New Orleans

My life has gotten entirely too busy and too interesting lately. Between Dad's death, learning a new job, and traveling five days per week, it has been really tough to get time to update this blog. I did try on several occasions down in New Orleans, but I kept getting pulled away. I'm not exactly in New Orleans, I'm actually in Laplace. It's about 20 miles west of New Orleans. While Katrina wasn't strong enough there to rip the place apart, it was still strong enough to do damage that still has not been corrected. There are massive old trees all over the area for instance that were blown down, and have been left where they lay. In addition, you can see high water marks on buildings on occasion. By far though, the hurricane left its largest impression on the people. All have stories, all want to share them, I get the impression that there is a type of therapy going on as they share their stories. I rode down sitting next to a lady who worked for the Post Office. Her job was to try to get a list together of who was living in the flood damaged ninth ward, and where they were living. She said that it was amazing to see where people were living. You would think that a house was too destroyed for anyone to live in, and there would be someone at the door.

The people there are friendly, the climate is agreeable. At least it is in May. I'll let you know about July later, and the food is outstanding. In fact, the most abusive thing about the assignment is getting there. There is no way to get to New Orleans from Detroit without a layover somewhere. I do not enjoy racing through mega airports, but that appears to be my fate. I have three choices: Atlanta, Chicago, or Dallas Fort Worth.

The job itself, keeps me indoors and pounding on a computer. I have enjoyed the breaks under a live oak tree sitting at a picnic table listening to the mockingbirds. It is summer there, and the living is easy. I'm hoping as the job requirements ease off, I'll be able to tour some of the plantations and historical sites. I specifically want to see if there is any really cool antiques out there. I wouldn't mind stopping in a few antique stores in the area.

That's about it for right now.

Living Room Bookcases

The carcasses for the living room bookcases are complete and temporarily lined up against the wall in the workshop. This is a big project. There are 4 sections that are each 36" wide, 12" deep and all of the units are 7' 6" tall. The carcasses are made of 3/4 in birch faced plywood. I've prestained each of the sections in cherry to avoid glue run out problems as I assemble them. The next step is to build the face frame and start construction on the raised panel doors for the base of the 2 center units. Just as soon as I can, I'll post a picture of the progress so far.

The face frame will be poplar. Once again I will stain the wood cherry before final assembly. Right now, I'm giving a good deal of thought to how I am going to cut the crown moulding for the top of the units. In particular, I am trying to figure out how to cut the cove curve into the crown moulding. I'm going to try to cut it on the table saw. I'll keep you posted.

Appalachian Teaching Styles in the 1930's

I've been thinking about my father lately. Today marks one week since his death. He had some great stories. This is not shocking since my family is all about telling stories when we get together.

He told one that is totally foreign to modern sensibilities. However, it does make sense for Appalachian Kentucky is the early 1930's. As a school kid, he had a teacher in a one room schoolhouse that was an abusive alcoholic. One day when he was fooling around in class, the teacher came up behind him and pulled him out of his chair by his hair and threw him into the corner. An older kid who liked my dad jumped up and began brawling with the teacher. The teacher got the upper hand and threw the kid out an open window where he landed on the sandy bank of a creek that ran behind the school. The kid promptly got up, ran back into the school, and threw the teacher out the window. School was dismissed early that day. Much as dad hated the teacher, he hated going home worse. First of all, he did not get to go to school much because his father was always looking for a reason to keep him home and put him to work. Secondly, his younger sister always reported on what he did wrong that day, and he got a whipping for any transgressions.

In 1945, my father got out of the army, and went back home. He freely admitted he was an Army trained killer with combat fatigue and a very short fuse. He thinks he would have had post traumatic stress syndrome except that it hadn't been invented yet. At that point he had waded ashore on Normandy beach, and fought his way across Europe seeing action in the hedgerows of France, the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally the bridgehead across the Rhine.

He decided to look up that vile teacher for the simple joy of kicking his besotted ass. He asked his aunt where to find the useless reprobate. She told him that he was dead. Sixty years later, it still made dad irate that that useless, drunken teacher had escaped the beating that he so richly deserved by dying.

