Johnson pArts

The mob fingered me through Vargas, my partner. They’d put the squeeze on him, threatened his wife and kids. Didn’t blame him. Now they know where to find me. I’m ready for the mechanic. Noise at the door. Pump a slug through it but it was only Vincenzo, the delivery guy with my tandoori chicken. Then suddenly, there’s a guy here. I run him through the room to the balcony and over. He grabs for the rail and hangs on like sweat-soaked starched shirts, but I pump two rounds into his head. He drops. Hope he doesn’t die til he hits the ‘crete 50 feet down. And now I’m up on Murder One. DA says it was only an unarmed insurance peddler named Threadneedle. I say different.

As I’m taking out (forklift) the recycling, across the street stands a fellow staring up at the final approach of one of the commuter flights, just like I do. Turns out Solly Sullivan is a pilot, from the Skagit Valley, had his own Beechcraft Bonanza and is a good soul.

Shopward.

Inspired by one of the Johnson Family Artifacts sent me by my sister, I resolve it shall have a case.

It’s a small, wooden, turned pencil case – about 5 ½ inches long and ¾” in diameter.

How small a case can I make for it and how thin can get the materials?

Dunno, let’s find out.

I think it is a pencil case, what say you?

Here’s some fir left from the Half Metal Jacket Cabinet. After joint planing the two outside long edges, rip a kerf sufficient for the glass, then run off 1.4 cm widths on the bandsaw.

Except the bandsaw is today not my friend. The cut veers off true. Replace the bandsaw blade. That wasn’t the problem. Tighten up the bandsaw blade guides, this seems to help. Gremlins?

But I’m ahead of the design story. Figured to start with the four sides of the case – each something like a tiny window – the long sides about 20 x 8 cm, the short sides 8 cm square. Once each of the four sides is formed with the frame containing a piece of glass, I’ll 45 the meet edges and here will be the nexus of the display case.

Run out 12 8’s and 4 20’s before I pack up the Half Metal Jacket Cabinet, and props prior to my 3PM studio rental.

Asilomar. The light is right. The Prof is helpful. The glam photos got.

We retire to his garage for Guinness, then his West portico for cedar smells and doggie scratchin’s.

There’s a growl from the beach, why it’s Curtis on his Kawi. We enjoy the late afternoon, with brews discussing single malts and not plotting rebellion.

RUNDAY –

To Salinas, and not on shank’s mare either.

I’m to be married at 1 this day, which is three hours from now which is good as it’ll take me a least a half an hour to remember how to tie a bow tie. Into the Lithuanian Hall come members of the bride’s contingent who ignore me and complement the venue. Should I feel miffed? Then Harvey gets upon the stage and announces that he’ll sport for the first five rounds and my future father-in-law can host the next five. This is wrong. Harvey is dead. I get with Vaughn and ask him if he doesn’t think it a bit odd that our father, our dead father, is attending the wedding. Vaughn says to keep it under my hat, we’ll convene later to sort it all out. Good advice, I guess and finally a few wedding guest arrive to congratulate me – some distant cousins who have – bless their souls – adopted and kept in their household a brace of seriously retarded forever children.

Unfortunately, the guy for whom I assembled the Illustra desk two weeks ago actually DID call me to reschedule the fix on his desk drawers. So it was slog out 68 for the fourth time in two weeks.

Happily, the fix was as simple as replacing the 12 round head screws with flat heads. Done in 10 minutes. I never have to go there again.

OIGDAY –

But to Salinas, again I WILL have to go.

Yesterslack, the band saw blade wandered in riving some thin fir. What? The saw should slash through fir like an Evolutionary Biologist through a Christian Fundamentalist.

In past, this has been due to a dull blade, and it has been quite some time since there was a fresh slicer, so I swapped to a new one.

This day, in cutting poplar, another not-that-dense wood, the cuts were burned. WHA!!!

The lower bandsaw thrust bearing assembly bearing the now defunct bearing.

It is possible that I got a dull, new blade, but less likely than, say, the lateral guides being too tight, or worse, a failed thrust bearing.

Loosened the guides. No change. Upper thrust bearing spins freely. The lower thrust bearing was as tight as a crocodile’s chomp on a hog leg.

Arrrr.

Call Harbor (Damaged) Freight to sniff out replacement bearing potential. Result: model is discontinued and so no technical or parts specs are available.

Figures.

Zoom in to Grainger.com, but there’s no citation on their site for a “CHL Z909” or, if read the other way, “CHL 606Z.”

