The day of reckoning: Must Assemble Cenotaph.

The five verticals are screwed on from underneath and the light socket and bracket installed.

The Midnight Study Hall had resolved the assembly steps:

1. Screw on the verticals, loosely
2. Up end upon the top with the top glass in place to be sure there was sufficient clearance, but not too much, for the top glass
3. Turn the base and vertical sub-assembly upright
4. Dry fit the top to the tops of the verticals
5. Remove the top and insert the five side panes
6. Dry fit the top with the five panes in place
7. Secure the panes in place with hot melt glue
8. Place the top glass pane on the verticals
9. Put glue to the tops of the verticals
10. Apply the top and clamp

Easy.  No.  Nothing is easy here.

There was some fine-tuning to the top glass pane, had to shave off a bit more from the corners, and file a bit on the seats of the verticals.

All else went according to plan, except for my miscalculation on the spacing between verts – there’s nary enough overlap on the five side panes.

Behind the scenes, light bulb eye’s view showing the need for black hot melt glue. Say NOTHING!

Dosed the panes, once in place, liberally with hot melt hoping that the glue would be opaque enough to cover any gaps.

It wasn’t.

Tried coloring the glue with black marker.  Fail.

Re-melted some of the glue at the two most obvious gaps and glommed in there some thin redwood strips.  But not well.

Finally, the thing in glue up.

There’s still gappage and hence light leakage.  Not so good.  But fortunately this light leakage isn’t terribly obvious AND there are aspects of the panes where there isn’t lead coverage and so there’s light leakage through the gaps in the panes, which sort of distracts the eye from my cock-ups.

Maybe.

The Glasswegan will be the final arbiter – it’s ready for inspection.

While departed, Kohl may still light the life of his best human friend.

APPRECIATIONDAY –

The Glasswegan approved of the final Kohl Cenotaph in the most exquisite kind of praise to a penurious artisan: cash money.

With pockets jingling with gold sovereigns, could I do anything but provision?  I could not and did not not.

Once more to home with a message from The Glasswegan – there’s a blemish that needs fixing.

Bad as my eye-sight is, I spent 20 intimate hours with the wood, and starting on about hour 5 took particular pains to protect all the show surfaces knowing as I all too well know that a defect is easy to introduce and often difficult to efface, what could be the matter?

We shall see what we shall see.

Be glad it is not pointed toward you.

Having no compelling projects on the bench, gave liberty to the creative forces (SLACK) which resulted in a sort of Death Ray Lamp.

INTERESTDAY –

To no one but me.

Straight out the Lisa Weed Titanic Titty gate which I never knew in real life is The Glasswegan.

It is true, there are minute blemishes in two of the redwood verticals, and to my discredit, one of which I saw, but ignored.  I do not mind being held to a Higher Standard, and yes, I can remediate the blemishes.  Embarrassing.

Off to Watsonville, once the Capital of California Apples, so proclaimed all those living in Watsonville, where to meet friend Rossi.

Ideas on language education

Del Taco

Home Slacko

Kohl Cenotaph remediation.

Planning for the Civil War Atlas bookstand.

Arrives The Prof – metal bending follows – followed by Guinness.

Good.

FAKEWORKDAY –

Not real work, except for another two coats of tung on the remediation zones of the Kohl Cenotaph.  No.  Happy (mostly) hours were devoted to the crafting of the base of the Civil War Atlas Bookstand (CWAB).

What is wanted is a stand that will straddle the achingly unused edge of the West Penthouse wainscot next the hats.  This bookstand must also have the property of sitting comfortably desktop, should that circumstance ever come to be.

Working backwards from that 22.2 degree top bevel is not the way to save wood.

Prelim concepts suggest a pair of upright stantions, the front lower than the rear pair, their tip edges angled to 22.2 degrees and canted inward at 15 degrees.  Atop this will reside the actual book support itself, a pair of open frames somewhat smaller in area than the open plan of the Civil War Atlas.

