Too much sun, way too much sun.

But that wasn’t the problem when the sun came up – The Glasswegan had arranged to meet me at The Castle, drop off the long-awaited Kohl penta-tryptych at 0830.

Here at JohnsonArts, 0830 means be ready at 0825.

In Glasswegan time, where the chronological arts are more fluid, it meant not at all.

I have a doctor’s appointment at 0930 and so I’m gone at 0910.

To my credit – and I credit my Spirit Guides Jonny Quest, Wile E. Coyote, and Jack The Ripper – I shrugged off the disrespect with a psychological meh rather than respond to my upbringing which would have been the full-bore Harvey grump, and worse.  For weeks…

I make Dr. Suh (her parents were cruel, her first name is …. Wait for it: Sue) in plenty of time and in the fullness of Blue Shield enjoy my consultation with the rheumatologist.

In the main, although my swollen joints (as contrasted with my anemic bank account) are no better, last week’s blood work shows no shocking abnormalities, save a slightly raised blood sugar, an utter lack of fluency in small talk about television programs, and a vitamin D deficiency.  The worst of my turnip fingers gets a local cortisone shot, which was exciting, and I am sent away with the second prescrip for methotrexate and a whopping non-OTC writ for lovely green vitamin D caps.  I’m given 3 months to get better, or else.

Knowing that med’s won’t be ready in the 9 minutes it will take to lurk to New Monterey, instead spurv out to Homely Depot.

Two days ago, The Prof assigned me a commission: hide some vital tools in plain sight.

Specifically, craft what would look like, to the uninspired thief, a surplus shipping container.  He even delivers the surplus plywood from which to make the crate, and some cash.

I figure, and The Prof agrees, that the ply box ought be bolstered on all edges by battens, just the way you’d see a crate.  And so, instead of spending half an hour casing the lumber piles hoping (and it would have been in vain) to find enough junk timber and then eating sawdust for two hours riving the junk down into 100 linear feet of 1 x 2”, the visit to HD.

No 1 x 2”s, but ample 1 x 3”s.  Close enough and cheap enough for 11 8 footers: $46.

Back to The Slacktle and an email from The Glasswegan – she had to go to her studio in Carmel and couldn’t make the 0830, sent me a text at 0800.

Again, to my credit, and Bugs Bunny Spirit Guide I didn’t e-bitch her out – and I’ve told her three times that I cannot and do not receive text messages – Can we reschedule?

The Prof Crate calls.

Two hours spent reducing the various sizes of ½” ply, some of it single surface to the six main box parts and one of the three internal partitions.  A job rendered insalubrious by the oppressive, unrelenting, gleaming sun; and made straightforward by the employment of the Festool circular saw and guide system.

Just as I get out from under the sun arrives The Glasswegan bearing the penta-tryptych.

I will leave it to the student whether the five side panes are …. Are …. HEY!  Her money looks good as it’s handed to me!

A beloved doggie gone to doggie heaven.

Most of the questions I have concerning the aesthetics of what I’m about to build are answered in my favor: alder (some of it deliciously ‘flawed’ with inclusions, knots and swirls) for the base and top, redwood for the verts.  My choice of light stain and tung oil finish.  No resolve on: What kind of feet, but I don’t need an answer on that today.

As to the Lithuanian Club hanging lamp, my demonstration pierced pane backed with brass brackets is not met with favor.   No matter, didn’t expect this job to pass muster, and arriving at a potential solution is most of the fun anyway.

It looks right, but it wasn’t.

Get rid of her and back to the Crate Fun, which is causing to come into being ¼” deep routs in the two ends and one side of the crate, and in the length-spanning internal partition.

I’ve done this sort of thing, in small, so many times, and every time wrong, I devote extra care to measuring 304 times to rout once.  The two ends on the router table, and the partition and the one side on the workbench using the Festool system.

Tomorslack, perhaps I can make a box and then get to the more interesting details.

If tomorslack there be…..

