Daryl’s Brain

When I posted the first “Surprise Project” I said there was going to be three posts. I only posted two. So before I detail out what this project was, let me first say what that third one was going to be: cutting up the Christmas tree.

Now, you may not think that cutting up a tree of any kind ranks as a ‘woodworking project,’ but I figured A) it was a project and B) it involved wood. So there. On top of that it taught me a lesson that I needed to learn to do with working on projects in a small space: MOVE THE CAR!!!

If you recall the pictures of the space I am using for most of my projects, you might recall that it is also the same space where we store our car (unlike many people in our neighbourhood). If you also happen to know our house at all you know that we have plenty of space. And, if you also happen to know Stella or myself (mostly Stella) you may also know that we *must* have a full-sized Christmas tree. All that meant that I had a large item (the tree) that I was working with in a small space (our garage) which may or may not have contained a car.

Also, if you know me, I’m a little clumsy at times. The combination of all of that meant the car may or may not have been in danger of…well…me and my tree. So, from then on, whenever I did any further projects in the garage, I’ve moved the car.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, the next major project was actually a ‘real’ project; but first a bit of background. Back when Stella and I were living in Victoria (the first time) and shortly after we were married (I think it was the second year) I bought her a hydrangea. It was a wonderful plant that actually lasted quite a while in the pot (we didn’t have anywhere to plant it). In fact, it lasted until we moved to the east coast when we gave it away to a friend. When we moved back to Victoria we re-inherited the plant and then took it with us when we moved to the mainland. Here it died. It didn’t survive the winter. Sad. (Boo-hoo-moo-moo boo-hoo-moo-moo moo moo)

The place we are renting now came with an awesome landlord! One who doesn’t mind us making improvements to the yard…as long as they actually are, in fact, improvements. Recently, he expanded our back yard patio to make the area more usable. The results of that were wonderful. In the process, it got me talking with him about other possible improvements. One of which was that I was thinking of digging out an area of the yard that doesn’t get much sun and planting something other than the moss that seems to love that spot so much. I never mentioned any of it to Stella.

Eventually, after the back yard was done with its renovations, I had an idea: plant a hydrangea. They are shade-loving plants and had sentimental value for Stella and I, so I figured that would be perfect. I still hadn’t mentioned anything to Stella, so I figured I would keep it a secret and surprise her with it one day. The problem was in the logistics of this as we only have the one vehicle. Then fortune fell on me and my parents went away for a little while. I had to drive their car from where they left it before their flight back to their house (it wasn’t mine to use) and on the way home I remembered my idea.

I stopped by a nursery and asked about hydrangeas, explaining my idea of digging out an area for it that was very deep (as there is a lot of clay under our yard) and filling it with rocks, then sand, then soil; giving it great drainage. My thoughts about drainage didn’t go much past getting the water out of the soil in which the plant was to be planted. Fortunately, the very friendly people I talked with were a little bit more knowledgeable then I and, more importantly, had more experience. What happens to the water once it reaches the rocks?

Well, the answer is “nothing,” it just sits there due to the clay. Effectively, the clay would act like a bucket trapping the water there no matter how good I thought I had build drainage into the dug-out pit. This would, in turn, eventually rot the roots of the plant killing it off, likely after the first heavy rainfall. The solution was that the area had to be “built up.”

I was a little disappointed by this news as I figured it would be easier to dig down than to build up (HAH! Ever try digging through clay?) but, as I was about to leave the nursery, I figured I should buy the plant anyway and that way I would be committing myself to the project. “Now,” I thought, “how do I keep a plant this big, which will require regular maintenance, a secret from Stella until I can get around to working on this project?” I called my sister (who has three green thumbs) and she said she could hold onto it for time being. YAY for family!!!

