Wood Zealot's Workshop

Taking out the trash this evening I almost walked into a very well-hung spider web. Silk was flying everywhere as these two spiders were spinning furiously together. The little one was doing all the work, ferrying new silk lines back and forth and handing it off to the bigger one to attach to the main web. Occasionally the big one would belch and scratch it’s belly as it waited for the little one to return. It actually was a pretty cool display of nature to watch… too bad I must kill them now as I am the dominant, alpha, pinnacle species and must exercise my dominance. Oops, just checked and I’m out of Raid… will have to demonstrate my raw, natural fury after a run to Sears.

Sadly, almost walking into this web with it’s rather intimidating occupant will only reinforce my normal reaction to walking into webs, which is to hop in circles while spastically slapping myself.

– Update: Amazon has unceremoniously discontinued their 30 day price protection policy. Bad Amazon! That’s a very BAD AMAZON!!! Monitoring the cart prior to buying is still somewhat useful. –

Tools, tools, tools… just never have enough of them do we? Well don’t get discouraged. You can melt that plastic and not feel so guilty about it if your getting good deals, right?!? As is common for everyone, I have my preferred sites and slightly varied buying strategies for each. Today I’ll share my Amazon strategery and explain why it’s best to keep your cart full.

Amazon is my go to site for everything outside of woodworking and many purchases for woodworking. If nothing else it usually provides a good baseline price along with performing a froogle (I think google calls it “product search” now… I still use the froogle url). If you track products on Amazon you will see that for brief windows of time Amazon will drop prices on items (and significant price drops at that, at times). Beyond these price drops, why is Amazon’s site so special? Well, It’s their cart. They have the one cart to rule them all… (in a golum voice) it’s my precious. I currently have 171 items in my cart so clearly the Amazon cart is bigger than most, right? Ok, maybe not, but here’s why it’s huge in a different sense…

What the cart does for you is it allows you to quickly find price drops on the items your interested in. Amazon’s cart is truly your friend (the one that will actually tell you that your dragging a roll of TP behind you) in that you can add items to it and click the “save for later” button and every time you visit your cart in the future you will be notified of any increase/decrease in price (see pic below I just took… no good drops, but you see the format). Next, just stop by your cart every once and a while and you’ll get a feel for the normal pricing range on a particular product.

Now you’re the jaguar in the Amazon, poised to pounce on that disoriented dingo of a sweet deal when it stumbles by (yes, yes… currently dingos in the Amazon have not been documented… but, you have watched “Lost” right? We weren’t aware of polar bears on tropical islands before this documentary aired. Dharma dingos in the Amazon could happen… and my guess it that they would be significantly disoriented and thus ripe for the pouncing.

So you’ve purchased something on Amazon (great deal or not), what do you do next? You, add that dingo to your cart again and “save it for later”. If that item drops in price in the next thirty days Amazon will credit you the difference without question. A simple email to customer service does the job. I have saved hundreds of dollars this way. So if you see an item that your interested in dropping and dropping don’t worry to much about waiting for the absolute bottom to be reached (especially since you don’t know where that bottom is and it may jump back up). Just snatch it up knowing that your locked in to the lowest price Amazon will sell that item for over the next 30 days that you observe and request a credit for.

This probably sounds like more work than it really is (mostly becuase I keep blabbing nonsense inside of parenthesis). Just have a tab loaded up with your cart and do a refresh every once and a while (if your not using tabbed browsing by now shame on you). When I’m looking to make a purchase I do this regularly, in sync with checking email (I have nothing else to say… just getting one last parenthesis fix (mmmm, nested parenthesis are even more satisying)).

My greatest love involves my girlfriend. She introduced me one day to Oreo Thin Crisps by Nabisco and it was love at first bite. I simply can not get enough of these heavenly treats!

Nabisco please take notice of my unadultered love of your Oreo Thin Crisps. You may also be interested to know that this website has tens of readers. Because I find Oreo Thin Crisps to be the single greatest food product ever made, I am willing to make the following offer. Provide me a one-year supply of Thin Crips (at a rate of two 100 calorie packs per day) and I promise to insert a postive Nabisco Oreo Thin Crisp reference (a.k.a “A Shout Out”) in every Wood Zealot Workshop post for a year!! Plus I will publish a special post illustrating how Oreo Thin crisps can be useful to woodworkers beside their pure tastiness. My sole purpose will be to bring Thin Crisps to the vast, snack-hungry woodworking community. My people are waiting to hear from your people… let’s make this happen!

