First, there is the famous havest bin. I made another mistake that I am too embarassed to tell. Suffice it to say that it will still look good but with three dimples and a small hole drilled in the front of the middle drawer, I'm not sure it is saleable. At least not at a price that is worth the twenty + hours I put into it. So at that point, I said to heck with it and proceeded to cut 1/8" off the back side corner. It no longer wobbles so that problem is fixed.
Saturday while working on the doll cradle, I got to thinking about the close calls and incidents discussed in some of the posts this week. One of my thoughts was, here I was again working with the machines but with nobody around if I got into trouble, as my dear wife is off visiting the kids in Calgary again. The bottom side rails on the cradle are only 1 1/4" wide and call for a dado to be cut in them to receive the bottom piece. I have made a dozen of these and have always routed the dodo without using a push block. Kind of stupid I thought. So this time I started using the SS rubber padded push block. Don't ask me what happened, but I think the piece started to lift and I reached to hold it down when I felt a real pain in my left index finger. Needless to say I pulled back quickly and instinct made me apply pressure with my thumb before doing anything else. When I got up the nerve to look, I found I had only chewd a little off the side and nail. I really dodged the bullet on that one. After attending to my finger, I examined the piece and the dado was well enough into it that the blade should not have been exposed, so I still don't really know what happened. Fortunately the piece was also OK so I didn't have to make another but I did have to take afew hours off.
Yesterday I drove up to Ottawa to take in a woodshow. I managed to spend a few dollars but could have spent more if I had known that Santa had not yet bought the clamps I requested, or what I could do with some of the nice wood that was on sale. It's a 2.5 hour drive each way but on the way home, I spotted a flock of snow geese, and with the setting sun reflecting off of them, it almost made the trip worthwile just to see that.
Today while working on the mortises in the feet of the cradle I thought there was something wrong. Sure enough, I had made them out of 3/4" wood rather than 1" so there was no room for a shoulder for the tenon. Well it's back to square one on the feet. Otherwise the cradle is coming along but the show is next Sunday and I am running out of time.
On a happier note, our Montreal football team won the Canadian title yesterday. Mind you they needed some help from a higher authority as they played poorly for most of the game before bringing it to a two point difference with 10 seconds to go and our ball on the opposition 30+ yard line. Our kicker who was great all year but not yesterday, attempted a field goal and missed! Fortunately the other team was called for an illegal substitution, too many men, so he got another chance. This time he redeemed himself so after going to the finals seven times in the last ten years, we got our second Grey Cup.
On that note,
Have a Safe and Fun week!
John
Another mistake! The Date should be the 30th.
I decided to elongate the back hole in the insert to keep the project moving, but I think that I will be making my own blank inserts in the future.
