In Limbo

I thought that I would be working on kitchen cabinets right up to when we leave town for the holidays. We are still in the design phase, which is fine with me. I only imagined my work schedule a bit different. It has been very cold in the shop so maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I wrapped up the sashes and stops and even designed a set of cabinets for a clients mud room. It seems that I might be building those before the kitchen, but we will see, only time will tell.

Another possible project is building a set of doors for a room in Berkeley. The house is an old craftsman style structure with an old horse stable converted to a man cave. The double doors are disintegrating and need replacing.

The shower in the house is framed and blocked for the hardi-backer. I am waiting for the drain to arrive via UPS. Our local hardware store didn't have a quality three piece drain with a brass finish so I ordered one.

Framed shower

I am hesitating to start any new projects because we will be gone in a few days and I would like to return and start on a new project instead of coming back and wrapping up something that I wasn't able to make much progress on.  Honestly I think this cold weather has made me either stick close to a heat source or gets me to work up the hill cutting scotch broom in the sun. Even as I write I am soaking up the heat from our Jotul stove, warming my bones for work after lunch.

Freeze

You know the shop will be cold when the water pipes are frozen until 12:30 p.m. Today is the fifth day the pipes have froze. No surprise really, most of the black poly water lines are above ground. This is life in the back country, where the nearest bank, grocery store or hardware store are an hours drive from here. Freezing isn't usually a problem. We fill gallon jugs with water and keep about seven jugs in the bathroom and a few near the kitchen. It takes two jugs to flush the toilet. The pipes have been freezing consistently at about 6:30 p.m. Just now the pipes thawed, it is noon, a half an hour earlier than the last few days. With warm leftovers heated over the wood stove I am ready to work.

Warmth in the studio.

Cold weather hasn't kept me from working, with plenty of layers, a warm hat, wool socks and even gloves I stay warm. Long-Johns under baggy pants are comfortable and I have lined pants from LL Bean, thanks honey!  Even with all the layers of clothing I have been avoiding shop work, instead I have been working in the studio.  First it was glueing up windows and then it was work at the drafting table. The wood stove in the studio warms the space to the mid 60's. Better than high 30's to low 40's in the shop. The Windy Nip kitchen configuration was changed so I sketched the second draft idea. Then I worked on the kitchen plans for the Yellow House. I shifted my drawings around and drew the shower plans for the bathroom yesterday. I plan on framing the shower and then getting back in the shop. Hopefully temps will be warmer. Three more sashes to build and a bunch of stop material to make to hold the glass in the sashes.

Studio Progress

I had the opportunity to see, hear and feel one of my favorite bands, Balkan Beat Box played at the Arcata Theater Lounge. Excellent energy and great sound, a good way to recharge the body and soul. It makes one realize the importance of music and how it brings so many different kinds of people together in an almost intimate way. The BBB had of strong message of PEACE.

Back home and trying to wrap up so many loose ends. Made good progress in the studio! Baseboards for the bathroom were made from the redwood 2x4 stash that came from Crescent City. I ripped them in half and ended up with five eights by three and a half inch boards with rough sawn texture. I made some for the half bath in the house too.

From the rotting 1x fir that the nice folks at the College of the Redwoods gave me I built the cabinet (with shelves) over the breaker panel in the studio and also used that wood to fill in between the loft joists. It now looks finished but also old because of the rough texture of the wood. I still need to hang the doors to the cabinet.

The first draft design for the Windy Nip kitchen are drawn. The studio was warm because of a firing Becky did in the kiln so I took advantage of the heat. It has been cold at nights, the low temperatures have averaged around the high thirties to low forties.  Once the water pipes froze. The high temps have been in the high fifties to low sixties. It will be another beautiful blue sky day today no doubt. Sitting close by the wood stove with a hot cup of Joe typing this entry makes me feel thankful for all that I have and that reminds me off all the things I want to do before Thanksgiving. CIAU!

Sashes to Kitchen

Last night I glued up the rest of the thirty three sashes for downstairs. Next week I'll tackle the remaining sashes for upstairs. Between now and then I hope to install a Murphy bed on Monday and wrap up the first draft of the Windy Nip kitchen. Besides the paying jobs there are a few things I would like to accomplish in the near future. At least before Thanksgiving.

I'm looking over a list I made this morning. In the studio I would like to put blocking in between the loft joists and cover up all the unsightly electrical Romex. There is a hole in the wall behind the kiln to cover and baseboard in the bathroom. It has only been about 6 years since it was ready for baseboard. Last but first on the list is a closet around the breaker panel by the drafting table. I pulled an old barn door out of a pile under the cypress trees that might work for that.

