Oily Counter Top Day

There's nothing like a day off to allow you to get caught up with a couple maintenance tasks and today is one of those days. Our kitchen island has a big (4+ x 8+) maple top that needs to be oiled a couple times a year; our Fireslate counter tops (which I've discussed before) also need treating a couple times a year.
I used mineral oil for the island. The top really soaks it up. Whenever I oil the island top, I also take the opportunity to oil our cutting boards and wooden utensils.
For the counter tops, I use Tung oil. I put it on pretty thick with a rag and wipe off the excess after it soaks for a bit.
Needless to say, between all that mineral and tung oil, the house is pretty smelly.
Probably one of the best side benefits of this chore is that we have to completely clean off the counter tops and the island. That gives us a good opportunity to (maybe) not put a few things back and keep the clutter down. Although, I have to say that we (Sarah especially) keep up with that kind of de-cluttering pretty regularly.
This is definitely not one of the more strenuous chores I do, but it's an important one to have done. (And yes: it would have been better to do this on Saturday morning before we left for our jaunt to Concord, MA but we were out of mineral oil, I had to drop the dog off at friends, etc., etc. You get the idea.)

WFH Desk Accesory

Here's a little desk accessory I made when I started working from home in May 09. Of course, it uses pocket screws to join the legs to the shelf. Note the ventilation hole in the front leg to help keep things cool. It fits nicley on my filing cabinet and straddles my laptop dock perfectly.

(This is a post from my Droid phone.)

Ski Storage Rack Prototype

For those of you who ski, you're familiar with the clutter and nuisance of ski storage. It always feels like they're either in the way, getting banged up, or, worse, not accessible when you need them. For the last couple years we've been using an antique barrel we picked up at a yard sale but it was just a smidge too small and we didn't like how it was getting abused by the skis. This project set out to fix that.
I spent some time looking around at various solutions. I was looking for something that would meet the following criteria:

1. Keep the skis and poles neat and tidy
   
2. Look decent enough to keep on our porch
   
3. Use materials I already had and....
   
4. Be as cheap as possible
   

I think that what I came up with fits the criteria pretty well. The holder (rack?) sits on our porch and doesn't detract from the look of our entrance; it holds plenty of skis and poles (nordic as well as alpine); it used materials I already had; and I didn't have to go out and buy anything!
The plywood is left over from when I enclosed the eaves on our porch and the two-by is left over from the wood shed construction.
I cut the plywood into interlocking slats so they fit together like an egg carton. The holes are 4" square arrayed in a 3x5 grid so there's room for 15 pairs of skis and poles. Each "tube" formed by the interlocking plywood is 13" deep. That's a little tall for kids' skis, but we won't have those around for much longer so I'm not worried about it. Then I wrapped the hole thing in the two-by. Skis are pretty heavy and they take some strength to support so I built this thing pretty tough.
I'm calling it a prototype because the next time I build one of these, I'll use one-by hemlock instead of plywood since I'm not a big fan of how plywood looks. Overall, though, I'd have to say that the ski rack does what it's supposed to do.

Home Ec 2

My family loves it when I make chicken stew and biscuits. My biscuit recipe came from my Grandmother and I've loved it since I was a kid. But the other night, rather than make biscuits, I decided to go a bit further and make a chicken pot pie. I've had good luck with the basic pie crust recipe in the Fanny Farmer cookbook and this night was no exception. Making a pie crust is slightly more work than biscuits but the pay off is huge!

This was probably the best chicken pot pie I've ever made and it was a big hit with my family. Needless to say, there were no left-overs.

Home Ec 1

My free time lately has not been taken up solely with building projects and lumbering. I also enjoy spending time in the kitchen and, when I have to, doing a bit of sewing...
I bought a great pair of Carhartt double-kneed jeans at the local thrift store for $8. They were a little long and had a small hole in them so I hemmed them up (my lovely wife pinned them up for me) and patched the hole.

Not the best job in the world but very functional. They're just work jeans, after all!

