Thursday, June 23, 2011

Things are warming up!

Here in Las Vegas we've finally hit the 100+ degree phase of summer.  I believe the weather service said that this year was the ranked the fourth in being late to reach that milestone.  What it means for me is that if I need to do a glue up or any finishing I have to get up early.  This morning I needed to put the final coats of shellac on the eyeglass cases, something you should do at less than 90 degrees.  Well, at 6am it was already 86 and now that I've finished that it's 88 degrees at 8pm.  Here's how they look now:

Left to right: African Paduak, Goncalo Alves, and Spanish Cedar 
The final coats of shellac have been sprayed on and I need to wait about a week before rubbing it out and doing the final assembly. Now it's on to the other two projects I have on my list.
     I bought the Walnut for the table I've been commissioned to do, the one that will utilize the piece of marble from my clients great-grandfather.  This table will be a very traditional design and construction.  I suppose I could plagiarize Charles Dickens and call the next projects a Tale of Two Tables!  In addition to the traditional table, I'm also working on a set of three, contemporary style tables for us.  They're the ones I bought the Zebrawood for.  Having a slight problem with the Zebrawood panels that's probably caused by our low (less than 10%) humidity -- they're splitting across the width and cupping rather badly.  It's time for winding sticks and a smoothing plane to tame that.  Well, that's the project update for now.  Back to the shop before it's 100+ degrees in there which is my official get out and take a siesta temperature.

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