Monday, July 03, 2006

woodworking

Woodworking is just like knitting except there are spinning blades that can take off your finger in an instant, lots of sawdust to choke your lungs, and things are put together with glue instead of yarn. There are also no DPN's, or clapotis (whatever that is). I'm sure knitting can be dangerous, I just am not aware of how. Maybe there are lots of eye injuries from those pesky needle thingys.

So today in shop class I:
Made a big washer shaped item and brazed (that's molten metal ladies) the connecting pieces from a lamp harp onto it. Then I brazed the handle onto an iris assembly from a theatrical spotlight (it broke up at Danny's school and I foolishly said something like, "I can fix that!"). Then I made an eight hook hanger for swimsuits (not that I use them much).

Illustration #1




















Then I made a rabbeting sled (See illustration #1) (that's a tool for making rabbet cuts) so I could make the 24 cuts in the ends of redwood 2x4's to make rabbeted corner joints in my gates. I'm making three gates for the front yard project, AKA the most beautiful front yard ever.

So I did all that and glued up the three gates after figuring out exactly how big to cut the pieces, which is a critical step if you already have the posts in place in concrete.

(insert two festive beverages (G&T) here)

Tomorrow I'm gonna make 48 dowels and drill 48 holes for them and glue all them in place. Once all the glue cures (polyurethane no less) I'll sand and stain the lot of them and hang them up and put on the bamboo and... ... ...

I'll post pictures.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

More pictures, man! I'm a huge fan of woodworking and am even a little jealous. Appease me with pictures! (.)(.)
(Little known fact about Grace:
I took woodshop in 9th Grade and won an award for my drop-leaf table.)

Unknown said...

I think "Appease me with pictures! (.)(.)" will become my new catch phrase.