Now I had my plant (and was very late coming home as a result, whoops). I figured the next thing I had to do was get the wood to use to hold the soil in which the plant was to be planted. It sounded simple in my head: just pick up wood. That’s it. So I called a hardware store and got a quote on the amount of 4X4’s required for the space in question. They brought up a good point: The total length I would need was *not* the total length of lumber I would have to buy. I needed to take into consideration how many sections would fit in one 10’ section (the longest they had) and account for the fact that I may only be able to use 8 or 9 feet of it. So I guessed.

In hind-sight, guessing is not the best route to take when you want to avoid more than a single trip to the hardware store. Fortunately, luck was on my side and, despite the fact that my guess was way off, so was the number of sides I would need to add to my flower box. So, with the (fortunately lucky) estimate of what I would need, I made up an excuse to head out so I could pick it up. The hardest part, after all, was done, right? I had figured out what I needed to buy. This was indeed just a simple matter of “picking up wood.” Wasn’t it?

Not quite. After I got to the hardware store, made like I knew what I was doing as I sifted through the available wood, and paid for my purchase it hit me: “How in the world am I going to fit two 10’ 4X4’s and a 6’ 4X4 into our little hatchback?!?!?” Uh oh.

“Well,” I thought, “There’s nothing for it but to just do it.” So, with the Nike commercial running through my head (forgive the pun) I opened up the hatch back, put down the seats, and started carefully placing some very long wood into the car. Had I thought ahead of time what would be needed (so much for “a wise man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them”) I might have thought to bring some rope…or a bungee cord, or something. After the wood was in (and out) I discovered that the hatch would, in fact, not stay down naturally.

Argh. I took a cloth grocery bag from the car and tied it to where the hatch hooks in only to realize that it would not be long enough to attach to the actual hatch itself. Argh again. Then I saw it; the emergency kit. “Well, this is an emergency…to me, anyway.” So I started rifling through it to find a single, short-ish bungee cord. HORAY!!! Despite its lack of length, the cord was long enough to keep the hatch closed. *Whew* And with that I drove home to an annoying “ding, ding, ding” reminder that the back hatch was still open.

As I drove in to our garage I was reminded, for the umpteenth time, of that “preparing for difficulties” verse again. Where was I to hide this vast quantity of wood from Stella? Huh. Well, in the end I just put the wood with the rest of my woodworking area set-up and hoped that she simply didn’t notice.

She didn’t.

The days passed and just before the weekend was upon us I realized I forgot the nails. *sigh* Fortunately, I had another excuse to head out and I picked up 16 6’ nails. Now to get Stella out of the house while I build this stupid thing. Wait. And soil. I forgot the dirt. *grrrrrrrrrrr* And that was when Green Thumbs (my sister) called.

We worked out that she would be able to distract Stella with a trip to Ikea (which would distract her for a very long time indeed) on Saturday while Mr. G.Thumbs (her hubby) picked up the soil and dropped off that and the plant. WOO HOO, a working plan.

Saturday came. On her way out the door Stella, not wanting to leave me without anything to do *cough* hinted, very subtly, that she might appreciate it if I cleaned up a bit by saying “it would be nice if you cleaned up a bit while I was out.” What went through my head was “wouldn’t it be funny if she came home, was all frustrated that I hadn’t cleaned up, and then saw the finished project in the back yard?”

I started cleaning up.

I had some unexpected time to kill anyway as Stella had arrived at Mr. and Mrs. G.T.’s place before MR. GT could leave with the plant, soil, and tools (shovel and sledge hammer) they had snagged from my absent parent’s place. And she spent a good while talking with them before heading out with Mrs. GT (and baby gt) to Ikea giving me plenty of time to do the dishes and wonder what the hold-up was. (I couldn’t very well start without a shovel.)

So, that’s the background to the project. Now, tools used:

• 26’ (total) of 4X4s
• 9’ nails (we used 8 of the 16)
• Hammer – the one from my grandpa’s tools
• Bigger hammer (sledge)
• Hand saw (*sigh*) – also from my grandpa’s tools
• Work bench
• Measuring tape
• Level
• Square – again, from my grandpa’s tools (thank you!)
• Pen (for marking the wood)
• Shovel
• Electric sander (a Christmas present, thank you)

I’m not sure how things would have turned out had Mr. GT not decided to stay and help out. The project was definitely a bigger project then my brain had made it out to be. A HUGE thank you needs to be said for all the hard work he did.

