At six in the morning I poured the last of the kerosene into the heater and set it afire. The shop in the woods was cool and slow to heat, as it always is, and a dark monolith standing in the only clear island amidst a small ocean of sawdust was cold to the touch.
Today, the day the monolith Diorama sets sail to the north. This Sunday today. Up until 15 hours ago we didn’t know if today would happen, whether the delivery was a go or not, what small miracle would need to happen for all of this to fall into place, this cabinet made into something that will touch and affect so many and so much.
Maybe I’m making more of it than is really necessary. Then again, maybe not enough. I spoke a few days back about things taking on a life of their own out in this shop and boy, has it ever happened this time.
A few practical matters first.
I commented to JK on the phone last night “My God, I’m six feet tall and I can’t see over top of the darn thing.” Shown here without the front door, which is ten feet away in the prone position getting a stain bath.
It is, by all standards, a monolith. Dark indeed. Remember the sidewalls of this shop are 12 feet tall, so it may not look as imposing as it would in your living room (not that you’d want it there). I’ve got it sitting on some of those sliding coasters that have been hanging around the shop on a dusty shelf since Pterodactyls flew and might just send them along with the unit. Either because I don’t want them or they might just be needed to keep it from depressing somebody else’s concrete floor (I kid, it’s impressively heavy but not that much.)
The aforementioned door, just stained. Hoping that this stain will blend with everything else. Wood being weird and especially since it’s oak, the stain tends to do weird tricks in the light, different shades appear then change as you walk around it.
Like here. In bright light it looks like almost a natural finish, but it ain’t, not by a long shot. I nicknamed this hinge “Old Stiffy” since it came from the maker without the natural floppy action of its mates. Happens to work quite well with the door that will go on it, so all the better. The door needs to drop open and remain somewhat stationary.
All the mundane details. The screws I found to fit these hinges, for example. Only available in stainless steel. Chrome stainless, to be exact. Not exactly a match for bronzed metal. But a shot of black enamel paint and they blend in pretty well.
Or the turntable, which I dare not photograph less the natural order of the universe be disturbed. 26” in diameter, it sits atop a spinner mechanism that is 12” round. It’s heavy since it’s all hardwood, glued up from 3” strips. And since it’s hardwood it has a mind of its own and wants to warp and move and the whole apparatus has to be balanced and screwed and shimmed and bolted so that it spins (through two narrow as hell slots!) naturally, and smoothly. Delicate is not the word. Exasperating might be.
But spin it does, and slowly, as it should be for a display unit. Can’t really make it spin fast and you wouldn’t want to, since the pictures that will set upon it should be viewed slowly I should think. Deliberately. With critical eye. The point of this whole cabinet is to display the Diorama and make the unit fade into the background. I had to keep that in mind the whole time and it wasn’t easy.
The bottom drawer again.
JK asked about the costs involved in this thing, and I have a rough idea.The hardwood and plywood and stain and all the little stuff is probably in the range of $700 American. That’s materials. Easy.
The labor? Good lord. Look, I know how much my labor is worth (some of my colleagues would say “not a speckled damn”) and about how many hours are in this thing. It’s part and parcel of what I do, or should know how to do.
Usually pricing labor for a customer is a matter of figuring how many hours and hoping you’re correct about the time involved, multiplying by an ever variable labor rate per hour, gasping at the total and then wondering just how much this poor soul can afford to pay. That’s the way I do it, anyway. A better business practice would be to get the labor and be hard hearted no matter how much it is, probably throw a fat markup and profit factor on it as well. Such a practice on 60 hours of labor would put this thing at well over $5,000.00 for the total. Possibly more than that.
It’s a prototype, as JK keeps reminding me. It’s also a necessary part of her Masters Thesis.
I‘m not charging for labor. Have no desire to, because it’s my way of helping this project along. I haven’t the funds to contribute to her project in any other way. You charge meagerly for prototypes in this business in any case, and hope for repeats on final design (and I can assure you, there needs to be many design improvements from my plain offerings on this one).
