The long-awaited inception of paint on the Castle as arrived in the form of Paul and his myrmidon Scotty The Spare at banker’s hours to spend the mid-day hosing off the north decks.

Their timing was perfect as I’d just returned from the rike, and my timing was excellent in finishing lunch in time to field the phone call from Theresa who wanted to look over the shop NOW in stead of at the previously arranged 4PM.

Jake wid me and when she whirls into what was once a center of complacency, tranquility and peace, all is thrown asunder.

There are two projects on my probationary dance card:

The Dog Psychologist Bathroom Sconce

The Dead Dog Memorial.

Since we talked last week, the DPBS has evolved into an almost impossible physical structure, but an appealing aesthetic one.  Gone is the ebony, replaced by wenge.  Me neither.

The wenge will be the four verticals at each corner of what is essentially an open at top and bottom rectangular form, with the art glass forming the sides and front.  The challenge – for Dogman here – will be to join wenge with glass – will Gorilla glue in the kerfs be sufficient.

I do not know.

The DDM will be a lantern about 18” tall, five sided.  Five sided.  Gawd.

The DPBS design is set, all I need are the glass pieces and wood, wenge which needs finding, Jackel in Watsonville has none, but I turned up a source in Phoenix that could get what I need here in a week, all for $20 a board foot, which I need 2 bf.

The DDM design is still in the consultative phase, and so I await developments, but not without trying to form a 5-sided form.  Rough cut some pine, then table sawed it to 36 degrees on either end.  Sort of.

Now, if only I could set the new miter trimmer to 36 degrees.

Truth is elusive.

Lammed out a masonite triangle with 36 and 54 degree angles, trimmed the pine, fit was off.  What am I doing wrong?  360 / 10 = 36 and yet the angles are off by a few degrees.  WHA!!!!???

Here is a close up detail view of the t-knobs as eventually deployed on the Scoptics Case which I thought contrasted with yet accentuated the rounded edges of the outer case.

Happily, UPS arrives with the knobs ordered from Homely Depot a week and a half ago, and so can now drill them out  – which was easy as they are soft steel – and then tap them to ¼ “ NC, which I did.

Much to be done, much to be done….

BDAY –

Break, beer, bargains.

In the mid of the Midnight Study Hall I got to thinking about whales.  Big creatures, big brains, chose to return to the sea for once they were land creatures.  Big brains.  What do they think about?  They haven’t the ability to do anything about what they think, save from finding and snarfing up the anchovies and squid, so what DO they do with their thoughts?

Poetry.

They must compose poetry.

Titanic, elaborate, beautiful, tremendous poetry.

Yes?  Yes.

Yes to up and off toward Poetry Joes’ for 24 cans of liquid inspiration, thence through the thinning fall fog to The Dump where the lot and the Toxic Table disappoint; yet The Deal Is Not Dead At The Dump!

Here’s a shoe box full of what on first glance seems garage door hardware, but is not.  It’s some hinges, what HO! five or six case handles and four secure twist lock lashes.  The box even wholesale is worth $40, and on the way out scoop up 19 gr

Not even counting the 19 green light bulbs! Whadda life!

een light bulbs and 20 feet of 3/8” tubing.

Good luck is with me as Junkpunzel has the con.  I would have convinced Harvey that five bucks just for the hardware would have been a noble investment, but I didn’t have to.

“Three here, those are two; five dollars.”  This the lot.

Scampered away like a squirrel with cheeks full of the Christmas nut bowl.

To Grocery Cheaplet where deals there are as well.  Sharp cheddar for $2.50/lb?!!  Split chicken breasts at $1.79/lb!  Furloughed federal employee’s willing to pull my chariot for 23 shekels/day!?

Chariot returns to the Slackzone for which I am grateful.

Slide the Furlough Log Flume to The Shop where the 4^th coat of Wildman’s Sekret Elixir goes on the Scoptics Box.

And daggoneit, look who pulls up, the Wildman himself come to thank me for the 18” Incra ruler what I bought him.  It has pre-drilled holes every 1/16^th of an inch as an aid to the feeble-sighted.  I’ll be there one day, if I make it that far.

Made it this far to make up the Sconce mock up, less for Theresa and more for me.  Find some alder and rive four 10” lengths to about an inch square in cross section.  Slice for the glass, then cut three pieces: 2 7” square for the two sides and on 7” x 17” for the front.

Next, I cut two slats that span the back, an upper and lower which will be pocket-hole screwed to the rear verts.  The lower slat is rectangular in cross section, but the upper comes in two parts, cut at a 45 lengthwise to form the two parts of a cleat by which the entire scone will be hung.

And that was the easy part.

