Bistro Alder

Bistro Alder Ceiling

Had dinner with wife and older son at Bistro Alder yesterday evening. We lucked out when we got a table because they were pretty much fully booked.

The ceiling in this place is nuts. Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to create this.

Detail

Rubberwood

Your cheap furniture has a secret.
Rex Krueger

I've seen the kind of household items he's talking about, and I kind of wondered what kind of wood it was, but never wondered enough to look into it, and here's an answer I wouldn't have expected.

Door Repair

I drove over to St. Johns today to help younger son replace the lock on his front door. The door has been not-quite-right for a while now, and the key finally sheared off in the lock. Extracting the broken key was an exercise in futility, so he elected to just replace the entire fixture. I get over there and the lady of the house is making French toast which we ate Romanian style, which means pouring a puddle of honey on a plate, then tearing off pieces of French toast and dipping them in the honey. Wonderful.

Coffeed and toasted we tackled the door. The old latch assembly comes out easy enough, the Makita makes short work of the dozen or so screws holding it all together, but now we see the real problem: the door is not square in the frame. There is a big (quarter inch gap) at the top on the hinge side and the other edge overlaps the frame by maybe a sixteenth of an inch. It's weird because hinges don't seem to be bent and they all seem to be fully seated in the respective places. The only thing I can think of to do is to chisel out the frame where the top hinge goes. We shave off a bit, but it's not enough. I think we ended up taking about an eighth of an inch off and that brought it into line.

The screws in the hinges were only about a half of an inch long, and some of the ones in the middle hinge were stripped. We replaced them all with some two and half inch long screws. You might think that the longer screws would have fixed the problem, but no. We tried that first and it didn't help. Thank goodness for electric screwdrivers. Can you imagine driving two dozen, two and half inch screws in by hand, and then taking them back out and driving them in again, not once, but two or three times? Mr. Makita got a workout.

Once we got the alignment problem solved, it was a simple matter to install the new latch. Oh, and look, the deadbolt slides home without making any fuss. Means we didn't have to get out the Dremel tool and grind the latch plate, which was what I was expecting to do.

Stanley Wood Chisels

We had one old, ragged chisel. When we ran out of screws we took a jaunt over to Ace Hardware. I used this opportunity to buy some Stanley wood chisels and a Milwaukee pocket knife. I don't really have any need to buy tools anymore, but I still have a hard time every time I go to Home Depot and I have to walk by the tool department. Tool lust is a disease and it is only through tremendous self-discipline that I am able to keep from drooling and and pulling out my charge card.

Milwaukee Pocket Knife

I have a pocket knife, but it was grown dull and Jeeves has been lax about sharpening it. I expect I shall have to speak sharply to him. Anyway, I had an excuse to buy a knife, and I indulged it.

Quote of the Day

Roubo Workbench

Did you know, things in the real world are not like the internet? Shocking but true! - Adaptive Curmudgeon

The picture is here because Curmudgeon mentions the Roubo Workbench and I had never heard of it.

Sawing Logs

Sawing massive 50 foot pine
SolidToothSawmill

I'm watching this and I'm thinking it's pretty cool: dogged little robots manhandling this chunk of wood and turning it into boards. But then I start looking at this setup and I'm thinking about the precision, the complexity and the durability. The cart carrying the log needs to spot on every time it makes a pass on that blade. I suspect the saw and the track are mounted to the same slab of concrete. And that blade! I thought round blades had been replaced by bandsaws. Evidently not all of them, and if it still works, and it's paid for, why not just keep on truckin? Surely it's paid for, old as it is.

Okay, that's point one and two. The grippers on the cart are another matter. They are complicated, precision devices in their own right. They have to be able to grip the log, preferably along the top and bottom edges of the side facing the gripper. They also have to be able to position themselves crosswise in order to get the exact thickness of cut. And all this needs to work day in, day out, for years. You might get a slow time of year when you give the machine a checkup and maybe squirt a little oil in the bearings.

I wonder how often he has to sharpen that saw. Daily? Weekly? Hourly? And how's that compare with a bandsaw with similar capacity? I suspect solid blades like this one make a slightly wider cut and generate more sawdust. You might get a little more wood out of a log, like one more board, but replacing the machine would probably a large chunk of change, so it's not going to pay off anytime soon.

More Furniture

Bookcase

Uniberp reports:

I made this over the last couple days. The criteria, besides holding cd changer and books, was that it be as cheap as possible. I do that so if i hate it or it's stupid i have no problem disposing of it. Also i wanted it as light as possible, so the carcase is made of 1x2 furring. One sheet of 1/4 plywood plus 2 scraps of 1/2 ply for the large shelves. All glued. Weighs about 20 lbs. 

It needs putty and probably paint but not now.

 

Panic - Or Not

The Endless Ocean - Shepard Tone (⚠️Video and audio can have psychological effects⚠️)
Jan BEWARE: This is the song that doesn't end.
I've been skimming the news for a while now (days, months, decades?) and it seems there is an unending stream of gloom and doom from everyday reports and people predicting the end of civilization. But it occurred to me that maybe this endless collapse goes hand in hand with our endless war. That's just the way things are now and the way they are going to be for the foreseeable future. Some people are going to run into the ground, but many are going to be clawing their way forward. It's kind of like these guys rolling logs:


Log Rollers
foresthistory

Once that log gets to spinning it takes everything you've got just to keep up. Miss a step and kersploosh! into the drink you go.