“THANK YOU”

So, the steps to building a garden box are (apparently):

1. Dig out the area to add the garden box to, removing the lawn and placing neatly to the side.
2. Hit the cement holding up the existing fence.
3. Recalculate and re-plan the design.

At this point, we decided to go for only adding two sides of the garden box (which is why my guess of the amount of wood we would need worked out) and used the existing fence to hold the other two sides.

4. Measure out the first layer of wood needed and cut.
5. Keep cutting.
6. Keep cutting (don’t forget, it was a hand saw we were using).
7. Place the cut wood to see if it fits.
8. Cut out notches in the wood to make it fit.
9. Use the level to make sure it’s…uh…level
10. Use the square to make sure it’s…heh…square
11. Make an executive decision to eyeball it from there on out.
12. Take some existing clay and fill below where the wood will go to prevent it from collapsing on us.
13. Measure and cut (re-cutting as needed) the pieces for the next layer of wood.
14. Get water (for ourselves).
15. Measure and cut the final layer of wood.

It was at this layer that the sander came in handy. We had inadvertently cut one of the edges at a slight angle which caused there to be a substantial gap when it was placed where it was supposed to go. The sander took care of this, though it may have been faster to use a chisel and then sanded. (May?)

16. Remove the wood and set the first layer of wood to where it was going to be.
17. Place the second layer on top of the first and hammer the nails into place.
18. Use the sledge hammer to reposition the structure.
19. Place the final layer of wood and nail into place, repositioning as required.
20. Shovel back into the box some of the dirt that was taken out to making sure to leave a hole of sorts for the plant.
21. Lay in the first layer of soil.
22. Pour in half a bag of fertilizer and mix into the soil.
23. Place the plant in the “hole” and pour in remaining soil and fertilizer mixing as you go.
24. Clean.
25. Haul leftover dirt (that had been dug out) and lawn pieces to an out-of-the-way location where it can all be dumped.

The whole process took us about 3 hours (it would have taken me at least 9 by myself) leaving ample time for Stella to finish up at Ikea (she had not left the store by the time we were done…not sure what I was expecting) and get home. (It also left me time to finish that cleaning she so cleverly had hinted at.) When she did get home she was very surprised (probably more so that I had actually started and finished a project than by the project itself) and very happy with the results (as is our landlord). YAY.

So that is how to build a raised garden box in 25 easy (ish) steps for complete imbeciles with little to no woodworking experience required. (Cutting up that Christmas tree was good practice. I knew I included it here for a reason.)

The Complete Imbeciles Guide to Woodworking
(Part IV)

This little project partly falls under the category of setting up shop. The workbench I was assembling was a Christmas present; a Black and Decker Workmate 225. If anyone has purchased one of these, feel free to use my experience to help you set up yours.



Tools Used:

• Those that came in the box
• Two hammers (directions only call for one)
• Clamp (directions did not call for it at all)

Let me just say, intuition will only get you so far when putting together a piece of equipment like this. For me, my intuition directed me to open the box, take out the big metal thing, pop it open (actually pretty simple) and then faded into the background as I looked at the metal frame of the workbench (which pops up and locks into place if you flick the right switches on it, but offers no clues as to the next step). So, on to the directions.

The directions say I will need a hammer, but that a tool is provided for screwing your hands, uh, hand screwing the bolts.

Sidetrack:
I recently was given a box of tools from my Papa, which included a hammer. I don’t know why, but I thought it was cool to see how the handle must have slipped off at some point in the hammers life and he nailed it back on. You can see the heads of the nails in this image with it held up beside a new hammer.

