Making Shavings

Getting good use from the brand I built last spring.

I spent a little more time recently making some nice wood shavings, saw dust and scrap out of some nice pieces of hardwood. Well you can't make omelet without breaking a few eggs I guess. It was good fun regardless and  the finished product was novel and functional if not wholly necessary.

The neat aspect of this project was that I actually made from scrap that I lying around anyhow so it cost nothing but time and watts to power the electrical equipment. The top was a maple stool seat blank that was rejected from the furniture maker my brother works for. I chose to leave it as an Isosceles Trapezoid, a shape the accentuates natural perspective. The legs were old legs from an old sewing table I'd made years ago that I tore apart and had lying in the wood pile. I simply cut them down and planed them. The rails were hardwood flooring I had leftover.

The other really neat thing about it is that I treated it more like a sculpture project than a functional project. Literally after it was functionally complete I started to look differently, aesthetically with an artistic eye rather than a purely functional eye. That was where the progression of holes came from. Small detail I know but it made me think and elicited a response. It was also fun getting them spaced correctly, geometrically speaking. 

I've got to say that it has been a very, very long time since that side of my brain has fired and it felt really good. That type of thing was my actual background as I'm an artist by training. That's right, I actually went to school for art and was supposed to be the creative type. It always came naturally and I really didn't have to fight to get it out and much of what came out ended up being pretty well accepted.

Any accolades from my early years didn't seem to come from sports activity. No, I was never the person that was gifted at sports, or at least I was never the one who had the discipline, dedication or desire to become good at sports. I suspect the reality is that I could have been much better had I tried harder. No, the recognition and awards I got were primarily art based. Even in competition at the regional and national level I seemed to fair well.

Alas, when it came down to making a living there was none to be found for me in and around art, at least not when I got out of school. We were in another housing speculation and bad banking induced recession which meant that graphics and advertising budgets were thin if at all and artists were simply not necessary.

The truth was that I wasn't all that good as a graphic artist. It wasn't really what I excelled at but seemed one of the few places one could actually make a reasonable living as an artist. As such, I followed the potential for employment. Really though, at least at this point, I think I prefer physical 3D art or sculpture and really enjoy doing architectural based sculpture, such as furniture.

Anyhow, the latest project was a step in what I think may be the right direction. I'm going to try and do some more stuff like that, that is more about emotion and feelings than about pure function. There is nothing better than creating something the evokes an emotional response. A work that makes you smile, makes you laugh, or just makes you feel.

That Hurt

Let the training begin. As I have said before, I simply can not believe how quickly the 2013 race season is approaching and how I seem to find myself behind in preparation. It feels like the proverbial bad dream where you wake up the morning of a deliverable, realizing that you have forgotten to start let alone complete it. Funny though, from what I am seeing, I don't seem to be the only one that missed the memo.

For as early and intense as last year's training start was for everyone, primarily due to the lack of winter, this year seems to be the exact opposite. Many people really haven't been riding their bikes at all. For me, I have been riding the whole time, it was simply that my plan was cyclocross specific and included mostly shorter, more intense sessions. It is only the past couple of weeks that I've started to really tack on the miles, getting back up over 200 miles a week. In fact, the ride that we did this past Saturday, a reasonably sane four and a half hours with most of the folks on the newly consolidated Bikeway Source/Bell lap Racing team, was probably the longest ride that I had done since August, nearly six months ago.

Last week team-mate and ride buddy Kyle and I hammered out the first fast and hard two hour road ride of the season. Last night Keith joined us and we extended the loop a bit and got in a brutally hard attack on the slightly modified to add a couple really punchy hills, Turkey Vulture's Revenge ride. We stayed together for the first half but whittled down to two after the new hill additions. I got in a solid hour of zone 3 and another hour of zone four with a few minutes hitting zone 5, which I suspect was gated by the lack of recovery. My legs were screaming the last hour as were my knees from pushing so hard to try and maintain the power and speed. We played off from each other and didn't hold anything back trying to keep the pace high. We finished with over 47 miles and a solid average speed. Not too bad on fully fendered cyclocross bikes, albeit  running road tires.


So the first race that I am currently registered for is Battenkill. We have a team of three of us, Kyle, Mike H. and I, heading out to compete in the master's 45+ race on Saturday. This will be the first time that I have really had a team, although Ben and I raced it last year. That race is just about six and a half weeks away. Not much time to cram for it but I'm certainly going to try. I'm really hopeful but we will have to see how it goes. I'm thinking that I may hit the Burlingame MTB TT that is coming up in a few weeks just to see how that goes. It should be good if I still have some short-fast cyclocross fitness left from the race season. It will also be a chance to try the Cannondale Scalpel 29er that Cathy got me for Christmas. I still haven't had a chance to ride it on dirt yet.

Back in the Wood Shop

The raw materials, with the top already glued.

It has been some time since I have done any real wood projects. I had the opportunity to do a whole lot of projects and build a number of different things this fast spring, which brought great satisfaction to me. This past summer and fall however were super busy what with riding, racing and working.

The other reality was that the job was taking a whole lot of the wind out of my sails and had me pretty down. I find it really difficult to sit at a desk for nine or ten hours a day and do the same thing, watching life slip away, while doing something that I really didn't enjoy. I suspect that had I grown up 30 years later than I actually did that I'd have been labeled with all sorts of spiffy acronyms and would have been on numerous helpful drugs to correct those acronyms. As luck had it I grew up before society subscribed to pharmaceutical based homogenization.

