ANYDAY –
It’s a little known fact that Jimi Hendricks wrestled 120 for the Rovers, in 1972, even after he was dead. Solid takedown artist, good on legs, near-unstoppable chicken-wing. We’re 3 – 0 so far this season.

Ex-Pope called, left a message, “How do you DO it?” I’m deluged with fortune seekers, mystics, Lottery exploiter’s (still not clear on the Infallible, Not Infallible), cripples (and some that ought to be crippled, but you didn’t read it from me…), the penitent and the penurious, the sanctimonious and the profane …. Yet you, You are sanguine in your shop, untroubled by the stir and strife. What day next week can I Net Jet into your place, maybe have a few brews, get your take on Maximizing Slack?”

I’ll return his message tomorrow. Maybe. But first, off to TJ’s for the mid-week O’boom rations. I’m there before 10, parking lot is jammed. Some problems what the Pope just ain’t got no dope.

Home in time for beans and chicken, then down the Hope Handle to the Supplicant-Free Shop.

To Kabinet Kren – figure to glue up the front face – the two front legs, horizontal stretchers and doors. Plan from here is to dry-fit the rest of the Kab, size then fab the floor and during, scheme on shelf supports.

If Shelves There Be ….

Even though the mortisii overlap and I know the spew will expand, deploy the Monkey Glue. But sparingly. No really. I’ve yet, in five years, have used too little. Waugh.

Clamp the thing six ways to Saint Swithin’s Day. Now, for some real fun.

The arched top. Last week’s primitive execution rough cutting the shapes resulted in ….shall we say asymmetry. Flop the front horizontally against the back and it’s all bollocked.

Do so and draw the overlaps. Turn to my second-bestest friend the Ronco Pocket Folding Get A Free Milk Shake With Every Purchase Band Saw to trim the overlaps.

Rasp. File. Sand. Flip back and forth – all the while The Velvet Fog croons.

Symmetry Achieved. Too bad Ratsinger wasn’t here, what’ll I do with the Pabst?

Zap off the two side arch pieces from the dross of the curvies. Now what?

The What – exhume my oak veneer which, in the fullness of ignorance, had assumed would form the arched top. It still may. Yet its exhumation reveals that it has almost Zero Thickness.

Okay, okay, it’s not zero, but it’s darn near. Is this a problem? Seemed like it at the time. Retrench. Consider. Have to, I’m not Infallible.

Noodling around on/about The Secret Latch.

The left door is 45’ed toward the back, the right 45’ed to the front so that when the doors are properly closed, holding the left door also holds the right.

The Secret Latch is all about locking and unlocking the left door in a way not immediately obvious.

Certainly how to achieve this isn’t to me. Yet ideas pester and fester. Perhaps a pull-out empennage that will allow a turning something-or-another. Yes. Maybe.

YAYDAY –

3 for 4 on this year’s Nightmare Quota, glad it was just that. And you’ll be glad I’m not going to relate the bucket of sewage plunge the death brew into the forehead escape BACK to the mental hospital story.

Wake up to blessed wonderfulness, except for the knee. But then, of the repulsive blue sky morning, the gods mooned me.

There, in the garden reposes Visity Kitty! But Wait, There’s More! Just outside the fence, separated by perhaps 3 feet and zero time (so far as we sense that pace at which events seem to transpire), strolls blue-collar wearing Buster Kitty!

Final, conclusive, ultimate proof that one isn’t the other and neither are. Straight up.

What more is there to life? How many conclusive proofs you got today?

Beans and chicken fortified, down the Learning Curve to The Shop and face the face of The Kren Kab.

The right door is split south from the charismatic knot hole to the bottom. While I embrace the hole and split, some physical stability is warranted. How to?

Simple, or it would have been simple before I’d installed the doors into the front face, drive a staple across the crack (CRACK!) in an unseen manner.

Easy. Do it on the underside.

As I wrote, this would have been simple before the doors were put to the face. But, all I need do invert the front face, clamp it into the workbench ensuring that the top of the right door is firmly upon the workbench surface, then perform the surgery.

Lack of overhead space here in the Mordant Grotto suggests otherwise. Hark! Yon open space beckoneth! Roll the workbench out nearly into the street. With the Shaw, could have marshaled nearly enough for a parade. Holiday weekend.

Once the staple was fabbed from brass wire, pre-drilled the two holes, then carved out an inset of the door underside so that the staple wouldn’t show.

Fun! Except for all those tour buses a percentage of which I do not get!

This done, roll the operation back into the privacy of the stables, then dry fit the entire Kab together. Some skibbering around with the tenons necessary. Don’t Look At THAT One!

