Refocused

“Never let yesterday use up too much of today.” Will Rogers

From the vantage point of Thursday night, it appears - barring unexpected distractions - that the upcoming weekend should finally find me getting my wood cut to length. The carport is finally clean and my trusty Bosch 4000 tablesaw - which I unwrapped from its plastic tarp cocoon and brought inside last weekend - also cleaned up quite nicely. No more excuses: the plumbing in the house isn't leaking any longer and it's not raining outside. The weather, in fact, is slated to be perfect this weekend and I don't have an extraordinary amount of precheduled commitments to get in the way.

It appears, though, that I've taken so much web space here lately lamenting all that's been getting in my way (story of my life, I suppose,) that I've unexpectedly relegated the very first entry I posted here -  the one with all the chair pictures - to the archive bin. To rectifie this and to simply provide a nice on-topic image to get us back into the spirit of things, here's that pretty color photo - enlarged, this time - of the 1925 Chair With Spring Seat to provide some fresh inspiration. Enjoy.

More distractions and storm preparation

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow. But phone calls taper off."  Johnny Carson

No sooner did the plumbers pack their tools on Thursday afternoon, after digging out some impressive holes in the plaster behind my kitchen cabinets and drilling through brick in one place to route new pipe, than the phone decided to die. Actually, I can take some blame for this. My wife will tell you that it's all my fault, of course, but I'll parse out some pointed criticisms to various on-the-cheap phone repair jockeys, who, over the ensuing years, insisted on adding sloppy patches to old lines, instead of simply routing new and fresh cables to the 3 outlets needed in our little mid century ranch bungalow.  Here's what happened . . .

It was unknown to any of us if the plumbers would need access to our attic crawl space to perform their magic. So, the day before they started, we were instructed by them to empty the closet where this access point is and keep it an available option. It turned out, of course, not to be needed for the plumbing job. But it did remind me of the very antiquated electronic security system box (no relation to the far more modern one we use) that resides up near the closet ceiling. As long as the house was in cosmetic ruins anyway, it seemed like a good time to finally yank this sucker off the wall. Three wires were attached in the back. Two came out as short pigtails, attached only to the back of the box. The third wire needed to be cut and this was the one, of course, that killed the phone.

I was in no mood to troubleshoot this thing and, after taking off numerous days from work this past week to deal with plumbing issues, it was decided to simply call in an electrician to get it done quickly. The repair turned out to be a single wire patch inside a junction box, where the phone line enters the house. This simple wire jumper bypasses the 50 or 60 odd feet of various vintage antique wiring junk laying up above the ceiling. I also requested another wire to emanate from this junction box, so that I could run a new line to other outlets of my choice  . . . on my own and at a later date. Since our electrician figured he wouldn't be getting additional phone line routing business from us after he was done, he charged a rather stiff premium for his little patch job. We'll use our plumbing crew again, when those sort of upgrades are needed. They were a bargain. But, after paying these sort of prices for a simple phone line jumper patch that took about half an hour,  I'll be routing my own new phone lines through the attic, thank you very much!

Meanwhile, after a couple of days of carport cleaning, the outside of the house is looking much better. What remains in the way of boxes and other junk, though, will have to be stuffed back into the newly emptied shed rather quickly . . . at least temporarily.  We're about to get hit with a major winter rain storm that is slated to begin tomorrow night. So, tomorrow morning will be a bit of a scramble to prepare for it. Fortunately, the table saw, which has been carefully stored underneath a heavy plastic tarp for the past year or so, is about ready to be extracted from the carport - and this is where my wife will give me the look of horror - it's coming into the house for the weekend. The cleaning that needs to be performed (more of a dusting than a de-rusting, it appears) will occur in my dry back room, while the storms pass overhead and outside these next few days. When the dry weather finally returns (Tuesday is the latest prediction,) I'll place the saw on my back patio and finally cut my chair wood. Needless to say, I'll keep you updated.

Life returning to normal

"I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."  William Shakespeare

After spending a long weekend without running water in the house (you don't realize how much you miss it until you don't have it,) I'm happy to report that our plumbing situation is on it's way to returning to a state of normalcy . . . and it's not going to bankrupt us. Our plumber was easily able to bypass the offending portion of old and rotted pipework buried in cement slab under the bathroom floor. Water now comes exclusively out of our faucets instead of seeping up through the tile work. While hot water is temporarily unavailable in the kitchen and in one of the bathrooms, the other bathroom and the washing machine have both hot and cold again. While not perfection, this is a completely livable situation for us for now.

