You never knew the ugly, angry Harvey.  For which I’m glad.  He revisited last night – I’m all togged out in my WWII bomber crew lambskins and there’s a promenade  in the city.  He’s driving Barnaby, Georgia shotgun, me in the back making sure my shearling shines.  We pass by the Mechanics Hall in which the event is occurring, Harvey say’s it looks dark, must nothing be going on.  Going On?  We’ve driven this far just to drive past?  STOP.  He won’t .  Comes all vicious into the back seat, tells Georgia not to even think about jamming down the brake pedal as we hurdle through he darkness.

Aren’t you glad?

Glad I ixnayed slacking about and took the ion tube to The Shop for constructive slacking.

At Issue – In spite of urges, the Whirling Dervish is not quite finished.  The top cap needs …. something.  A something the Midnight Study Hall suggests.

Since there’s an exposed lag bolt head, why not link it to a spinning over top cap?

How?

The filthy washer was filed into a hex inside to fit the head of the lag bolt.

There’s the fun.

Could buy, cut down and weld to a plate a 1/2″ socket, but that would be too destructive.  Then it happened,

as it always does.  Find a washer that will fit inside the lag bolt countersink in the top cap, file it to fit the bolt head, then drill for screws which will attach same to the …. something destined to spin in concert with the lower dervishes.

Filing.  Fitting.  Funning.

Yet all is not sunshine, of which I am pleased to report has been scant here in the coastal province lo this month and more past..

The …. something is at issue.  What IS it, and how should it be structurally linked to the Whirling D?

The second question is more easy to answer than the first.

The …. something will be an equilateral triangle of bamboo.

How to affix it to the top cap is both easy and not so easy.

The easy part is use a 4” diameter lazy susan.

The not so easy answer is how.

There are two choices in screwing a lazy susan hold – screw first to one, then drill an access hole through the other to screw to the other.  Since I didn’t want an hole in the top spinner, I drilled though the top cap knowing full well the extreme tantric yoga screw driverposition Kidney Stone Monkey would be required.  It meant turning the entire thing upside down and so it was well the That Professor showed as he provide clutch technical assistance.  Kama Sutra #28 with a triple axel was required to get just the driver and screw into the top cap hole, then employing a small right-angle drive plus earnest mojo, the screws were driven.  All for a dingus I haven’t the physical space to own.

Distracting me from this quasi-success is The Professor who wants his 8 foot redwood plank angled so as to form a top cap on some fence he’s building to keep out of his Asilomar compound roving Gypsies.

Set the table saw for 15 degrees and when the fence is just right, he performs admirable duty as Auxiliary infeed/outfeed Man.

With this kind of achievement, can there be any other reward than busting open the Lag?

Here’s the Whirling Dervish graduation picture, and like many fresh graduates, it has no prospects for employment.

No.

PROVISIONDAY –

It’s the mid-week comestibles run – the usual Lennies Joss House & Texas BBQ for spicy opium, TJ’s for crystal lager, The Dump for almost buying ten lockers and only getting a nearly unused DeWalt tool bag (grab handles sheared off, but shoulder lash points intact) for the Harvey Almost Approved $5 I expected to pay.  Then the Marina Grocery Cheaplet (Worth the Drive) for Puffer Fish Liver of Opportunity ($1 Off, Must Go), Low Fat Splanchnic Mesoderm (Buy One, Get One Embryo Free!), and two gallons of free-range, organic Guff.  Only one more stop at Glob-Hill Market where the peaches are in, the prices are astronomical and the reward savings for Arne Saknussem’s purchases over the past 6 months are being sent to a fabricious street address in Waco.

More Real: the zesty scum chee, olives and grilled chicken plate, thence down the organ pipes to The Shop.

To the Box Joint Table, specifically, the table top.  Figure it for a sheet of ¾” ply edge banding in something.

Step One: cut out the ply to about 100 x 54 cm, in a try for square corners.  This size supposed best-fit for the space now underutilized under the wall-mounted knife collection and NCAA Negro Demagogue Display of Don’t Mind Your Culture is Broken Watch the Magic Victimhood Crystal Spawn Federal Spending Charm.

