They all need to wear ear plugs!
It sure gets loud in here!
Wine oak planer shavings
If you peruse the web where woodworkers roam, you can find numerous discussions of what to do with scraps and sawdust. Scraps are a bit easier. We save them for smaller projects like cutting boards. We donate offcuts to our son’s school or organizations like Trash for Teaching, that redistribute the materials to schools. We have been busy with wine oak projects lately. Reclaimed wood is great because (it’s beautiful and unique and) we keep it out of landfills and fire pits, but it takes a lot of work and precessing. Here are the results.
Twenty-five bags of planer shavings and fine sawdust
I thought we had ten bags. Turns out, it was more than 25. So, where does a person do with 25 bags of sawdust? Even if we had room in our dumpster, I’d have a really hard time tossing them. So, I turned to Freecycle. I posted our surplus offering and got responses from gardeners, pet owners, worm composters and a ceramicist, who was going to use it for raku firings at SMC. That took care of about half. For the rest, I contacted David King at the Learning Garden at Venice High School, which is all of two blocks away. I brought over the truck, stacked to the rim. Luckily, none of the people who responded care much about getting themselves or their cars a little dirty.
Sawdust is a good thing. Sawdust on the floor indicates that we are busy and it smells great.
If you have a need for scraps or sawdust, are in the Los Angeles area (and willing to pick-up), shoot me an email. I’ll put you on the short list.
The rain has been pouring down in Los Angeles for 4 days now. Tornado warnings, flash floods, leaks, wet and cold. The guys are devotedly unloading 11 palettes of new (old) wine oak with the forklift. I thought I’d reminisce from my warm seat at the computer about last week when I drove down PCH to photograph a recent job in Malibu.
Office built-ins, a sliding door to reveal the pantry and a custom bed. All made of wine oak, though with slightly different finishes. These pieces were designed to be removed and reused in a pending rebuild of the home in a few years. How about that? Planning your re-use of your purchases…
Here are some images:
We stayed home for the Winter holidays this year, which was a welcome change. In the midst of some massive catch up from (admitted) over-promising of deliveries, we found some time for some family time in the shop.
Scout is generally completely content to hang out while Cliff works, as long as some audio stories are playing on the stereo. The LP of the Justice League of America (Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man and Metamorpho) is his favorite. They built this stool together out of reclaimed douglas fir and wine oak.
- Shaping the stool seat.
Placing in the legs, notice the proper safety gear.
Using the mallet for some fancy joinery for a four year old.
Natural finish of linseed oil is suitable for children, well, with parental assitance.
Make it shine.
The finished product
For years to come
Scout wants to add orange polka dots. Updated image coming soon.
February 2010 cover of dwell
Like many, I wait anxiously each month for our issue of dwell magazine.
This time, I was not only thrilled by the usual eye candy throughout, but an article called Contractor 101. I like how they put it: “‘Having a contract’ is to ‘not having a contract’ as ‘family planning’ is to ‘beer bong’”. Contractor implies, by the root of the word, that there is a contract. It also implies that contractor has a license. We are, of course, partial to contractors, since we have one. General contractors (or we) can only work with other licensed contractors, or they (we) lose ours. Keeping up this license takes effort, education and expense. Oh, and it’s also the law in California.
It is certainly possible for a person to find a qualified and honest cabinet maker who is not licensed, but if they are are doing more than $500 of work that is fixed to your property. As in, screwed in to the wall… well, you get the point of this rant.
Nice illustrations
Things that can go wrong without a contract
We want you to smile, so buy this magazine and read this article.
By the way, the article says there is a 25% chance your contractor’s name will be Kenny. We don’t know any contractors named that.
Happy New Year!
