Finishing Up

Tomorrow I start to head back home from RI after chewing gum and kicking ass at SWOS. I can't say that I'll exactly be thrilled to go back to a maelstrom of paperwork, busywork, and boringness but hopefully my career will start looking up with the prospect of going to fleet week in NYC and starting to actually apply some of the stuff I've learned here. My biggest disappointment the whole time I was up here? The weather and the fact that I couldn't find any woodworking shops that aren't already back home. I guess there just isn't that much demand up here, despite the boom that New England had back in the day for handmade furniture.

Woodworking projects

I finished making a tool tote from Roy Underhill's "The Woodwright's Apprentice." It's about as ugly as a cross-eyed dog with the mange, but somehow the stars and planets aligned when I was knocking the thing together with 1 1/4" nails and it's steady like a rock, fully capable of holding 20 pounds worth of tools. When I first glanced through the pages, I thought it'd be a snap to put together. But after I dog-eared the page and came back to it and actually started reading, I realized the ends and sides are canted outwards so that the whole thing resembles an upside down triangle with the apex truncated. In as few words, it blew my mind as to how I'd make it.

Fortunately after I'd prepared all the stock, it wasn't that difficult to figure out. The bottom gave me the most grief. I attempted to put a bevel on its edges so that the tote's sides would neatly join up to it. But I somehow fouled it all up to where the bevel was far too much and resulted in the sides splaying waaaay out.

In the end I had to go back and replane the bevel on the bottom. Throughout the whole process of measuring, planing, fiddling around with the T bevel, hitting my thumb with hammer and spilling all the nails out into a pile of shavings, something seemed amiss. It wasn't obvious until I put the thing together that I realized I'd somehow cut the bottom's lenth about an inch and a half short.

But instead of channeling my artistic angst-neo-deconstructivist side (aka getting pissed off and destroying it with a hammer) I cobbled it together with nails and stood back to look at it.

My eyes shortly began to burn and fill up with tears. It was extremely homely. But I piled it up with all the adrift tools, clamps, blades, and squares that I had on my workbench and hoisted it up to see if it would hold. I could hear angels in the background, and I felt a golden glow surround me; I'd just performed a miracle.

In all seriousness, the workmanship of the thing is a pretty low standard. The sides' bottoms aren't fully flush with the bottom's sides, the mortices are cut a little too deep (the handle perceptibly shifts about 1/16" back and forth), the rabbets aren't cut very cleanly, and there's that obvious gap in the bottom where it's too short.

However, I'm improving and progressing which is encouraging to me. The rabbets are the best I've cut so far, I was able to plane and joint the boards dead flat and actually plane the proper bevel on the end pieces and the sides' bottoms (but not the bottom), the mortice and tenons I made are decent and hold, and the saw cuts I made to shape the handle are extremely accurate and very clean. Overall, I'd say it's a success. My whole intention was to make a tote that I can carry tools around, and this certainly meets that goal. I plan on making one for Lara pretty soon for her gardening tools, and I'll definitely be using the lessons applied. And hey, practice makes perfect.

Normalcy

Things have started to settle down now at work ever since we passed FCT's. This means I've had time to work on my qualifications, study, PT, and work on my carvings while still having enough time left over for tea and reading. There's something about drinking tea at night that helps to clear my head and stimulate the thinking portion of my brain that's often underutilized (and sometimes not required) at work. Unfortunately this has backfired on several occassions where I've spent half the night working on some idea for a carving, or sketching, only to glance at my watch and realize that I have to get up in 6 hours for work.

For right now I'm patiently waiting for warmer weather so that I can start riding my bike again. I'm almost finished with my frog and lilypad carving, I'm in the middle of carving a dolphin, and I've just started carving a dragon. It's a little bit comforting to see that I'm improving in carving and everything that goes with it (sharpening, stropping, setting up a bevel, laying out a thorough design in full). Once I complete the dragon, I'll probably do several more versions of it just to try and improve upon it. Although the first one is still crude, I'll probably leave it with the tool marks on it. Hopefully I'll put up pictures of these carvings in the next few days if I can ever figure out how to work all this blasted technology.

Pu'er Favorites the Second Time Around

I enjoy trying new things unless I'm feeling exceptionally grumpy, and sheng pu'er is no exception. But, it's comforting to continually explore the same tea: I usually notice different notes that went previously undetected. Over the past year, I acquired three bricks of the Xiaguan Baoyan, which I plan on letting age, one bing of the Kunming Guyi 2006 JingMai, three bricks of the Yiwu Yongpinhao 2007 Fall Harvest, and one Xiaguan Baoyan tuocha. Right now while I try to make time outside of work, I'm slowly chipping away at each bing and brick with the exception of two Yiwu Yingpinhao bricks and the Kunming Guyi bing.

My final thoughts on the Yuannian 2008 JianCheng 1094-I originally noted some muscatel and malt flavors about a year and a half ago. This has subtly changed with the malt fading away into a rustic sweetness in the background and the muscatel becoming muted. As of now, the flavors mesh wonderfully with each other, but there's nothing special about this decent tea.

Surviving until the holidays

Hopefully this weekend I can catch up on sleep and exercise, but I'm really looking forward until Tuesday when my vacation time starts. 9 days of rest and relaxation, here I come!

Dryad carving

I'm almost done with my dryad woodcarving. Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures once I clean it up. As for right now, it's really just a "first draft" carving. I've got another piece of black walnut that I'll use to make another carving and learn from all the mistakes that I made on the first one.

If they didn't have Christmas, they'd invent something else

Performance Bike was having an early bird special so I went to their Raleigh location to see what I needed. After going through their clearance rack and seeing that only larges and xxl sized jerseys and bibs were left, I decided to look elsewhere. I went through the whole store and settled on a bike stand to use with the front tire when you're using a trainer. It cost a whopping $8.60. I brought it up to the cashier who looked disappointed when I put it on the counter, and after spending 2 minutes checking to see if I'd ever shopped at one of their stores, commented, "That's it? I mean, 20% off all purchases..." I replied, "Yeah, but this is all I need." He rang me up and I waited for my dad to finish with his purchase while I watched the other people stand in line with items costing less than $50. I know that if we didn't have Christmas, department stores would create something else to inundate us with some sort of cultural obligation that would require us to spend a small fortune to enjoy the created holiday.