Riverbend Journal

  With warmer weather finally here for good, hopefully, I am able to put in some longer hours on this project. As I have mentioned before, adhesives prefer warmer temperatures to bond and cure properly. Still, I find myself idle for small chunks of time simply because I don't have enough clamps, or at least the right kind of clamps. As you can see, I'm starting to pack out the columns by adding layers to them and to avoid using mechanical fasteners, I need a lot of clamps to hold things while the glue dries. Fortunately, glue sets up enough I can remove most of the clamps within an hour or so and fully cures within three hours. I probably could have kept going on other pieces but unfortunately, I have my tablesaw dialed into an exact 45 degrees for mitering all those corners and the next steps require me to have the blade at 90 degrees. All this is technical jargon for saying that I need to finish all these small mitered trim pieces before I can reset my saw and move onto the r...

  After much sanding over several days, of both the carcass and the columns, I was able to attach the columns in place on the carcass. This involved applying adhesive to one side, clamping it in place on the outside and then using a ladder, screwing it from the inside of the box several times to apply the proper "clamping" pressure. It required lots of up and down and some minor contortions but I was able to get them in place satisfactorily. My next step was to obtain some more oak to start batching out various trim details which you see on the workbench. It always makes me sigh a bit to cut up an expensive board into small pieces but it has to be done to achieve the effect the client desires. Next up, I will start cutting the joinery on all those small pieces and after more sanding, start attaching them to the altar permanently. Then it should visually start looking more like an altar. I'm an engineer so it stands to reason, I loved physics in college. It was one of my f...

  Awhile back, in cleaning out our storage room to make room for the radon guy, I came across this project and set it aside. It is, if memory serves me correct, my very first woodworking project I ever did. It was probably in my junior high shop class which had a section on woodworking. If I recall, we could only use hand tools for that class, no power tools. For years, it floated around the farm house and was used for it's intended purpose as a small shelf to hold books. For the last half dozen years or so though, it has resided on a shelf in our storage room collecting dust. Since it is my first project however, I have no desire to purge it and will probably just let it collect more dust. Perhaps one of my kids will desire to use it someday. Inspired, I looked around the house at other projects I built early on during my "woodworking career" if you can call it that. The above pump handle lamp was I think the second project I ever built, probably as a freshman in high sc...

  I've seen a handful of these vehicles from a distance while I've been driving around and not long ago, I saw quite a number of them on the evening news burning, but I've never seen one up close until recently. If you recall, I dug out an old Apple IIe computer from our storage room, cleaned it up and put it up for sale on Marketplace. Despite being clearly stating I would sell it "to the best offer" and tagging the ad with the words "if you are reading this, it is still available", I fielded about 20 people asking if it was free or still available before I finally got one person who seemed interested in it. We worked out a deal and a couple days later, he arrived to pick it up in the above vehicle. It turned out he was also mechanical engineer who graduated from my alma mater so we spent some time chatting about campus from two different perspectives (he was twenty years younger) and about the careers of mechanical engineers these days. (Like many midd...

  Although as of this writing, it is still too cold for gluing the entire assembly together, it won't be long before it remains warm enough. After sleeping on the corner legs with the splintered wood chunks, I decided to attempt to repair them but liberally applying glue to the splintered areas mixed with sawdust to create a like colored patch. After it dried and I sanded it, the repair virtually disappeared and is no longer noticeable. Crisis adverted.  With that decided, I trimmed the columns to the correct with and using clamps and some screws, temporarily mocked everything together with the exception of lots of trim, molding and bead work that still remains along with the top that will go... well on top. But for the next couple days anyway, weather will put a halt to my work until I can get the four sides of the base adhere together so that it can be sanded before I apply the columns permanently and then final sand those before applying the trim work permanently. Essential...

A.I. Generated Image I wasn't born a Catholic or really into any specific church. Through my childhood into adulthood, I attended Methodist, Baptist, Mennonite and Lutheran churches and was a member of none of them. I never really felt called towards anyone church, at least until shortly after I was married. After marrying a Catholic, I attended my wife's church though I was initially opposed to ever becoming Catholic in any official sense. But the priest who married us and whose church we attended really captivated my attention with his homilies along with the direct line of Popes and religious doctrine that went back in a straight line to the days of Jesus. The parishioners who sat around us every Sunday felt just like extended family and in the months leading up to the birth of our first daughter, I joined a church for the first time, the Catholic Church. As part of the confirmation process, one selects a patron saint to be a guide towards ones faith journey and after readin...

  A couple weeks ago, the conditions finally came together to where we could safely do prescribed burns on our farm. Every spring, we burn portions of our farm that are enrolled in CRP or Conservation Reserve Program. Land in CRP is land that is marginal to farm, usually due to being highly erodible using conventional tillage technics. So instead of tilling it and planting crops, the government pays you to not do so. Of course it comes with a catch. One must grow native grasses on it for wildlife and that requires periodic maintenance such as biennial burning to promote native plant propagation. To safely due this burning, we need dead fuel on top, i.e. dead grasses, to allow the fire to burn hot enough to kill undesirable weeds and other plants, low humidity so it will burn hot but not too low that it burns too quickly, a light wind to carry the flames across the field but not too windy that it gets out of control.  We use drip torches as seen above, to do the burns in a cont...

  Around the perimeter of the carcass, there are eight columns or legs. The break up the face to give it some appeal and in my case, disguise the joint between plywood panels allowing me to have grain always pointing in the right direction. Getting the material for the legs wasn't easy. I basically have two choices, (one more choice than I did for plywood), I can get the proper type, thickness and size of wood at my local LoNards Depot and pay a premium or I could drive 30 miles south of town to an Amish lumber mill who may or may not be open for business (and they have no phones to call and find out ahead of time), their lumber varies a lot in coloration and grain patterns so may not match, may or may not have the proper thickness and requires me to spend a lot of time milling it to the correct thickness, but I end up paying a lot less money. Seeing that someone else is paying for materials and my labor is free, I chose the former route. It wasn't without problems, sadly. The ...