And practical things again, it still needs to ship north. All the way to New York City, where it will be shipped again and reside in a museum. Can you imagine? Still haven’t wrapped my mind around that concept.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The shipping. There’s no way to make a long story any shorter than to speak of something so ordinary as shipping a cabinet from the Carolina woods to the bright lights of NYC, and all the whys and all the soul that will go with it. Out of mind. Out of heart.
We will speak of this later today.
. . . what to say.
A tragedy came to our door today, in the midst of progress on the Diorama. Seems that tragedy stalks this family with a relentless and determined pace.
In the mechanics of such things that were pre-ordained to happen, I submit some pictures of the past 48 hours of work. The unit is stained and ready for clear finish, which is normally very fast.
The turntable finally spins.
Right side.
Spinning another arc for a surprise feature, more structural than decorative.
Assembled.
The upper unit, dry fit for hardware. Immediately disassembled for finishing.
Face door dropped. The arc, to support the upper sides and create a stereographic effect is revealed.
First stained item, the bottom drawer. I looped one of the picture frames around the drawer front for color comparison, it’s pretty close. Once dry, I’ll check and see if it needs more toning,
The top lid masked with tape and ready for finish. Flat black inside, stain outside.
Sorry for the brevity. It was a very productive session.
Filed under: Shop
So we left off with a bunch of glued up parts and racks of materials.
Start from the ground up, I always say. Here’s the base of the Diorama, looking for all the world like an upside down end table. 3 x 3 legs planed and cut to length.
The legs were haunched to create a shoulder where they enter the base, then bored, screwed and glued. The screw holes were plugged with oak bungs, milled on the drill press with a cutter nobody else has, a stainless steel sweetheart, and I’ve got 4 of ‘em. Keeps me warm at night, such things. Holes, meet bung. Thank you Beavis.
The drawer is made and installed. This will hold nothing more exciting than sand, as a counterweight for something prone to be top heavy. The drawer pull finally arrived and wound up being the first of the hardware to see action. Has to come back off before stain is applied, but what the heck?
The Diorama base completed. Laid the next level on there to feel out the turntable.
This might have been the most fun thing of all. Whipping the big router (no longer made, something about too much horsepower and just totally unsafe, heh heh) around to make a perfect turntable circle.
Here’s a thought. Let’s make the upper unit a little more, shall we say, Victorian. Panels for sides, instead of just a flat chunk of plywood. There’s one of the cool hinges (which the bastards didn’t send any screws for, and caused me no end of running around).
A tighter look at the panels. This will be the upper unit and lid. Most of it anyway. Lot of work in these little pieces of goo.
She breaches! The upper unit from the front without the drop down door or front of the lid. A keen eye (and enlarging the picture) will show the turntable poking through the side in a narrow slot. Lost a year off my life on that slot, I did. The turntable is offset to allow this spinning function and it slots out on the back as well. Call it a touch of whimsy. Or physics. Round meets square and all that. Cool 26 hp tractor in background.
The two “fronts” will be flat instead of panelized for a couple reasons. They were originally intended (and still could be) as a surface to mount a viewfinder in, like a stereoscope. And the bigger drop down front will be used as a surface to mount a map or instructions on the inside face.
A gnarled hand showing where the hinges will go for the lid, on the back of the upper unit. Now mind, surface mounting these hinges in no mortice, or leafed in like a conventional door would be, goes against all modern construction methods. Mounting like this, like a steamer trunk hinge, is just plain wrong. Unless you paid a small fortune for a decorative hinge from Victorian days. In which case it’s all good. Had to admit I wrestled with this one for a while, just to defeat the paradigm. I’m thinking the front will be similar, an exposed hinge. Plus, more bung holes!
Ally picked up the finish and flat black paint for the inside. Once the front is finished and mounted, we paint. We stain. Then we is done. This thing ships to NYC this coming weekend assuming my driver isn’t off chasing skirts again.
And we all know how that goes.
Hey JK, any thoughts or concerns?
Filed under: Shop
The frames arrived today.