Likely there was a better way to make these complex stantions than the path I chose, which was wasteful of ply.  Probably that method involves swiveling the chop saw to 15 degrees, and then setting the mitre angle to 22.2 degrees.  But I didn’t do that.

Pocket holes are your friend, except when they wander away from the desired joint location…

In the end, here are the four stantions wanting only a reliable means by which they can assume their rightful positions.  This was readily supplied by a length of pine cut to 21.7 cm width – the width of the wainscot.  This was made fast using pocket holes.  Praise Be to Pocket Hole Jigs.

Does it fit?  Dunno.  But it looks nice.

MTDAY –

M is for mortise; T is for tenon.

What is wanted for the CWAB is about 250 cm of about 1.5 x 4 cm cross section something.  Leaning toward redwood, but here’s a chunk of Port Orford Cedar left over from the Deck Chair project and I can carve all that I need out of that one hunk.  So it is done.

Next: cut the ‘rails and stiles’ we’ll call them to final length, which is about 22 cm for the 6 stiles and about 27.5 cm for the rails.  The mortisii will be gouged into the rails; the ends of the stiles will have the tenons.

Here I’m trying to find the center of a test blank with the 1/4″ mortise bit.

To Mortising: Power-lifted the 300 pound mortising machine up out of the rutabaga cellar and onto the work bench, without wearing a truss (should have).

There’s nothing a mortising machine does that a fella cannot do with his drill press and a chisel.

Is it faster?  Not at my skill level.  They both come in at about equal in set-up time: fence, stops, hitting dead bang center of the stock.  You still have some chisel practice in cleaning up the square holes the mortising machine caused to be.

The only advantage I can see is in repetition.  You got 4 mortises to cut – don’t even bother with the machine; but, if you’ve more than say, a dozen, which is the case with this project, the mortising machine is the way to play.

Completed mortisii are a thing of rectangular hole beauty.

Smart chappies advise you to machine not-overlapping mortisii as the bit can sometimes drift; instead you punch the holes separated by a few millimeters, and then backtrack to clean out the dross.

With the mortisii lammed out, can turn to the tenons to fit.

Bury a dado blade in a sacrificial fence, and then sneak up on the shoulder, which I had marked on the bandsaw.  This extra step – cutting in a millimeter or two into all four faces – severs the surface fibers and reduces chip out at the dado blade.

Table saw set up to form the tenons.

Got close enough with the tenons, figured for some fine tuning, and there was that with a file to sneak up on a snug but not too-tight fit.

Both frames glued up almost square without using superhuman powers.  Strange.

DUMPDAY –

But not down in the.

Parking limited, had to pose the truck in Hollister and take the maglev to the spoil heap, and was heap glad me do: bins replete with electrical parts and hardware.

Bins of opportunity!

Loaded up a sack with sockets, brackets, drawer pulls, items of questionable past and future; guy poring over an adjacent bin says to me, “you keep pawin’ through thar and yer bound to fand somethin to buy you don’t need.”  It’s ten pounds of goodness, including $90 worth of euro-hinges.  Junkpunzel is liking me this day: ten dallah and I’m gone.

Somewhat more at Grocery Cheaplet, but stocked up on the Gorton’s pollock meat balls I fancy.

To Home and fancy at the CWAB parts: almost final sand the two leaves that will support the Civil War Atlas, then turn to how to mark the screw holes that will attach the two leaves to the base.

The compound angle of the 15 insie and the 22.2 degree upski downski caused a weird meeting of the two leaves at the center – shift them just a tad north or south and they do not meet plumb.  Thus, the lash points leaf-to-base was a dicey operation.

The thing actually looks better unassembled…

Dice is our Business, dice were rolled, holes were drilled, hope played no part.

With the screw holes pre-drilled in the base, there remains only to edge band the four vertical show sides of the base with poplar strips, and quick glued with spray-on adhesive.

I wanted to stain the three parts before assembly, but didn’t want stain on any of the meet surfaces where I intended to glue.  This was chimerical because there isn’t that much contact surface between base and the two leaves, and so I should have stained all three parts before assembly, but didn’t.

I’ll know better if ever I make another one.