Then I made a quick list for the house. Hook up the sink in the half bath, install the baseboard and hook up the proper light. My temporary light fixtures can last for years. (Still haven't replaced the two wall lights under the loft in the shearing shed.) Make slats for the bed in Oli's room, and finish the shelves in the pantry. I have my work cut out for me, better stop wasting time on this here N-7.

Sashes Galore

I have been building window sashes for a home built and designed by the artist Tony A. (You might have scene his home in Builders of the Pacific Coast by Lloyd Kahn.) Downstairs the house has 33 sashes and maybe another dozen upstairs. This project pushed me to purchase a new planer, my Powermatic 12 and 1\2 inch planer has been with me for 14 years and cost me $300 back then. The head of this machine jumps sporadically and dents the wood, a problem I have lived with for 6 or so months. Normally I would have it fixed but I think I'm ready for a replacement.  I bought the Dewalt 12 and 1\2 portable planer for $400. The planer is great! Three blades on the head and even a locking bar that helps prevent snipe.

Back to the sashes, today I finished all the machining except for the mortises. Wow, lots of pieces to keep track of! Nearly every sash is a different size so everything was numbered and that has worked great. About half of these are openers and the other are fixed. The openers will have mortise and tenon joinery and the fixed just get butt jointed and screwed and glued. I used up most of the wood for the downstairs sashes and have not measured for the upstairs windows yet. We'll need more wood for those. Check out more snaps on Flickr.

Tools Down

A luxury we have here in Humboldt is Humboldt Fasteners. They sell an assortment of tools but the department I visit most is their tool repair shop. My friend Tars disagrees, he would rather fix the tool himself claiming that Humboldt Fasteners is over priced. I like the fact that I can drop my tool off and come back a week later and it works again, it's worth the $25 minimal charge and whatever the cost it is to fix it. If the repair is more than the price of a new tool they'll tell you before they do the work. This happened to me with a 5 inch angle grinder, it would have cost me $10 more to buy a new one. I had them fix it anyway and I now have two grinders which is very useful. I have one set up with a wood sanding disc and they other is set up with either metal cutting or grinding disc or masonry diamond cutter.

Recently several of my tools have stopped working, first it as my small orbital sander. The pad wore out so I took the pad to town to find a match and they were out of stock at Valley Lumber and Pierson's Building Center. Lucky for me Almquist Lumber had the pad and I discovered also the lowest price. I must have lost a part because now the pad rubs and it bogs the sander down and it smells like burning rubber. I discovered ereplacementparts.com, search for your tool and a blown apart schematic is available with links to parts you can add to your cart. My part was a felt washer only $1.18. A week later my other orbital bit the dust, the part for it was $12.87. I started to think of other tool parts I might need and added a new cord for my Skilsaw, new brushes for the impact driver and an extra sanding pad for the orbital. Looks like I'll be following in the footsteps of my good friend Tars after all. Now I have to find out why my Fien vacuum stopped working.

Shop to House

The closet doors for R + L are glued up and finished, they can be installed any time. The pine panels with narrow Doug fir frames looks exquisite, I'm very pleased with them. Two coats of shellac applied with a sponge brush gives them a smooth wipeable surface and at the same time look and feel as though they are polished raw wood. I'm curious how the color of the wood will change as it ages.

I am building doors for the yellow house closets with the same material. I can't imagine them as bare wood but wood hate to mask the qualities of the wood. I am considering white washing the doors, maybe apply a stain that would remain in the crevices of the molding and reveals to make them look look old and distinguished. I would like to make some samples once I start milling the molding that I had a cutter shaped for.

I'm back to the house, I now have the window latches upstairs installed. No more windows blowing open and closed on those blustery autumn days and nights. What to do next is always the question it seams, the trick is to plan out a strategy that will be quick and efficient and also in the correct order.

Summer 1999
When ever James Krenov came out of his closet workspace that was on the opposite side of the machine room from the students bench room, I followed, hoping to strike up a conversation or just to eaves drop on some else's conversation with the master woodworker that grew up in Alaska. One time he walked through the student bench room to the break room where the coffee pot was located along with a small fridge, some tables and chairs, a pay phone and an impressive collection of books all relating to woodworking. He began to make a fresh batch of coffee. I was new to coffee at the time, didn't really drink it before my Fort Bragg woodworking experiences through College of the Redwoods. I had just purchased a mug with a lid to have at my bench, I figured I could use it in the car too because it had a wide base and was less likely to fall over. I had that buzzing experience of high energy late in the day and wanted to have a mug in case coffee was available which it always was in Fort Bragg. Anyway I'm standing there by the coffee pot watching the black dripping liquid and thanking Mr. Krenov himself for starting this school and teaching people woodworking tricks. He scoffed, and snorted. "Tricks!" he said. "Do you think this is magic?" he pauses. "What we are teaching isn't magical...it is simply the order in the way that we do things."

