Day 2129 Do you understand John?

12th June 2023

I made the drive to Byron Center to work on the modification to the worktop.

This was the first time that I have spent time with John, and it was an experience. He is a good guy, with a well equipped workshop to die for, but it was like working with my mirror image, but slightly worse.

He has no problem with building massive tables, but when it came to modifying mine he didn’t know what to do, and in which order.

It was the blind leading the blind.

My first thoughts were to find exactly where the bow occurred, this might be obvious, but as I didn’t have my “Boys book of everything”,I relied on my instinct. Whilst agreeing on the area, John went in search of a plank of beech.

I could hear him upstairs rifling amongst the lumber he had stored there. It took about fifteen minutes for him to emerge with two pieces ten feet long. Then it was choosing the best piece that didn’t have knots.

Once that was cleaned up, then it was deciding the width to cut. I can’t remember how many times I suggested a dimension, but it was like I was speaking a different language, or that the hairs in his ears were dulling my words, but finally a decision was made.

Now was the time to cut the worktop.

A straight edge was laid along the length, and John fired up the skill saw. The two pieces fell aside, there was no going back. The next step was to cut out the offending section of timber which was done on his huge table saw.

Each piece was then sent past the jointer to neaten the edge.

Now we had to finalise the exact width of the new pieces to insert. John left that to me, I think he lost the plot a little while back. I measured everything three times and gave him the width dimension to cut, again allowing for cleaning up afterwards.

After each pass through jointer I measured the piece until I stuck my thumbs up.

Now was the process of joining all three parts together.

At this point I would have chosen a domino or a biscuit to ensure aligned of the face, but John chose to use dowels. Even though I have various doweling jigs I’ve never been that successful, mainly because it has to be precise, but John was adamant. He went to a set of drawers and pulled out a self centring dowel jig, it looked old, but very robust.

He marked out the positions for the dowels and asked me to mark the lines down to where the holes were to be drilled. There were a number that I remarked, hopefully in a more accurate position, then he drilled the holes.

I wasn’t there when he glued and fitted it all together, but hopefully all went well.

When I got back we had to drive to a house that was giving away flooring that Kelli was interested in, I had my reservations, I suspected what it was, and I was right, fake wood laminate. That was not something that I would put in the house, even if I was desperate, so we walked away.

Later Kelli got into a dispute with a neighbour. He objected to the music she was playing and shouted something over the fence. I was in the garage at the time and didn’t hear what was said. The first I knew of it was when she burst into the garage saying what was said. She wanted me to speak to the man, so to avoid being shot, I donned my bulletproof vest.

We exchanged views and if he stopped shouting over the fence we would turn the sound down when we knew he was back from work.