Without going into the minutia of plumbing design, all I'll say is that the stuff installed above ground in the mid 1970s add-on of our 1956 house was done correctly (following the then-current building code) and with good materials (I can't say enough nice things about 0.75" diameter copper pipe.) This, potentially, saved us several thousands of dollars that a total house repiping could have ended up costing us. Along with an insurance settlement negotiated today and a very reasonable estimate for getting the rest of the pipework properly configured, we should have complete and functioning hot/cold plumbing - as well as a much needed brand new hot water heater - sooner than later. I'm going to sleep well tonight with that new found knowledge.

Not knowing if my house was going to be invaded on Tuesday and Wednesday with a complete plumbing crew ready to tear into my walls to install new pipe,  I took provisions to get time off work these next two days to watch it happen and witness the household monetary funds deplete accordingly. Now, instead, I can work outside in the carport (beautiful weather forecast, by the way,) at a comfortable pace and I have a certain amount of confidence that the table saw will be unearthed very soon. We're back on track, folks. Life is good.

Water, water, everywhere

"You only have to know two things to become a plumber: shit runs down hill and payday is on Friday." anonymous pipe fitter.

Remember on my previous post where I alluded to "unrelated roadblocks that life throws at you from day to day"? Well, I'm living through one of those right now. My wife and I were greeted with a large puddle of water in the hallway Thursday afternoon when we came home. First thoughts were that the hot water heater near there finally gave up the ghost. A handyman was located ASAP. In the meantime, we had to turn off the water at the main and begin a sort of in-house camping adventure.

It wasn't until this morning, however, that we finally figured out that our problems were far more involved. The water heater is still reasonably tight. That's good. But the 56 year old galvanized steel pipes buried in the cement foundation have rusted away and water is now fissuring through the bathroom floor tile grout. I took the day off work to talk with plumbers and insurance agents, both in person and over the phone. Nobody, of course is available on Friday to do anything for us. That won't happen until Monday afternoon.

In the meantime, showers will occur at the nearby health club and meals are now either brought in from the outside, precooked, or exist as ready-to-eat. Hand washing, tooth brushing and simple cleanups now require extra effort that you don't fully appreciate until you have to expend it. Toilets are filled up to the point at which we can't handle the smell any longer and we then run out to the street to turn the water main on, long enough to replenish the tanks before quickly flushing. Then, we mop the fissured inlet water from the bathroom floor once more, after shutting off the mains. Our modern water-oriented miracle appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines, are currently rendered useless. Good thing there's a coin-op laundromat down the street.

We're probably going to be living like this at least through the middle of next week and this, of course, puts everything else - including artistic chair building pursuits - on the back burner for now. Savor those drawing from last week, ladies and gentlemen. I promise I'll follow on with additional progress as soon as possible.

One bit of good news, though. I happened to drop by the local Home Depot earlier this week with shed restoration questions. I was referred to the Pro Account Sales Desk and spoke with a woman there, Deborah, who was a wealth of knowledge and who generously spent a good deal of time answering my questions about framing, covering materials, insulation and roof design. She obviously knows her stuff and was able to present it to me without the typical "good ol' boy" pretense you sometimes get from these hardware store guys. Turns out she's got an architecture degree (!) and this was among the first jobs she could find upon arriving to town not too long ago. Six months from now, of course, she'll probably working her real trade out of some swank office and charging for such design and construction advise accordingly. But while she's still dressing up in the trademark orange apron at the local big box, I'm going to stop by often and get all the shed design advice I can absorb, while also stocking up on supplies.

More next week . . .

