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.