Score the Stump

I got to spend some quality time with my chainsaw over the holidays while I killed a few birds with one stone: I cleared out some trees down by the barn to make some room and I started working on firewood for the 2011-2012 heating season.
I had to take down a few pine trees to get at the maples and oaks but that's OK since I need the room anyway.

A couple years ago, I hosted two logging/chainsaw safety classes at my house and learned a lot about safely bringing down trees, dealing with leaners, and de-limbing them. The course is called "The Game of Logging". The idea is that if you make cutting down trees into a game with points, people will focus on getting the points but at the same time reinforce safety habits. I think that philosophy actually works.
I've done the first two levels of training, which you can read about here.



Turns out my score on the stump isn't that great. I didn't have a tape measure with me so I made my hinge too wide which caused all the other point losses. Here's a rundown on my score (10 points is the highest score):

Criteria		Score
70 degree or greater notch	yes	2 pts
Hinge thickness should be 2.68	1.5 inches - no	0 pts
Notch cuts meet	yes	2 pts
Fiber pull less than 3"	3.5" - no	0 pts
Level back-cut (+/- 1.5"	1.5" - yes	2 pts
Total		6 pts

So even though the tree feel exactly where I wanted it to, I still didn't get all the points I could for it. I will say, though, that I didn't violate any of the long list of safety criteria.

Let me wrap up by pointing out that while I have been going to the gym regularly since November, no gym work-out can match dropping, limbing, and bucking up trees for sheer cardiac load. It's a blast and it feels great!

Santa's Workshop 2009 - Writing Desks

Ever since Sarah and I were married, we have exchanged hand-made gifts on Christmas Eve, a tradition that we have also shared with our two daughters. For me, the crafting began in November when I bought the materials I'd need for my projects from Home Depot. (I'd love to buy rough lumber and mill it but until I have a planer and a jointer, I have to buy my wood pre-milled.)

For my daughters, I built two versions of the same thing: a small writing desk with an internal divider for paper, pens, etc. I used half-inch poplar, four inches wide. I cut the sides to length while mitering them on my chopsaw then I cut the dadoes for the tops and bottoms on my table saw. Even my smallest dado combination was too wide so I just used my regular blade and cut two dadoes side by side. The tops and bottoms are hardboard that I cut with the circular saw and cleaned up with my block plane.



For assembly, I taped the back sides of the miters with blue painters tape, spread the glue, and held it all together with a band clamp. I used a couple other clamps to clamp it down at the corners to keep it good and flat (the top of my table saw was good for that, as you can see.)

Cutting the top off of a box like this seems like it should be easy but it has caused me trouble every time I've done it. I need to come up with a better technique. I didn't wreck anything but the top and bottoms don't meet nearly as neatly as I would like. Maybe hot-gluing some scraps inside to keep it all even as I run it through the table saw would help? Regardless, I cleaned up the top and bottom with a block plane and sand paper so they came out OK. The divider inside the box (with rounded corners) provides just enough friction to keep the lids closed and provide just the right amount of resistance when opening them. That is a nice feature of my design that I didn't anticipate.

The thin stripe on the front of the box in the picture is evidence of a lapse in concentration while I was cutting the tops off the boxes. I wasn't thinking and made a cut in the wrong place. After a bit of head scratching (every shop needs a chair or stool for long bouts of thinking) I decided to glue a thin strip of cherry in the mistake and show it off as a decorative feature. It works!


The finish is a coat of urethane inside and out (not on the hard-board, of course).
A close friend gave me a set of plastic triangles that elevate workpieces off of the bench for finishing that are very, very helpful. He probably has no idea how much I use them!

Here's a summary of the highlights of the design:

• Sides are 1/2" x 4" poplar
  
• Top and bottom are 3/16" hard-board, smooth side out
  
• The boxes are square, about 12"x12" inside dimension
  
• The corners are mitered and do not use splines
  

This design is so flexible and easy to build that I suspect I'll make a few tool and storage boxes using this technique.