PHENOMINALDAY –

No, I didn’t get laid.  Not That phenomenal.

Didn’t land a job, ski, or dive.

But almost as good – we’ll call it Goodday.

I’m up early enough to field a phone call from the Glaswegan.  You remember, the Carmel glass artist who ostensibly engaged me to make a lantern, bounced a check on me, and then was heard from not for six weeks.

This morning she’s all hot to see the Kohl Cenotaph prototype, consult on another possible job, and hand me two hundred fifty cash money.

This is done.  The prototype meets her approval.  Can I thin down the parts?  Sure.

I talk her away from using exotic wood mostly on the strength that wood parts are to be secondary to the memorial pictures encased in the six glass panes; and so drive her toward more prosaic wood – redwood and alder – of which I have plenteous amounts.

Nary a surface plain in brass with griffon heads and a shield boss below.

As to the other possible gig, can I think of a way to mount glass panes on what must be the ugliest hanging lamp I’ve seen since the DuBois Lithuanian Club redecorated during the Kennedy Administration.  So kitsch it becomes attractive.

And no, I cannot.  At the moment, but I’ll think of something.

Get rid of her, fondle the cash, and up drives Mr. James Muncie, author of the recently new front drawbridge.  He’s here to put sealant on the grain ends of the redwood, and meet the City building inspector.

Inspector arrives, pulls out his tape measure, determines that the steel hand rail is 3 inches too low, but all else seems to meet code.  Jim agrees to shift the handrail toward Polaris and can the inspector swing by in a few hours?

He can, and does, and signs off on the job.  Now we can remove the garish handrail.

Amid this excitement UPS delivers part of my Amazon order, the vital part being a new motherboard for the moribund desktop computer.

The former mom board excised and we hope for boot.

We do not know that swapping out motherboards will return the desktop to life.

It is a $20 (free two-day shipping on my 30 day free test drive of Amazon Prime) gamble.  If the new momboard does restore the desktop to life – which it did two and a half years ago – I will have spent a Jackson to NOT spend five Franks.

Out with the old, in with the new.  Connect, turn on and …..it boots.

Odin Be Praised.

All the while my economic lifeline, Capstone Turbine, shoots up another seven cents a share.  It’s up nearly thirty cents in two weeks since their lackluster earnings call.  Good School.

And as if life couldn’t get any better, up the drag strip drives The Wildman.  He looks great, has dropped weight for the right reasons, and has come just to see if I’m okay.

I’m okay.  You?

THUNDERDAY –

Except that the forecast forgot to mention it was Possible Thunderstorms (Light).  I expected the day’s duty to be conducted under a drenching rain.  No.  Oppressive, malignant, relentless blue skies.  We enjoyed a minor earthquake about 1230, though…

Duty?

I had agreed to shift the Lovely Kelly’s former television set out to The Dump – I was going there for the weekly case anyway.  What’s a few minutes chuckling a little TV out of her aerie and into the truck?

Get to her place – third floor where the telephone booth sized elevators typically do not function – to find the surplus cathode ray tube out on the deck.

Filling the deck.  Causing the deck to sag.  Affecting the moon’s orbit due to its mass.

It is the size of a small Texas county and made from anvils during the pre-Olympian days before Zeus defeated The Titans.

Fortunately, her familiar Chip was on hand to help, meaning horse the edifice off the deck, through her salon and out to the main passageway while Marlon Perkins was having cocktails back at camp getting a double foot-job from Jim’s twin grand-daughters.

We lash the M1 tank engine to a wheeled cart and miraculously find one of the building elevators operative; this in spite of a placard on the door of the elevator that read “OUT OF SERVICE.”

And that was the EASY Part.

No Egyptian coolies were available to help trundle the mass out the building and to my truck.  Nor were there any dead-lift weight-lifters near to hand to elevate the thing the 32.7 inches up into the back of the truck.

It was a two-man dead lift, actually not bad, provided that no kryptonite was nearby.

Likely all of you sensed, just about 1800 GMT, the noticeable wobble in the Earth’s revolution as we shifted the mass the 14 miles to The Dump.

