Sunday, April 27th, 2003
Well my last glue-up involving mortise and tenon joints (Coleman's desk) was an ignominious affair to say the best of it -- suffice to say it involved a lot of rage on my part, enough to frighten Ellen and Sylvia, and all to no avail (so to speak) -- the glue up was not successful and resulted in some yucky joinery. To contrast with today's endeavor, which came off mostly without a hitch -- and looks fine, better indeed than I had expected: this time I did repeated dry runs and corrected problems, last time not so much; and last time I was expecting my joinery to look "professional", this time my expectations were a good deal lower. In short, I have gotten better at joinery, and have developed a more realistic assessment of my abilities. Nice combination! At 7 this morning I asked Ellen for 2 hours to work on the shoe rack, she said ok, see you at 9; and I went downstairs. First thing I noticed was oh shoot, I haven't joined the back of the case like I had been meaning to -- this may take a bit more than 2 hours -- and I started in on that (pretty simple) joinery. This basically meant marking and drilling 8 holes, and smooth planing 2 boards. While I was working on this, Ellen and Sylvia came down, Ellen to do some ironing and Sylvia to watch everything that was going on. "What you doing, da-da?" So I took a little time out to tell her about the project, and she watched me drilling holes for a little while. And watched me knock apart the dry fitted rack. It was during this knock-down that I made my last adjustment, filing a bit off the side of a too-tight tenon. During this process I arranged all the pieces in the correct orientation, so I would not have to turn them around too much while gluing. Then I set up my gluing area -- pot full of Elmer's white PVA glue, and a wet flux brush; and went to work! And voila, everything flowed very smoothly. I was a bit nervous about the fact that I had not done a dry fit of the rear joinery -- but it was not a problem. Everything hammered together quite cleanly. I at first was not going to clamp it because the friction of the joints was enough to hold everything in place; but then I realized some strategically placed clamps would get rid of some gaps between tenon shoulder and stile. So I did that; I swept up the shop; and I came upstairs and looked at the clock. 9:00! Well this project has taken me approximately 3 times as long as any previous one. I think in the end, the time was put to pretty good use -- I have learned a lot and I think gotten more patient as well. Next things on my list of stuff are a banquette for our kitchen; a sandbox for Sylvia; and some fixtures for my shop.
posted morning of April 27th, 2003: Respond
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