Step Two: groove the edges of the ply into which will fit a compensatory tongue on the something which will band the ply edges.  Step Two is simple – merely chuck the appropriate router bit into the DeWalt, make one pass, flip the ply, make another pass and bingo – centered groove.

Nothing here is easy, although I can report a 97.2% success.

Step Three: find an appropriately contrasting color wood with sufficient length and girth to circumferize the ply: about 350 cm of something about 7/8” in width, which allow for planing down to the ply thickness once the tongue is formed.

Happily, I either stole or was given some luscious red wood, which is likely the finest cherry I’ve ever had in my own two mitts, or it’s the Cub Stadium owners trying to spend their own half Bil hoping the cross street landlords who’ve erected bleachers on tenement roofs tall enough to peer into the ball park don’t sue, which was sufficient in all physical dimensions.

The Learning.  Better form the tongues on the router table than the table saw.  At least for this relatively narrow (2 cm x 2 cm) edge banding.

In this case, The Learning came too late.  Alas.

Onward.  Lammed out enough of the cherry to move to the hot poker up the nether regions portion of the program, which is to form the four strips  perfectly to length so that the 45’s at the four corners are Odin’s Own.

Ply table top with cherry edge banding in glue up.

Results: encouraging, but not exemplary.  In glue up, one of the shorter edge pieces slipped north leaving a ghastly 0.5 mm gap to the South.

I’ll keep trying.

DOGDAY –

Johnson’s Mutt Motel had reservations for two: Gnuuggies and Yutzski.  Gnugg arrived 0800, it’s main pack off to Reno for the weekend.  Yutz was expected anytime after the rike, the anticipation of a co-mingling of two noble dogs I savored much.

But my aim was too high – my hopes for Dual Doggies were dashed.  Doggle did show, but expressed antipathy verging on the anxiously, aggressively annoyed such that her caretakers took her away.  I hadn’t seen that in her ever before.

Well, one dog’s better than none..

Gnuggies taught me the value of rolling around in the grass.

As the One Dog Day ebbs – To Where Goes Time? – there comes, as I’m minding my own beersness, a timid rap to the castle gates.

It’s Brooke, a blond waif likely 10 years younger and a foot shorter than I with a plaintive story.  Unless she finds some, any means to cut the wires surrounding her tomato plants, the crimson fruits are doomed.  Wirecutters have failed, she’s at last gasp, can I help?  I can, but for a price.  From the back 40 of The Truck I bring forth the mighty Bolt Cutters, Shearer of Hardened Steel Lock Shanks, Emasculator of One Ton Bulls, The Can Opener of Choice to Extricate an Impounded Vehicle from Fence-bound Lots.  It does the duty, sometimes size matters.  In price, I am promised a selection from such bounteous harvest as escapes the town raccoon mob.

Fair Dinkum.

DOGDAYII –

It’s not until Wildman parks in the outdoor lot at the London arcade that I realize I’ve left my wallet and credentials back at … at wherever it was we’ve been staying in the London ‘burbs.  This is embarrassing.  Worse to come, as we jostle the crowd walking up the two flights of concrete steps, such as you’d find at a parking garage, I lose Wildman in the throng.  I run this way, I dash that way, can’t find him.  Swell.  No money, can’t remember where we’re staying and I wandering this seemingly endless concatenation of bars, amusement parlors, theatres, all like what I’d image Coney Island was like 80 years ago.  Nothing for it but to return to the car and wait.  And then I can’t trace my steps.  Nothing looks familiar, I can’t find a recognizable landmark.  In desperation, I ask a traffic matron for help, she say’s she’ll call in the helicopter.

It’s what I get for sleeping in.

It’s walking out with Gnuugies next, need to clear my head.  Gnuugies obviously hasn’t had much in the way of leash training, either that or her pack walk her at a trot.

After luncheon in the Solarium, I jetpack down to The Shop.

