1st August 2025
After my rant about the moon landing, I thought I would get back to something that actually happened today.
I drove down to Wyoming to pick up John the wood with an aim to get the top glued up.
I got there earlier than planned, I even remembered to take food and water. The food was eaten after just a few miles, a failing I’ve had most of my life.
Anyway, on the way to his workshop, I asked him if he had enough dowels to do the job, he said he wasn’t sure, I then suggested that we stop off at a store to get some, and he agreed.
There was a Lowes quit close, so we parked, and went inside. Rather than wander around looking I went to the information desk and asked a guy where to find them. He gave me directions, I turned round and John was nowhere to be seen.
I remembered when my boys were young, I had to stop them running off, would I have to do it with John?.
The guy from the information desk then came and led me to the location, fortunately I found John on the way. I picked three bundles of dowels, enough to be cut up for what we needed.
Proceeding on, we got to his workshop, and proceeded to plan what we needed to do.
The strips of lumber were laid out on the bench, but the end strip did not look good, so I asked him to run it through the jointer again, which he did. When he returned, the strip still wasn’t right.
I asked him if he had an adjustable square. He looked at me blankly, I described what it looked like, he was still blank. I tried to explain what I was trying to check, but It made no impression.
He shuffled off and later returned with a small adjustable square, I grabbed it quickly in case he lost it. The square showed that the piece was twisted, and the edge and face were not at right angles. The piece was no good, but luckily I found an off-cut that could be used instead.
Just that took a lot of effort, I was exhausted, and I’d only been there 30 minutes.
Now was the time to do the glue up.
John found the adhesive, but couldn’t remove the top of bottle. More time was spent looking for something to grip it and break the bond.
Once that was done, he went looking for a roller.
He opened a drawer, and with his elbow knocked over the bottle, the adhesive poured out and into the drawer he had just opened. I quickly found a container to catch as much of the stuff that I could whilst John disappeared.
I used a stick to direct the stream of adhesive in the container, my fingers were covered, and we hadn’t even started to glue up anything yet.
He returned with a damp cloth, and we managed to clean up the mess.
Finally we could start the glue up.
Everything was set up, all the clamps were ready, he went into his office and returned with a bag of dowels. I looked at them, and asked him why he let me buy three bags of dowels, he said that he had a hundred, and probably more.
There were a few words I would have liked to utter, but I kept my composure.
The glue up began, he was laying it on good and thick, I was trying to smear it evenly with my finger, I had enough to cover both surfaces.
Surprisingly the first pieces went together well, so we added another strip.
It was then that I realised that we were one strip out of order. I had marked each piece with a number, but I noticed that they went one, three, two, but it was too late to change that, I just hoped that the dowels were in the same position.
The next three went together well, thank goodness, leaving us to do the last pieces a bit later.
Just before finishing we joined the two section together, fortunately the dowel holes were aligned, so a problem was averted.
I dropped John back to his home, then went looking for a petrol station, I was definitely down to the fumes before I found one.
Once I got back we took pictures of the latest piece, considering what we started with, it turned out good.
Another Lifetime to go 