  With the very next day being forecasted to be in the mid 70's followed by ten days in the 50's, I decided to make a go of it and laminate all my pieces together in a marathon of a day. Due to the awkward nature of the side panels, I don't have enough clamps or weights to apply the proper pressure for wood glue to bond properly. Wood glue also starts setting up in about 10 minutes meaning I would have to work very fast. Fortunately, technology has created products like the Thixo epoxy you see above with open times closer to an hour and although it needs some pressure to bond, it isn't as much as wood glue. However, it does need to have 55 F or above temperatures for 24 hours to fully cure. With one day of warm weather forecasted, I came upon the solution. I opened the interior door between my kitchen and garage and set a fan blowing warmer house air into the garage to bring it quickly up to temperature. The day started out at 48 degrees F so it didn't have far to g...

  With my template that I cut out earlier laid onto my newly cut to width front panel, I could trace out the double ogee arch decoration that will go there. I drilled some holes on the insides of those lines and carefully cut the middle parts of each are out, leaving about a quarter inch of material between my cut and the line. The reason for that is because I was using a jigsaw to cut out the middle parts and it leaves a very rough cut, the blade doesn't always track straight up and down and it tends to splinter the edges of the wood being cut which isn't very attractive. I have a secret weapon for fixing all those defaults but it only works if the majority of the waste wood is removed first. This is how the double arched panel looks after I cut it out with the jigsaw. You can see the lines I drew still there and the wavy edges left by the jigsaw. Above is a closeup of the front panel with some double sided carpet tape adhered in a few spots. I will put my template on top of t...

  Probably the second worst job of any large furniture build that involves sheet goods is breaking large sheets into smaller pieces. (The worst job will always be sanding and it's not even close to second.) The sheets are heavy and my accurate tools like the tablesaw with a nice sharp blade on it, are too small. So I have to cut them into pieces small enough that my table saw can handle the rest.  To break down a sheet, I slide it up onto my workbench and slide some scrap pieces of wood underneath so that I don't cut into my workbench table top by accident. Then I measure out a rough distance giving me some room to play with. The tool you see above is called a track saw. The saw itself slides on a grooved aluminum plate that makes it cut a perfectly straight line, in what ever orientation you position it in. But the blade in the saw isn't meant for fine carpentry so I cut it oversized so that I can do the final trimming later. Once I had the sheets broken down into smaller ...

  I am familiar with radon. It is a radioactive gas produced by decaying uranium deposits underground and is particularly prevalent in some parts of this country but not mine. It has been linked to cancer especially in significant exposures and if one has comorbidities like being a smoker. The gas is heavier than air so tends to collect in basements of houses which are prevalent in my part of the world. But in this part of Iowa, radon isn't listed as being abundantly around and is more hit and miss in nature. One house can have a problem and another 100 yards away won't. One of the old farmhouses I spent my later teens in had a radon problem but my parents had a mitigation system put in to bring it down to safer levels. When we moved into this house some twelve plus years ago, testing for radon did cross my mind but since this house, as with both houses I've owned, had a walk out basement. In my mind, it meant that any heavier than air radon that accumulated in the basement...

  In preparation for a house project that needed doing, I had to make some space in our storage/laundry/utility room to make some room for the work to be done. In doing so, it brought up this project from long ago. Above is the first computer I ever saw or used and I even learned how to do Basic programming on it, creating at least one program that my family used for awhile. Mostly I played various games on it when allowed by my parents.  At some point, it was gifted to me by my family and I thought it might be nice to set it up and be nostalgic of old times by playing some of the old games or seeing if I could remember my Basic programming skills. I put it in the storage room and there it has sat for I don't know how many years, in the corner gathering dust. Moving it out to create some working space reminded me that I likely will never accomplish the nostalgic fix but I could probably clean it up and sell it to someone who might. Empty space has also become more valuable to ...

  I have a love hate relationship with my local big box LowNards Depot, more hate than love. But when living out in rural America, there isn't a lot of better options especially since they drove out all their mom and pop competitors years ago. So when I placed my order for six sheets of A1 graded red oak plywood, I knew just getting it home would be a struggle. Under current prices, not sure if the tariffs on Canadian wood is in place or not as of this writing, this stuff is pricey coming in at about $120 per sheet. I need six sheets. I could have paid for delivery but in my past experiences, delivery operators that LowNards Depot contracts out too are usually reliably rough in handling the merchandise, not to mention, it would cost me the price of another sheet of plywood to pay for the service. The alternative is to just haul it myself. It is a lot of physical labor and six sheets is pushing the envelope of what my poor old minivan can handle, but I thought with no need to hurry,...

  March 24 With full intentions of beginning work on the altar project in earnest, I went to the local big box wood store, my sole supplier of plywood and found their selection to be very lacking. So I went back home and placed my order online for some superior looking product, hopefully, which I will not wait patiently a week for delivery. Meanwhile, I did a tour of our property looking for signs of spring and found some. Above is a flat of basil in our greenhouse that is indeed starting to show life. We planted three early flats using leftover seeds and none of the three every sprouted. To be fair, our unheated greenhouse received at least six days of below freezing weather during the early morning hours which may have played a part. The above flat was one we replanted a little over a week ago along with me replanting the tomatoes. They haven't shown life yet but it takes a little bit longer for them to sprout. March 24 In the garden, the surest signs of life is the garlic patch....