I’ve come to depend upon this $150 8-year-old Harbor (Damaged) Freight tool so much that now that it’s down feel like I’m walking around the mall without trousers, only one shoe on and contact lenses in the wrong eyes.

I’ll have to physically visit the Salinas Grainger outlet and hope that their Vice President for Bearings has 10 minutes out of his schedule to help me find a compatible part.

Soldier on knocking out base part for the Pencil Case Case.

Opted not to go with the fir I’d formed the other day, but fall back on proven case construction techniques, which in this case is to rabbet the upper edges of the case base in which will nest the ply floor and glass sides – thereby eliminating a seam, then ram out the 45’s, then notch the inside corners of the 45’s for the four corner tenons.

Will likely employ the same method for the case top, and am undecided on how to access the case insides once the thing is built. Maybe the fourth side of the top will be epoxied to the glass and have the glass and fourth side slide. Dunno.

Know: Have to visit Grainger in Salinas for some bearings.

PROVISIONDAY –

First: collect the Psychological Support Canine from The Professor, as much for me as for The Lovely Kelly, who I dragooned into going with me on the party procurement run in hopes our menu might be a tad more broad than vulture fritters and wombat chitlin’s.

Collecting Gnuuggies was easy, the Prof dropped her at The Castle.

The next part was less easy: getting a slot at Circle K for petrol. They ain’t even givin’ it away.

Once done, I’m 15 minutes early to collect Kelly. She’s not ready, but in 14 minutes she is. And Gnuuggies was just the right furry creature for just the right support; we didn’t even have to stop at 7-11 for a double frappe loupy soupy coconut latte …. Although now that I write that, I want one …

In the oppressively bright sunlight streaming down through the depressingly rain-free azure jet contrail streaked sky we motor to Grainger in the hopes, well, one of us hoped, that some band saw bearings could be got.

Hopes dashed, but the helpful expert at Grainger suggested Applied Industrial Technologies just round the corner.

Miguel was right out of the CHL 606Z and so was the warehouse, but he vowed to order me four. Sometimes, a promise is a good as a deed.

Onward to Watsonville and the meet with Rossi. Meeting was met and he seemed to like Kelly and she him. He’s 72, looks 57, but he’s never been his age.

Now, for the Main Event: Grocery Cheaplet for party goods. Goods got, but not all. Why no gin but six kinds of (Newark Chemical? Birmingham Plating? Tulsa Embalming Supply?) vodka?. Guess we know what the economical tippler in Marina prefers.

And then, A Miracle Happened.

Kelly let on that she’s about to buy a ‘new’ (new to her) car as her current steed – a Kia or Chia or some really Off Brand from Tuva – is on its last miles. The timing chain needs replaced and there is, according to her, no replacement short of being hand-forged by Tuvan blacksmiths.

Years ago, I lent her a third the cost of the car without much ever expecting repayment. But today, and going forward, $500 bucks looms large in my need state.

I was somewhat unwilling to broach the topic, didn’t want to upset her or put a strain on her finances, but eventually chimed in, “Well, what happens to the 1/3 of the car I own?”

“That’s RIGHT, you DID loan me $500 …. I can give that to you today. Would you like cash?”

PARTYDAY –

Writing about parties is like describing a meal. I can paint a word picture, but it’s missing the most important parts – the smell, the taste, the feel and that satisfied comfort down the gullet. So I don’t.

The most notable event was the blind kim chi tasting. I had on hand three different vats of festering cabbage and six experienced, stalwart judges stepped to the fore.

Duodenum Destroyer it IS by half a furlong!

As the Tasting Statistician, I recused myself from the actual event, in which each judge tasted the three noxious (but festively colored) poisons and ranked each with a score of 3: Excellent; 2: S’allrat; 1: Meh. And a Zero Score was allowed.

The results are shown on the right, and they surprised me. I expected Gut Gripper, the hand-made product from Wildman’s Korean wife, to sweep the field, but no. Colon Clencher is the best available I’ve found here out of one of the half dozen Asian Markets in Marina, and Duodenum Destroyer, The Dark Horse, from Out Of Nowhere (well, actually, Huntington Park in LA) easily took the Palme d’Or.

And so did Nana’s Split Second cookies.

JOBDAY –

It doesn’t look menacing, does it?

I do not know why I accepted this assembly. Yet another Office Max desk with overglowering hutch, and a separate bookcase, in Santa Cruz. Even with the twenty bucks consideration for gas, it’s still a 90 mile round trip to put together a desk I know is a bitch.