This is important because we match the pre-finished frames for color to the Diorama unit. The frames are white pine, there are 4 of them, and Julio in Juarez spent his lunch hour lavishing them with staples and shrink wrap.
Just kidding. I’m sure Julio would have no end of good things to say about me.
The visible opening is 15½” x 19½”. The matte cut size (see, I know some art stuff) is 16 1/8 x 20 1/8.
A close up, or at least as good as my poor camera can do. The finish is very flat and very dark! They all appear to have arrived in good shape.
Now if JK could just leave a comment, here’s a question. Do we want the finish as flat as the frames or is some semi-gloss okay? Or should we whip out the steel chain and do a little distressing on the Display (that’s another artsy term, distressing) just to give that aged appearance?
I might just clobber it with a club for the hell of it. My planer broke down and put me behind schedule for a day and I’m looking for something to beat on.
Next update should show some structure and have much hilarity. No time to be sitting here making entries, I got work to do.
Filed under: Shop
I’ve always divided builds into 3 equal parts. Transport being the first, the mobilizing and shipment of materials. Reckon it’s safe to say that a great deal of that was completed this week. Part two would be the construction phase and three – the finish and hardware stage.
Plywood and some of the hardware was picked up on Friday and a couple hundred board feet of red oak hardwood on Saturday. Some of the pre-machining was accomplished at the big shop where I spend weekdays slogging for the man, a major help when it comes to processing plywood that only comes in 4 x 8 sheets. Whacking that up in my little shop can be problematic to say the least.
Here’s the oak hardwood, fresh off the truck and already serving as a handy horizontal surface for other things. This generally takes, oh . . . about 15 seconds after it lands on the sawhorses.
Pre-cut drawer parts and cabinet components for the “Other” job, the Kitchen Island. Shot one side with catylized lacquer prior to assembly, a quick way to get some of the interior finish out of the way. That Devilbuss spray gun is the Ferrari in an otherwise Chevy shop, and I’m continually amazed at how cool it really is.
Proof that I really do look at the drawings. Just before changing them on the fly. Continuously. The Spinner (my hardware guy insisted on calling it a spinner, rather than a Lazy Susan) can be seen to the left. Simple ball bearing goodness and very low profile.
A drywall cart full-o-parts, plywood parts in this case. Somewhere in there are two cabinets. Or one cabinet and a piece of furniture, to be accurate.
My ancient guy, 15 years old and falling apart (at least the unimportant OSHA parts, like a proper guard) but still cutting dead nuts square. Eighty bucks worth of blade, and I’ve got several of them. All to get that hardwood to rough length, then to the table saw for rough width, then the planer for thickness and finish width.
Which yields you this. A stack of like parts. And there are many such stacks to go. Doors and panels, drawers, tops and components.
Gluing up the legs for the Diorama. There are 4 separate legs in there that will net 2½ x 2½ square. At this point they’re a little long so I can cut to net length later.
Gluing up the turntable for the Diorama, the heart of that piece. It’s way oversized in both directions too, and will be cut into a round circle when the glue dries.
Not shown are all the door parts (Island) and panel parts (Diorama), the Butcher Block top for the Island, and about 30 pounds of sawdust. And all the resulting kindling wood to be fed into the fireplace and oyster pit. Seems a pity ‘cause it’s some darn fine kindling wood. Expensive, too.
So at the end of the day we’ve got a bunch of stuff pre-cutand roughed out, always the nastiest and messiest part of the build (although the raised panel stuff is a pain too). Glue is drying. Have received the Diorama latch, awaiting the hinges and pull and the pre-finished picture frames with the all important stain color to match.
Fastest part of the whole affair. Assemble on the Island carcass is done, with the drawer and tray slides in place. Simple. The inside has the clear finish already done, the outside will get a stain but it’s relatively light. I call these my battleship cabinets, since they’re built to a spec that only the US Navy could appreciate. I mean, who on earth still uses solid oak drawer slide backers? Let alone veneer core plywood at $65 bucks a sheet. I shall always be poor, but my stuff doesn’t fall apart. Not ever.