Wormy Chestnut

I have an uncle in Kentucky who has done well. He owns a bunch of farms, and leads the life of a gentleman farmer. He tells me he owns a barn made of wormy chestnut at the head of a holler. He says the only reason that it is still there is that it is so remote that no one knows about it. He wants to show it to me the next time I come down.

What am I going to do? I would love to get my hands on some of it. I would think it would make some lovely and valuable furniture. I can't use all of it however, and it just bothers me to think that there is such a valuable wood just rotting out there in the weather. The cladding on the side of the barn is probably 3/4 in planking. It seems to be what they use down there. I would imagine it would plane down to 1/2 in material. The bones of the barn are what I am most intrigued about. Frequently, the beams are 4 X 4 and 4 X 6 timbers, and in some cases, they are uncut tree trunks. I've got to go down there and see what's there.

My own father's barn is a case in point. The cladding is poplar weathered dark gray to black. I am not sure that it is worth much. However, the beams and supports are all white oak. It also is rotting out in the weather.

None of the barns are used anymore. They used to be used for curing tobacco. Now there is very little tobacco grown down there anymore. It's a shame that all that lovely wood is rotting away.

Gone for a while

We buried my father in Kentucky on Easter Sunday. His burial site is picture perfect. It sits on a knoll surrounded by the prettiest valley I have ever seen. The fields are yellow with blooming mustard plant. The hillsides are dotted with blooming redbud, and dogwood. The grave site is shaded by an oak tree, and I just feel Dad is happy with it.

Dad was equal parts stubborn, and practical; strong, and gentle; funny, and gloomy. In short he was a man with all the character contradictions that most men have. He did not fear death, he had seen it too many times in his life, and so when it came, it came with a sense of relief.

I will miss him. In him, I saw myself. Through him, I learned how to be a man, and how to grow old gracefully. He accepted the limitations that age and disease put on him, and still managed to enjoy his family and friends and long summer evenings on his porch with his pets. That is his legacy to me and my brothers.

Airport Decoration

I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight last week, and I had a revelation. As I sat in a huge waiting area, I felt uneasy. I really could not figure out why. I wasn't worried about the flight. I had a seat guaranteed. I wasn't late. I wasn't crowded. I was healthy, and generally in good spirits.

I was surrounded by a tastefully decorated waiting area. The floor tile was a light gray. The carpet was tastefully beige. The metal was a high tech brushed nickel finish. And the indirectly lighted cieling was a muted off white. The banks of seating were upholstered in cream colored vinyl. The view out the window was all about concrete, and jet planes.

Then it occured to me. There wasn't a single natural thing anywhere in the area. No wood, no plants, no pictures of anything occuring in nature. Was that the reason I felt so uneasy? I walked over to the bar area where you could buy a drink. Sure enough, the tables were made of cherry wood, as were the chairs. The mural behind the bar depicted mallards gliding in for a landing in a marsh. I immediately felt myself relax just a little. (Without a drink.)

I'm beginning to understand why we surround ourselves with wood and wood products. They comfort us. We respond to wooden objects as if they are still living things. In a world far removed from natural surroundings, wood is a link to our primal natures. No wonder we love it in our lives.

It's also yet another reason why air travel is so disliked by most fliers in the nation.

Life on the Road

It's been a week since I updated this blog. The reason: One week's worth of training in Wilmington, Delaware. They say that travel broadens you, and I agree. I put on 5 pounds in one week. Actually, it was an agreeable week. There was one thing I found disturbing about that particular patch of the east coast. There was the general lack of home improvement stores.

I commented on this with a person from the area, and they agreed. Not only was there a general lack of the big box home improvement stores, there was also a generalized dearth of hardware stores. At that very moment, I knew that I had entered a warp of some sort that that transported me to a bizzaro world where up was down, right was left, and even minor home improvements were contracted out.

