Good afternoon in the workshop at the lake today working on several projects.
Lawn furniture
After cleaning up the workshop I started what will be a long term job repainting the Nunnallys’ canary yellow lawn furniture black (see chair that’s up next in the background). I started with the smallest piece today, a little table, and it went surprisingly well.
The new toys drawer is for my new measuring tools – it’s becoming clear that my biggest problem in woodworking is not measuring accurately, and even worse, not making sure my cuts are square. So I’m working at being more precise on the upcoming projects with a new Starrett combination square, and a rosewood try square and marking gauge by Crown The slope desk (shown below) is so phenomenally not square it’s embarrassing – the pencil strips are not parallel to the edges, and the top and bottom are not parallel to each other. Not even close. 
The new Starrett square is a real eye opener. I already have three combination squares, but none work remotely as well as it does – the markings are clear enough to read, and you can opt for measurements into the 1/32 and 1/64 scales.
Also got a new top for the broken glass one that’s in a frame welded to the top of an old Singer sewing machine table in the workshop. It’s a little under 2’ x 4’ so a 2’ x 4’ sheet of oak plywood will work fine (I did one of those in law school) with a strip mitered around the edge and painted black. But for the moment, it’s filled with rough Hub shelves to serve as a base for the new planer, which I put to work on some Hub boards for two more slope desks for the Hub. I have had a joiner for almost ten years, but had never set it up, and after I did and started cleaning up some boards I realized that all this Hub lumber really needs a planer as well.
I cut the face and spine for two more desk slopes/book stands, as well as a more complex set of cuts for the pencil trays. They still won’t accommodate my iPad in its case, but I think I can chisel them out tomorrow. I redesigned the spine to be smaller and simpler, and both because of that and because I planed the pieces down, they should be slightly lighter than the original – although they’re going to be about an inch taller so they accommodate not just paper but the Circa notebooks I use at work (there’s one in the background). They work as a book stand right side up and a slope desk upside down, and I have been using the prototype in the office every day since I built it.
I would normally have put the biscuits in and glued them up, but Parker feels strongly that the edges on the prototype are too sharp, so I’m waiting on a couple of router bits to come in and we’ll see whether the 1/8” or 1/16” roundover bit works better.
All this reminds me that I need to rebuild the top of the office piece (shown in the background) but until I get the metal to make the post, it wouldn’t accomplish much. So I’m not working on that yet – but am building the skills I’ll need for it eventually.
But a beautiful day, and got several projects moved along a bit.
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