Monday – Dog Tired

Last night between 3:30 and 4:00 in the morning something came snooping around our place and set the dogs off on a bark-fest. Marie is blessed with the ability to lay back down after such a disturbance and go right back to sleep. She can also nap during the day. I can do neither. Once I’m awake, I’m awake for the duration. And if I try to nap I just get super groggy. I need to get a good, solid eight hour block of unconsciousness to do well.

So, needless to say, I was a bit off my game today. I got an early start on the bookkeeping and blogging chores though, so those are all caught up, but I was working a bit slow the rest of the day… being careful, double checking everything so I didn’t do anything real stupid.

Still I got one whole pedestal completed. This means milling the shelf blank I glued up Friday down to size and making sure it is square, milling the drawer slides, milling the 5 spacer pieces for the top and bottom of the pedestal then sanding and installing them. The picture on the left is looking at the pedestal from the bottom, showing the shelf installation and drawer slides. The shelf is glued and screwed in place only at the front edge, the rest is allowed to float in it’s slots so it can expand and contract with humidity changes. The drawer slides are also not glued in, just fastened with screws. These can, with some amount of abuse, break. Should that happen, they need to be easy to remove so replacements can be made. The other picture was taken after the cabinet was rolled up on it’s feet (if it had feet – which it doesn’t yet) and shows just the surger pedestal after completion.

A solid top plate will be attached to the three spacers, and making them separate pieces instead of one big one like the shelf eases problems with wood expansion. For one it allows me to solidly glue and screw them to the cabinet to lend it strength and rigidity. The lower compartment in this pedestal is occupied by a deep drawer, so the open space in the bottom will not be visible once the drawer is in place.

Tomorrow we plan to be in Bean Station touring a factory, but that should only take up the morning. I’ll get started on the drawer pedestal when we get back.

Doug