A Learning Adventure in the Workshop

Darrell Peart's new Greene & Greene book arrives!!

I received Darrell Peart's new book called "Greene & Greene : Design Elements for the Workshop" yesterday, hot off of the press and signed by Darrell.

Darrell does my favorite interpretation of the Greene & Greene furniture style (see his website at www.furnituremaker.com) and now he offers both the book and his plans on-line for woodworkers.

The book is not a book of Green & Greene woodworking plans (although there are some good drawings in the back of the book), but rather a book of instructions and tips to allow the intermediate or advanced woodworker to build furniture in the style of Greene & Greene.  The book provides tips, scale and dimensions for how to make the cloud-lift details, the ebony pegs, the inlet-leg details, etc that define the style of Greene & Greene.

The photos are very good and Darrell provides information on building jigs, etc to make the job easier.  If you are building Greene & Greene furniture, don't go without this book!

Last night I also put the fourth coat of finish on the band saw box.  A final sanding and final coat tonight, and then hopefully flocking tomorrow.

Applying the finish

Slow progress on the band saw box.  I had to work last weekend and did not make it down to the workshop again.

Early this week I did finish the sanding on the band saw box, and I applied the first coat of Waterlox finish.   Probably 3 more coats, the flocking in the drawers, and it will be done.

100 post milestone!

I just noticed that my last post marked 100 posts in this blog since I began this experiment in blogging on February 4, 2005.  It took me just over a year to write my first 100 posts, we'll see how long the next 100 take.

100 posts ago I didn't know if I'd like this medium and if I'd keep up on blogging.  Turns out that I do like it, and intend to continue even if I am the only person reading it.  Blogging seems to be a good way for me to clear my head and "learn" from my mistakes and my Adventures in the Workshop, just as I had hoped when I named the blog over a year ago.

Surprisingly to me, other folks do seem to be finding and reading this blog (although that was never the purpose of doing this).  In a typical month I am using about 20-30% of my 2 GB bandwidth allotment from Typepad, and that seems to translate to about 20 or so unique visitors a day.  Who these people are, is a mystery to me, but most seem to be getting here from Google searches...frequently the searches are about home-built CNC or garden trains...far more of these types of folks seem to be finding my blog than are woodworkers.  Maybe CNCers and garden train folks just spend more time on-line than woodworkers, or maybe my woodworking projects are less interesting than my gadget and train projects .  I think that this the real reason, I don't have enough unique (or advanced) search terms for woodworkers to find me. My visitors seem to be a real United Nations of different people...most of the searches are not from the US Google site, but are from every other iteration of Google from around the world (mainly western Europe).  The Internet really has made the world a smaller place.

I am very happy with the Typepad blog service, ever since I moved the blog to here from the Blogger service during last summer.  Typepad has had its share or glitches and outages, but is still far for stable and user-friendly than Blogger ever was for me.

See you in another 100 posts!

A little bit of shop time, and spring fever.

I finally spent a little time in the workshop this past weekend, but not much.   After fixing the humidifier on the furnace and repairing our vacuum, I got to spend a little bit of time working on the band saw box project again.

I cut two S-curved pulls for the drawers out of some of the ebony that I had purchased for the pegs on the desk project.  The pulls turned out very well.  I like the ebony a lot. I attached the pulls to the drawers on the band saw box, and the entire box is now ready for final sanding and finishing.  I am pleased with how it looks considering it is my first project of this type.  I hope to do the final sanding and finishing in the next couple of days.  I think I will use a clear danish oil finish on the box.  I'm also going to try to "flock" the interior of the drawers with green-felt flocking.  This will be my first attempt at flocking.

I also spent some time in the yard yesterday getting spring fever, and planning the garden railroad expansion for this spring and summer    I want to extend the small loop of track that we installed last year by running a straight run of track for most of the entire length of our back fence to the left of our garage.  This will be about 120 linear feet of track with a small loop at one end to return the train to the other direction (on a single track).   The other end of the track will enter the garage through the small "hatch" that we had built into the wall when we built the garage, and then a small turn-around loop will be placed between the two cars in the garage (right on the concrete floor).   The "straight" run of track along the back fence will be suspended about 2 feet above the ground on a shelf attached to the fence.  I think I will make the shelf out of pressure-treated lumber for simplicity and low cost.  The far loop of track will use the raised "stringer" method of trackbed that I installed last year and talked about previously in this blog.  I have been very pleased with how the loop installed last summer performed through the winter.  This seems to be a very stable and weather and heave resistant construction method.

My goal will to have the new rail line built by June.  The two lines (last year's line and this year's line) will be able to run independently, so we will be able to run two trains at a time without conflicts.