Work day begins: 6:45 AM I’m taking a quick peek at e-mail, then heading out to heat up the workshop. It got down into the 30s last night, so the shop will be chilly this morning – a fire will be warranted. Shop Opens: 7:00 AM This morning I’m cutting the tenons onto the ends casework rails I milled yesterday. This will consume the morning. This afternoon I’m cutting the mortises into which the tenons I cut earlier will fit. Then I’ll trim this-n-that to make it all fit nicely. This consumed the afternoon. The case is basically assembled – but not glued together as I still have some things to do before I can make it permanent. Workshop closes: 6:00 PM Write up my notes so they’ll be ready to post when I’m done, and see what else needs to be done before I quit for the day. OK, that’s all that really needs doing. Work day ends: 6:45 PM

Work day begins: 5:30 AM Log on and post notes from yesterday, as my internet connection was not working well last night and the Blogger – which is always slow to respond – was not working at all. Not Bloggers fault, none of the web sites I tried to order supplies from were available either. Too many people on-line all at once, I suspect, and the servers were overloaded. Now I will continue my pursuit of supplies. Shop Opens: 7:15 AM Trim the casework parts to finished size (except the corner stiles). Lay out tenons and grooves. Cut locked miters on corner stiles. Mill miter lock strips. Begin gluing corner posts together. This piece of furniture uses a locked-miter corner where the corner stiles meet. I use it for several reasons: 1) It’s very strong, making it almost impossible for a panel to pop loose or for the casework to shift out of alignment. 2) It is less costly and more stable than milling the corner post from a solid piece of wood. 3) It makes a very pretty corner. By careful grain matching, I can wrap the grain around the corner. This is especially effective when quarter sawn graining is evident. But, the thing is tricky to make. To get a proper, square corner, the beveled cut must be exactly 45°: if it is 44° or 45.5° it will produce a corner post that is not square and won’t line up properly with the rails that will be tenoned into it’s mortises. Workshop closes: 6:00 PM Post notes and do some bookkeeping. Work day ends: 7:45 PM

Shop Opens: 8:00 AM Today I begin on the island for Jim & Ruth. I start out by cleaning up from the weekend adventures. We spent Saturday working on a personal project of Maries, A dog feeding station for a friend of hers. It’s turned out well, and we may post it to the web site. I needed to do the final assembly yet and put away the tools. We’re expecting several days of thunder storms, so I also took some time to stack the white oak that has been sitting outside unprotected. Then I selected my lumber and rough cut all the casement frame members for the island, and planed them to finished thickness. This is a good stopping point as I won’t be able to complete the next step this evening and I need desperately to order supplies. Workshop closes: 4:30 PM I went on-line and tried to order the supplies I need, but our dial-up connection – always slow – was especially slow this evening and my browser kept timing out. Today is rated as the busiest on-line shopping day of the year as people return to WORK to do their shopping on-line. I suspect I’ll have better luck tomorrow morning early. Work day ends: 5:30 PM

Work day begins: 6:45 AM A quick check of e-mail, then I’m off to start warming up the workshop. It got down into the 20’s last night, it will be cold out there. Shop Opens: 7:15 AM The first order of business this morning will be to lay out, drill and install the wooden pegs in the 4 stopper racks that I’ve been working on. Construction is complete and the finish sanding done. The shop is vacuumed and the tools put away. After lunch I’ll spray finish the four racks: two for Daniel, two to go into Treasures to replace some of the five that were sold in the last week. This will be the last batch of stopper racks to be completed this year. I got the four racks sprayed and inspected. Packaged up two of them for Daniel, as he has already made his balance payment on-line. Workshop closes: 5:30 PM Prepare a shipping label for this package. It’s going Parcel Post, so I’ll have to run it into town tomorrow. Adjust inventory at Treasures to show the 2 added racks as available. Work day ends: 6:00 PM