Remove the clamps from the edge banding on the Box Joint table top.  It’s shaping up to be real flotsam.  In places the edge banding stands proud of the ply surface, in others, flush.  The one 45 has a 0.8mm gap, and there are significant blemishes in the surface of the ply and there’s a sliver of surface rived off in the middle of one of the long edges.

That the top can now be classified as a Superfund Site opens up new possibilities in SLACK.  Since the project won’t be MOMA qualified, I can take liberties with the legs.

Specifically, drag the compost pile for dreck lumber, which I do and come up with some surly characters which I rough out to 95 cm length by about 4 cm cross section.  Seven of them just a notch above firewood.

These I plane these down to about 3.5 cm square.

The next trick is to skarve out of the top of each leg enough so that the alder skirt will sit flush on the leg.  It’s a whack with the table saw to make the shoulder cuts, and a slice on the bandsaw to remove the dross.  Badly, as it turned out because somehow, I didn’t feed the dross cut straight, which necessitated aggressive belt sander remediation.  After prelim sanding of the legs they’re ready for The Future.

The Present: punch pocket holes into the alder skirt corners, then glue up the four corners.  It should have gone easier than it did.  The pocket holes are fine.  Had the table top been real wood, a glue up of planks, I wouldn’t have considered pocket holes.  Rather, the traditional method is to cut slots in the skirt into which is inserted one end of a sort of rude Z shape bracket the other end of which is screwed up into the underside of the table top.  This allows for table top expansion and contraction.  But this tabletop is ply and so didn’t think it needed allowance for movement.

Box Joint Table skirt corners in glue up.

The box joint glue ups revealed significant inconsanguinuities between the mating parts.  When will I ever do good?  I dddooooonnn’tt knnoooowww….

DOGDAYIII –

Gnuuugies let me sleep in until 0614!  It’s nice to get up in the middle of the night.

I will never, ever again use ply with the top layer only 1/64th’s of an inch thick.

It’s also nice to find that the Box Joint Table Top isn’t as irredeemably ruined as I thought.  Redeemably ruined certainly, but not irredeemably.  With some deft hand planing of the edge trim and some earnest sanding out (most of) the gou

ges, pits, slashes and demerits not even seen until taken into the sunlight (sort of sunlight

given our glorious gloom) the top isn’t complete wreckage.  Just mostly.

Anyway, move to the skirt corners which were unclamped and wood putty applied where necessary.  Krenov, Forgive Me.

Decision Point: the naked end grain on either side of the box joint skirt corners – what to do?  Nothing, or something.  Something was agreed upon .

Tried for a round off on the router table, but without heroic preparations, this would result in chip out and besides, my largest round over bit is only a 7/8” radius, too small by half for the 1.7 cm thickness of the skirt corners.  So it was retire to the belt sander to hand round over the edges.  Modest success and minimal clean up hand sanding required.

Now – the skirt can be assembled.  Instead of relying on a drawn line to set the 6 cm inset of the cherry sides, cut two ‘memory sticks,’ one for each of the two lengths of the box joint corners, then glued and screwed.

Box Joint Table skirt – the learning here is that the cherry slats that connect the four corners are only stylistically necessary….

Enough to this day as I received this email of the morning from Slackman:

“I’ll head up to your place today, late afternoon arrival. Hao bu hao?”

Must provision, wonder what he’s going to drink….

SLACKDAY –

Slackman arrived late the night before, I’d already quaffed all his beer and was now working on my own.  Unfortunately, he discovered the Secret Bar and my scotch, and so all was well until this morning when we lurked out into the early gloom for provisions.

This done and once sufficient coffee was bathed in, we planned the day: slack, slack, bike shop, slack, grilling.

We boodle off to Bay Bikes on Washington and Pearl.  The buildings date from about 1930 and they supplant a venerable structure built in the 1860’s which was the Washington Hotel, ramshackle in this view, likely taken in the late 1800’s.

The Washington Hotel, circa 1880.

Slackman’s on the hunt for some esoteric bike tyre, which he can acquire in LA, but not online, and so I know its just an excuse to glom bike gear.  I glom some G2 on state of the art and am happy to report that I suffer no sticker shock at the 2.8 lb carbon fibre wheels: $2200.  And no that’s not a six-pack, that’s each.