We thought we were bringing the Biggest TV Ever Recycled.  No.  There were others on the lot the size of a VW van.

We engage, at The Dump, Hercules the Yard Man and his loader.  He raises the forks enough so that all Chip and I had to do was summon our chi and then slide the TV out the back of the truck and onto the forks.

No (serious) spinal injury.  We were free to look over the joint.  The Toxic Table does not disappoint – a near quart of Zar Wipe-On Tung Oil and quarter of a can of shellac.

Next: Grocery Cheaplet for half-price Korean Massage and cheeses of opportunity.  The Heifetz Pickles are Back On!

One more stop at Ka-Nob Hill Market for price gouging on fruit, and world-class waiting in line while all the other checkers were shooting craps out back.

Dumped Chip off back to Kelly’s flop, then flapped to the Castle, and then opened The Shop.

Could start the Kohl Cenotaph as I do not need the five side glass pieces to form the five verticals, and maybe I should as I spent part of half the fee today on beer and pickles.

But no, I’ll spit on last week’s earnest but flawed box joint effort, and instead waste two hours trying to make a respectable box from the cobbled together slat job to two weeks before.  It’s not square, and so efforts to insert a floor were wasted.  After two FAILS cut a thin ply slab slightly over dimension, nailed it on, and then sanded the hulk flat to the sides.

Hurting only due to the over-much brass rod packaging.

It’s almost Relaxation Time and so ease into the pre-weekend by opening the day’s deliveries from Amazon: a set up square, an Incra protractor and 10 1/8″ brass rods.

The set up square will be useful in lining up 90 angled case and box frames, the protractor seems to be important since I seem to be doing more off-45 joints, and I’m almost out of brass rod of the 1/8″ variety.

Form a workbench back nest for the set up square, then pack it up the space tether to The Penthouse where grilling and raindancing are unconfined.

And now, to important matters twofold.

One – Now that I’ve had a few days to inspect Amazon Prime – and there’s no slip on their 2-day free delivery – I’ve found the catch in Amazon’s streaming video lure: Only a fraction of the titles are available for streaming.  Sure, you can watch any of 40,000 titles, for a price.  Out of the two dozen I put on my ‘watch list’ four are available for streaming.

Two – Sandwiches here at Castle Slackton are in retrograde.  I’ve been a sandwich man ere since Nana started broiling the bologna, but lately, it’s wraps.

A bit of meat, some onions and a LOT of cheese goes a long way to satisfy the Sandwich … Nay Wrap Man.

Don’t just take my word for it, come round; I’ll sport you a round.

RAINDAY –

Didn’t even HAVE to wash the truck to bring in the showers, and could switch off the computer generated rain sounds.

F ugly box joint hiding with the application of corner trim. Say Nothing.

Nowhere to go all morning (life) but The Shop where instead of heaping the Box Joint Box onto the rain god propitiation pyre, resolved for damage-control.  It won’t make the Guggenheim, but if I tart it up enough, I’ll be less ashamed to look at it.

Figure to corner trim to hide the insufficient box joints, an overlapping lid matched to the corner edge trim and a sort of baseboard to hide where I’ll nail in the floor.  Then, I’ll build another box just slightly larger in which to hide this one.

All of the trim, floor and lid surplus from efforts past so that Scrooge doesn’t have to open the purse.

Since the corner trim dimensions dictated the extent of the lid overlap, cut them first, then fitted a floor from 3/8″ ply, nearly almost well-fit (except for that crack – no peekie).

Nail, hand nail in this case as I didn’t want any errant brads fragging through the floor or the 1/4″ sides of the box.

Shown is the extra non-box joint intended to allow a cut without interupting the 1/4 inch pattern. Need not have allows this much. We learn….

Then separated the ‘lid’ from the ‘base’ of the box.  The excessive stutter step of the box joints allowed me to retain the 1/4″ insie-outsie pattern.

Setting aside the base, and using the corner trim as markers laid out the cut for the lid from 1/4″ ply.