The tool that they provided was a joke tool. It wasn’t indented as a joke tool, but that’s what it was. You can see in the pictures below both the problem and my solution. The problem is that the small size of the tool provides no leverage, so it’s very difficult to tighten the bolt completely unless you do what I did, which is to find something else to provide the leverage. In my case, I used a clamp because it was the closest thing to pop into my head as a possibility.

So, lesson #1, when assembling the Black & Decker Workmate 225, make sure you have a supplement to the piece of plastic garbage that they provide.

Now then, they also said that you would need a hammer. This is because the two wind-up crank-things in the front each have a small pin that you need to hammer into place. The problem is that you have to hammer them into place as part of putting them on and have nothing to hammer ‘against’. You need a hammer because it takes more then just tapping, but if you hammer with full force you knock over the bench while you’re at it.

This picture shows you my solution. I took my second hammer and placed it on the other side of the handle that I needed to hammer so that the other hammer would absorb the shock and provide some resistance. Ideally you would have a sledge hammer, or something with a bit more weight behind it. (This was a trick I learned while working on the hovercraft.) If you are looking at the picture, the little circular thing on the edge of the handle is the pin I hammered in.

So, lesson #2, when assembling the Black & Decker Workmate 225, make sure you have a sledgehammer or some other way to counter the force of your hammering.

The process of setting this up gave me my second and third ‘woodworking’ injury: a hammered finger (hammered twice) and a couple of hammered knuckles. Now that it’s up, I’m a little sceptical of the welding job on the left side (it seems a little more flimsy then on the right) but all in all I’m very happy with it.

The Complete Imbeciles Guide to Woodworking
(Part III)

These next three posts are about three projects that kinda took me by surprise in that I had not counted on having to do them (which is why I mentioned the shelving as the ‘first’ project in a previous post), despite the fact that I did, actually know I had to do them. Okay, Taking down the lights is not so much a “woodworking project” as it is simply a project involving tools. I am going to count it simply because I can, and because it has raised a question that I am wondering if anyone has the answer to.

Tools Used:

• Ladder
• Hammer

First, we did not put up many lights over this last Christmas season, but we did line our garage door with them (along with lighting up two trees that bordered the garage). We had never done something like this before so we had no idea how to put the lights up. I ended up just nailing some small nails into the wood around the garage door, bending the nails, and hooking the lights to these.

So, as far as projects go, this one was pretty stupidly simple. All I did was get the ladder, and use the claw end (does it have an actual name?) and removed each nail one by one as I moved the ladder. The question that has come up, however, is this:

Does anyone know if there is a trick to removing a nail while standing on a ladder without dropping the nail?

Did I mention that these lights were bordering our garage? We (and the tenants downstairs) often drive our vehicles in and out of our driveway which is right in front of our garage. So, had I known the answer to the above question it would have saved me half an hour of looking for the dropped nails. I do hope I got them all.

Wow. Two blog posts right after each other. What’s going on?

Well you see, I have some time off right now (Christmas holidays and all) so I have time to just think about things. I also have time to do some things, like organize my “workshop”. If you read part one of the woodworking series you will know that I decided that the first step to “becoming a wood worker” for me is going to be setting up my workspace. Well, the first step to setting up my workspace is to clean the garage and clear enough space so that I am able to set up my workspace.

Cleaning

Kids, don’t let your parents fool you. Cleaning is dangerous. I just got my first woodworking related (indirectly related, anyway) injury while sweeping away the leaves that managed to blow into our garage while we drove our car in and out. There is a piece of metal sticking out of one part of the broom and it poked me in my index finger and drew blood. Ok, it wasn’t very much blood and as far as an injury goes it’s pretty lame. But it was my index finger! The one I use all the time! (Which is why I was using it when it was injured.) Well, nothing for it but to “suck it up and be a man”.

Next Challenge: Small Space

So, if there is actually anybody reading this who is paying attention to what I’ve been saying, then I probably don’t need to say this next part. My guess is, however, that if anyone is reading this at all they are probably just skimming through it because it came up in a Google search and really is not at all what they were looking for. So, I will go over my first, biggest challenge: lack of space.

