We were all set for a typically wonderful Thanksgiving, beginning with acting out my outlaw nature by traveling across state lines in open and willful disregard for the edicts from the Panic Porn Peddlers of the Covidian Cult. We arrived at dottir’s house on Tuesday with a good weekend planned of eating a farm-fresh turkey and fixin’s and celebrating our thankfulness, along with a large dose of house and yard work.
That changed when we got “the call” just before lunch time Wednesday while I was up on the ladder; my Mom was declining precipitously and asking for us to be at her side. So we jumped into the car and headed south for fifteen hours, arriving after dawn on Thanksgiving Day and just as she was about to leave the realm of awareness. What followed was 48 hours of our company rotating through her bedroom, sitting and chatting with her, singing hymns, reading Psalms and other passages, holding her hand and stroking her face and hair punctuated by visits from numerous farewell-wishers. Though there was unmistakable sadness at her impending separation from us, there was even more joy and dare I say laughter in our recollections of life with her and Dad and together.
Mom with the Elvis impersonator (he is a family friend) at her 92nd birthday party in 2009.
She left her worn out almost-104-year-old body behind at 8:10 PM Saturday, with its lung disease, blindness, and hardness of hearing, and put on a glorious incorruptible body in Paradise where she is in the direct presence of The Creator and The Redeemer, probably holding my Dad’s hand after 17 years of separation. Her final breath was in the presence of my sister and brother, since we had already begun our trip back to Shangri-la.
Yes, I was the victim of a loving and Godly upbringing in an intact nuclear family. So sue me.
One quick story captures the character of my mom perfectly. My folks were traditionalists in music, with the home being graced mostly with hymns and classical music from the Record of the Month Club (Dad was the pastor, she was the church organist). I diverged somewhat from that menu, and when as a young teen I started to mix in some fairly divergent music (what was with the Gregorian chants and Modern Jazz Quartet and John Coltrane and Miles Davis?) into the playlist they were not sure what to make of it, but as long as there were no objectionable lyrics they let me follow my own path. They often joked that my taste in music proved they brought home the wrong kid from the hospital. Just before I moved out in 1974 I was listening to The Mahavishnu Orchestra at substantial volume in my room. I must’ve lost track of time — how could you not when listening to the Inner Mounting Flame album? — but I failed to turn down the volume so when my mom arrived home from work the house was a-rockin’. Polyrhythmically. She knocked on my door and popped her head in, asking me to turn it down. Then after a few seconds of listening asked, “Are they all playing the same song?” When I assured her they were, she just shrugged and shook her head with a bewildered smile and chuckle then backed out, closing the door. Checking in, but giving me room to breathe my own air.
Farewell, Mom. I will join you and Dad in Paradise whenever my appointed time comes
With the two halves of the Kindle case ready, I glued on band of leather to bring the two of them together. The gluing was only to the faces of the case with the back edges unglued so that the case could be folded open with the two halves face-to-face.
Once the two halves were put together I took some scrap felt from my rag bin and glued that into the cavity holding the Kindle. That was a nice effect, except for where I slipped with the razor blade while trimming the felt and cut off some of the cypress veneer. I hate when that happens, and will repair it when I get a chance.
With everything together and complete I spent a little time padding on some more shellac. I will probably repeat this periodically to build it up a bit more, but I wanted the case to get to work. I stuck on some velcro dots at the two corners to hold it together when not in use and called it “finished.”
Twenty-some years go I began creating a Japanese garden adjacent to the house, including planting a small crepe myrtle tree at the corner of the deck. These photos from November 2000 are charming to me, capturing a long past moment.
Over the years the crepe myrtle has grown from a bundle of striplings into the largest crepe myrtle I’ve seen in a home garden, now taller than a two-story house. For whatever reason I never really noticed its almost-neon fall foliage until this year. The gold of the crepe myrtle leaves create a stunning composition with the scarlet of the Japanese maple.
Working with plastic “wood” decking is something I’d had a little experience with but this was the first large scale project, primarily due to the exorbitant cost. But, dottir’s friend P and I worked together for the better part of a week as he first removed all the aged and non-reusable old decking (and kept the burn pit flaming for three days) and then screwing down the new material. He started with the platforms in front of the porch and I began cutting the “boards” for the larger section in front of the living room.
Working the plastic decking is not really dissimilar from using SYP except that there is no grain and much less binding with the circular saw. The stuff cuts like butter because in consistency it really is like stiff butter. The decking comes with some proprietary screws (very pricey, of course) and we went through a lot of them.
One thing I did notice is that this plastic stuff is much less stiff than SYP or even red cedar or redwood, and there is a distinct little bounce to the decking between the joists since we were applying it on the diagonal for aesthetic reasons. Were I to build a new, heavily used deck with this decking in mind I would definitely space the joists closer that the 16″ o.c. I did for this one thirty-plus years ago. Since this deck is really just a design feature that gets very little use (near zero, actually), the spacing and bit of bounce was not an issue.
After all the “boards” were screwed in place I used a long straightedge to guide my saw in trimming the ends and the project was finished. My project for next year is to dismantle and replace the sagging beams and replace the open arbor that used to be there. The beams were assembled with Japanese joinery, which requires fully seasoned/very dry wood, but the material was not dry enough so over time as the wood dried its dimensions changed and the joint sagged.
…And I would have finished the shingling on this side of the living room. I just ran out of time.
This is how I left the south wall a year ago.