Because it all has to start somewhere. And isn’t that a lovely little fire coming from the kerosene heater on a chilly March day.
For a few frantic posts, I’m going to relate in semi-live time the goings on at the little shop in the Backwater. The one behind the house. The one elected to produce a special piece of furniture for someone special indeed, the sister of Ally, who will use this as part and parcel of her Masters Thesis. I don’t know quite how many posts will occur as part of this (not that, you know, a lot of them occur at any rate) but this is an easy way to put pictures and history together for the building of this thing.
Plus I got the shop all cleaned up and wanted to show off, if you want to know the truth. Lookee. 12 foot side walls. A concrete floor laid and smoothed by one of the finest finishers I’ve ever worked with. A modest handful of small machines and a boatload of hand tools, most of which aren’t shown here. But will be, soon.
I’ve worked in better and worse. Hell I work in the most advanced place in this part of the country every day with millions of dollars in equipment and edifice. But better is not always the best when it comes to the stuff you do on your own. You’re wanting the quiet and stern emptiness of the discipline on your own, without several dozen opinions standing nearby. It’s more peaceable, sure, you can slurp a beverage and curse freely if need be. You often do a little of both. I’ve done so for nearly 35 years now and like the selfishness of spending the time away from all others in pursuit of . . . whatever emerges, I guess. There’s a plan to this of course. I know what to build. But sometimes it takes on a life of its own, somewhere amidst the sawdust and the screaming machines.
Here’s a chunk of scrap wood. I ought to burn it in the fireplace or the oyster pit, I really should. But I look at it and it has a beauty in that end grain, and I’m old in the way of looking at things like this.
It ought to say something about how I roll that a planer and a propane grill occupy bench space all at once.
This weekend, the madness begins. Short timeline, much to do.
And in the truest sense of feast or famine, a nice lady has requested an island cabinet for her kitchen. Same time frame.
Let the madness begin.
Adirondack love seat. Plain sawn white oak 7/8″ thick, assembled with coated screws which were countersunk and plugged. Wood finished with Flood CWF Clear exterior (U/V inhibitor) which is a translucent oil base finish. Seat slats are 1/2″ x 2″ Corian Bone White, secured to legs with stainless steel screws in countersunk holes. Labor time 10 hours, a lot of which involved the undulating back issue.
It’s heavy. This ain’t your Home Despot pine special. And we brought it into the house so the slow drying finish would speed up just a bit.
The Corian was left over from an install – window sills. I guarantee you if I hadn’t packratted the scraps this unit would have had white oak seat slats. I’m not going out and buying a sheet of Corian just ’cause, you know?
Next up: 2 bar stools made the same way, or pretty close. It’s tough to get the legs to work on a bar stool when you’re using an Adirondack design. Arms and backs and legs make the thing what it is, and I don’t want to lose the arms and back look. And I’ve still got some Corian left over.
This is suppose to be an outside unit, and I’m sure it will be eventually. But Ally swung it around in front of the fireplace and it shows no sign of going anywhere.
Matter of fact, I don’t think she wants it to. Must be a Christmas thing.
She sat across the dining room table and tried to get me to focus. Which, after another 9 hours of work and 135 miles of driving to get there, was a hard ol’ thing for me.
“Listen. I don’t want a lot this Christmas, see? No clothes, nothing that needs a trip to the store afterwards to get it running, no jewelry. I really would like one thing, just the one.”
“No jewelry? You don’t want gold or bracelets or . . .”
“What I’d really like for you to do is to make me something.”
“. . . a nice pendant or a ring or . . .”
“And I know you can make it, you’ve done it often enough.”
“. . . maybe some earrings. You like earrings, right?”
She paused, small smile and brown eyes dancing with some sort of long ago learned patience with children and a husband prone to ramble on. It is the patience of the mother and wife and it takes years of tending, my friends.
“Nope. No jewelry. I’d really love to have something to sit on, for out on the back deck. For nights when we light a fire in the little fire pit and sit out there and watch the moon. Something big enough for the both of us.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “An Adirondack love seat. That’s what I want.”
