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I just realized that I failed to post pictures of a couple of completed wood working projects I'd shown off here. First is this wine rack:

Sadly this wine rack fell off the wall about two weeks after hanging it, destroying most of it's contents in the process. On the bright side I'm a better cabinet maker than I am a cabinet installer and the rack itself was relatively undamaged. Some of the crown molding popped off and needed to be repaired and there were some scratches from broken glass that needed to be planed out and refinished, basically you can't even tell that it fell.

It fell because when I was designing it I failed to account for the fact that it was to be a hanging cabinet and didn't leave enough empty space in the back to allow a proper French cleat to be installed so I was left with a jerry rigged setup with a French cleat on the bottom (as seen in the pictures) with a screw hidden in the back to help keep it balanced. Well the drywall anchor in the back wasn't strong enough to hold the rack upright and when it gave the whole thing just tipped over and fell to the floor, right before my eyes... at 1AM no less. In the fall we lost two bottles of wine and that lovely duck decanter. I tell it's no fun cleaning red wine and broken glass and crystal out of white carpet!

The rack itself took surprisingly little damage in the fall. Some dings in the face frame from broken glass and crown molding popped off. It only took me about an hour to fix when I calmed down a few days later and could look at it without getting sick. I'd show new pictures but honestly you can't tell it even fell.

The fall happened early last September and I just now got around to rehanging it. Part of the reason it sat around so long after being fixed is that we really didn't trust the wall it was hung on. We had a hell of time finding the wall studs as whoever framed the wall out didn't put them on 16" centers, as is customary. Some didn't go all the way from the floor to the ceiling etc... all in all a pretty shoddy DIY project by a former owner, so I had to build a hanging cleat that only required one stud behind it, but attached in multiple places. Our mistrust in the wall finally gave way to our irritation at not being able to use the rack. I opted for the same system I used in the small wine rack I gave my sister for giftmas but because it was a retro fit the cabinet won't sit flush with the wall. I'm going to have to install an extra strip of molding to cover the gap but it's up again and it's not going anywhere this time.

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Small wine rack
Entered: 2009-01-08
Edited: 2009-01-08
Type: woodworking

I just finished this wine rack a couple weeks ago to send to my sister for giftmas:

It's pine, painted "soldier blue" with milkpaint. I used walnut for the drawer front, the bottle holders and the backing boards, the complex crown molding on top is poplar, which takes details crisper than the pine does, the base molding is pine. It's hung with a French cleat

Like all of my woodworking this project was done completely by hand, no electrons were harmed in the construction of this project. All of the major components to this little wine rack were all built with techniques I've used on several projects and went very smoothly, I finished it in a little over three weeks. However a lot of the finishing details were new to me. The lipped drawer is a first for me (I've usually done flush fitting inset drawers) as are the rabbeted, half blind dovetails you can see above and the 'thumbnail' profile cut around the edge of the drawer front. This was also the first time I used milkpaint on a nice piece of furniture, the only other project I've used it on is a little toolbox I built a couple months ago.

The milkpaint is really quite interesting. It's one of the first paints ever used by people and as the name suggests it uses proteins extracted from milk as it's bonding agent. It comes as a dry powder and you must mix it with water. Since it's water based it dries very quickly, it has a very mild odor, is completely non-toxic and doesn't give off any toxic fumes while drying. It's simple to apply and you can wash your brush in the kitchen sink.

It differs from modern oil and latex based paints in a few not so good ways too. For starters it goes bad after about 24 hours after being mixed so you have to careful to mix only as much as you need, learned that the hard way. The biggest surprise to modern wood workers is that even though it's easy to apply it's really not a one step finish. When it first dries (even the second coat) it's much lighter than expected and has almost a chalky look to it.