Anyhow, I was saying that it had been since the spring that I had spent any time woodworking. I've always enjoyed making things, tangible things that you could see and feel. I suspect that was really my true calling and passion and am often remiss that I never ended up in a vocation that would allow and foster that. In  the past I would build things in my spare time. I'd always have multiple projects going either building stuff or working on the house or doing some other similar thing. When we got into bicycle racing, some of that tapered off. In the past few years as racing has gotten more and more serious and consumed more and more time, the side projects have been drastically reduced.

Underside detail of the rail/top and rail/leg/corner attachments.

This year with cyclocross heading into the extra innings that it did there was never any down time to use the creative side. With that, I made some time to start doing some stuff and have been acting on that. A few home projects here and there and a little bit of woodworking. I've already got a number of projects planned or in the works and I finished one up last week. Nothing too terribly difficult and nothing that I had't done many times in the past, but still something tangible and tactile.

We wanted a new end stand for the living room, one that would work well with the sectional sofa that we have and one that would match the decor of the room. Most of our furniture is made of cherry and the floors are rustic maple hardwood. It just so happened that I had a stash of 5/4 cherry that I purchased years ago for a project that never materialized. I also had a couple boxes of the maple flooring that I'd installed in the house when we did the addition back in 2005. All the I had to purchase was some 3/4 x 2" maple that I would glue up into the legs. Entire monetary outlay would be low, materials wise about $20.

Finished product sprayed with clear lacquer.

The plan was to make a simple four leg table using side rails that were notched for the corner blocks that secured the legs via lag bolts through the block. I'd used this technique, the same technique that is commonly used for dining room tables, on most all of the tables I'd built. It makes a good solid connection and a secure fit. I've also started using the plate joiner to drop biscuits in the leg/rail butt connection. This means that the legs don't come off but it also allows for perfect alignment of the interface. Without that, you get varying alignment which I find visually annoying.

I pulled the cherry stock I had, ran the edges over the bench jointer to face them, cut biscuit slots with the plate joiner and glued them up into a rough 1 x 3' table top. They were clamped up with a row of bar clamps and left to cure. The rails were made of the leftover rustic maple flooring which I ran through the thickness planer to remove the finish on (the flooring was pre-finished with clear baked urethane). I then cut and glued the maple 1 x 2" into 2 x 2" legs and clamped them up to cure as well.

The rails were cut to length and V-notched back from the ends a bit using a shallow set dado stack on the table saw set at a 45 degree angle. That required slight modification of the custom made blade fence but was easy to do. Eight quick passes on the saw and I had the notched insets for the corner blocks. Some more simple biscuit cuts in the rail ends and the legs and I could dry assemble the unit to verify the length I'd need for my corner blocks.

Do some measuring, drill some holes and assemble the rails to the legs via the corner blocks and it it all held together nicely. Next I needed to finish off the table top which meant finish cutting and then planing the edges and the surface slightly. A bunch of sanding to get the desired finish and it was ready to install to the lower. To do this I used the neat pocket hole jig that my brother got me for Christmas a few years back.

As it sits now, covered in stuff.

The rest of the table was very simple form wise with straight legs and only hand sanded edges to dull them a bit. I chose not to fully round or 45 them, both of which I have done in the past on other projects. The router stayed in the case and never got called into play for this project.

Once it was complete and assembled, I fired up the custom brand I'd built to stamp the underside and cleaned it off to receive the finish. For the finish I first applied a coat of lacquer sanding sealer with a brush. Once dry, I then sanded that out with steel wool, cleaned the dust off and shot a few coats of semi-gloss clear lacquer through the paint gun. This quickly dried to a clear, hard protective finish which I sanded any imperfections with more steel wool. A coat of furniture polish and it was set to go.

A fun little project that reminded just how satisfying it is to create something from raw materials. I'm hoping that I will have more to come shortly. I've got another end table I want to build, this one a cherry and oak combination to match a different room we have. I've also got an idea for a neat spiral cat tower that I think I may make.

Better than the Trainer

Yes it was snow/raining, and wet.

Yes, it was cold and we didn't have bike fenders.

Yes, the bike path turned into one giant, never ending three inch deep  slush puddle.

Yes we were on single speeds cyclocross bikes with knobby cross tires and yes, my butt is still frozen even after a long hot shower. 

I will contest, however, that it was still better than riding the trainer any day of the week. 

 

Where's the adventure in that anyhow?

Three

Last Wednesday Opie and Ellie turned three years old, at least as best we can tell. Regardless, that is the date we have marked as their birthday and the day that we celebrate their birth each year. It is hard to believe that it has already been three years. They are getting so big. OK, they are cats, and at three they are more than full grown. So full grown in fact that they are on restricted diets; no self restraint you know.

As has become tradition, we get a birthday cake from Concord Tea Cakes with the "Happy Birthday Opie & Ellie" message written on it. The ladies at Concord Tea Cakes always get a kick out of the fact that we do this every year. They always smile as I tell them what I want written on the cake and they realize that it probably isn't for our children. Really it is. This year I bought them a raspberry lemon cake, which they enjoyed greatly. As usual, we made them wear their party hats which they enjoyed much less. Always the good sports though, they suffered through it for the party shots.

Besides sampling the frosting on the cake, they each got a tiny piece of cake as well, which it is safe to say, they enjoyed. Once a year probably won't ruin the diet. It was a good time for all and Cathy and I were glad to share some of the cake as well, given how we had missed out on cake for my birthday this year. We feel fortunate to be able to celebrate it with them and wish them a happy and health year.