Quick Saturday Table Base

Sarah and I have been talking about creating this kind of base for our porch table for a few weeks now so when I had a couple hours and a willing assistant, I just went for it!
The old base was made up of two wooden bookshelves laid on their side. It worked quite well for a few years until they started to mildew. Using the pipes couldn't have been easier.
Basically, it's just a bunch of nipples (Liz thought it was funny that that's what they're called), some tees, and some flanges. I was expecting it to be tricky to get it level but it wasn't at all.
So now we have a nice, modern table base that should last a long, long time.

Memorial Day Weekend Cover Work Day

I spent the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend doing a bathroom renovation with Cover Home Repair in New Hampshire. For this particular job, there was a Cover leader working with two volunteer crews doing flooring repairs in a mobile home. Each volunteer crew had two people and we were very ably led by Diane Reinhardt.
Team one was working on repairing the floors in two bedrooms and my team was redoing the bathroom floor. The bedroom floor team was made up of a really nice father-son pair from Norwich. I worked with a gentleman I had worked with before, Rich, so we were able to get going pretty quickly. Rich lives in Enfield so he didn't have to travel too far for our job.
Rich and I first had to take up the linoleum from the bathroom floor which we hoped to save to lay down when we were done. We were able to do this because it hadn't been glued down. Once we did that we had to take up the subfloor which was rotten in all the wrong places, like under the toilet. Mobile homes may look flimsy but I can tell you from experience that they know how to attach a subfloor to the joists. They use a combination of 2" staples and glue so you really need some leverage and strength to get it up. Added to that is the fact that it's a very small space (it's a bathroom after all) and that you want to keep the insulation that's there between the joists without wrecking it and you have a situation that requires a lot of contortions to get the job done. Let's just say that you'll feel muscles in your butt the next day that you don't normally use.
The next step was installing blocking between the joists to support the new subfloor we were going to lay down. This is necessary because a mobile home subfloor spans the whole trailer without regard to rooms, walls, etc., so we needed to put support down under all the spots where our new subfloor would have seams.
This turned out to be the toughest part of the job for a couple reasons. The first is that since it's such a tight space, maneuvering to get leverage to install the blocking between the joists is really difficult. Keep in mind you're doing this with no floor so you're walking and kneeling on joists, which don't exactly give you a stable base to work on. The other is that Cover uses screws and drivers for just about everything (at least on the jobs I've done with them) rather than nails. This makes it much easier for volunteers to do work without complicated and dangerous tools (like nail guns) but in a flooring situation, it was really hard. I yearned for my framing nailer to just pop in the nails; instead, I was using a nice driver and 4" screws. I did it, but I stripped a few heads in the process and I got a wicked core workout, too! I got a little frustrated but working with Rich helped since he's such a nice guy. He kept me from throwing the driver through the wall but most importantly his presence kept me from swearing, which I am wont to do when wood, tools, fasteners, etc. don't want to cooperate with me.
The father-son team finished up by 3:30 but Rich and I were still going at it in the bathroom. After getting all the blocking in place, we had to cut new pieces of Advantech subfloor in all kinds of crazy shapes. This was because we left the tub and vanity in place and had to work around the toilet flange, vent pipes, etc. This was fussy work in cramped and poorly lit conditions so it took a while. Rich had to leave around 4 so it was just the Diane and I "gettin' it done". We really wanted to make sure the home owner had a toilet by the time we left so we had to add some more blocking, cut and install some more subfloor and then lay down the linoleum. I summarize that in just a quick sentence, but this was some of the fussiest work of the day. Luckily, the Diane is a real pro so she was able to keep us on track and do a good job of it. By the end, I was just following Diane's lead.
We finally got the toilet installed and made sure it didn't leak before leaving. I was so pleased that we were able to leave the client's house in better shape than when we got there. I have to admit that doing this level of work on a house was more than I bargained for and it was difficult at times to stay positive. Building a wheelchair ramp is much easier than a bathroom floor renovation but the need for what we did is huge in the Upper Valley and I'm so glad that Cover is there to help alleviate even a small amount of it. I'm also happy that I can help a little in this regard, too.

Porch Screen Refit - The Sequel

My faithful readers will remember that a year ago I spend hours and hours refitting the screens on our porch. I went through a long, tedious process of routing grooves around all the openings and securing the screens with spline. It felt great when it was done but it started to fail within a few weeks.
The spline just didn't stay in to keep the screens in place. It must be because I routed grooves that were too big or not deep enough or too deep. Who knows? All I know is that by mid-winter I had to pull them all off because they were so droopy and crappy looking that it was just too much to look at.
So this year I'm trying something a bit different. Basically, I wrapped the screen around the sides of each frame and stapled the crap out of it. By wrapping the screen around the frames, the staples are all covered by the porch trim. I was able to get them nice and snug and thanks to the use of a Craftsman electric stapler, I didn't kill my hands putting in all those staples.
We'll see how well they hold up.

Franken Mower

My lawnmower frightens me. I brought it up from the barn this morning so that I could mow the lawn. When I say I store it "in the barn" that just means that it's out of the snow and wet. I put an upside-down garden cart over it to add a bit more cover but it's basically outside all winter. So when I brought it up this morning, I fully expected to have to fuss with it. But did I? No, sir. I put a little oil in it, pushed the primer bubble a few times and then that thing just fired right up.

It's about 15 or 16 years old by now. I took it for a "tune up" a couple years ago. (I'm not really sure what the guy did to it.) I've replaced the blade once and I've sharpened it (badly) a few times. Aside from that, I put gas in it and oil when I remember and just run it. One of the front wheels is a bit wonky and can fold backwards if I hit a bump too hard and it's a bitch to steer but that thing just ... keeps....going.