You have to understand that I am from the Detroit area. There are more engineers per square foot here than there are anywhere else on the planet. Each of those engineers knows that if civilization was wiped off this earth, they could single handedly rebuild it all. If you add that to the people who rebuild cars in their garage, and the outdoorsmen, you get a great deal of can do attitude around here. My next door neighbor, for example, builds homes as a retirement hobby. I have seen men around here get teased because they didn't know that concrete driveways needed to be sloped one quarter bubble away from the house.

In Detroit, it is hard to find a major shopping area that does not have a big box home improvement store. In addition to that there are lumber yards and hardwares scattered all over the area. Let's just say that it shattered my world view to discover that the Detroit area is not the center of the universe, nor it does not represent the way that the world should be.

It's taken a while, but I think I've gotten my emotional equilibrium back. Still I need to know, where do you go to get the new GFCI when the old one goes in the kitchen.

How to Build a House in 30 Minutes and Other TV Nonsense

I am always astounded by the amount of information that is not shared on the Saturday morning home repair and decorating shows. Perhaps the best example of this was a show where recaning seat bottoms of chairs was treated as a 5 minute filler at the end of the show. Now anyone who has ever recaned a chair, or looked for someone who knows how to do it understands that 5 minutes is only enough time to get someone into deep trouble if they try to do it themselves.

I am also amazed by the standard cut away shot where the voice over says, "We started construction of the built in bookcases." as they show a man cutting panels on a table saw. The next shot is a man screwing the carcass to a stud in the wall, and then the final shot is one of the hosts inserting the final screw into the hinge of the beveled glass door. I suspect that many people do not realize that the real process took several days labor by skilled craftsmen who live off camera and are there to make the host or hostess look knowledgable.

I'm pretty sure that this sort of thing leads to home improvement disasters. My wife recently told me of a man who volunteered to construct 3 boxes for the winners of the reading contest to stand on at her school. If you know woodworking, you know that there are several things needed to do this right. First of all, a table saw is pretty handy. Secondly, a panel cutting jig is necessary to get right angles, and finally, gluing and screwing all the joints is necessary to assure that they are solid.

The night before they were needed, the man was still having problems keeping all the sides together, he eventually needed the help of his father to complete it. On stage, the face of one of the boxes fell off.

Is this the result of the home improvement shows on TV? You probably could not prove it in court, but I still think that it contributes to the attitude that woodworking is a cinch, and that a project never takes more than half an hour to complete.

Looking at Antiques

I just spent the morning at the Detroit Antique Mall. What a cool place! I was down there to get some ideas. My wife would like a headboard for the bed that incorporates wood and wrought iron. I remember that there was a ton of ornamental wrought iron down there that had been salvaged from old buildings. It is mostly in the form of fence sections, garden gates, and stair parts. I was hoping to find a really good looking piece that I could have sandblasted and restored for use as the centerpiece of the headboard.

I was successful too. I found some really excellent pieces that I could incorporate. I just need to get my wife down there to choose. While I was there though, I also noticed the stained glass. There are some beautiful pieces there. Once again, I believe that they were taken from homes, because they do not have religious themes. I started thinking that the stained glass might make an even cooler headboard. Especially when you consider that the headboard would be up against an east facing window.

I can just imagine how warmly those translucent colors would glow and light up the room on sunny winter mornings. I also like the fact that that combination would be unique. I really enjoy combining ideas like that.

The other thing that I found there that may be of great value is TM5-613 War Department Technical Manual "Woodworking and Furniture Repair" June 1946. Not only does it contain plans for all sorts of furniture, it also has an instruction section that is chock full of shop made jigs. As I thumb through it I am amazed at how little has changed and at how much has changed. Wood joints haven't changed a bit. A butt joint is still a butt joint, and a rabbett is still a rabbett, for example. However, if you look at glue, there is nothing they have listed that I would care to glue up furniture with. The entire list is: Powder animal glues, liquid animal glues, blood-albumin glues, starch glues, casin and vegetable protein glues, urea resin glues, and phenolic resin glues. I can only surmise that Elmer's Glue was still a dream back then.

I'll keep you posted as I dig deeper into this gem.