ANOTHERDAY –

Yep, today’s look and tung wipe over the CWAB confirms all suspicions: I do not want this style of construction should ever I make another.  The two book support leaves are fine, and perhaps CWAB II would have a base made in the same way with mortise and tenons; but the base-to-book supports would likely be dowels.

Those eurohinges are the double-acting mastodons seen only on high end cabinetry and nuclear containment vessels.

This momentous decision arrived at, arrived at sorting through a dispersing The Dump schwag from the other day.  There is $90 bucks worth of eurohinges in the pile; the bag I picked up to jam the junk into would have run me $3 on its own.  Always better to pile it on – none of the girls at the register want to sort through man muck.

HAPPYDAY –

When you’re a crew member of a death ship you get to levitate, even fly, but once you leave the Dead Ship, which sails the seas for eternity, you cannot return, can’t find it; so I floated in the air to sister Marna’s house for dinner.

Didn’t seem that way the way the stock market was trending – you win a few, you lose a few…

Heavy, clunky, but not too bad for a prototype.

To The Shop where the flotsam that once was called the CWAB needed dry dock.

Even after: wreckage.

Mr. Christman is generous, get a D Minus.

Remediation.  Stain.  Tung. Drying.

Cobble together a lamp.  Fun.

More Fun: arrives Curtis – Big News: he’s just been sacked from AOL.

No, this is good.  Term of his contract: 18 months full salary.

Better: he’s FREE!

Even Better, he brings to The Shop a pair of speakers that will run off his last-year’s gift of the Squeeze-box.  But they are not mere speakers, they are studio monitors.

The finest sounding speakers I’ve have had.

Me neither.

They sound great.

Even greater arrives The Prof.

You get lucky sometimes.

LAMPDAY –

The sheriff’s convoy speed past, serious.  Against the law tide run the escaped convicts.  I load up.  But not enough.  They run past, but not far enough, not far enough to see a truck they can heist.  I don’t want to shoot them, and as it turns out, when I threaten them, I can’t.  My slippery loads drop out of the front of the .357 like lost contact lenses.  But they don’t know that.  Yet.  I do.  Frantically paw the ammo in the back.  It’s all wrong and here they come again …..  Hello dawn.

Finally, after 30 years, that atlas can be looked through now and again.

Now that the CWAB is declared officially hideous, take the glam shots, park it on the wainscoting and engage the atlas.  Looks good when you can’t see much of it.

Nothing in the project queue, so wander about the Lamp Dalek, could there be fun here?

There was.  First off was dosing a french fry basket with a candelabra socket.  Not so simple.  Even though the lash leaves would span to the lower ring, how to fasten them?  If I could punch two holes, I could overlam a pair of cable fasteners and all would be lovely.  If.

This is HARD metal, non-ductile.  First hole drilled hard and slow, the second, the second would not be drilled.  Tried half a dozen drill bits, some fresh out the box.  Nix.

Can’t drill, but I can pound a punch.

Wonder if I can punch, literally, with a nail set, a hole?  I could and it saved the day.

Oh, and those gifts from Curtis?  The Not Speakers but the Studio Monitors – me neither – I’m listening to some Palestrina, Allegri Miserere, a work I’ve heard dozens of times.

No, no I haven’t.  On this set up, it is like I’m hearing it for the first time.

Might there be another lamp needing to be cobbled together?

No, I mean YES, of Course there is.

Cast about the Dalek for parts all the while trying to find parts that would fit/hide the halogen fixture once a track light.  Nothing came of it, was trying too hard.  Here’s a …. Well, I don’t know what it was in its former photography studio, high energy physics lab, but it looks promising.  And it was.  Add a 100 year old candle holder, the flange from something and a regular size socket with hot dog bulb and it’s wonderful.  Would look right in keeping in Captain Nemo’s  Grande Salon.

And then inspiration arrived in the form of The Prof with a six-pack of Strength and thanks to his ideas, will make the New Antique Mono-stereo Transmorphopticon even better.  Yes.

This week’s lamp creations proudly lit for their graduation portrait.