It's a Tecumseh 6.5 HP motor on a Craftsman deck. I just can't kill it. And now that Helen's off to college, I need it to run for a few more years because I don't want to spend the money on a new one!

Christmas Gifts 2013

I got a jump on this year's Christmas crafting as I decided what to make by Thanksgiving. Since that's usually the toughest part for me, I was very happy to have it figured out early.

For Sarah, I made this Christmas tree decoration. I milled all of the slats out of 2x4 hemlock left over from the barn project. Since that's an old project, the wood was suitably weathered.

The slats start out at 24" long and taper by 2" or so to the top; each layer has 5 slats. I drilled a hole in the middle of each slat so that they'll slide down a 3/8" aluminum rod that's anchored to two 14" 6x4 chunks that are lapped together in the middle. I got the rod at the hardware store and I think it's 48" long. The spacers are 2" pieces of maple with a hole drilled through the center. The whole thing is quite heavy and stable (25-30 lbs.?) It came out great.

The milling of all these slats made me realize that I really, really need a dust collection system in the shop. By the time I was done, the whole basement was coated in dust which will be very difficult, if not impossible, to clean.

For the girls, I made journaling accessories. We all love to journal on vacation, so I wanted to make something that'd make it easier to keep all our supplies together. I started by simply making bandoliers out of elastic for the journals and a few pencils, etc. This was fun and quick, but I didn't think it'd be enough.

I decided to head back to the shop and make the gifts a bit more useful and slightly more elaborate. What I ended up doing was making a box with a dado around the top that exactly fit the journal. By adding a (slightly bigger) bandolier, the journal becomes the box top and will keep everything all neat and tidy.

The whole thing is 2" deep which, when you take away the dados for the top and bottom, leaves about an inch inside for pencils, pens, post cards, etc. Overall dimensions are 8-3/4"x5-1/2"x2". The bottom dado is 1/4"x1/4" and the top dado is 3/8"x3/8". Basically, though, the size of the journal really drove the dimensions more than anything else.

The box is just 1/2" poplar from Home Depot and the bottom is a piece of hard board that's set into another dado on the bottom and glued. I use the Home Depot "craft wood" for a lot of projects: I just love that stuff. It's cheap, clear, and easy to work with. And since I don't have a planer, it's especially convenient.

This was a fun set of gifts to make this year and I didn't feel the pressure I've sometimes felt in years past which made it especially pleasant.

Spoon Carving in Maine

I've been wanting to try my hand at carving a spoon for quite a while now. Both daughters carved beautiful spoons at their Waldorf school but I had never tried it. Elizabeth and I started to do it one weekend this winter but we didn't finish so I decided that while I was on vacation in Maine, I'd finally give it a try. I had a lot of fun doing it and now I'm hooked!

I started with a pine branch that had been cut about a year ago. I think it was about 1.5"-2" in diameter. When I was cutting the branch, it split in half which was really handy, as you can see.

First, I took off all the bark and the stubs of branches.

Then I started to rough out the shape with my larger knife. At this point, it's really more whittling than carving but it's still fun. BTW, I don't know if this Opinel knife is the "right" tool, but it felt good in my hand and was the sharpest pocket knife I had at home so I figured I'd use it.

I used some carvers tape to protect my right hand and wore a leather work glove on my left since that's the hand I used to hold the wood. My knives were moderately sharp, so the blades were doing most of the work but as I got further along on my second spoon, they were dulling just enough that I was worried about a slip. Luckily, nothing happened but did I ever learn: use really, really sharp knives to be safe. Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.

For Christmas last year, Sarah gave me a hook knife which is a knife with a curved blade for hollowing out spoons. It was very handy.

You can see the hook knife in this picture.

The knife on the right is a regular detail carving knife which I switched to after I had roughed it out with my big blade.

This is what the spoon looked like before I started sanding. I tried to get as many knife marks off as I could but that's a lot like plastering a wall: the art is knowing when to stop.

I started with 100 grit sand paper and then switched to 220 after a while. I think I probably sanded for about an hour total, maybe a bit more. I just sat on the rocks in the sun with my dog and sanded away so I kind of lost track of time. It was very soothing.

I made two spoons. The first one is on the right and the second one is on the left. (I consider the one on the right a rough draft.) When I felt like they were smooth enough, I used Beekeepers Gold on them. That's a mix of bee's wax and mineral oil. I applied it with my hands to rub it in really well and wiped off the excess. I think each spoon got 2 or 3 coats.

I'm really happy with how they came out and I'm looking forward to making a bunch more now that I know a bit more about what I'm doing.

Screen Porch Refit

Building the screens for our screen porch was one of the early projects I did once we moved into our house back in 2006 or 2007. The screens frames themselves are quite nicely built and sturdy but I took a shortcut with the screening. I just stapled it on rather than doing it right. They held up for 6 years but it finally became apparent last summer that they needed to be re-done.

The first step was to unmount all 12 and pull all the staples out. These had multiplied over the years as the screens aged and the cat climbed on them. There were a LOT of staples.

Next came routing a dado around the tops, sides, and bottoms which is what I should have done originally. I used a home-made guide that made a really big difference. One-handed quick-clamps helped a lot, too.

Here you can see the grooves. I went through two 3/16" router bits. The dado ended up about 3/8" deep or so. I then used .175" spline which I bought in bulk from Home Depot to get the screens in place.

It took a couple tries, but I figured out how to get the screens in nice and tight and now they're all done. I just hope the cat doesn't decide to climb on them again this year. I think I'll keep a super-soaker out on the porch just in case (and for a little amusement, too).