Wrapping Up Some Jobs

 During the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with several small jobs all at once. This weekend I got them done.

 First Kieran and his sister came to stay with us for three days and he and I got busy and finished his tool box.

  On his last visit we worked on other projects but on Saturday morning we drilled all the holes and screwed the ends on and nailed the sides on too. This is the collection of tools that fill his box now.  He has a hammer, three pliers, six screw drivers, two different squares, a block plane, black saw (still too big for him), a sanding block and his own cordless drill driver. He just turned five and is pretty good at drilling holes and driving screws.  This was the first time that he had many brads to drive and he also did a pretty good job.  Oddly enough, he doesn't like sanding either, he gets bored. (a typical woodworker).  Usually I hold the drill and he pushes the trigger to drill the holes. This time he was confident enough that he wanted to hold the drill by himself. I don't know who was more proud when he had finished drilling all those holes, by himself, him or me.

  I also spent some time painting, the puppet theatre needs to be ready for next weekend, so it got another  coat of paint and then Eva makes the curtain.

  There is a 3/4 dowel as a handle for moving the theatre about and a 1/4 dowel for the curtain.  The paint is good now, one more coat will make it excellent.

  Spread out on my saw horses are the two rub rails off the Pinzgauer.

You can see the rails in this photo. The rails I sanded and finished with tung oil are clear and will stand out nicely against the typical olive drab paint.

Once the paint was sanded off these birch rails sucked in plenty of tung oil.

  The last job but certainly the one that was most important for world security was the refit of the aircraft carrier. I found a nice piece of Baltic birch plywood and replaced the splintery deck that we'd put on the boat last time.  Rushing the job to keep a five year old happy just meant that it had to be done again.  Have you even noticed how some customers behave like five year old kids, and then are grumpy when the result isn't want they wanted.  I had a painted friend who used to say, you can have it quick, you can have it cheap, or you can have it well done. But you can only have it one way.

  Incidentally Kieran learned it was refit because the hull and the control tower were the same, only the deck was changed.

  My plan is to take a couple of days to work in the yard and to slip away for a couple days bike riding in the warm summer breezes.  It has been an excellent August so far, good for gardens, good for biking and cool enough that we've only turned the air conditioner on one for two days this summer.

  

  When I get back to the shop I am going to look at Jack Houweling's tool caddy plan. I think that he is on to something good.

cheers, ianw