BE DAY –

And right glad for it I was, particularly to wake from two disturbing dreams.

1 – It’s an open book test on film, no, the test wasn’t given in celluloid, the subject was movies.  I have the reference book, I’m given the test, the blank sheets on which the test answers are to be written immediately turn into shredded tissue paper and while I’m hunting down tape my reference book disappears and I find myself 300 yards from my truck where I was taking the test with legs like lead running out of test time.

2 – I’m dunned 5 times the bridge toll, told I didn’t pay that last 5 trips, which was a filthy lie and then I’m running up the steep slope of the bridge pushing a garbage bin until I reach what looks like a beaver lodge which has to be climbed for me to reach the Boeing parking lot, I  wonder if anyone missed me, I hadn’t been showing up for work there even though I didn’t work there anymore and I cannot remember where my office is – it all looks like a shopping mall, or an industrial park and I wonder if this is how dementia feels?

Certainly felt demented taking the (insufficiently coffee-dosed) tachyon train to The Shop where most of the Borer Crate parts wanted assembly.  A short and a long side are nailed to the floor.  So Far, So Good; and then So Farther, Not So Good.

I still cannot fathom where I went wrong, but the dadoes for the box-spanning insert were offset from the dadoes in the box side by 0.5 cm.  I set both insert and box side to match centers, where did I go wangy?

Working the re-work for the partion insert.

Where I went next was an hour and half of re-work to form a new insert.  Hadn’t any more ½” thick ply 48” long and so had to use some ¾” which had the unfortunate effect of reducing the desired inside dimension of the spaces between the insert and the box sides down from 6 ¼” to 6”  The Client will not like this.  I didn’t like it either.

Less didn’t like was the assembly of the insert, the two partitions, then the second short end, and finally, the second long side.  HEY!  It’s starting to look like a manky crate!

The customer stops by to check progress, is now considering legal recourse to the missing ¼.”

CRATEDAY –

Mostly, but not without an hour spent roughing out the verticals for the Kohl Cenotaph.  And rough it was trying to remember how I formed the prototype verticals with the added frisson of wanting to minimize the show aspect.  Many head scratchings, but fortunately, no blind alleys.

Onward.  The Borer Crate.

Reversed the usual lift that bale, tote that barge to have some fun come first: edge band the upper edges of the ply partitions.  The long aspect with oak, the two shorter with cedar using an inset 45 into the oak.  FUN!

The crate base assembled and yearning for a companionable lid.

Now, back to shirk, I mean work, I mean more fun.  Surround the crate base with 1 x 3”, simple butt joints, Must …. Fight …. Urge …. To ….. 45 …..and so nothing here is simple.

Exhume out the long dis-used chop saw to lop the four lengths needed for the bottom of the crate base.  Today’s hero:  my brad driver/nail gun – could it  countersink through oak like it was Styrofoam?  It did.  Wonderful.

The base based, up-end it to do the same surround around the upper periphery.  Enough for one day.

I like having two jobs going at once.  Need more of the same.  Four at once?  Can do.

CRATEDAYMORE –

But before: provisioning.

My needs, simple.  A few flagons of brew, a roll or two into which to place a grilled sausage.  All this can be had within moments, tourist traffic permitting.  And it was and I wasn’t for a voyage lo these many miles out to The Dump, yet Dumpward I trekked.

A wealth of brackets, braces, dingus’es and hardware gee-gaws.

The Dump Slump is OVER.   Mounds of some guy’s decades of accumulated dreck: brackets, braces, cable, shrunken heads, nuclear detonators, pancake freshness testers, and ten lords a’leaping.

The only way things can be better is to make it back to the Slacktle alive.  So it was.

And to The Borer Crate we turn.

It all should have been just nail the thing together, so much for should have been.

The lid will, if I simply nail the parts together,  be 3 mm too narrow for the crate base.  Case the lumber yard for something, anything which in wood width will make up for the deficiency in my measuring and cutting.  Some poplar found and adrenaline levels return to Amped Up Tron.