More drawings to ponder

"Eternal nothingness is fine, if you happen to be dressed for it."  Woody Allen

I continued the messy and relentlessly dull process of cleaning my filthy carport and adjoining shed through this past weekend, still with the explicit and more enticing goal in mind of finally getting my table saw unearthed and calibrated. It turns out that my shed (a long rectangular affair constructed with 2X4s on a cement pad) is going to require, at the very least, a new roof. So, as I'm prepping the saw for the chair wood, I'm sure I'll be cutting some roofing lumber as well. Good thing that the nice not-too-warm and not-at-all-rainy weather is holding out down here in the Sonoran Desert. I keep telling myself that this is the time of the year to do all this dirty stuff outside and that I'll be rewarded in mid summer with a tight shed. The table saw - and other tools too big to store in the house - will finally have a clean, dry place to live when the inevitable mid year monsoons and dust storms arrive. While we're all waiting for - or, in my case, working towards - the eventuality of when chair wood finally meets saw blade, here's a few more drawings to mull over.

There should be enough presented below, in fact, for anyone reading this blog to beat me to the punch and build a copy of this chair for themselves - at least the basic frame - before I do. When I ran my old model airplane web site and discussion forum on Jetex.org, I occasionally found myself spending weeks drawing a plan and posting it there, only to find that one of my online buddies would build a copy of my design before I could even clean off my worktable and make one for myself. I don't think I have enough viewers on this blog just yet to find that happening, but I'd be pleasantly surprised, actually, to have someone out pull this off. Even in the best of times, I'm a notoriously slow - yet fastidious and exacting - builder.

The first drawing for this post (below) shows the six different components comprising the basic frame. Each component is given a 4-view and requisite dimensions in inches. You'll note that four short laths are required per chair, as well as one each of the medium and long ones - all 0.875" X 0.875". Two each (four total) of the 1.75" X 0.875" legs and two cross braces are needed for each chair.

The centers of the small circles indicate where dowels will eventually be drilled, which I've now decided doing exclusively with the Miller dowel system (more on that in a moment.) The dimensions - in addition to showing overall lengths, widths and depths - show the distance between these drill point centers. Note, for instance, that the medium length lath has its drill points spaced at a greater distance than those found on the short and long laths.  Drill point locations are also noted on the 1.75" X 0.875" cross brace 4-view. In all instances, the drill points are centered on these pieces (ie: at 0.4375" on 0.875" wide ones and at 0.875" on the 1.75" wide one.) As far as the legs are concerned, each one receives a 0.25" deep X 1.75" wide dado at the noted location.

The next pair of drawings (below) show completed front and rear leg assemblies. A 3-view of each assembly, hopefully, makes it clear as to how these parts line up. Note the location of the drill point circles. Beyond the fact that the rear leg assembly is taller than the front and includes the longest 0.875" X  0.875" lath, the two assemblies are essentially front-to-rear mirrors of each other.

The final drawing on this post (left) illustrates the orientation of the two horizontal cross braces and the medium length lath that spans them. Note that the horizontal cross braces overhang the front and rear edges of the legs by 0.25".

As mentioned above, I'm now eschewing the time-honored blind doweling technique described in previous posts in favor of using the newly developed Miller dowels at all attachment points. This will not only speed up the assembly process considerably but, by all accounts, I should have stronger joints when it's all said and done. I recently purchased one of the dedicated 2X sized Miller drill bits along with some of the matching 2X red oak dowels.

Although red oak isn't an exact match to the European beech I'm using for the main structure, the color is similar enough to almost blend in. There is something desirable, actually, in having a slight contrast of color with these exposed dowels. I may even choose a darker, contrasting-colored dowel for some of the attachment points. I'm thinking, in particular, the four where the legs meet the cross braces, which will be the most exposed of the dowel heads. These might look particularly nice in teak.

So, what's left after the basic frame is built? Well, I'm still working out details regarding the armrests and armrest supports. There will be a basic mortise and tenon joint that will have to be performed on each of these, but nothing too outlandish or too hard to pull off. The seat and back - which both feature a significant bend in them - will be a bit more involved.

Making the seat and back will entail some interesting low angle finger joinery on the table saw with Baltic birch plywood, some jig building (make that LOTS of jig building) and then, finally, some veneering . . . certainly fun, but also certainly very time consuming. Then, mix in the usual unrelated roadblocks that life throws at you from day to day and you begin to realize that you're going to be at this little chair building project for a while. Plenty of time to think it all through and plenty of time to write about it.

Such are the luxuries, I suppose, of being - all at once - an introspective, meticulous and ploddingly lethargic woodworker. OK . . . enough bragging on my part for now. Back to the grimmer and more immediate cleaning the carport and dealing with that leaky shed roof . . .