It was the end of the work day but the mind is not easily shut off. I calculate wood and wood products all day long. The cutlist for such a chair ran through my mind, sorted itself into board feet and waste factors and ‘What I didn’t have on hand in the shop Already’ lists in nanoseconds. It’s what I do, and I’ve had entirely too much practice at doing it. Even after a long work day and a tiresome drive. Not to mention three Shiner Bocks and their longneck goodness.
Adirondack love seat. For watching the moon.
I shifted. I coughed. “No jewelry? ‘Cause really, I don’t mind going by that nice jewelry store with the cute chicas in there workin’ on commission, on Christmas Eve, honest I don’t. They’re always so glad to see me, too.” Ally gazed at me, chin in hand, impassively waiting out the end of the oft-told tale. “Remember the year I went in there on Christmas Eve and told the nice lady just to out-do what she did last year and I’d be back in an hour to pick it up? Remember? And she did it too, by golly.”
The nice lady truly was nice, and she apparently had tipped off her employees, because I embrace the idea of walking into a store once a year with large amounts of cash or a bloated credit card and having my way with them. “Look for the carpenter looking fellow who wants to be outta here in less than five minutes. He drops two grand and wants to be smiled at a lot. Been coming in here for years, every Christmas Eve like clockwork. Wife and two daughters. All you gotta do is pick out three things they don’t already have. Sure makes my weekly quota, I can tell you that. Maybe my monthly quota!”
I look upon it as a holiday tradition, and care not the commerce behind it all. Some things are best tagged with a spirit of doing the same thing you always have, that always works, that makes the girls smile and swoon just a bit, come Christmas morning.
Adirondack love seat. For watching the moon. And tending the fire pit.
“That’s all you want, an old chair? No jewelry?”
“No jewelry, love. You can make a chair, right?”
Of course. She knew that. I’d run off batches of chairs over the years. Kept some, gave away more. Cypress and cedar and redwood and pine. I once made 50 in one run for a commercial marina and got sick of the sight of them. I can make a chair.
“That’s what you want?”
“Honest, it is.” And here she leaned forward and gave me the look. It’s a dreamy sort of look that invariably slithers down the back of my eyes until it snatches deliciously at my very soul, tugging and caressing.
“Can you make it for me?” And a smile. “I’ll make you fried chicken tonight, too.”
Well, then. Nothing more to consider, right?
Because my wife is Southern born and bred. And there is no such thing as anything better than her fried chicken. Of all the absolutes in life, this is the one unshakable truth. It is a pure and blissful thing, is Ally’s chicken.
~~~~~
We were sitting in the big rig work truck, Tommy and I, awaiting the delivery of something to install. It was a rushed something, it happens every year about this time. A rush to finish construction jobs by the end of the year means everyone and everything gets rushed right along with it.
“So that’s what she wants for her Christmas present, a chair? You’re kiddin’ me, right?”
“Not just a chair, a love seat. Like two chairs. That’s twice the work, in a way. Plus, I’m thinkin’ of making it out of white oak. Go the whole nine yards so to speak.”
Tommy was incredulous. “Man, you’re one lucky bastard. You got a big shop and all those tools and all that skill and your wife wants you to just make her a chair. For Christmas. How do I sign up for that gig? You got off so cheap, ‘bro.”
“Wait a second. I gotta buy the lumber, which isn’t cheap by any means. Haul it all the way to the backwater and set up all the stuff and by the way, I need more kerosene to heat the damn shop. Here it is Friday, the Friday before Christmas. I got lots to do, and it surely ain’t gonna be cheap.”
“How long you known about this, Jim?”
I puffed, and grinned. “Couple weeks, I reckon.”
Tommy hooted. “Man you’re one procrastinatin’ dude, aren’t you? But you’re still lucky. My girlfriend, all she wants is jewelry and clothes. Gonna cost me a fortune, she is.”
I looked at him a tad mournfully. “Jewelry, huh?”
“Yep. And trust me, she knows the good stuff, too. Got an eye for that sort of thing. You wouldn’t believe it, I have to go to an honest-to-God jewelry store every year.”