The order in the way that we do things.

That changed my whole outlook on woodworking, from then on it was the order that I payed close attention to. One more thing that also stuck with me was this.

Always leave the back door open.

What does this mean? It means don't permanently glue something together until you have all the pieces made, fit, and finished. Ahhhh! Finish before the piece is glued together, that was a huge realization in my woodworking fourteen years ago. Many thanks to James Krenov, David Welter and Jim Budlong. Summer classes in Fort Bragg are worth the sacrifice.

Closet Doors and Vanities

I guess I wouldn't be writing if I wasn't in some sort of transition. This time I'm switching from 'installation mode' back to building doors in the shop. Before I installed R + T's vanity I piled the tools and some redwood into the Jeep and drove two hours to Arcata to repair some rot in a stair banister on a 1940 Craftsman home. The home is due for a new coat of paint since the last application 16 years ago. The caps had some serious rot but I ended up replacing less wood than expected. Once the soft, punky wood was removed it was obvious what had to be replaced and what could remain. Retaining as much of the historic fabric as possible is the goal. Old growth redwood is not available like it used to be and there is only 2% or less of the magnificent forests from just 164 years ago when the whites settled Humboldt county and nearly wiped out the entire indigenous population. The Mattole tribes are one if those native groups that were completely eliminated.

After a day and a half of restoration my focus was on installing bathroom vanities. First for the gothic revival farmhouse and then for the Hideaway. I received the larger sized knife hinges and hung the door for the farmhouse vanity. What a pain to mortise for the hinges on the cabinet. At least I had the vanity in the shop and could flip it upside down to mortise for the top hinge. Mortising on the door is a piece of cake with the use of a trim router, sharp chisels and caul blocks. The new redwood top looks much better than the cypress one.

The vanity for Rick and Tamar went in pretty smooth. The floor was way out of level but having a separate base for the cabinet to sit on was easy enough to adjust using shims, a level, a scribing compass and some power tools. Working with PaperStone wasn't bad. I could cut it with a skill saw, I used a fence clamped to the top that the saw slid on. A jig saw barely cut through where I had to finish off what the circular saw couldn't get. The key to precision for shaping the top to match the template was an angled grinder with a 50 grit sanding pad, and of course a hepa filtered dust mask. The edges routed beautifully, I tried 3 different profiles until I decided which shape to use. The top fit my first try, that doesn't happen very often. For holes, a hole saw cuts right through no problem.

Back to closet doors. R + L's doors are built, they need the panels finished and then they can be glued up. The Gothic revival farmhouse doors now have the frames together and the panels are being glued up. I have enough clamps to glue two panels at a time. In a couple hours I'll glue up two more of the eight panels that get glued.

I'm still working out the design of the L shaped closet. The actual design is finished, what is undecided is how it will be built. At first the idea was to make plywood carcasses that would have face frames and stick trim to make the sides look like frame and panel. One carcass would measure 2 feet by 5 feet and stand 8 feet tall. That is a big plywood box. I cringe at the thought of sanding and finishing it and than can't imagine how we would lift the damn thing up that wobbling staircase down the narrow walk way to the bedroom. Instead I want to just make the face frames and make them a bit thicker than the standard 3/4 inch. Use mortise and tenon joinery and set panels into dadoes. Those can attach to the walls and each other and the inside of the cabinet will be the walls of the room. Lightweight, easy to transport and I don't have to use toxic sheets of laminated wood.

Transition Time

Being in between projects can be quite a frenzy. What do I do next? What can I fit in before the next project? I'm caught trying to wrap up  loose ends, prepping for the next big project or maybe even throw in a project that has been on the back burner for a while. This time of year I'm trying to fit in cutting firewood... better late than never. Luckily I have trees to cut that fell last winter so the limbs are fairly dry. Yesterday I finally cleaned up tree limbs that squashed a fence last winter. I also built simple French style doors held together with copper nails and roves for a client that hasn't been in a rush for them.

In the shop I just completed a bathroom vanity for R + T and also one for the yellow house. I had to send hinges back for replacement for our vanity but R + T's is ready to install. I'll be building closet doors next, three for R + L and four for the yellow house. I'm waiting on design approval before I begin. I ended up glueing up a redwood top for our vanity instead of using the cypress top that I already made. I just don't like the look of the cypress top, so we'll see if the redwood top is any better.