The lid comes together badly and the schedule ruined as I need clamp the side pieces and so cannot lam on the top trim.  The Client will not be pleased.  I am not pleased.

At this delay, turn to the Kohl Cenotaph.  Measure out the 5 glass panes to be the sides of the piece, and make corresponding measurements for the lantern verticals.  Much remains as known unknowns, even with the prototype before me.

Who has more fun?

Me even, as I’m bugling the rhino’s home for feeding, up drives The Prof with Guinness and his latest turgid op/ed piece to be published in the Bakersfield Californian this Sunday.  You take home delivery, yes?

TOURDAY –

Always sleep unwell the night before a show at The Lab, how do real actors do it?

I’m outside of a starry night on the Singing Hills Deck wondering at the unusual sky.  There are two moons.  One a crescent well up the ecliptic, the other a glowing orb on the western horizon.  And then the orb begins to grow.  FUCK, it’s a hydrogen bomb detonation.  Cleveland?  Hustle everyone inside, including little Manglor, slam shut all the windows and move all concerned into the basement.  Figure it’s our best chance to survive the approaching shock wave.  It wasn’t.  I wake heaving.

I’d been bumped out of my usual 1030 slot by the Fabulous Susan Shillinglaw, whose presentation last year in The Lab was easily one of the Worst Five I’ve ever seen and I walked out on.  And remember, I used to work in Aerospace.

Bust of Ed Ricketts atop the piano in The Lab.

Maybe the shift toward the afternoon will be good for me.

It was fine.

Both the 1230 and the 2 PM tours were near the 15 person limit imposed by The City.  Although I had two people walk out and caught one woman looking at her watch, but both of these were during the non-Johnson, listening to recordings of the People That Knew Ed portion of the show.

As to the Johnson Full Slack Jacket portion of the program, I hit my marks, and receive the usual encomiums from both tour groups.

But I fear all of our Lab Guests are so accustomed to the monotonous, droning micro detail-excessive presentations at most historical properties where they would willingly leap into an active volcano just to put an end to the torment that they are expressing mere relief that today’s hour wasn’t as stupefyingly boring as being trapped inside the Museum of Flax during a blackout.  Although I did receive a nice complement from Robbie, who has more Ricketts in her pinky fingernail that I will ever know.

No, the kind of creative and constructive feedback I need is to do my shtick for an audience of expert Interpreters/presenters and/or Rickett’s experts.  Naked.

I am available for children’s parties, bar mitzvahs and executions.

CRATEDAY –

The parts are starting to come together, although likely not at the rate The Prof would like.

Saw most of what needed to be sawn, mostly.

Right out the freight elevator and put a coat of tung oil to the inside bottom.

Then, in order to make the lid fit without overbite on the base, had to shave 3/16” from the front of the lid.  Did most of the shaving with the Festool saw and guide, and then fine-tuned the junk with the sander.

The inside of the canoe needed thwarts.

But the lid is not complete.  I need two braces athwart the inside; these braces will physically connect the back of the lid to the front and the top, this will ensure that the hinge stress doesn’t embarrass us by tearing the lid apart.  It’s a pair of slats cut to fit and nailed in.

Rivets pre-riveted in the lid aspect of the hinge.

NOW, we can mount the hinge to the lid using blind rivets.  It looks a bit dodgy, but I’ve had complete success with blind rivets rather than screws.  The only worry is the trauma that would ensue should the lid be opened and thrown back, which could rip the hinge right off the thing.  I’ll install some kind of travel limit to prevent this.

The inside of the lid gets a coat of tung, and the bottom a second.

Cut and install the corner braces, and one front and back just in the center of the base.

Drilled the holes to mount the base side of the hinge to the base, but postponed assembly: still have the handles to form and since they will be screwed from the inside t’will be easier if the lid isn’t demanding attention.

A hazy picture emerges – a ragged crate!