Social MEdia: Unlocking the Awsome Potential of Behavioral Disorders

This is not my original idea. Someone emailed it to me and I don't know the original source. It pretty much sums it up .

Yes, yet another . . .

. . . table.

This is actually the first of these tabourets I have made over the past several years. It is based on a design by Kelly J. Dunton found in Fine Woodworking Issue 186. After I finished, I was dissatisfied because it was not "perfect" inasmuch as a through tenon blew out the exposed side of one of the mortises. Therefore, it was put in the house and used but hidden under a piece of fabric.

Recently, it was replaced by a similar table deemed to be more worthy of full display and so I decided to finish this one with the same pine recipe used on the stand-up desk. I am glad I did because the finish really adds to this piece, made, yet again from pieces of construction southern yellow pine from Home Depot.

This tabouret has now found a home on the porch attached to my shop where it proudly holds a cigar ashtray and the scotch enjoyed by my friends and I on Thursday evenings. Incidentally, one of these friends has recently brought a bottle of Four Roses single barrel bourbon whiskey to sip and it is excellent. I tell him to take it home with him because I cannot guarantee its safety while in my charge.

To the right is a recently completed step-stool to enable a little girl to peer into her mirror. It is oak, the dovetails are hand cut and the design is Shaker in origin but it is reduced in size. The red stool is one I made several years ago and is also Shaker in origin. It is shown for size comparison. Both designs came from Norm Abram's book Mostly Shaker from The New Yankee Workshop.

I think many people unfairly criticise Mr. Abram for his seeming attachment to everything new and powered when it comes to tools and the processes used for them. However, I would argue that for many, many woodworkers, he was the introduction to woodworking and the inspiration for many of them. I include myself in that group to some extent even though I have drifted to more hand tool use. Nevertheless, I still plop down on the couch on Wednesday nights to watch the This Old House Hour and The New Yankee Workshop whenever I can catch it.

The Shack . . .

. . . a review.

I saw this and had to post it:



Hah! Here is a real review of The Shack from Discerning Reader by Tim Challiles and a follow-up review also found on Discerning Reader.

Not ready to quit the day job . . .

. . . but maybe I'm getting closer.

Well, not really. I have been ready to quit the day job for years.

Anyway, this is a stand-up desk I have made for myself. This represents several firsts for me:

1. It is the largest piece of furniture I have made thus far.
2. It has the first tapered legs I have made.
3. It is my first interpretation of an historical style.

The dimensions came from a slab, or huntboard, I found in an antique store in Thomasville, Georgia a few weeks ago. I thought the height was perfect for a stand-up desk. The original had legs tapered on all four sides of each leg. That seemed a bit spindly to me so I only tapered the two inside sides of each leg. The original also had a pair of drawers which I simply did not want to fool around with. Here is a link to a picture of a reproduction offered by Southern Living.

The backsplash on the original was about five inches high and I shortened that as well as take the design on the ends of the backsplash from a photo of a Georgia slab found in Neat Pieces: The Plain-Style Furniture of Nineteenth-Century Georgia.

While the original was walnut, this is obviously pine which is not-so obviously from two 2x12s that came from Home Depot and have sitting in my shop for over a year. Who says you cannot make something good looking from construction lumber?

The joinery was pretty simple: Pegged double tenons on both ends of each part of the apron inserted into double mortises in the legs. That is sixteen tenons and sixteen mortises. However, other than the tenons on the first apron side, none were measured. I simply laid out all the rest from those first two. Then, all mortises were laid out from their corresponding tenons. Quick and easy. Aside from cutting the shoulders of the tenons on the tablesaw, everything else was hand cut.

The finish was from off the shelf materials and couldn't have been easier. First, there is a coat of natural Minwax stain to reduce blotching in the pine. Then two coats of Minwax Puritan Pine were laid down which were then covered with two coats of amber shellac. I am not sure of the cut of the shellac because I had some in a jar and just added more alcohol to it. Finally, two cuts of satin polyurethane were added followed by a coat of Briwax and a coat of paste wax buffed out with a car buffer.

So now I can join the ranks of famous intellectuals who used stand-up desks like Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway. Not bad company. Maybe one I day I might be accepted.

*In the photos is a step stool I made many years ago. Unfortunately, those hand-cut dovetails were about the best I have ever done.

Bloom, Red and the Ordinary Girl . . .

. . . is the title of a 2006 record by the group Tres Chicas. I have been constantly listening to it along with their first album, Sweetwater, over the past few months. They can both be downloaded from eMusic if you have a membership there. Tracks from the albums can be streamed from their website.