After dating the girlfriend for the past year I decided it was time to do the ever-so-dreaded (I mean eagerly-anticipated if your reading this sweetie!) introduction of her to my parents. Interestingly enough… while I’m 37 years old, this is the first time I’ve brought someone home to meet my parents (yes, I’ve dated previously and even touched boobies before that). Both my girlfriend and parents demanded this meeting stating that they had essentially done their time and that they had thus earned it. So, that was that… a dinner was planned for this momentous occasion.

Wanting to take control of the situation I prepared a few cue cards for me to display at appropriate times to the appropriate individual. These included the obvious:

• Pretend you found that interesting
• Bad topic… Move on… Nothing to see here
• Choose your words wisely. I have dirt on you too
• LAUGH! That was a joke
• for untenable situations “This bitch is crazy. I don’t know her.”

I ran out of cards as there were others that I wanted on hand such as “Just say that you love me anyway” and “Use your inner voice”. All in all the cue cards went well… I only had to use the “This bitch is crazy. I don’t know her card” card four times or so (I apologize Mom but sometimes that shoe fits).

I’m thinking about extending the cue card notion a bit further to facilitate office interactions:

• I’d rather be watching a monkey drinking it’s own piss on youtube right now
• I know you’d rather be watching a monkey drinking it’s own piss on youtube right now but hear me out
• when you find your point, please poke me with it to wake me up
• causal conversation does nothing for me. I’d rather be planning my next movement
• (boss-man specific) yes, yes… potential… yeah, productivity… whatever… just give me more money and I’ll keep the facade up that I “work” here
• (vending machine specific) you took my mother-f’in money now spin your mother-f’in loop a little further so that my mother-f’in animal crackers will fall
• This bitch is crazy. I don’t know her (it’s demonstrated usefulness can not be understated)

I’ve recently encountered a few situations that have given me pause with the realization of the fact that I’m clearly in an obsessive state with regards to woodworking. I will list some of the signs to look for as a PSA (Public Service Announcement) for others out there to detect this condition:

• spending ridiculous amounts of money on tools (including tools that you are not completely sure are even for woodworking)
• selling all of your furniture to make room for tools. I’ve recently sold my coffee table and living room chair on craigslist and currently have my recliner listed. All that is left is my couch! Dedicated woodworking rooms now include garage, dining room, one bedroom, and part of the kitchen (conveniently enough, a hand plane slices roast beef like butta).
• always having wood on the brain (this is ok if you are a prostitute)
• constantly making childish wood/penis jokes (this just might be me)
• you randomly grab wood and smell it (this is sooo not a penis joke… I’m truly addicted to the sweet smell of my walnut… in fact I would go so far as to say that you haven’t lived until you’ve huffed freshly planed walnut)

I should probably keep this as a “live” list and add to it as these realizations occur. Submissions from family, friends, and therapists welcomed.

I knew that router bits were dangerous as they spin at speeds of 30,000 rpm. But did you know that bits traveling at 0 rpm can be quite dangerous as well? I learned this as I simply attempted to remove a bit that was stuck in it’s case. I had removed several simlilarly stuck bits with a rag as a buffer so I was confident that it wouldn’t be a problem (like a razor sharp carbide bit could cut cotton anyway). The smallish 1/4 straight bit was the one that attacked. Without any hesitation it jumped up and bit… SLICE… right through the rag and my finger… I’m not sure what occurred first, the nerves firing indicating pain to my brain or the realization that I just Forrest Gump’d myself. Then I could have sworn I heard someone yell “we got a bleeder!” as the mighty Nile began to flow.

The one opportunity that gumping myself provided was a chance to try out something that I had read in woodworking forums and that was to use super-glue to seal small wounds. This was the perfect application. It’s worked like a champ. Sealed the cut allowing me to use the hand without much problem at all.

Enjoy the bloody mess… I realize the pic of the original cut is poorly focused but I attribute that to bleeding-out at the time… and ohhh, it should be noted that in the isolation picture of the finger with the sealed wound, that the finger was indeed still attached to my hand at the time… although it does give a visual of the inevitable future.

Mmmmm…. Nothing better than some rust soup when you’re trying to restore old tools. If you collect old woodworking tools, one thing you will not be able to avoid is dealing with rust at some point or another. I got my hands on a sweet Siegley 8 jointer plane. These pre-Stanley planes are not very easy to come by so I was pretty happy to get one even though the one I got was pretty much concealed in a nice layer of rust. Despite its outward appearance, I could still see the beauty that lay beneath (yeah, I may have had a couple drinks first… you know how it goes… you have a couple beverages and that rusty jointer starts looking pretty good from way across the web). So the simple answer was a little electrolysis. No, no… Not the kind that resulted in me sporting some sort of spectacular brazilian. The sort of electrolysis needed here would hopefully prove less painful than that.

