One project down another almost given up on.

As you can see from this first picture this was a good weekend to be indoors, if it was not snowing there was a strong wind with which to contend.

This weekend saw the end of the bedroom tables project and the beginning of another... the spice rack for the camper.


All in all the tables turned our well. All of the wood came from tree cut here in 2005 (beetle kill).





The attempt to match the two pieces for each top turned out OK, but would have been better if a single piece had been resawed.





Marlys did the finishing over the weekend and it has 3 layers; the first was GF Original Seal-a-Cell, followed by 2 coats of GF Arm-R-Seal Urethane Topcoat. She steel wooled between all coats. 2 coats of lacquer were also added to the tops only.

While Marlys was doing the finishing, I got started on the spice rack to replace the one in the truck camper. The new one should allow for more spice and incorporate a paper towel holder.

Golden Oak is used through out the camper and in looking through the wood in the shop there was only Oak cabinet grade plywood. This was not going to work.

In digging around a bunch of cherry draw fronts removed from the bathroom cabinets during the build were collecting dust in the rafters (trusses really). These would become the next victims of the wood butcher.

It took be a while to re-mill the drawer fronts into 1/2" cherry stock, then I made wrong cut - repair, wrong cut-repair, until I stopped inflicting damage to the boards and built some OSB shelves for finishing stuff. I will start up on the spice rack again this weekend.

Hopefully the wood will be fully healed by then.

The Start of the Winter Furniture Season

It was cold and snowing most of the weekend, finally starting to clear after sunset (4PM) on Sunday.

Some of you may notice something is missing in this photo. I re-touched it to remove the platform bird feeder.

For those keeping score, the Stellar's went through 50#'s of feed between Saturday and Sunday. I believe that Bart (Family Feeds @ the Royal Gorge) has trained the flock to fly around and decimate bird feeders, so that they need to be reprovisioned... often...from Family Feeds.

Although I did have the John Koskinen Memorial (6 years) Sauna Bake Off on Sunday, which included a number of walks outside to cool down, most of the time was spent in the shop. I tried to snap a shot standing in the cold and steaming, but it was deemed unsuitable for viewing...by anyone.

Last weekend the legs and top pieces were cut for the bed side tables. This weekend the tables were actually built.

They are built entirely from beetle kill Ponderosa, harvested here at Pinon Rock, and milled on the band saw mill.

Since, Bill (the consultant) picked the "best" pieces to take back to Minnesota last summer, I have been forced to use the seconds.

Actually, I hide the best pieces so he wouldn't find and abscond with them.

The tops of the table have tapered edges to complement the tapered legs.

The drawers have the sides dovetailed in to the fronts and backs, and the pulls (not shown) are deer antler.

Although the "Molesworth" sideboard had drawers, these were a step up on the complexity scale, but they turned out good.

I used 3/4" cabinet grade ply for the sides and back of the drawers and it was not the best stuff when using a template and router, but my thinking was that it would be stable and reduce sticking when the humidity is high... say 20%.

Because of my past failures at staining, these tables will be left with a natural finish. General Finishes tung/poly/linseed combo will be applied by Marlys next weekend.

Three Years @ Pinon Rock

On Thanksgiving it was our 3 year anniversary of moving into the house.


I remember that first Thanksgiving in that we had everything needed for a COP, but the carpets would not be put in until the next day, so there was still and unfinished feel.

Now it seems like home. Even though there are still things/projects to be done.

There is even have time now to notice the things that change day to day, like these Elk tracks in the snow.