I am sure that the people who are running this country have an agenda. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't include putting a speed limit on the log. I doubt they could even if they wanted to. I kind of suspect that everything is changing so fast that everyone is struggling to keep up. The internet has tossed the world on it's ear. Kids are making zillions from idiotic entertainment videos for other kids. Some adults are making fortunes from making videos, many more are making a decent living, and I think we can safely presume that zillions of folks are making a little extra cash from social media. Shoot, I got $12 from Amazon the other day. Not sure why, could it be from one of the links on this blog? I suppose it's possible.

I keep thinking we should establish campgrounds for the homeless, but going any farther than suggesting the idea means I would have to talk to people who are involved. I mean it seems like kind of an obvious solution to the problem. Since it hasn't been done I suspect there is some kind of political bullshit going on, and that usually means money. More suspicion: somebody comes up with practical solution to the problem, but some aggressive, abrasive 'advocates' see an opportunity to extract some moola from the government, which will give them the opportunity to siphon off a healthy portion into their own pockets. Nobody wants to get into a screaming match with these assholes, so they relent and give them what they want.

We need a new sheriff to clean up this town, but who would want the job?

San Juan de Pasajes

Bayou Renaissance Man has a good post up about 16th century Basque sailors. Seems their beverage of choice was hard apple cider. The advantage it had over rum, which is what the British used, was you didn't need to add Vitamin-C, apple cider already has Vitamin-C. The Brits, you will recall, used limes.

A diver inspects the San Juan wreck, connected to a hose supplying hot water to endure in the cold water of Red Bay.
I'd never heard of piping in hot water to keep a diver warm. Makes sense though.

Back in 1978, the wreck of the 16th century San Juan de Pasajes was found off the coast of Canada and they started an archaeological exploration of the site. The wreck was in such good shape it inspired some people in Pasaia, Spain to build a replica.

Laying out the template for an angle piece on a natural fork

Lower section of the hull

Pasaia and Irun, Spain

I'm looking at a map of this place, and I think 'wait a minute', we've been here before. Yes, with Captain Coignet and the Storks. Irun is Captain Coignet's town. Both Irun and Pasaia are on the north coast of Spain very near the border with France.

Bookcase

Cherry Bookcase

My daughter wants to remodel her kitchen, which leads to talking about cabinets which leads to Vlastic, the Czech immigrant who built the cabinets in our basement when we finished it 20 years ago. Do a little digging and finally find his old website, and what do we have here? - a photo of my bookcase. I'll be durned. Still hoping to get in touch with him, but it might be a little difficult as he has moved out of state. He did leave an excellent farewell letter, which I quote:

Obituary, 2014

 

I'm done in Oregon with it's ever rising taxes, more taxes, taxes disguised as no taxes, insurances, bonds, fees, surcharges, handling fees, filling fees, rules, regulations, more regulations, administrative reports, permits and more permits.

I'm moving out.

Thanks to all of my customers and G.C. for all those jobs.

Hope everything worked fine and holds, since I already cashed the checks.  :-)

Best of luck.

Vlastic

Wood Carving

Model for Under Eaves Trim

We are putting up the siding on our remodel project in St. Johns. When you get to the top of the wall you need some trim so it looks like it was built by civilized people and not some hacker-bashers. We're working on an inside corner under the valley that joins the old roof, built with 2 x 6 rafters, and the new roof, built with trusses made from 2 x 4's. This is our attempt to carve a piece of wood to fit in this corner. Once we get it so that it fits to our satisfaction, we will have to reproduce it on a longer piece that will run to the outside corner. Kind of a pain, but sometimes the more complicated way gets you to your goal quicker than trying to do it all in one fell swoop.

Wood

This Is What We Do
I buy lumber occasionally for small home repair projects. I have a chain saw that I use mostly for cutting the end off of the Christmas tree every year. There is a lumber mill near Hagg Lake, which is only about 15 miles away. I see log trucks hauling logs down the highway every now and then. But I can't recall ever seeing a logging operation in progress. Of course, you don't want to get too near this kind of thing. It's kind of like being in a gun battle in the Mideast: all kinds of dangerous shit flying through the air. You don't want to be there unless you know what you are doing and you're getting paid.

I suppose the reason you don't encounter actual in-progress logging operations is because they are very efficient. It doesn't take an army to harvest a hundred acres of trees.

Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away

Mass Plywood Panel- Strength Test

Mass Plywood Panel- Strength Test
The International Mass Timber Conference is coming to Portland next week. A bunch of people are going to be talking about using big pieces made out of wood to build other things, like buildings. 'Mass Plywood' was an unfamiliar term to me, so I looked it up and this is what I found. Those are big pieces of plywood.

Moroccan bow lathe turner

More Post-Hip obscurity from Scott. Stuart King's website.