Lash the dry fit together with cable clamps, then sneak up on the fit of the Kab floor out of birch ply.

But all is not joy. The brisk pre-spring wind coats the Slackrage floor with dead oak leaves. From the tree overhanging the truck. Shouldn’t be shedding this time of year.

I’m late in my diagnosis, should have been on top of this six months ago. Leaves anemic, branches without flower – this tree needs help, or it is at the end of its age.

I catch Father Murphy, the head mythologist at St. Angela’s, on his biggest weekend.

Interpose Action Item # 372 – and didn’t even have an action plan. He asked, “what do you suggest?” An arborer, we guess. To salvage SOMETHING out of this altercation I point out a missing trim piece on the side of the parish office and can I replace it?

He’s got men on the job. But if they find the job too niggardly, I’ll do it (ladders, Odin Help me).

Back to the leaf-littered Caldron of Creativity where, now that the Kab floor is in and consideration is given to a possible shelf, or shelves within, we turn our mighty Slack toward the Kab pediment.

Back to that oak veneer with the near-zero thickness. What if I clapped two near-zero thicknesses together, back to back? Or more accurately, glue to glue, since they’re adhesive backed.

This done, rough out a size about 36 x 75 cm and tie into a curve, try to educate the wood into its intended shape….

With this, can see toward a final top once the arched front/back and sides are appropriately rabbeted. If rabbetted they be….

Upslack it’s all grill time and a dozen Snnaacckk visits cadging snacks. Multiple mates, I think. One in the redwood on 7th Street, another on 9th in the oak. Hearty lad, this Jaybird.

DAY –

The three-week long parking lot destruction at Trader Joe’s Up The Hill is Still in work. The Good News is that the parking lot is Still The Same! They spent $900,000 to remake the parking so that it isn’t any different from when Blockbuster vacated.

Even worse, no O’boom on the rack. Even worse worse, the clark stocking the shelves didn’t know what “Have you any full cases of Orangeboom in the 16 ounce cans?” meant.

Must needs learn some other language.

But Hozannah there was in the back a case.

Away I make to home and a day devoted solely to my own wishes.

Kab Kren – rout the groove!

The Midnight Study Hall devoted itself to the arched top – how? The original plan was lam the veneer into a shallow kerf along the front and back to dive into the sides.

Would have looked geechy – new plan: rout an inset into the four top parts such that the veneer can be inserted. Cost? A somewhat heavier look because the rising and falling of the shape will be inside something rather than outside, controlling the form.

Right.

Now to rout a 1/16” groove in an arch in these two top pieces?

Suggestions?

Here’s one. Since I haven’t a laser, I’ll have to deploy a trim router. And since I haven’t a 1/16” router bit, I’ll have to use what I have, which is a ¼: bit. Figure to stuff something into the gapping crack later. Sure I do.

The curved edge of the extant front and back can each serve as the template for the router. Sure they can.

And they do.

Next: form the side rails. Easy. Which no one here ever said.

Amidships wanders a forlorn looking bloke with two bullet hole scars just about where the left parietal meets the frontal lobe wearing a heavy metal t-shirt and talking tails of moving from Florida to be near his 7 year old daughter and then later his 11 year old daughter. He’s pawing over the Lamp Dalek when Phil and Barbara arrive wanting my take on a venerable dowel jig and how much should they sell it for on Ebay?

More wandering about my fee for installing her flower boxes. Took 3.5 hours. My rate is $50/hour, but figured to give her a bit of a discount, so as to encourage more business – How about $120?

Not liked. But no counter offer. Say’s she’ll go off to the ATM for the cash. Should have taken the check.

Get rid of Michael The Maimed, which wasn’t easy as he had nowhere to go, unless you count the surf with a cement block tied about his neck, and return to possible Kren Kab Seckret Mechanism.

Arrives The Professor with tales of Ordinance Disposal from his flying visit to Point Loma. We scheme about unreal estate schemes, quaff many a pint and my garage floor is the better for the spittle reminds us of our place on terra.

Not a bad place, so far as mere mortals go….

CHAIRDAY –

After a five-day long hiatus from The Shop (and beer …WHAT!), slipped down the skimmer handle once more, sprained back (muscular only, Praise Be to Baal) and all.

Four chairs, in varying states of decay, have mysteriously appeared before the west portcullis. Not entirely a surprise, as Barbara alluded to my repair of said chairs. They are all of the Saloon Captain’s Cabin 1960’s Ranch House Rustic Dining Room style.