To really get a rich color you have to oil it with a curing vegetable oil like linseed oil or tung oil. It's also prone to picking up dirt, water marks and oily finger smudges so a more durable topcoat is often applied, like lacquer or shellac. I finished off this wine rack with linseed oil and topcoated with blond shellac. In this way it's a lot more like regular finishing in woodworking instead a quick and easy approach you usually associate with paint. In fact I really gained a new found appreciation for what goes into hand painting something with a nice even coat and I'm looking forward to using milkpaint on future projects more often.

While this wine rack isn't strictly speaking a period reproduction it's built with pretty solid 18th century techniques and styling; Variations on this type of cabinet design could be found throughout colonial America. And in my case most of the tools used would be pretty familiar to 18th century craftsmen as well.

Cheers,

Josh

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Hurricane info and links
Entered: 2008-09-12
Edited: 2008-09-12
Type: journal

Some real good info on Hurricane Ike and his expected effects on Houston:

National Weather Service official forecast - This is for my zipcode, 77096, and is currently giving the expected max wind predictions. At the moment 55-75mph with 90mph gusts. Which is below the level expected to damage most homes.

National Hurricane Center The official forecast for Ike's track and additional information. It's coming right for Houston which is actually slightly better than yesterday's track of 60 miles west of here since the eastern half of the storm is nastier.

Houston Chronicle's Science Blog The best part of our local paper is Eric Berger's science blog. For three years running he's had the best information about tropical systems heading into the gulf, and what they mean to the Houston area. He's a little strung out right now from lack of sleep but still putting out great stuff. Keep in mind that I live well outside the storm surge zone so discussion about it's affects don't apply to me.

Stormpulse.com - Another good tracking site that let's you look at the computer models that go into the forecast track. HWRF and GFDL are the NHC's two homegrown models and get the most weight in the official track.

Houston Hide From the Wind A great zip code map of predicted wind speeds in the Houston area. For my fans click on the 77096. The values listed here are a bit higher than the NWS forecast numbers and don't list the gusts but it's still a good resource.

If you have a twitter account you can follow my storm status on twitter.com I'll try to post "I'm alive" notes here during the storm if I can still access the 'net from home or from my iPhone.

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OMG!!!!!1 Hurricane! It
Entered: 2008-09-11
Edited: 2008-09-11
Type: journal

This is a live image on the NHC's site so at some point this will change and look silly in the archives. Deal.

On the bright side... I don't live in a storm surge zone, don't have to evacuate and don't have much to worry about. Ike is looking like it it'll make landfall as a Cat2 now, and while we might get some 80mph winds (and some 100mph gusts) that's not really enough to do more than minor damage to the house. Only thing I'm worried about at this point is losing power and my friends and family in AK getting worried about me. Oh and losing the A/C would suck but the cars are all gassed up and we can charge cellphones and laptops in them while taking an A/C break if it comes to that.

Also I don't have to go to work tomorrow! Since we got out early today Becca and I have already finished getting supplies and doing what prep to the house we can. While waiting for the hurricane show to start tomorrow I get to hang out in the shop working on this:

The top to my new workbench - a 120#, two foot by six foot slab of solid Ash. It's going to be an 18th century, French style workbench, as discussed in Andre Roubo's L'ART DU MENUISIER (THE ART OF THE JOINER)

Being an inveterate handtool user I can keep working even if we lose power. Hell I can work by lamplight if I need to ;-)

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Visit from Fast Eddie
Entered: 2008-08-05
Edited: 2008-08-05
Type: journal

Thanks to this guy:

Coming into town uninvited I get the day off from work today! Yippee!

The best part is that late last night it took a slight turn to the north before making landfall, which means we're getting lots of rain but not much wind from it. So we're just hanging out enjoying the heavy rain and not going to work. So far we haven't had much wind but it is supposed to pick up in our part of town around 1pm this afternoon and get into the 30mph range. Less than we saw from the glancing blow from Rita a couple summers ago.

I'll be spending the day working on this:

With any luck we'll have some flooding in the low intersections around our neighborhood and have to stay home again tomorrow ;-)

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