A House Warming Gift #2: 2 + 2

Two hours on Friday, and two hours I managed to squeeze in Sunday afternoon, but the work progresses!
Began Sunday by transferring the pattern I fabricated onto the wood
I guess most attach the patterns to the wood, to be honest, I’ve never done it that way. When I started doing these, ready access to a simple copying machine was difficult to come by. The patterns were also considered precious to me and I didn’t want to cut them up. Anyway, I’ve continued doing them right on to the wood. The resultant tracings are very faint,
so I have to embolden the lines. Man, I love those Roller Ball pens! But I have to keep a paper towel handy to clean the point, otherwise I’ll get smudges.
Next step I actually get to start using tools, when I screw this former drawer side from an unwanted bureau to a similarly cast off drawer side and bottom.
This wood is Maple, I believe, and is as dry as dust. I’m screwing this to two other pieces, one is the same size and type of wood (so that I have a “spare” should anything happen and for added strength during the coming drilling and sawing) and the other as the abuse taker on the bottom. Whatever chip out or blow out hopefully will be confined there. I pre-drilled to avoid splitting, sank some screws, and then cut the whole to a more manageable size. The bottom waste piece is so thin it’s barely held on by the points of the screws so I’m going to “flip” the screws.
Of course this meant counter sinking, so I set myself up a little screw flipping station on my heaviest piece of furniture, the Prayer Desk, which has turned out to be remarkably useful for this sort of thing. Someday I have to build myself a bench….
And that’s the story so far, almost ready for machining. Tomorrow is TGIF with my work week, so Wednesday or Thursday I should start making some real progress happen when I get a day to make the sawdust fly! Michael C.

-- Mike in Concord, NH---Unpleasant tasks are simply worthy challenges to improve skills.