Dear Good Hours, j
Oh First, before the sawdust and the making and the swearing… I don’t watch numbers, or pay much attention to engagement. Why? Almost all of the content is free, (As of writing this, I only have 3 paid subscribers… thank you especially!)
I went through a phase of “engagement tracking” early on writing the Oldwolf Workshop blog and quickly realized it was a horrible thing to obsess over. I understand that’s contrary to the modern “influencer” zeitgeist, but I’ll choose authenticity and writing whatever the hell is in my mind and heart over chasing click bait trends.
This is already longer than I wanted it to be…. Dammit….
I recently realized this publication has grown to over 100 subscribers, 105 to be exact, with a high engagement. That’s a big number to me. Especially for such an intimate, navel gazing effort to track my attempts at leading a creative life. So. To everyone of you who take a minute out of your day to read the journal of my journey. You keep me humble, you keep me heartfelt, and you keep me honest.
I raise a glass of Four Roses Single Batch, poured over a big rock and given a twist and a dunk of orange peel to all of you.
Thanks for the support. Much love.
Now. Back to the Bat Cave!
*****
Dear Good Hours, (didn’t we just do this?)
I pay attention to several makers outside of the woodworking world. Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame and his YouTube and Patreon endeavors under the banner of “Tested” is one of my regular watches. A normal segment for Adam is his “One Day Builds” which notoriously take more than one day for him to complete. I feel you brother, the last 10% is 90% or the work.
I stepped into the shop late this morning and I didn’t want to work on the Dutch Tool Chest, Carving Chisel Chest. The thing I should have focused on. What I wanted was a sense of accomplishment. I wanted to finish something. A while back I was supposed to demonstrate dovetail cutting at Laura Ingles Wilder Days in Pepin WI, but I had Covid running through my household, and though I was testing negative, going to a public event felt irresponsible.
I had a project planned for the dovetails I was supposed to cut in front of the Ingles Homestead. A few weeks before I was doing a couple of break pad replacement jobs on two of our cars and I looked down at this mess.
It was four trips from my automotive tool chest to the wheel of the car to get these things together. In the past I’ve used one of the cardboard boxes the replacement part comes in, or a different plastic container that died a sad, aged and cracked death recently. I needed something my trays of sockets would fit inside, and an assortment of other knuckle-busting tools to go on top, and the demo seemed the right opportunity to make something useful for this and other situations.
I picked up some pine 1x6’s for the demo and inked this idea into the shop sketchbook.
I never got to do the demo. I did get to waste a few hours in the shop today getting it done. Not just one, but why not make a pair of them.
I started by cutting the sides to length, 18”. Then I used a plow plane to cut grooves along the bottom of each to support the bottom of the box.
I used the “tongue” half of my tongue & groove planes to cut a corresponding edge on the bottom boards to fit into this groove.
I then used both of the T&G planes to make the joint connecting the joined bottom boards.
A little fiddling and I had everything dry fit together and made a measurement for the end boards.
I cut those to length and set to dovetailing the corners using quick, rough, and utilitarian methods to just knock them out. Nothing special, nothing fancy, no showing off.
It’s odd and mildly frustrating to me that these free and loose takes on cutting dovetails often are the ones that turn out best…
Huh… that worked out… cool!
For Christ sakes I’m not going to write about cutting dovetails here. Repeating that over and over (at least that’s the way it felt) is one of the things that killed my interest in blogging. I don’t have the temperament to repeat myself a dozen times.
Everything was together. I had cut and chopped one boxes dovetails, glued it up, the cut, chopped and glued the second box. I didn’t groove the ends of the box so I drilled and glued in a hardwood dowel “nail” in each board.
I hadn’t given myself any way to pick up the box by handholds or anything, so I chucked my biggest Forstner bit into the drill press and made a 2 and 1/8th” hole on each side.
I eased all the top edges with a block plane and realized the top corners of the joint were the weak part. I used a cheep trick to reinforce them. I drilled and drove a 8p finishing nail down through the joint, mechanically locking the top dovetails together beyond the joinery and the glue.
But the Substack gods are telling me I’m running out of space and testing the patience of my readers with the length of this notion. I have 2 quick things to say. First: I managed to finish these two pieces of shop infrastructure in a single day, that doesn’t make me better than Mr. Savage, just lucky today.
And Two: I did have some philosophical thoughts while cutting the joinery, I had to edit it out, perhaps I’ll return to this for additional “finger swirling in belly button” in the future.
That’s it for tonight.
Love Derek.
Ratione et Passionis
I do like those dovetails; the proportions and the rough and ready cutting of them. Workmanlike.