In a week.

Sometimes it feels like you don't get anything done in a week, and other times, it all falls into place and you get a lot done. This week Paul and I finished assembling and sanding all 60 stools and 40 chairs for a new restaurant opening up in Freeport, ME. Our part is done now; all that's left is for them to go to the finish guy to get a few coats of lacquer. Then we deliver the product. What a relief to be done with them. May God be praised for sustaining us through it. We've been hard at it six days-a-week for over two months.

Finished Cathance River Low-Back Barstools waiting for delivery.

I took my first Saturday off in months to get a few things done around the house. I started with coffee, bacon and pancakes. We finally got the last of our stuff out of the attic of our old apartment, and we're finally settling in at our new place. Many thanks to our friend Ivan the Mechanic for getting me a new muffler on the Honda in a about 45 minutes flat.

I guess I need a muffler. My car was starting to sound like the Fast and the Furious.

And right after dinner yesterday, I got the dryer all hooked up and working. We've never had our own washer and dryer, so this is a big deal. (And I got to buy a 4" hole saw out of the deal.)

Not bad for $140 on Craigslist.

An army of Cathance River Side Chairs awaits our command ( or the finish guy )

More good news: KT's job has assured funding through the end of September, so there's now time for the state legislature to make up their minds about whether or not they will fund early-childhood home-visiting programs throughout the state

Sanding the curved backs of the barstools with a 5" random orbit sander and 120 grit.

With a few things around here to wrap up in the next week or two, I'm hoping to make a trip out to the midwest to visit with family and friends who I haven't seen in a while, that I might not see for a while if I don't make the trip soon.

Finish sanding the last side chair with 180 grit paper. The culmination of 8 weeks of work.

I'm also pretty excited about my new drill and driver combo. Paul is always harassing me for using his impact driver, so I had to do something about it. We had a Home Depot gift card and did exactly what they want you to do: spend twice as much money as your gift card. So when I saw this combo for just over $200 I couldn't pass it up.

I needed something to drive that 4" hole saw, as if the other three drills I own weren't going to work...

custom.

One of the reasons restoration and period remodeling is sooooo expensive is that every single piece of trim, molding, casing, etc is customized in some fashion because you just can't get this or that molding profile from your local lumberyard. So you get whatever is close to what you need then you turn your tablesaw or router table or even your handplane into the appropriate tool to mill up the profile that matches the rest of the house. In this case, the window and door casing in the rest of the house has a molding on its outside edge with bead on the inside edge and we need to match it.....make sense?


So I set up this conglomeration of clamps and festival of featherboards (actually there's only two) to hold the stock in the right spot as I run it over one third of a triple bead cutter on this here old makita table saw in the basement of the house we're working on.


A little closer up. Fence on the right with a featherboard holding the stock down and setting the location of the bead. Featherboard on the left holding the stock against the fence. You can see the cutter head of the 'blade' on the saw. I'm only using the right third of the cutter.


A top view maybe gives a little more clarity. Or maybe not.


The finished molding with the extra bead added on the right. When its finished and installed, it will be indistinguishable from the original.

well considered gifts and merry Christmas

A well considered gift for the man who needs to pound things of various sizes.


And at this weight (16lb), I have an excuse to buy another slightly smaller one (maybe a 10lb-er) for 'light duty' applications.


Every little bit of tools brings us closer to building our own timber-framed house. This particular hammer will, no doubt, persuade many a stubborn timber joint to come together nicely. It may drive the wedges to split reluctant logs as well.

The reason I ended up with a gift like this is due to the Amazon Wish List which leaves no excuse for those who are stumped on what to get someone. Never again will someone have to get another Bass Pro Fisher 4, thanks, but no thanks....

God rest ye merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born upon this day.

To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

News from the Country Estate June 14

Greetings from the well-soaked Country Estate!

-The week or so of nice weather (nice for us humans) broke last week with rain, rain and more rain. It rains now in fact. This is all good news for the garden up to a point. The peas, pumpkins, kohlrabi and turnips are doing well, everything else ranges from so-so to dead. If we were subsistence farmers, we'd be worried, but as it is, we say, well you've got to start somewhere. Here is a a recent self-portrait of the eastern branch of the Wagner clan/Maine-branch of the Ruff-Wagner clan. Some of you's have not seen KT's hair short or my face be-goateed. The goat is a recent occurrence for me, but KT's easily-maintained-do is at least four months old. She might add that she is not making any statement other than that of living a simple life expressed through the hair-follicles. As it is, I think she's quite presentable with or without hair :) (Thanks to In-Law Amy for the Bean plaid shirt, it fits great!)


In other news, two weeks or so of stress for me comes to an end as I start work on a new project tomorrow and money flows in again. Not a moment too soon too as big blue trucks don't pay for themselves literally. Its not until they start carting around tools and materials that they begin to make sense. With that in mind I forced the rack I built for the Chevy onto the Italian Stallion (now that Chrysler is owned by Fiat that name seems fitting). Oddly enough the bed of the new truck is two inches wider in the front that the Chevy. Installing the now dry and brittle hemlock posts was not without its challenges. The bed on the new truck is also three inches longer than the Chevy requiring new side planks at a full 8 feet. The result:

I will be putting the whole rig through its paces tomorrow morning. I'll be loaded to the gills with ladders, tools, planks, saw horses and the like for the job on Thompson Lake. We've got two timber frames to raise, one hand cut in Hemlock and one machine cut by South County Post and Beam of West Kingston, RI in Douglas Fir. This will be our first time raising a machine cut frame. It will also be my first time in this particular part of Maine:


Ver mapa más grande

In addition to raising the timberframes we'll be enclosing the buildings with structural insulated panels from Winter Panel in Brattleboro, VT. All that raising and enclosing means a lot of time working with a crane and working on the roofs--exactly the kind of work I had in mind for myself when I was five!

KT sends her greetings to all y'all in the blogosphere and interweb

That's the way it looks from here.

News from the Country Estate June 10, 2009

Greetings,

-Back in Maine, the way life should be, waiting out a rainy week, dodging Black Flies, mosquitos and ticks.

-The garden soldiers on despite a concerted attack of the local slug contingent:

Collateral damage, a mostly eaten butternut squash.

-I've pretty much given up on the butternut squash. Its a little late to be planting more. There are a few water melons hanging on, as the slugs don't seem to like them as much.

Tomatoes in the bed next to the deck.

The right half is our garden, the left is our landlords'.

Peas Left, Turnips Right.

Lettuce/Onions/Kohlrabi Left, Sweet Basil Right.

Open sown corn and beans. Only the beans are coming up.

A hill of pumpkins.

Spring chickens. John Barleycorn, the lieutenant rooster is on the left.

The Commodore, the dominant rooster, front and center.

-In other news, the transportation infrastructure has changed, as I have traded the 2005 Chevy for a 2004 Dodge 2500 with only 22,500 miles and everything on it. It came with a 8.5 foot Fisher V-plow.

Snazzy. And supremely useful.

Plow and newly painted boat trailer

-I also recently traded some labor for a lightly used but in working order job-box for my voluminous amounts of tools. Now I can lock them securely in box weighing close to 500lbs. My theory for preventing theft is to make it supremely inconvenient to steal my stuff. You can never make something completely secure because if someone wants something bad enough, they'll find a way to get it. But if it is sufficiently inconvenient to take something, it will keep something 99% secure. The other thing is to keep the other subcontractors on your site happy, because if they're mad at you, they're more likely to take it out on your tools.

-The rain and wetness continues.

---W---