Lyrically, these two albums are the finest I have heard in a long, long time. Consider these lines from the song Red:

I'm as red as the red of a barn painted red.
And green as the bottom of the valley.

The red is the blood of the heart you have broken
and green as you well know is envy. . .

I'm as red as the skin of a Jonathan apple
and gold as a black-susan petal.

The red is the blood of the heart you have broken
and gold is a meaningless metal.

Or these lines from 400 Flamingos:

Your heart is four hundred flamingos
Pink and preening in the water.
And your heart is seven satin ribbons
on a festooned, favored farmer's daughter.

My heart is plain, and yours.
My heart is plain, and yours.

If those images don't grab you right away, you have no appreciation for poetry at all.

I have previously praised Caitlin Cary's excellent album of duets with Thad Cockrell which remains constantly in my cd player. Like that albums, these two have found a place in permanent rotation. I think even my wife likes them!

If you like excellent country music that has no chance of ever seeing the light of corporate Nashville radio, grab these two records. You will not be disappointed.

Souvenirs (Jamaica Part II)

Unless one wants to buy either marijuana, Cuban cigars, Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum, or tacky Bob Marley T-shirts, Jamaica doesn't offer a lot as far as souvenirs are concerned. Or not that we could find. Usually, when I travel somewhere, I try to find indigenous art like pottery or paintings by local artists. I am sure that had we been in Kingston rather than Ocho Rios, more likely than not, I could have found some cool pottery that wasn't shaped like a bong and didn't have the word Jamaica misspelled.

There were some women who were allowed onto the beach at the resort to set up a couple of tables where they sold some carved turtles and rasta dolls and shell jewelry, none of which was very intriguing. However, some of the wood that was used for the carved turtles and Jamaican drink coasters was beautiful so I go the idea to bring wood home. So I asked our driver to take me to a cabinet shop where we negotiated with the proprietor about some wood for me to buy. I probably paid the guy more for these scraps of wood than one of his workers made in several days but I don't mind.

Clockwise from the left are three pieces of Blue Mahoe (Talipariti elatum), which is the national tree of Jamaica. The wood has blue streaks all through it. I have enough for a few small turnings and maybe a box or two. A close up of the grain is to the right.

At twelve o'clock is a piece of what I believe is Spanish Elm (Cordia gerascanthus) but I am not sure of that. I think that is what the cabinet maker told me and wrote down. He was hard to understand and his handwriting is less than legible (as is mine). A close up is to the left.

In front of the Spanish Elm is what was represented to me as a piece of Jamaican Ironwood or Lignum-Vitae (Guaiacum officinale and G. sanctum). This is really a piece of endgrain but hopefully I can do something with it. Perhaps I can laminate a piece large enough to make a mallet.

The other three pieces are Mahogany but I am not sure if they are West Indian or Cuban Mahogany ( Swietenia mahagoni,) or Honduras Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). There is enough for a few small turnings and maybe a box or some book-matched panels for the doors to a small cabinet.

The cabinet shop (Simpson Woodwork, 168 Main Street, Ocho Rios) is smaller than mine. And much messier. But the shavings littering the floor sure looked cooler. All that blue from the Blue Mahoe. While I was there, some guys were working on windows in the sun and some cabinets in the shade.

The shop was equipped rather simply: An older model Delta 8" Jointer and an equally old 15" Delta Planer and a contractors table saw of an unknown make. No dust control. No safety equipment. The fence on the table saw was held in place with wooden wedges. No problem, mon!

By the way, Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum is very smooth and makes a nice sipping rum. Leave the Bacardi for pina coladas and such. Enjoy the Appleton neat.

Jamaica Farewell . . . (Jamaica Part I)

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. We had an extraordinary time down there sitting on "sandy beaches, drinking rum every night." We stayed at the Royal Plantation Resort. It is a beautiful place overlooking the Caribbean toward Cuba. The staff was friendly and helpful, the food and drinks were superb and my wife is still fetching in a bathing suit.


However, there was something that gnawed at me all week: the poverty of the country. Jamaica, for all its natural beauty and resources, is a third world country and it is shocking and startling to be confronted with the poverty that is there. Especially when one is not expecting it. I suppose I was simply thinking in terms of the resort and was not mentally prepared for the shacks with corrugated tin roofs, stray goats and men urinating by the roadside.

Immediately, I was reminded of other third-world countries I have been to like Ecuador, Panama, Mississippi and kept remarking to my wife how similar they were in human appearance by which I mean the trash, debris, and crumbling and decayed infrastructure.

Don't be mistaken, I would return in an instant if I could. I just think it would be under circumstances whereby I could DO something helpful other than simply tipping very well.




And maybe I would take something to read other than Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers From Prison. That was cheerful.