I'm at the drawing table now designing an L shaped closet. I'll be redrawing our closet doors now that I have the material. The new door design will incorporate the dimensions of the material at hand. Working at the drawing table means I can listen to Pandora. Time to get to work.

Hawkins Bar

     I've been asked to work on a Jim Groeling designed house in Hawkins Bar. This is an opportunity not to be turned down, Jim not only designs beautiful redwood homes but he is also in the redwood salvaging business. This means the quality of wood he uses is that of a century ago when the virgin redwood forests were being logged at an alarming rate. Back then it seemed these forests would last forever, today we have only 2% of those redwood forests remaining.

     I agreed to take on building doors for the house, we would start with the exterior doors and then move on to the interior. Before I began I got a call from Joe Yonts asking me if I had a shaper and was it in working order. He wanted to run window sash stock through it because the Lighthouse Road Shop's shaper was down. This turned into a much larger project, all the stock was rough milled so it all needed it's final milling and then pushed through the shaper. At this point Joe's back went out and he could hardly walk. 

     At the same time Shane Miller's truck was discovered abandoned in the Mattole. Shane's wife and two kids had been murdered in Redding and he was a suspect. Dozens of police officers showed up in our rural valley, estimated between 60 and 70 officers. Sheriffs, Marshalls, Redding Police, Fortuna, Rio Dell and more. Roads were closed and Joe couldn't get home so he had to spend the night at our place.

     I ended up glueing up 33 sashes and sanding them too. Just as I finished sanding me and the family packed and drove south for our son's college graduation. 10 days later we are back and now I'm working on the doors. The frames are mortise and tenoned and the birds eye panels have been cut to size but I had to break away and get back to the Yellow House to bat proof it. Since we've been gone they have been pissing and shitting on everything, even the freshly painted walls. One more day of house work and I'll get back on the doors. Time to get to work.

Tool Box for Stained Glass

Tool Box for Stained Glass, a set on Flickr.

I took a material science course at College of the Redwoods, CT-7 Glass. I couldn't wait to get my own tools and start making my own stained glass creations. I was commissioned to do a stained glass window for a patron's sauna so I decided to build a tool box to organize my stained glass tools so that they could all be in one place. I wanted to build it with wood but decided to make it out of plywood first in case I wanted to modify the design after using it.

Refinishing a kitchen

     I refinished a kitchen today and yesterday. I built this kitchen ten years ago, back when I only wanted to use shellac flakes dissolved in denatured alcohol as a finish. No fumes for me, no polyurethane or penetrating oil please. I was so anti-toxic finish, yet I used plastic laminated MDF as the carcass material. I never used MDF again after this project. Not only was it extremely toxic when cut but it was fucking heavy. I remember getting our boys and a couple of their friends to help lift the cabinets into the truck and then into the house. 

     This was one of my first kitchens, I bought the maple at Almquist Lumber. They had a fresh shipment of locally milled (local to Humboldt) maple limbs cut into one inch boards. The wood was full of interesting qualities. There was spalt, fiddle back, live edges, quilting and more. I had fun resawing the wood and matching the book-matched grain. There is so much character in every one of the panels, I was a joy seeing them today after a decade.

     Check  out my flickr site if you are interested in how I refinished these cabinets.

   

Horizontal or Vertical

   I don't know why I feel the urge to write down what I am doing in life, but for some reason I do. I've been keeping a journal since I was 10 years old. I work alone most of the time and enjoy figuring out how to accomplished woodworking tasks. All of my projects are custom and I rarely use the same kind of material. Sometimes its plywood and store bought lumber already planed and jointed, other times its material from a stock pile of lumber salvaged from old wooden gates or feeding troughs, or maybe some painted siding from an historic building.
     My current project is a bathroom cabinet made from maple milled on the land the house is sitting on.  I used most of the wood already on the kitchen, vanity cabinets, the breakfast nook and the window seat. Now I am picking through the remains. Mostly 2 inch slabs that are bowed, twisted, checked, warped... you name it, these are the culls from the other projects.
    I had some left over panels and offcuts that were long enough to use if they were horizontal, I intended to have vertical panels. I made the panels and dadoed the frame to find that I was about 2 boards shy. I spaced the boards to see if that looked good, I slid them together, I tried to randomize the colors so there was no pattern. I didn't like any of them.  I don't know if it's the different colors of wood or that they are side-ways instead of up and down. It's been probably two weeks now and I need to gat back on it. Temperature in the shop is in the low 40's so that makes it hard to get motivated to work in there.
   Here is a link to the Mattole Craftsmen Flickr site for this project.