I of course performed my due diligence here (i.e. i did a Google on it and skimmed through the first search result for the main points) and learned that all I needed was a bucket, battery charger, soda powder, and a piece of metal. Yes, there was scientificky talk of anodes, electrons, and cathodes. Whatever… I’ve got the web so I don’t need to understand that stuff. I just hook everything up and flip the switch and start cooking! Bubbles start coming up and the rust follows. Pretty cool stuff, huh?!? It worked and I didn’t die so mission accomplished.

Disclaimer: If you attempt to perform electrolysis yourself referencing my blog as some sort of instructions you are a complete idiot and need to be put down for the sake of the gene pool. Improperly performed electrolysis can result in explosion, electrocution, and many other things that would otherwise ruin your day. I mean what kind of idiot reads this stuff off the internet and gives it a try based on good faith??? In terms of full disclosure I should note that ever since I did this I have had a slight ringing in my ears and a persistent shooting pain through my genitalia. If that blade didn’t end up so shiny I’d have to really weigh whether it was worth it.

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As you can see in the after pic the blade came out pretty clean. After I restore the plane body it will make a nice collector. As would be expected the blade sustained enough pitting to render it useless as a user plane since it will never hold a keen edge. Still you have to admit that is one dead-sexy blade. You know you want to touch it.

Here’s a block of spalted Maple. The spalting is the result of fungi invading the wood and taking up occupation. Or rather… the fungi are spreading democracy to the wood. The dark lines or “zone lines” are where different colonies of fungi are fighting for territory with one another. From what I understand, it all started over some holy grain that each side claims is theirs…. then of course fungi extremism developed and terrorism ensued. I’m still not sure which side was right, but I do know that fungi terrorism must be rooted out at all costs! (get it…. fungi terrorism… rooted out… wait, does fungi even have roots? crap, back to Wikipedia)

To answer your question… No, I really don’t know why I kept going with that analogy/metaphor long after it had served it’s purpose… yes, it was kind of interesting to see that highly sophisticated organisms such as ourselves behave similarly as fungi on the macroscopic level, but did I really need to take it as far I did… not really… It probably was not very fair to the fungi. My apologies to all the fungi out there…. especially the fungi-Americans.

You know I just noticed that the word analogy has anal in it… what’s up with that? Just another example of how you can go through your whole life and can miss the little meaningful details. I think I’m just noticing it because it phonetically sounds different from Anal. It has that ‘a’, with the two dots above it, sound… like in canal… hey there’s an anal in canal! For some reason that one seems more appropriate.

And to answer your latest question: No, I don’t do drugs… I do insomnia. Same net effect minus the fun part… and less track marks.

Please stop asking questions.

Summiting Everest? Tagging some endangered turtle somewhere? Starting a cult? No, sadly none of these is correct. Or is it “are correct”? Or did you understand what I meant and I’m just wasting your time now asking you about usage? Whatever… I’m learning to work wood these days, not to use proper English or prevent dangling a participle when I have the urge to dangle it (Like I know what a participle is or how to dangle it).

So, Some of you may notice that a couple days have passed since my last post. I don’t know what to say other than art can not be forced. Such art is at the whim of the fickle muse. Hopefully she is back for a while and enraptured with such things as butt joints.

In all seriousness, I realized that I needed to do a couple things: Learn much more about woodworking and get my shop set up. Even as fond of myself as I am, I don’t believe that anyone would find it interesting reading my blog that illuminates the captivating details associated with reading books. I think I know my readers… they will be much more interested in tales of woodworking that illustrate my obvious incompetence as well as the occasional dismemberment. However, since I have been reading so many books and watching numerous DVDs I think I will create a section on the site where I’ll provide my thoughts for others to consider. So keep a keen eye out for that!

Ok, I’m spent. See you soon…. when is Halley’s comet due back?

Yup, it’s finally happening. For the first time in my life I’m getting wood from eBay (though, to be fair, it has given me a semi several times in the past). Below are various pictures of my newly purchased lumber. All are Black Walnut which is a relatively easy species to work with and finishes well. Several pieces are “book-matched” which simply means that were cut in succession allowing for certain design patterning options such as creating mirror image type effects.