I suggest a stroll up and down what was once the side street of the Spanish pueblo and keen-eyed LA-man notices the Crown and Anchor.  Why not notice it more closely.

Green Flash on tap, no discount for banter, no free bar towel for jokes.  I barter my left-brain lobe to cover the tab.

Slackward.  It’s been a busy day.  It got busier as The Professor shows to collect Gnuuggies and drop off a couple of hog’s head of Guinness.

SLACKDAY II –

First off: Rike.  A 50-minute job out Lighthouse, then a U-turn and back along the otter molestation trail.

Recovery requires hours, then we verge out – Slackman needs (wants) an oversized pastry press.  Or at least sized sufficient for meat pies, like English pasties.

Stone Creek Kitchens – Nope

William Sonoma – Almost

Target – Please…

Guong Quoi Asian Market – I’m not sure why we went there…

Costco – Right, but I got much needed feta and kalamata olives

After this exhausting run, there’s nothing but SLACK and grilling.  Slackman’s funny.  He devotes the next two hours to glomming the hundreds of pastry presses in all their incarnations in all their availability ranging in price from $0.99 to the $5000 pizza dough press and I don’t think he closed the deal on anything.

I’m just the opposite.  I invest 94% of my emotional capital just deciding IF I’m going to buy something and then when I do opt to drop, a few minutes price comparison and I hit BUY.

SLACKDAY III –

Rike accomplished, we boodle out to The Dump where I score five tiny aluminum cups which will perfectly serve should I build another Travel Bar and an amber traffic light lens.  Grocery Cheaplet as I need chicken titties, Slackman needs nothing.  We both achieve Mission Over Accomplishment.

Homeslack for grilling, sardont observations, and swilling.

BACKDAY –

We both field some recruiters and then he has to depart south.

Depression sets in.

I hate goodbyes.

TABLEDAY –

The parts are prepared, what’s not prepared is me looking at just what junk I’ve created.

I try to ignore all the flaws.

Three of four legs installed on the Box Joint Table (Jetsam).

I fail.

I FAIL in seven ways a table ought not to be built, three of them entirely new to science.

The thing’s a mess, I’ve never done worse.

It’s one of those days.

I’ll roll with it.

LABDAY –

I’ve two shows at The Lab, the 1030 and the 1230.  And so naturally I’ve spent the past few days in a dither all fretful about my performance.  I suppose consummate actors are so well prepared that they don’t experience this degree of duck feet, but then again, if you’re on stage night after night, week after week, you fall into the thing; unlike these once a month or once every two or three month gigs.  Except for the feeling, but then again, a good actor is separate from his part.  No?

I took the Columbia (not really so) portable Christ this thing is both the size and the weight of a VW engine phonograph and started each show with some 1915 Enrico Caruso.  Not what Ed would have listened to, he was an Early Music, Bach and before guy, but I didn’t have any Palestrina, so what the hell…..

Pacific Biological Laboratory – the Grande Salon.

The crowds were SRO for both shows, most of them seemingly pleased, only saw one yawn.  Ruined the thing for one woman who buttonholes me ex post facto.  She leavens her praise with one suggestion, could I not use the word ‘whorehouse’ and instead employ one of the usual raft of euphemisms.

I understood.  She believes, and not without cause, that the term whore demonizes the woman and not both parties.

If I was told by the City not to use certain words, I wouldn’t use them.  It’s not me there giving the tours, it’s the City.  But unless and until I’m given a set of proscribed terms, I’ll say whatever the fuck I want to say.

To The Castle of Slackness.

Pull the Box Joint Table off the workbench and it stands on its own hind legs.

Get two coats of urethane on the horror before The Professor shows with some redwood planks all of which need symmetrical bevel cut.  They’ll form the top cap of a fence.  Jolly good fun, especially the 16 footer, but we got ‘er done.

We retire with a case of Guinness to the Girl’s Dormitory where we regale them with our tales of daring don’t.