Another hour-and-a-half of shingling and then it will be on to trimming out the upper window and the wall corners.
I resumed the work that I’d been doing last autumn and was making pretty good progress while dottir’s friend was dismantling the front decking. It was actually nice to work on a wall that only has windows, rather than a wall that has plumbing, electrical service, a/c paraphernalia… I was making excellent progress before I had to switch to working with him on the new decking.
Next trip back I can finish the shingling and the new trim without a hitch. Then on to the final stretch of the new shingling on the upstairs wall above the living room.
In laying out the first of the parquetry patterns I was finding peace and solitude while listening to an audio book rather than news or similar podcasts. As always I laid out the patterns on kraft paper, gluing the pieces in place with a dab of stick adhesive. Once I had built the pattern beyond the boundaries of the field I flipped it over and glued it “face down,” this time with PVA since I needed an adverse-environment-resistant construction. Using a foam sheet between the paper and the plywood caul assured the pieces would conform intimately with the substrate. Their irregularities on the surface are irrelevant as the surface will be smoothed to a finished foundation.
Using a straight edge and my Japanese mortise saw I trimmed the field to the designed size. I noted with interest the amount of curve that was introduced to the homemade epoxy/veneer plywood through the use of the water-based PVA emulsion to lay down the parquetry. Fortunately that cupping diminished in about 72 hours.
It was then time to saw the simple banding strips from a block I made long ago, fitting the corners with a 45-degree shooting board, then glued them in place along the perimeter of the field.
I have found the best method for holding the banding in place during the gluing is essentially the same as described by Roubo — wide head pins.
The next day I laid the edge decoration, which was just thin, cross-grained pieces of the sawn veneer. Once those were done I began the process of removing all the thickness variations and creating the perfect foundation for the finished surface.
In addition to bending all the necessary parts for next August’s Build A Gragg Chair workshop John and I spent some time setting up the attic for the event as it is the only space in the barn large enough for the activity. I already had two eight-foot workbenches up there, but in order for all the participants to have their own bench we needed three more.
One of them was a simple problem to solve, at least conceptually. Just take one of the benches from the classroom space on the second floor and host it up with my vintage compound block-and-tackle. We did accomplish that but we are definitely not as young and probably not as strong as we once were. Plus John probably weighs about a buck fifty if you put bricks in his pockets. Even with a compound hoist, a 350-pound bench weighs 350 pounds.
But hoist it up there we did.
For the other two I made two more Nicholson benches after carrying the individual boards up the stairs one at a time, definitely an easier path to glory. At the moment they are sans vises and holdfast holes but that will be rectified soon enough.
Now my total workbench inventory for the barn is 19, an entirely appropriate number in my opinion. This is probably the end of the run for new Nicholsons or laminated Roubos as the recent prices for lumber have definitely scared me off. For example, I recently needed two ordinary (untreated) twelve-foot 2x8s, they were $23 apiece. The 24-foot 2x12s I’ve been buying for workbenches used to be $54, now they are $97. Fortunately I had just enough of my old inventory to build these two benches.
… to wear this corduroy hat I got for my birthday this year. It is so hefty that it makes my brain boil when the weather is too mild. My daughter bought it at my (and her) favorite chocolate boutique. I will carefully wear it only occasionally in order to preserve it as long as possible.
Coolest logo ever, with the ribbons of dark chocolate curling up out of the joiner’s plane! I’ve toured their facility and they really do have cast slabs of chocolate awaiting further processing. And that chocolate, while a bit pricey, is to die for.
A couple weeks ago I spent several days working on the old house, first replacing some degraded decking on the front side of the house. There’s is a lot of decking on this house, somewhere around 1900 s.f. which needs replacing periodically, especially that which is exposed to nature directly. Such was the case her, as the decking in front of the living room and the platforms for potted plants across the front porch had been in place almost 3-1/2 decades, and were looking all the more shabby alongside the newly installed cedar shingle siding.
Dottir has a friend from church who is temporarily out of work due to Covid insanity so I was able to hire him for the week of work.
My plan was to replace the old SYP decking boards with synthetics so I would not have to address this problem any more in the lifetime. The only downside to using this material was the cost, which was $4/l.f. So, these two small sections of decking cost more than my first purchased domicile, a very nice 12×60 mobile home in 1975.
I also planned to re-use the sub-structure if it was in good enough shape, which was true for everything except one of the front platforms. Taking the old decking off required patience and care as the original screws had become subsumed by the wood expanding and contracting innumerable times over the decades. Two days of this and we were ready to roll with the fancy new plastic boards.
I cannot deny that our spirits were vexed at the end of the second day when we had a nearly 100% failure rate bending the seat/back slats. We re-thought our process and examined the broken elements. It was then that I noticed ex poste all the failed bends were in kiln dried stock that I had planned for a different used and they accidentally went into the “bend” barrel. D’oh! We enacted a couple of minor ex ante revisions and combining these with the proper selection of wood we had perfect results and reveled in a couple days of almost 100-percent success (I think we had one failure and that might very well have been my impatience, bending the piece faster than it could stand).
I’ve had good and bad streaks of steam bending, but these were the most stark examples of the challenges inherent in taking wood to the brink of what it can be forced into doing. We rejoiced as the inventory of chair parts grew into that which was needed for next August.
For now the chair parts are just hanging off the beam, seasoning until used by the workshop students. I have some more Gragg projects of my own to work on so there will undoubtedly be more experience interacting with wood, steam, and forms.
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