The Occasional Masthead

So I finished the doors, and they fit snugly. I gave them a good coat of Wattyl SpeedClear. I went down and bought the cheapest hinges, knobs and catchs that would work. I came home, put the hinges up against the door and…

Found that I needed to cut hinge mortices in the frame. I fiddle around with various chisels for a while, sharpening them to within an inch of my life, but realised in the end I may as well make a hinge morticing jig so I can route them out. After all, I’ll probably need to do this again.

Wood “work”? Wood “craft”? How about wood “endless fiddling with no apparent progress”

Addendum, 29th November 2004
Said mortice jig was duly knocked together, and made the production of the hinge mortices lovely and quick. Thus, the cupboard is finally finished. Of course, two things at least learnt from it: design the doors early with consideration of how the hinges will work; even when making it up as you go along be very scrupulous with measuring. Otherwise you wind up with two doors of different widths….

Creeping toward completion. At least at this stage it has wheels, shelves, and a slapped on coat of some sort of satin finish varnish. The doors are in progress, and with any luck I can finish them tomorrow.

I’ve done the doors as frame-and-panel with bridle joints. Of course, having done them, I then wondered why on earth I didn’t just do the stub tenons. Must have been on another planet.

From here the plan is to finish the doors, route a bit of a rebate on the inside so they help make the cupboard insect proof, screw them on, then wheel the whole thing into the corner and fill it up. Followed by a deep breath, and starting to work out what the next one will be.

According to this report at the ABC, Australia is getting hotter.

Frankly this doesn’t suprise me. Here in sunny Brisbane, the weather patterns seem to have changed from the Good Old Days. Back about 30 years ago, from October through March, you could set your watch (non-digital) by the almost monsoonal rains that came at 3:00 pm. Not any more. Now Brisbane can expect a run of scorching, sweltering days, followed by one or more very violent storms.

When I spent a little time in the west of Queensland, you could see small rain clouds meandering across the plains, more-or-less following the water courses. The best guess is that was because that was where the trees were, and the temperature was slightly lower above the trees. Now, picture Brisbane: several hundred square miles of heat-reflecting roofs, with a huge amount of land covered over in heat-retaining tarmac. Surely this has to change the local weather patterns, if the air above the sprawling SE Queensland urban areas is heated above the norm, and kept hot by heat radiating from the roads all night.

All I know is that it makes it pleasant to sit in the (air-conditioned) car, and go to my (air-conditioned) office through the daylight hours.

Is progressing, slowly. I’m going nuts with this one and making it frame-and-panel, with the frames joined together with stub tenons in the panel grooves. It’s only in dodgy old pine, but I’m having fun getting more precise joints together. The funny thing was that I first had to spend a couple of days making jigs before I could start making the joints. Hence I banged up an adjustable miter fence and a quick-and-dirty tenon jig for the table saw. Then I realised that I needed to knock up a quick-and-dirty outfeed roller thing so I could rip 35×140 planks down to 35×35.

Thinking, and sawdust, is in progress.