Aladdin's Woodworking Cave of Wonders

                                    

  Eventually my Grandchildren will come to fully appreciate my woodworking shop.  They will learn that when you want to do a little something, or make a small modification the tools and pieces are down in the shop.  My shop has bits of wire and many kinds of glue and all sorts of tape, wood of all sizes and shapes and a heap of Arts and Crafts stuff.

  The shop jobs in  this blog are all of the 'oh, I'll just nip down stairs and take care of it" type.

 Yesterday I went into the shop and make a flower/bud display vase. In my shop there was : a piece of wood, bark on,  that I collected in the spring, also four one inch diameter test tubes, and a piece of 2 x 6. 

  I made the vase(?) hold four buds because that was how many we were getting from the hibiscus plants under the grow lights in our basement, currently.  Now that the vase is done, the flowers seems to be running out.

 Aside from have the test tubes, and wood available just down the stairs I also had a one inch Forstner bit, and drill. I used my jointer to flatten the bottom of the fire wood so that it would sit on the 2 x 6 and cut things to length with my mitre saw. I could have used a hand plane, but I am still trying to take it easy on my back.

 As for finishing I had Minwax stain and shellac both on the shelf. Making this little project and the other two where  non-events since everything was on hand.

  The other two little jobs needed, waxed thread, lather lacing, and drilling.  I have a couple of walking sticks and pretty much one of them accompanies me when I am out and about, especially when it might be slippery.

 

   This stick has a cord that wraps around my wrist, to reduce the number of times I drop it while shopping. ( I have no hope that I will not drop it again.). The elastic that holds the loop on was getting tired. The solution was to go down stairs an cut a couple of feet of heavy waxed thread and wrap it around the elastic and the wrist strap.  The waxed thread is used to make my Polissoirs but is perfect for this little job.

  The other stick just needed a hole drilled and a length of leather lacing attached. 

  None of these jobs was  big deal as long as you have some tools and a couple of shoe boxes of stuff laying around.  It is a never ending battle in my shop between "too much jink" and " I'm glad I kept that thing, it's handy". Today I am happy about having stuff handy, tomorrow, who knows.

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I have been working away on a repair/restoration job for 10,000 Villages and here are couple of photos of how the job is going.

  That is one of the panels that needed repair. Not only was it cracked but also out of alignment, you can see how much material I had to sand away to get the two edges level. Sanding naturally removed the original finish, now I had to re-stain the panel as best as I could to get a reasonable match with the surrounding wood.

  You can see the colour match is pretty good although the repair to the crack is still visible. Once I put a couple of coats of shellac and wax the finished repair is going to be OK. I don't know if I had, had endless times and resources  whether  I could have hidden the cracks  completely or not.  To have really made the cabinet look good would have involved  making new panels and the way that the builder had glued and pegged everything together I doubt if I could have got the cabinet apart. Sometimes a job just turns out the way it does.

  This vase has a glass vase inside thereby making it a water proof wooden vase.  I made this vase from the recycled spruce from the senior's centre roof.  Spruce is a distinctive and broad grain but not unattractive, and much to good to be used as fire wood.

  As I was working out today's topics an interesting article showed up in my in box.

" Your First Tool Kit" , I agree with everything that he has included.  That would be a good tool kit to take to a shop that supplied all the standard power tools.  I would add to his list a shop knife,  Robertson screw drivers and a coping saw.


  The last thing to talk about today.

  I made a palette for when I am mixing paints.  The paints that I use on toys and other small projects come in tubes or small bottles. A palette gives me some place to mix and manage the paint I need for the project.  I even got fancy and  put a thumb hole in the palette to make it easy to hang on to.  I made this because I was tired of mixing and fiddling with paint on little scraps of wood or card board.