Puttering in the Study

Afternoon in the Workshop

Good afternoon in the workshop at the lake today working on several projects.  

Lawn furniture

After cleaning up the workshop I started what will be a long term job repainting the Nunnallys’ canary yellow lawn furniture black (see chair that’s up next in the background).  I started with the smallest piece today, a little table, and it went surprisingly well.

The new toys drawer is for my new measuring tools - it’s becoming clear that my biggest problem in woodworking is not measuring accurately, and even worse, not making sure my cuts are square.  So I’m working at being more precise on the upcoming projects with a new Starrett combination square, and a rosewood try square and marking gauge by Crown  The slope desk (shown below) is so phenomenally not square it’s embarrassing - the pencil strips are not parallel to the edges, and the top and bottom are not parallel to each other.  Not even close.   The new Starrett square is a real eye opener.  I already have three combination squares, but none work remotely as well as it does - the markings are clear enough to read, and you can opt for measurements into the 1/32 and 1/64 scales.

Also got a new top for the broken glass one that’s in a frame welded to the top of an old Singer sewing machine table in the workshop.  It’s a little under 2’ x 4’ so a 2’ x 4’ sheet of oak plywood will work fine (I did one of those in law school) with a strip mitered around the edge and painted black.  But for the moment, it’s filled with rough Hub shelves to serve as a base for the new planer, which I put to work on some Hub boards for two more slope desks for the Hub. I have had a joiner for almost ten years, but had never set it up, and after I did and started cleaning up some boards I realized that all this Hub lumber really needs a planer as well.

I cut the face and spine for two more desk slopes/book stands, as well as a more complex set of cuts for the pencil trays.  They still won’t accommodate my iPad in its case, but I think I can chisel them out tomorrow.  I redesigned the spine to be smaller and simpler, and both because of that and because I planed the pieces down, they should be slightly lighter than the original - although they’re going to be about an inch taller so they accommodate not just paper but the Circa notebooks I use at work (there’s one in the background). They work as a book stand right side up and a slope desk upside down, and I have been using the prototype in the office every day since I built it.

I would normally have put the biscuits in and glued them up, but Parker feels strongly that the edges on the prototype are too sharp, so I’m waiting on a couple of router bits to come in and we’ll see whether the 1/8” or 1/16” roundover bit works better.

All this reminds me that I need to rebuild the top of the office piece (shown in the background) but until I get the metal to make the post, it wouldn’t accomplish much.  So I’m not working on that yet - but am building the skills I’ll need for it eventually.

But a beautiful day, and got several projects moved along a bit.

New cove lighting for study

The burned out sections in the cove lights in the study were getting annoying, but even so, I had no idea how bad it was until I took the original (2004) lights out this afternoon to replace them with new rope lighting. Entire sections were black and most of the rest had burned areas, even if the lights were working.

The new lighting is warm but not orange-red, and instead of just laying haphazard in the cove propped up intermittently by wood blocks, making the lighting intermittent and hitting the bas relief portraits in the cove at a really bad angle, it’s held in place with plastic brackets that keep it level and closer to the ceiling. That eliminates the raking light on the portraits, which had the unfortunate effect of accenting the orange peel texture on the sheet rock, instead of the portraits.

Admiral Nimitz already looks much less grumpy.

Model workshop table finished

  It's not exactly a secret that my study has a secret door - the shelves for science fiction open into my model workshop.  For most of the time we've been in the house the first thing you saw when you opened the door was a stack of sawdust-covered wood and cardboard scraps. 

But after I cleaned it up last fall I realized that this was the perfect place for a narrow wall table - a place to put a phone or iPad when I am working in there.  I couldn't find a table with exactly the dimensions I wanted, so I after I got the new workbench for the wood workshop at the lake I built one from new lumber, with shelves underneath for storage.

The design was based on the shelves Daddy and I made for my paperbacks (the same ones on the shelves in the photos above).  Since I didn't have the ability to rabbet the shelves into the sides, and biscuits wouldn't provide enough support for a 48" long table, I used poplar cleats to hold the shelves in place.  

When I put it in I realized that it was the perfect place to store the model kits from my stash that I actually intend to built.  I have many more than those shown here, but aside from the large ones that wouldn't fit here, they're older kits that I have already decided aren't going to be built because there are better kits available now. 

The table also lent itself to a lamp, and although the photos don't show it, I have moved the Alexa and wireless speakers there as well.  And it provides a great place to display my framed naval aviation and NASA artwork, which I expect will get moved around from time to time.

I decided the paint the shelves themselves to match the room's "Divine White" trim, but built a top from old pine boards from the Hub Shoe Store.  The boards that made up the top weren't edged or planed, and were just held together with biscuits and glue.  The finish was Minwax Colonial Oak with several coats of hand-rubbed satin polyurethane.  It provides a rustic touch - and matches the wood-tone formica top of the model workbench.