Two have split seats along the assembly lines of the maple parts, one worse than the other, the third – Zagreb – needs a replacement leg socket, and Murgatroyd, #4 is bad strut: shattered back support where it enters the seat socket and a missing stile.

Seat splits so profound, yet without any marks of trauma, they clearly result from wood flexion in which the desires of the manufacturer (and his impotent glue) play no part.

Having had no com with Barbara, nor pay for the flower box installation (they can always be removed), rip right into the two chairs with split seat planks, figure half an hour each.

It was a trifle more as the seat surround is curved which makes clamping an Olympic-level sport. The chair with two splits was dealt with by wrapping the seat with a band clamp, then spanning the cracks with bar clamps. Not easy given the covetousness of the seat edge, but relatively straight forward.

Chair #2, the one with only one split was more challenging. The chair armrest and back seem conspiratory, if not causing the split, at east encouraging it, Like the Paki’s whispering to the Taliban. Mere glue will not hold this split together, so popped in three pocket holes, put the screws to and glued. Again, not easy, but bone simple.

Just buying time, really. There will be more splits. If these chairs are three years old, not so good, if 30, they have served well.

Enough effort on the chairs – waiting on a consultation as to price on Zagreb, as well as Murgatroyd. Figure an hour on Zagreb, must cut out the damaged leg socket and fab a new piece, probably ought to be completed in an hour, By A Real Guy.

Murgatroyd will take at least 3 hours. Unless Barbara gave birth on the thing or has some other strong sentimental attachment, the chair isn’t worth the cost to fix it, sad to say.

Just then The Professor sneaks up on me in his futuristic electronically powered (sometimes) Ugly Bedroom Slippermobile. He say’s the newer electronic cars will include some noise generator to alert We People Of A Past Century of the motorists approach.

This opens up a new business opportunity: Car Sound Stylist.

“Good day Madam, and just what kind of car sounds would you be shopping for today?”

“Well, I just don’t know. My boyfriend wants me to get ‘Asthmatic Cheetah Tearing Ass On The Veldt,’ but I’m thinking more of something in a ‘Lightening Bolt Shredding Nylon Body Armor’ do you have any of that?”

“If its the majestic sounds of the natural world you’re interested in, we have a Two-For-One special on Crocodile Coitus and Pachyderm Flatulence; if, however, you’re more set on something from our Hand of Zeus Collection, we can offer you a six-month lease on Everted Anti-Matter Tornado From Jupiter or, and this is my personal favorite, a year’s contract for Concrete Crusher’s Inside Odin’s Own Hangover.”

While I mull over this start-up, we drive around the neighborhood looking at properties up for a tax sale. There’s one on 8th just up the hill, another choice dump (Yorkie in the window, YORKIES!) adjacent to the Robert Down Middle School, and another not-too-bad looking Hobbitzone on 19th Street.

Educational, but merely academic as neither of us put together has the jackson to pony up should we (he) win the sealed bid auction. Terms: Cash On The Barrelhead

He dumps me back at my Dump, er Castle where I spend an hour fabbing the working part of the Kren Kab Sekret Latch. Back throbbing like God’s Own Gallstone, retire up the garderobe to consider just why Snaackkbird prefers moldy bread crusts to my carefully crafted (left over orts) sandwich morsels.

SLACKDAY –

Tail gunner on a B-25, not a choice slot, particularly at 340 mph at 30 AGL attacking the Ruhr. Can’t see what’s coming, can only see Mattox’s crate hit in the right wing but maybe they pranged OK, couldn’t tell for all the dust and smoke this low.

Lowdown damcrate need for provisioning. Not even the O’boom, just on general principles.

TJ’s lot jammed at it’s not even 10, but it’s Saturday. Clear the jam with case in the back (not of the Mitchell).

Grocery Cheaplet where I don’t even drop enough to use the $3 off coupon, then S&F for coffee beans and personal hygiene products. One more stop: ACE.

Worked out that I’ll not find a 4” long wood screw (or even four of them) with a 3 ½” naked shank and only ½” threads mandated by the SEKRET Kren Kab mechanism, so I better think of something else. The Else: a nail, well, four of them, 6 penny, Your Screw Substitute Since AD 33.

The Wall Of Provender at ACE provides, and the new lad didn’t interrupt my Imagineering. Use the 6 pennys, slide them inside nylon collets ($0.32/per) – then epiphany! Elevator bolt, the largest in stock (5/16th’s 4 inch long) for the main SEKRET axle. All this runs me $0.07. Had a $5 rewards card which Tim happily gave me a 10% discount on cost. Waugh!

Homeslice in time for beans and bird, then down the Slackhandle.

