No sand, so carpentry


Not only is it raining and cold most of the time, but we've run out of sand, the main ingredient in our house wall mix. Here's Melissa showing off how much sand is left over from the second delivery of 20 tons:


So on to wood work! From that big madrone tree I took down a while back, we've milled up some thick planks for stair runners... well, really stair 'toppers' as we already have the stone step in place, but the finished floor will be about 2 inches higher than the stones are now.. thus, we want an edge of wood to define where the stair is. these boards will be flush with the floor surface behind them.

First thing to do is get them smooth. I really like planing. I generally use a plane that was my grandfather's, that was around my mother's workbench when I was growing up. I used to take the thing apart when I was a kid.


In the above photo you can also see that I've built a bit of a workbench in the living room of the house. it's just extra long sawhorses with a piece of plywood screwed to them, but it's pretty solid, and it's great to have a nice work table under the roof, near the project.

At the end of the board I'm planing, you might be able to make out a little 'bench dog' peg I have in there as a 'work stop' - a peg of manzanita that stops the board being worked on from sliding off the end of the bench. I love simple stuff like that.


Melissa meanwhile is working on more of the soffet blockers. These are doug fir 2x8s that go between the rafters that will define the tops of the walls, within the ceiling/roof. She does all the measuring, and since we have to follow the contours of the curved walls below, there's often angle cuts that need to be made.


We started using my framing cross cut saw after I sharpened it up real well, and it seems to be better than the panel saw. Melissa has even started doing the sawing, and has been making cuts for a couple days now.