“Oh I would, Tommy. I really, sho’-nuff would.”
He was silent for a while, pondering the grey day with no delivery truck in sight, a big man with a contented life much like my own. The hurry of the season didn’t seem to touch my good helper very much. Of course, as helpers go, he’s a long ways towards being a journeyman carpenter in his own right.
“So when you gonna get the white oak, anyway?”
Good thought. Especially since it was Friday morning, and the lumber yard would be closed for the weekend and the holiday beyond.
“Right now. Watch this, miracle of technology and all that.” I produced a cell phone and dialed a number from memory that I hadn’t dialed in two years. To talk to a man I hadn’t seen in an equal amount of time. But for things like this, there are traditions, and ways. Not unlike the Nice Jewelry Store Lady ways. And in a community of those who work with wood, there aren’t many who’ve been doing so for thirty years or more.
“That you, Chris? Jim here. ‘Bout the same, hoss. Listen. 4/4 white oak, straight lined and skip planed, about a hundred board feet. Random lengths, shorts are okay. Mmm-hmm. Right. Okay, my brother. See you.” And I hung up the phone.
Tommy was staring. “Did you just call who I think you just called? The old place downtown by the tracks?”
“That’s the one. Probably the only one in town with white oak, lad.”
“And when can you get it?”
“Couple hours, he says.”
Tommy was bug-eyed by now, and shaking his head. “Last time I called them they wouldn’t even talk to me. Had to go in there with a fistful of cash and he about ran me outta there!”
“Yeh. They’ve been known to do that. Cantankerous bunch, for sure.”
“Holy smokes and they’re gonna mill this out for you to boot?”
“Rough mill, yes. I get to do the fine stuff myself.”
Tommy was still shaking his head in wonder. “Man, you are one lucky . . .”
I grinned the grin of the smug, the ancient, the Grinchy and wise. But he was right. I am one lucky bastard, somedays. Particularly with three and a half shopping days to go.
~~~~~
And with no further preamble, I find myself this morning at a stage of sorts. A stage where there is mess in the Shop, tools laid out as if for surgery, and a matter of hours to go.
There is a seat yet to be made, to go with the rest of it. And a finish, a protector from the rain of the backwater. Some sanding to do. Some tweaking and a great deal of standing alone in a Shop alongside the house, musing about a woman who can be made to smile on Christmas morning with little more than the twirling of my two hands upon a pile of oak.
There is no jewelry for Ally this year.
But I am rich with fable and sawdust, and the brown eyes that look at me that way. And a moon to watch, and a fire to tend.
It is more than enough.
Filed under: Shop
I’ve yet to bust a bottle of champagne (or Coors Lite, for that matter) across her sturdy corner. Haven’t carried my bride across the threshold. Haven’t built so much as a birdhouse in her.
But the possibilities are there.
She’s up.
There’s stuff in there. That’s the tail end of the rig, sitting at the concrete apron, just to give you a sense of scale. She’s big, indeedy.
And I’m painting the floor. What, doesn’t everybody paint their floor?
It’s the Fourth of July, and I’m exercising my independence by painting a floor, in a tall metal building somewhere in the wilds of Carolina.
I imagine Jefferson, Hancock and the boys would be proud. If freedom is important, having the freedom to do mundane things ought to be up there with speech and happiness and all the other rights. Free to do what you want.
Happy 4th, y’all.
Filed under: Shop
Remember this?
How much more complete it looks when it becomes this.
This is progress, backwater style. In the sense that it only took 5 weeks to get it this way. My concrete guy (what, you thought I did it myself?) is an artist who works only when God has promised him fair weather.
This weekend, when not letting the grandson chase me hither and yon, I’ll be all about the shovel, and the dirt. Filling in around the edges, you see. Backfilling.
With a little luck we’ll be seeing a structure on top of this next week.
God hasn’t promised. But I’m a hopeless believer in that which may be, and can be. The shrine has reached its own time. And I can’t say I’m not a little excited.
