A funny thing happened to me on the way to dusting off my table saw this past week. I ended up cleaning my carport instead. I suppose this isn't all that bad of a thing, really, as it only makes my outdoor work area less cluttered and safer to use power tools in. But it killed off the time I had originally set aside to cutting my beautifully planed and rip cut beech to length.
The good news is that we are currently experiencing our fabulous February desert weather down here (mid 70° F range daytime highs and low 40° F range nighttime lows, as well as no rain in sight.) Better to do all this grunt stuff now that in a few months, when it will start to get painfully hot outside. If all goes well, I'll have the table saw tuned up and cutting wood by the next weekend.
Something that I'll have to pontificate upon here at length fairly soon is the joys of biodiesel. This is transesterified vegetable oil - a petroleum-free "green" alternative fuel - that not only functions beautifully in just about any automotive diesel engine, but is also a fabulous solvent for de-rusting metals. Part of the carport cleanup found me restoring a couple of old, rusted Jorgensen clamps to near-new condition with nothing more than about a cup of biodiesel and a ScotchBrite pad. There are no harmful fumes (it basically smells like corn oil) and you don't have to worry about it attacking most paints or messing up wood parts. In fact, it actually does a fabulous job of cleaning non-finished woods, such as ebony, rosewood and teak. Biodiesel will be certainly be the subject of an entire future post. Marvelous stuff.
Also this week, I managed to find a little time to clean up at least one of my ragtag computer drawings of this chair. The one below isn't dimensioned, but subsequent drawings will have those details. I'll also eventually post a few detailed drawings containing more information regarding the dado and the drilling/doweling process.
I already wrote a bit about blind doweling but, in case you're wondering what, exactly, a Miller dowel is (I'll be using them on the 4 leg-to-cross-brace joints, instead of the carriage bolts found on original examples of this chair,) here's a web link that will clue you in.
'Til next week . . .
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