I’ve kerfed the four verticals only ¼” and it’s loose on the glass, of course I’ll use Gorilla Glue and hope for the best; but that isn’t the challenge.  The challenge is how and in what order do I juggle all seven parts into a loosely clamped whole?

Dunno, making it up as I go along.

This is the sconce mock-up in glue-up, I couldn’t have managed all the moving parts without The Prof’s help – I owe him a twenty spot.

First, I pocket hole join the two slats to the two rear verts.  So far, so good.  Then I loosely clamp the front glass into the two front verts.  Now I’m down to only four moving parts.

I soon realize that to prevent end-to-end wangy jangy during glue up, I need a pair of right angle bolsters to stabilize the thing.  These are quickly cut and notched to clear the verts.

Happily, just when I needed another pair of hands, here’s The Professor, now on furlough due the feckless, irresponsible, bickering dullards on The Hill.

We run through the dry-fit, then go for broke.  It’s assembled, it’s clamped, it’s gormly.

Guinness is unconfined when we reach the North Deck.  As if right on cue, immediate, multiple whale sign.  Not just the usual plumes and tail fluke, but full out of the water breaching, all within a mile of us.  Stunning.

SUMMERDAY –

Stoopid beautiful, all blue skies making like there’s nothing to worry about.

Rike the Oak Street Route practicing my spiel for next weekend’s tours at the PBL and so the time and hills pass with me hardly being consciously aware of the effort.

Return home to no Paul, no painting this day.  Giving the power wash another day to dry, which is necessary since the north face of the manse never sees direct Sol.

Sol-man descends the laser tunnel to The Shop to put yet another coat of Wildman’s Sekret Elixir to the Scoptics case.  Likely it needs no more; it’s gleaming.

Meantime, up drives Paul the Painter who is not painting today, but has brought along his nephew, John, the handy-man.  John is here to assess the front steps, which needed replacing during the Clinton Administration.

He immediately recognizes that the scope of the task is daunting, and calls in superior stair replacement re-enforcements, his clutch carpenter, Juan.  Juan will come around and have a look at some indeterminate future time.   Juan will concur that the steps need to be entirely replaced, which invokes a design up to code and a PG City review.  And I know Sam the Landlaird is expecting none of this.

I buttonhole John the Wiry, ask him does he ever run into handyman jobs not down his street but that might be up mine?  Turns out he’s had it with the handyman gig, his knees, his back, his shoulders ache all the time; only wants to work out of his shop.  At present, he’s involved in a long clock case scheme with some deep-pocketed investors, but vows to look over my website and keep me in the loop.

Fair dinkum.

To the Scone Mock-up.  The Midnight Study Hall fails me not.  What the now iffily glued up mock up needs is internal bolsters.  In this case rods spanning the sides.  These do not solve the lateral instability, but render the front-to-back structure sound.

Here’s the threaded, adjustment end of the steel side struts, of which there are four.

I craft tiny brass right-angle brackets drilled for screw mounting to the verts and rods that will lash front-to-back.  The rods are some steel something – likely for the Real Deal I’ll use brass, but I didn’t have any of the proper diameter to hand – which I tapped ( 6 32 NF) for knurled nuts of which I have dozens.  The other end is simply bent to 90 degrees.  This gives the arrangement, once put in place, an adjustable means of connecting the front of the sconce to the rear.

It does not solve the side-to-side instability nor does it completely make comfortable the engineer who worries about the front glass being entirely cantilevered.

To solve the former issue, diagonal cross struts would be invoked.  This is likely too much of an imposition on the desired aesthetic.  To solve the latter, I’d like to install a rod spanning from the top of the back cleat to just under the front of the front glass pane.  This might be achievable without undue imposition on the look of the piece.  But it’s up to Theresa.

Mock-up mature, its End Game on the Scoptics Box.

This involved some rasping larger holes for the hanger bolts once the top was screwed and glued to the case.  There was some lopping off of the excess hanger bolts, then Voila!  Fine!

Shown here are the Schneider scope, and both the inner and outer cases.

Glam photo shoot, then up the back garderobe stairs to the Penthouse and on display atop Elmer’s Tool chest.

It looks as if it’s always been there.

MORESUMMERDAY –

Well that I was up with the striking, strong, strident rays of the dawn as the painting crew arrived at 8, today bolstered with John of Fangor.  Right behind them was John the Wiry, here to meet The Stairmaster: Juan.

He and Juan consult over the stair job; it was a pleasure to see to competent workmen discuss the pros and cons to eventually arrive at a nascent approach.  An approach that will not lock-down Sam in the town permit process: the scheme is to cast the job as merely a ‘repair’ where no changes will be made in the ‘repair’ save to bring it up to the Code of Hammurabi.

Retreat from the clamor of pounding and sanding by the paint crew to The Shop where, since there’s no new major or minor projects, except for the paying jobs for which I haven’t been paid, its clearly time for some make-work.