Marked on the cut lid the outlines of the lid, then pre-drilled the nail holes.  Hand nailed it to, then glued and band-clamped the corner trim.

Gripping stuff, eh?

Had just enough shop mojo left in me to mitre the baseboards and glue them to the bottom of the box.  And just in time as The Prof arrives for Beverage Inspection and All Is Found Well.

This won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t seen the face of a name he wanted to remember staring back at him from his mind but cannot recall for days, and could look it up but doesn’t: Jacques Offenbach.

GLUEDAY –

Continued to compound a felony by finessing the box joint box.

Crime One: apply the edge trim to the box base corners, let dry.

Crime Two: Form L-shaped trim for the top of the box, L-shaped because the upper aspect will cover the nail heads that join the ply top to the ply sides, and the hang-over bit will cloak the ply edge of the top.

Crime Two Point Five: spending an hour FAILING at making the trim on the router table.  Insufferable chipout along the inside show edges.  Not sneaking up enough?  Dull router blade?  Speed too fast/slow?  I Dooonnn’tt Knnnoowww.

It was a job that took two passes and ten minutes on the table saw.

Once the trim was shaped, could exhaust myself sneaking up on the (near) perfect 45 degree, got to use my new Incra protractor too!

All this for a box that will end up holding three years of bills, receipts, and mail and will one day be tossed into a dumpster by my will’s executor.  But not really, it’s good, honest joinery practice.  And I need a LOT more.

NOHOPEDAY –

The Fugly Box: Muerto.

Crack bad

When I glued up the inside top trim yesterslack, I must have had too few bong hits as I glued the trim not to itself, which was the idea and the conception, but to the box sides and this resulted in a 2 mm gap in one of the joints.  I saw the gap.  I knew the gap was there and still I glued the trim to the box.

And so today there was to be no new lid, just clap the existing trash to the wreckage and toss it into the rutabaga cellar.

What now ought man to do?

I do not know what he ought to do, but I resolved to drag the dovetail jig out of the mangel-wurzel pit and get in some more practice.

It was left, lo these many moons ago, set to frag half-blind dovetails in ½” stock, although I had removed the dovetail blade to play with the Milescraft inlay jig.  Happily, before I removed the bit, I noted its height – 1.42 cm – out the router base and so this was reset.

Lammed out some ½” thick redwood and set to the jig.

In spite of being set, in spite of nobody jiggering with it down the pit, the tail and pin fit was off.

What ensued was the usual Solve The Equation With Two Unknowns Kabuki: lower the bit, raise the bit, move the fence back, move the fence forward.

Result: two of the four test joints were perfectly fine, two were not.

WHAT!  How can there be this variability?  There’s something amiss with the operator’s technique.

Tomorrow: keep trying.

TRYDAY –

A minor earthquake occurred at 4:53:19 AM (PST) on Saturday, March 8, 2014.
The magnitude 3.4 event occurred 11 km (7 miles) NNW of Point Sur, CA.
The hypocentral depth is 4 km ( 2 miles).

I hate earthquakes in the morning.

More prelim pre-work on the Kohl Cenotaph, if Kohl Cenotaph there be … found some beneficial alder in the two sizes I want for the top and bottom of the cenotaph.

Also found that my planer knives were dull, and this in only six weeks of use.

I’d like to tell you that the boys in the shop work two shifts a day eight days a week, but I cannot because they don’t.

Wildman never seems to replace his knives and he works exclusively in hardwoods.  Almost daily.

I can only assume that storing the planer on the Slack Deck where it is, save for the cover, exposed to the salt-laden zephyrs is the root cause of my knife degradation.

No more dovetail joint degradation.  Cut out more fir to make a second box (drawer wannabe), and the fit was better than that of yesterslack.  I may not be in complete harmony with the dovetail jig yet, but at least I’m singing in the same meter.

Even Mr.Christman was impressed, said he might recommend me for graduation from the Seventh Grade shop class up into the Seventh and a Half Grade.

Excelsior.

Okay, okay, they win the Ugly Baby Contest, but the joints, the joints, Man, they are righteous.