Slow Going

My plan for the day was to spend part of the morning finishing the stopper racks, cutting the splined miters in Mark’s Urn then assembling the sides of that project. I’m finding that Honey Locust does not glue well… by that I mean that I can not do as I often do and glue something up, give it an hour to tack up then continue working on it. Locust is so hard and dense that joints must stay clamped for the full duration to achieve a good bond.


I started by lacquering Rafik’s stopper rack and the locust curio shelf I made. When dry, I attached the loop hangers with #4 brass screws. Then I packaged Rafik’s rack and processed the shipping label and customs papers so it can travel to Australia. The curio shelf went on the web site as an On-Hand item.

Then I cut the splined miters that will lock the corners of Mark’s burial urn (box) together, cut the splines, got all the toys I'll need for this ready and glued the whole thing up, holding it together with 3 band clamps. The middle band uses a set of home-made gadgets that use short pieces of dowels and masking tape under the band clamp to put pressure on the corners to help hold them tightly together. The band clamp alone would not do this, the clamps at each end of the box use metal fittings that do the same thing. I also clamped a pair of corner squares into the box to hold it square while the glue dries.

Then I was going to get back to working on the steamer trunks. Really, I was! But that was not to be: A couple of purchases for on-hand items came in, so these needed to be packaged up, payments processed and the shipping labels generated. Then there was the tree.

There is a large old oak tree about 50 feet in front of my workshop that died. Don’t know why, it just never came back to life last spring. Electric lines run to either side of it, the workshop is up hill of it and Joy & Pat’s house is down hill of it. Should it decide to topple over in a winter storm, it’s going to damage something important. So we’ve been looking at options. One of those options stepped up and demanded my attention this afternoon.

What can I say… these things happen.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

Doug