Make-work: find a better storage solution for the 8 cheap bar clamps.  I like them on the rear bumper of the horizontal router table, but for reasons even too arcane for to describe, even for me, something different is needed.

Arrived on an approach by which the clamps just sort of perch on the rear bumper, but with the installation of what looks like a towel rack, they are prevented from toppling off when I race the table down 7^th Street.

Next: a deployment plan for the Scoptics.  Had originally thrilled to the idea of building a replica of a 100 year old tripod where the most fun would have been forming all the brass hardware.  Alas, this happy dream was dispelled with I realized how much real estate the tripod would occupy, even collapsed, on the North Deck.

Plan Q: rig a rope on a pulley where the upski-downski could be adjusted for various height scopers.

In the end: a cleat and screw eye in the side wall, a screw eye in the balcony overhang to which was attached the pulley, a rope one end secured to the screw eye in the wall, the other attaching to some artifice on the scope.

Right then.  Whilst John of Fangor is executing the Task From Hades, namely extract the thousand pebbles come off the roof from out the gaps between the deck planks, I ascend the ladder (= DEATH) to put in the screw eye into the balcony overhang.  Fortunately, all the other lashments, config, and appurtenances could be effected with both feet on John.

In the end, it lead to a disappointment.  I crafted a hunk of web belt which already had two grommets to the scope, then hooked the web to the clip on the nether end of the rope and peered in.

Nice magnification with a four-part brightness filter setting – likely to preserve night vision during muzzle flashes, as I assume this was a ship-board, and I don’t know why I think this, scope.  But it turns out that it IS a naval scope and dates from WWII.  It was made by Schneider Kreuznach.  But here’s the downer, I can’t resolve the two images from the two eye-pieces.  No, I wasn’t faced.  Must be why the Kriegsmarine deep-sixed the piece.  You win a few, you lose a few.

Homework task: Theresa has intimated that there may be a five-sided figure as the next job.  A lantern which will somehow be an encomium to a dear, departed doggie.  The aforementioned DDM.

Given the FAIL of the effort a few days ago, it is clear: I do not know how to form five chunks of wood into a pentagon.  Time to get hep.

It turned out that I had gauged the meet angles of the five pieces as if I was building a circle.

Wrong.  Although you can work out the angles if you consider a circle not radially, but segmented into 5 arcs, which I did not do.  I looked up the angle of a pentagon.  Each inside angle is 108 degrees, which makes each meet face want an angle of half that: 54 degrees.

I don’t find a five-sided figure attractive, but I do find attractive being able to glue one up.

After a not inconsiderate period of dicking around, it occurred to me that my 10” disc sander is rigged to fine tune 45’s, thus all I need is a 9 degree triangle to insert between the existing fence and the pentagon pieces.

This was done, the meet angles were sanded to the 54 degrees, then all five pieces were adjusted to the same length.

Thanks to the Merle Wonder Clamp, the homework is now in glue up.  You win a few, you don’t lose a few.  You?

LIMPDAY –

Both from the torpid temps and the knee.

Not even the ever-chronic right one, it’s the LEFT joint, the one that NEVER troubled me.  Until now.  Feels like torn meniscus.  Marvelous.  No Rike today, and since the Paint Crew arrives, I miss the Butterfly Parade again.

The Challenge three-part, double 45 joint.

Hobble to The Shop where the day’s effort – aside from just getting around without further inflaming the acute knee, is form a solution to gluing up double 45 joints.

A cage, well, a three-sided, right angled capsule that, when band-clamped to four of six degrees of freedom, will contain the six-sided double 45.  In theory.

Cut aluminum angle so that I can bend the free end inward to create an open, three sided box.  It just might work, has to work better than my knee, better get off it.

The Challenge joint with a possible solution – the three-sided aluminum glue up cage!

But before I close The Shop, in comes Scott The Spare, he wants to buy one of my laser toys off the Lamp Dalek.

Now maybe Scott is a filthy rich venture capitalist with a palace in Woodside who scrapes decks just to stay in touch with the common man; but he looks like his primary residence is ‘neath the Del Monte freeway overpass and has a summer home under the commercial fishing wharf.  Still, his four fins are on the table and they sing to my pocket.

This small transaction leavens the otherwise noxious, continual disruption in my sedate, reclusive, quiet so-called existence.

As I grind my teeth, I can take comfort in observing the care these three take in their job.  No rush to the brush; they are devoting days to surface prep, which anyone who knows painting will tell you is 80% of a high-quality, long-lasting job.

“Job”  I am not qualified to use that word.

The Doggie Psychologist Bathroom Scone mock-up hanging from it’s mocked-up cleat. So far, so mocked.