As you may have gathered from what I’ve said previously (or from the random pictures of my future work area that I will be spattering throughout this post in a sad attempt to make it more interesting) I am going to be setting up my workshop in our garage. It’s a two-car garage, so normally there would be ample space. However, we actually use our garage to park our car in (unlike most people in our neighbourhood) in addition to using it for storage space. This means that I will not have a lot of room to set things up.

If you look at the pictures you can see that I’ve attempted to pile all our stuff in one corner of the third of the garage that I will have to work in. Fortunately, it appears that my parents and in-laws are both forward-looking kinds of people, so my recent Christmas gifts included books and magazines like:

• Setting up Shop
• Space-Saving Mobile Workcenters
• Hard-Working Shop Essentials
• The Small Workshop

So, my next challenge is not only going to be setting up shop, but doing so in a small space which I will be sharing with ’stuff’ and a car. (Hey, “Stuff and a Car” would make a great title for something!) Which brings me to my most recent revelation.

I was thinking that my first big-ish project was going to be the aforementioned coffee table. However, in the interest of A) practice, B) space, and C) making something no one cares to look at, I think I am actually going to start with building some shelving and storage for the garage. My wonderful intuition tells me that this should be great practice.

But one step at a time. For me, my next step is going to be actually setting things up.

It all started with…well, really it all started way way back when I took a work aptitude course through the Salvation Army (sometime around 1997 or 1998), but it all resurfaced when Stela mentioned that she would like a new coffee table.  I did not want to spend the money on a new coffee table, so I jokingly said I should make one.  The idea got lodged in my brain and refused to leave.  This lead me to write this year’s Christmas list as the following (in part):

• Tools to work with wood:
  • Full sized saw (I have a little one)
  • Plane (the tool, not the vehicle)
  • Sandpaper
  • Wood glue
  • Saw Horses (or something to set up a work area in general)
• Wood.  To make things from.  (Like a coffee table.)
• My work area all set up
• Plans for making a coffee table from wood

Thanks to the many people in my family I actually got much of the above, including a box of tools from my Papa which filled in some of the items I will need but didn’t know existed.  Of course, not being a woodworker, there’s a lot that exists that I have no idea about.  For example, my brother said I need a router.  I have a router.  It’s connecting my home network to my modem and allowing us wireless access.  Apparently he meant a different kind of router.

Anyway, so now I have everything (and then some) except the wood, this mysterious router thingy, and the set-up-work-area.  Fortunately, Stela needed a new coat.  This means that I now have the amount of money that went towards the coat to be able to purchase wood guilt-free.  So basically I’m all set.  Because I am a software developer I also figured I should blog about this (as you may have guessed by now).

Background

I think a little bit of my background is in order here.  It all started way back when my great, great grandparents got busy and produced my great grandparents, who decided to follow suit and produced my grandparents.  On both sides of my family tree woodworking is very prevalent.  Not only were both my Papa and Grandpa woodworkers, but I think that their fathers were also woodworkers (I could be mistaken there).  On top of that, my father is very wood-workingly-inclined, as is my brother.

I’m more of an idea person.  While I can tell you what the shapes of all the different types of screwdrivers are (maybe not all…most?), I can not -unlike my 3-year-old nephew- name them all.  If you said to me “pass the Philip’s head”, I would look at you blankly until you said something like “it’s the [fill in shape here] one”.  This whole woodworking thing seems to have skipped over me.

However, what I do have on my side is the fact that I work by intuition.  Some things feel right (or not) and I can make my decisions about what to cut, how many nails are needed, or what tool to use based solely on what feels right to me.  Intuition is wonderful that way.  Right?

Well, regardless, I’m fairly certain that cleaning the garage and setting up a work area is the first step.  (See how helpful my intuition is?)  So, that will be where I start.  Stay tuned for where I will end up.  (And, no.  No one is taking bets as to whether that will be the hospital or not.)