FOUND: Tiny Legs!

You may remember my little floor table assembled from uncut upcycled deck board cutoffs.

 At the end of that post, I vowed to be vigilant in search of tiny  legs to make the table more ergonomic and functional. And vigilant I was.

As evidenced above, I found suitable material quite awhile back. It was the last haul in the old reliable Ford Ranger. These cutoffs were left over from making massive stakes and braces from lineal 2x4s.

I have finally gotten around to Project Tiny Legs, by the simple virtue of procrastination: I was able to put off another project by completing this one! I firmly hold that both designing and making are visual processes, so I always organize available materials visually before selection and layout.

Even for something as simple as attaching three legs, this exercise ensures that I think everything through before I start screwing it all . . . together . . .

With the legs attached, I turn my attention to the final detail: feet. The idea behind a three point base is to avoid rocking, regardless of the levelness of the floor. This is best achieved if the feet can end in a ball joint, allowing 3D rotation, or a single* point. (*theoretically)

 Opting for the simpler solution, I used an electric sheet sander to shape the feet. A sanding block or sandpaper would have worked just as well, only taking longer. This could also be done with a chisel, band saw, or jig saw. The curved facet is as close to a single point as it needs to be, ensuring that each leg lands on a relatively small surface area. Since a tangent is preferable to a sharp point, wooden spheres make excellent feet for furniture.

The table takes wing!

Now that I have finished a prototype, I'm itching to make a more refined variation . . .

Farewell to a Wonderful Workhorse

Well I did promise a post about my MVA (motor vehicle accident).  Can you tell I've been on the phone a lot with an insurance claim adjustor?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did borrow this wonderful workhorse my mother's Ford Ranger from time to time for travel and moving things, including wood.

Someone misread an exit from the highway and in a panic did jerk and swerve right into my path and that is all she wrote.  Knowing the age of the vehicle and seeing the damage firsthand, I can say with confidence that the offending driver's insurance company will junk it and opt to pay book, rather than springing for some very costly repairs.

Thankfully, even at six in the wee, my reflexes were primed at NYC bike messenger level and both of us were 'unhurt.'  Unhurt despite the crazy moments when I crunched the tail of the car and charged upon its whirling donut dance. Somehow we both skidded to the right shoulder completely out of the way of cars coming in behind us. And yet somehow traffic on the highway we had just exited eventually reached a 45 minute delay.  [This I learned from the receptionist at my new chiropractor! Oh, the irony.]

Kat was an angel and picked me up from the hospital and also took me out to empty personal effects.
Wipe away a tear.
Diagnosis: Whiplash


Pain is minor but still lingers and obviously doesn't mix well with my line of work.  48 hours later was the worst of it, as predicted.

I eat a ton of ibuprofen.

The chiropractor is recommending treatment far beyond my means: i.e. I can't afford to miss as many days from work.
Oh! His name is Dr. Bart at River Ridge Chiropractic and he is exceptional.
http://www.ncashevillechiropractor.com/blog/

At present, the insurance company has furnished us with a rental. I won't say what it is, but it looks like a clown car, is bright white, and is named after a platonic solid.

EDIT: High Res Images from Kat

Wood Speaks

Thanks for peeking into my headspace.  It is mostly about wood and making anything with found material, but really it is about all that we can make with our own hands.

Wood speaks to me the most.  Trees are the anthropomorphs of the plant kingdom.  Like us, they break the plane of the horizon until they eventually fall and meet it, and then decompose into the same soil that we will also make of our lives.  They reach and explore in every direction, seek sunlight and food and water, and express endless varieties of emotions within their forms.

Dead wood is not really dead; it carries a living memory and the alive potential to be transformed by a force of nature, be that the sea or the human hand.  Sometimes wood tells us what it wants to be.  Sometimes I think I know what it wants to be, only  to realize that it's all in my head.   With patience, misunderstood wood will be heard correctly at a later time.  So yes, "seize the wood" when you find it, but also think on it.  Give the wood time to speak to you.

I left Brooklyn needing time to decompress and get my head straight.  My mother invited me to stay for awhile on her land South of Jefferson, NC.  Several projects awaited my arrival, but I was most excited about a tree that had suffered complete erosion of the bark around its base.  Having lost its connection with nurturing soil, this tree was now dead and ready to be transformed!

My mother noted that the tree was old, and described its location along the sloping pasture behind her house.  With so many unknowns, my head swam in the potential of this mysterious tree now large and dead. I imagined a tall straight poplar, the common specimen on that corner of her property.  I imagined razing it down to the height of a man and, centered upon that tall stump, forming the cuttings into a jungle gym with a secret room where my children would lay plans of mischief over visits to Oba's House.

I was a little disappointed to find that it was not a poplar but an apple tree, old indeed and large as they go with a 6 inch diameter, nine foot spread and a 13 foot crown.  After the initial letdown, I decided it should be made into sculpture. I drew the apple in the twilight.  I ran through a few ideas and sketched one out.  To be honest, I was never wholly inspired.  Also, I sensed that my mother wouldn't have the patience for me to play around with it when there were more important tasks at hand: barns to be mended, moldy palettes to be taken to the dump, new recycled palettes to be fetched and laid down, holes to be dug for soil testing, stones to be cleared from a field and hay to be unloaded, loaded, transported, unloaded and loaded again on three separate occasions.

In the end, I didn't make anything of the apple tree by November when I found work in Asheville.  I left several projects unstarted or unfinished and I became a framing carpenter.  Working my new grueling 9 to 5 (in bed by nine to wake at five) time passed quickly and Thanksgiving was fast approaching.  Having borrowed the Ford Ranger for travel, I eventually heard what the wood should be - it wanted to be taken to Wortroot, for the Solstice bonfire.  Wortroot is wonderful farmland with a holler and a storied past, laying across state lines just North of Blountville, not far from Bristol.  It is now the site of a Winter Solstice tradition for our ever-expanding 'family,' a community that has been cultivated for decades in the foothills and mountains of Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina.

The day after Thanksgiving my son, seven, helped with the felling while my daughter, three, watched from a tiny yellow plastic chair.  We started by taking down the dimensions of the tree and truck bed, deciding on acceptable overhangs, and trimming down reachable branches.  For all cutting we used the Japanese-inspired Vaughan Bear Saw, which slices on the pull stroke for greater control and a very narrow kerf.  This makes it a great learning saw for children.  My son insisted that we wear safety goggles.  He was thrilled to give the final push and shout, "Timber!"

I remembered previous Solstices with big sprawling burnpiles, mostly cleared brush with some large timbers crossing the middle.  I envisioned planting the apple tree upright in the center of a pyre to deliver it's final performance and to fall to the earth one last time in spectacular fashion.  Considerable effort was made to leave the tree as whole as possible while still safe enough for highway travel.

The burnpile this year was set closer to the house, more compact and vertical.  It was nearly as tall as the largest section of the tree!  Once again my vision was compromised but I was content knowing that the wood would be pleased to burn in the fire regardless of my silly ideas.  I leaned the main sections up against one side of the pile and spread around the branch cuttings. That night, flames leapt high above the house and Solstice was, as always.