924 King Street is a 1920’s era faux adobe containing Grandma, a very shy rescue pooch and a blond pixie, cute as Tinkerbell, ever curious and wanting to watch, which is a good thing. Until it leads to paddy fingers….

The Chamber of Assembly …. and injury.

The chamber in which the desk is to reside is, happily almost empty and large enough to spot a VW bug.

Just about everything that went right with the job was me NOT following the instructions, except for the trauma.

As I’ve noted in prior posts, there’s a million dollars of engineering that goes into this type of low-cost, particle board, helpy-selfy DIY furniture.

Make the furniture from parts which can be packed in as small a volume as possible
Minimize exposed fasteners – no one wants to be distracted by annoying screw heads when you’re deep into fantasy football or porn downloads
Employ the maximum numbers of different types of screws so as to confute the assembler.

Advancing to the desk base and getting it together provides a waist-high work platform.

It is due to #2, above, that the assembly sequence is as difficult as it is and the reason why I skipped ahead to Step 19 (of 68) to assemble FIRST the base of the desk. Once a base or bases (wings for drawers or side cabinet), I can get off my knees to assemble that overglowering hutch in a standing position. As many of you can attest, it’s the Down On The Knees, Get Up From The Knees, Get Back Down On The Knees, Get Up From The Knees that denervates the workperson.

But there is no getting around the chief misery of the Office Max Desk. Instead of finding a creative way to minimize those annoying screw heads and allow the Helper-Selfer to build the desk base, put the desktop on the base, and THEN build the hutch atop, the wizards at the Office Max Design Labs compel one to assemble the hutch, Attach It To The Desk Top and then and only then, call in the crane to lift the hutch/desktop up onto the desk base.

In an inspired, but doomed attempt to avoid confuting gravity, laid the desk base and hutch/desktop on their backs, introduced the 24 dowels and cam lock posts men to their appropriate femmes, and encouraged both major, room-filling parts together like tying to merge tectonic plates. It might have worked had I four 6 foot long pipe clamps to hand to convince the two tectonic plates to meet, but I didn’t.

Back to Plan Hell – set upright the desk bases and then levitate the superstructure. Right.

Could not get the crane into the Chamber and thus, in trying to levitate the desktop/hutch superassembly ripped every tendon and ligament in my left shoulder except the one connected to my right eye lid. The crickly-crackly sound when your scrapper meets the quarter-inch of ice on the windshield of your Range Rover combined with the snap-crackle of when you’ve hacked and sawn enough through that the oak and you’re running from the fall line as it starts to topple.

Down to 1.28 arms.

Had to enlist Grandma, who forgot her truss back at the Green Bay Packer’s Locker Room, to help me lift the hutch/desktop edifice three feet into the air and drop it like a meteor onto the desk base(s).

At this juncture, I get an audience of Grandma, Tinkerbell and what I take to be her father, who looks like Jerry Garcia’s dropped out of college yearbook picture. And it was well that I did have witnesses to what next transpired.

Learning from my early mistakes in not properly organizing the assembly parts, I’ve taken to muffin pans and stainless steel San Quentin meal trays in which to organize the parts. As I remove each type of screw, cam lock fastener, buffalo sinew, or nail from its number-labeled sack (when the number label hasn’t already been lost – the dowels, hinges, pulls, drawer slides, puffer fish, and drawer assembly hardware are so singular that they need no such categorization), I pour each one into one of the bivvies and with a marker write the number of that part on the tray. This works better than scattering them out in a pile on the floor; but works less well when there are unseen paddy-fingers imposing entropy.

The randomizing of the parts by Tinkerbell was less upsetting than her immediately lying about doing so. How do parents and teachers cope with this malignancy?

Having still significant assembly tasks to (one) hand – the upper door, the lower door, the two base drawers and the pull-out keyboard tray – there was nothing for it but Use The Force in what screw to use where. You can try this at home, but you’ll hate it.

I’m nackered when I get the whole thing into serviceable shape, too flagged to consider doing the bookcase, or even adjusting the flapdoodled, out-of-alignment upper door.

I propose a re-schedule with Jerry Garcia’s avatar for next Tuesday when I supposedly have accepted ANOTHER desk assembly in, near, somewhere where a dirt track will lead with the Post Office address of (gawd) Felton.

He accepts and so I’ll return to 924 King Street for adjustments, some spray-on lacquer where I scuffed the desktop surface, and to assemble the bookcase.

All with 1.28 arms.