glue-up was the usual needing three more hands than evolution has granted us, but the mess is in clamps now.  We shall see what we shall see.