Laid out the SEKRET Outer Latch Lock on the front arch to mark the locations for the through holes for the 6 penny’s. Have I the proper springs to retract the outer latch?

I do.

And CAN I get the 2.5 cm travel IF the 6 penny’s only go into the outer latch 1.7cm?

I Might.

What needs done is cut the nails down a centimeter, pre-drill and countersink for the collets, then mark the locations on the latch for the nails.

I can and do.

Opt for a treaded insert into the front face to form the main support for the drive axle, sure, there’s a bit of in and out on actuation, but the slack (SLACK!) inherent in the drive pin latch tying even more nouns together expenditures can make up for it. Right?

Countersink for it, then finesse the elevator bolt – that is, flatten two parallel sides, then square out the aluminum pivot arm to accept same. Drill three holes in the fat face. You’ll know why later.

Just then, there’s a hoot from the street, it’s my favorite (non) Christian Scientist bearing Guinness, shortly followed by Curtis.

Brewskis’ are cracked, jokes are racked, updates from The Captain of Industry are wracked. We just get to listen, he had to work it.

We retire upslack for broiled asagio bread gracks and Snaaack feedings.

First The Professor must away, then Curtis.

Depression did Not Set, Repeat Not, Set In, still had plenty of O’boom.

You?

KRENISHDAY –

Wasn’t going to jump upon the JATO-stick to The Shop, but I’m glad that I did for here’s Phil of Barbara and Phil piling three Yakima totem poles into his Navy surplus 1972 Dodge van. Now I can acquire Final Course Correction on Zagreb and Murgatroyd, and maybe even get paid for the work (WERK!) already performed.

And there’s more. Here’s a tidy little middle Eastern influenced table that needs TLC. All sliding dovetail joints as the thing was, whether in actuality or mimicking a traditional style, meant to be knocked down for travel. Range Rover or Camel?

“The table will take an hour, that’s $50. It’ll be an hour on Zagreb – must rebuilt the leg socket – and maybe three on Murgatroyd; so you’ve got to decide if this chair is worth a hundie.”

What happened next is likely familiar to those of you married, but something of a jolt to Hermit Man – Instead of simply making the call, he dials (DIALS!) up Barbara. The entire conversation, nearly is him nodding and saying “Uh-huh, yep, uh-huh, yes, uh-huh.”

Result: no more work (werk) for Johnson. Good thing I waited. No loss on the two chairs, they’re two-for-twenty-five at the Hazen Flea Market; but I would have liked to restore the table. Fifty an hour was thought to be excessive.

Not by me. Barbara owns a sweet circa 1990 Mercedes 450 SL. You know that the hourly rate the dealership isn’t fifty. They need a plumber, say. The plumber doesn’t even show without a $75 ante, so I don’t feel any (much) remorse. Liked the table, though.

Turns out Phil is from New Bedford, Mass and not only does he have a whiff of the sea in his blood but they own a boat and have been on the Monterey Municipal Marina waiting list for 10 years – 3 more to go. Argues for a trailerable sloop.

Now that the loading dock is clear, my way is clear toward the Kren Kab and some of the most challenging design decisions of the project. No, not the overall look and structure, but the details the eye most catches: the Sekret Latching Mechanism and the door handles.

Door handles. Daunting. Delay.

Dive into the latching mechanism. Yesterslack, for reasons uncognitive, cut three ¼” ply squares which fit into the latch lock, which was strange as a single block of alder would have suited the then intended purpose.

Todayslack, the reason for it became manifest. I can step the ply, ziggurat-wise so the pull-out latch lock – and here I’m opening the kimono – needed extract from the case face more than about 0.7 mm when the total amount of travel designed in was 2 cm.

So be it.

In glue up.

Now, final test fit of the Kab Top. That double veneer – fit to the curved kerf – and with no small amount of fine-tuning dry-fit the entire top of the Kab. Because the kerf was cut to the smallest diameter of router bit on hand – ¼”, there is a significant gap when the 1/16” veneer is slid into place. There’s no reason for it, but somehow I thought of jamming into the gap, on the underside, a strip of lath about 1/8” – thick enough to force the veneer against the outer edge of the kerf but flexible enough to bend into kerf. It worked well. Strange.

Next – drill for dowels into the undersides of the top, deploy the dowel centers and mark the corresponding position of the holes to-be-drilled into the upperside of the Kabinet side rails. In the fullness of time.

I wanted, wanted Badly, to glue up the Kab top, but I knew, Knew I Tell You! that two hours after the glue would have set I would have thought of a reason why final assembly, particularly end-game on the sekret latching mechanism, would have been 37% easier had I NOT glued up the top. So didn’t.

Onward.