What to do on a VERY COLD day - 26 C this morning.

  Recently my 3 1/2 year old Granddaughter informed me that she liked boats too. She is just beginning to show an interest in "stuff" beyond her stuffed toys and modelling clay. She also said that she would like a pink fish as well as this purple boat, and Opa set to work, as all Opas would.

  The lighting in my shop makes the boat look blue, trust me it is purple. Making these small toys makes me admire folks that make miniatures for their trains sets or tiny lead soldiers for historic battle re-enactments. The many port holes are painted by dipping the end of an awl in paint and dabbing it the tiny holes I bored with my hand drill.  

  Jeff Foxworthy, is famous for his "you may be a Red Neck,if you....." jokes.  One of these days I should write down "you may be a Wood worker, if you.....".

  About five years ago I worked at a Wood show in Eastern Ontario and met a fellow that was struggling to revive woodworking in his secondary school.  One of the projects that the kids were doing was making shop stools from reclaimed material and selling them to raise money for their programme.  Needless to say I bought a stool.

 Shortly after I started using the stool in my shop I had to re-enforce the legs.  The design was good but maybe not solid enough to survive in a big guys shop.  At that point I really didn't need to fix the stool, I could have retired it to the fire, but, you know you are a wood worker when you rebuild or repair something 'cause it is made of wood.

I sat on the stool this morning and it ended up looking like this, a section of the top just broke off. Oops, do you suppose the furniture is hinting at something? 





When you've got a work shop and every tool there is, you fix things.

  I used my KREG drill bit to drill three holes into the section and drove three KREG 2 1/2 inch self taping pocket-hole screws into the stool's seat after giving it a liberal coating of Weldbond glue.

  Since the standard KREG drill bit is 3/8 it is easy to plug the hole if you want to.  I use this drill bit/screw combination frequently  because the screws are strong, the drill bits are high quality and the pilot tip on the bit helps with alignment when screwing.

 cheers, ianw