Themes as Creative Writing Prompts

Over on Today's Author, I'm discussing how a writing theme can be used to kickstart creativity:

Does this mean that I’ve abrogated the responsibility for creativity in selection of subjects for my blog posts? Not at all. I view this as akin to using a writing prompt as the basis for a short story. Thus far, I think I’ve written more (and better) blog posts than I have in a long time.

Pop over to Today's Author to read the whole post. Feel free to leave a comment there or here to tell me what you think. Do you use writing prompts? Have you pursued them through a larger theme? How applicable do you think this approach is to larger works?

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T is for Trim saw

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T is for Trim saw

Here's another a specialty item: a reversible trim saw, also called a flush-cut saw (1). This one is used for primarily for inducing backaches, hunched shoulders and stiff necks.

I'm kidding!

Actually, the trim saw is used to make difficult little cuts in fixed objects so that other objects can be fitted into them precisely. A typical example is in the laying of solid flooring, either wood, laminates, or tile. Rather than have this flooring butt up against edge trim around doorways, newel posts, ducts, etc., you want it to fit flush with no gaps.

To use a trim saw, you lay the blade on top of a piece of the flooring you're going to be installing. This will match the cut-off height with your floor. With the very thin, very fine-toothed saw held flush, flat and square up against the piece of trim to be cut, you carefully remove a piece from the bottom of the trim. The push-button blade lock lets you swing the handle around, reversing the blade to get the right directionality of your cuts.

If you've done it properly, there will be a gap at the bottom of the trim that is exactly the same thickness as your new floor. During installation, you slide a piece of flooring into the gap and bask in the glory of a perfectly fitted, beautifully gap-free floor, every single time.

BWAHAHA! HA HA HA!!!!

Of course it's not that easy! Who do you think you are, a cabinetmaker?

Seriously, though, there's an art to getting these close-fit trim cuts to look right. I've done a bunch of these flooring and staircase installations. I have a steady hand, a cool eye, and good quality tools that are kept sharp. Even with all that, my trim cuts still don't look perfect. Everyone around me can't seem to see the gaps, nicks and ragged edges, and they all claim that the fit is perfect. I know better, though. The flaws glare out at me like zits on the Mona Lisa.

To that end, I've been drooling over a new kind of power tool. It uses much thinner blades, oscillated at something like 25,000 rpm. Those vibrating cutter blades look fantastic in the demo videos, but I've never used one. They look like they'd make short work of trim cutting. With a tool like that, perfection in trim cutting just might be within my grasp.

Or I might cut off one of my fingers. Those vibro-blades look like they'd go right to the bone in a tenth of a second. Still, you never know until you try!

1. As you might imagine, I have lots of other hand saws, everything from rip saws and crosscut saws to keyhole saws and narrow gauge scroll saws. In the power tool line, I have a circular saw (naturally), jig saw, band saw (scary), table saw, and miter saw. I should note that I also have all ten fingers. My goal is to STILL have all ten fingers when I'm old and ready to lay my tools aside.

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S is for Stud sensor

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S is for Stud sensor

This is a stud sensor (1). It is used to detect studs, the vertical pieces of wood that support the weight of the wall. Why do I have a stud sensor?

Well...

Did you ever see that episode of the old "Dick Van Dyke Show" when Rob Petrie pounds a nail into the wall and a gush of water sprays out? This is, of course, after he's had a tiff with his wife, Laura, over whether he has the handyman skills necessary to do something as simple as hang a picture. In the process of driving the nail, Rob missed the stud and punctured a pipe he didn't know was there. Rob's efforts to contain the damage (before Laura came home from shopping) spiraled out of control, growing more and more frantic and slapstick with each passing minute. The wall erupted with water, the floors and wall were badly damaged and all the furniture in the room was ruined (2). Hilarity ensued.

No? You never saw that hysterical episode? How about when the exact same joke was done in just about every "dad is just a dope" sitcom since 1961?

Doesn't ring a bell? Seriously?

OK, how about the episode of "All in the Family" where Archie Bunker was trying to hang a picture, but instead of puncturing a pipe in the wall, he hit a live electrical conduit. The shock burned off the fingertips of the hand he was using to hold the nail, frying his flesh right to the bone. Also, the electrical fire that started inside the wall (which Archie, tending to the 3rd degree burns on his fingers, didn't notice until it was too late) spread vertically until it burned down the entire building (3). Archie, his wife Edith Bunker, his daughter Gloria Stivic and his son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic are left bankrupt and homeless, since insurance doesn't pay much for homeowner-caused damage. Hilarity ensured.

No? Didn't see that one either? Doesn't sound very funny, does it?

The fact is, we need to do stuff to our walls. Hang pictures or mirrors, attach moldings, install lighting fixtures, etc. All of this involves breaching the integrity of the wall surface, whether it's old plaster and lath or modern drywall. If only we could be sure that there was nothing BEHIND where we were about to drive that nail, screw or wall anchor, life would be much easier. Ideally, nails and screws should be driven into the studs. If you drive them into the space between the studs, the only thing that's holding it in place is the drywall. For light items, that might be OK, but a heavy item will just tear itself out of the wall.

You can often find the studs by rapping with your knuckles and listening for the change in sound. The spaces between studs go TOCK TOCK TOCK, while the spaces right over the studs go TICK TICK TICK. Usually. But sometimes it's hard to tell a TOCK from a TICK. Also, there's no way to know for sure where the pipes and wires are in relation to the stud. If you have one running vertically alongside a stud and you miss the edge of the wood by a quarter-inch, you suddenly find yourself in the role of Rob Petrie. Or worse, Archie Bunker.

The stud sensor pictured here was something like $15. I assume it uses ultrasound to penetrate the walls during detection mode, but I'm not really sure. It might use oscillating magnetic fields, or maybe vaporized unicorn saliva. Anyway, it will sense the change in density behind the wall and light up the LED array to tell you exactly where the edge of the stud is. It also projects a handy red line upward for marking. Since old plaster and lath is much thicker and denser than modern drywall (thanks to the heavy cement lath treatment under the base coat and skim coats of plaster), this stud sensor has a "Deep Scan" mode to penetrate that extra-heavy wall.

For added security, this stud sensor also has a sensor that detects live electrical current. This element HAS to be oscillating magnetic fields that will induce a bounce-back signal in copper wires. It's a nice feature, not only for avoiding the wires when hanging a picture, but for tracing the wires through the walls when installing new light fixtures.

As much as I love homeowner hilarity, I have no desire to puncture a pipe or clip a wire. A stud sensor is an easy to use tool that lets me put my nails exactly where I intend for them to go.

1. It makes a loud beeping sound every time I pick it up (4).

2. I've had basement floods due to a ruptured water heater, a shorted-out sump pump that failed during a hurricane and a bad electrical installation. They were always expensive and never funny.

3. This didn't really air. Houses destroyed by electrical fires aren't as funny as houses destroyed by water damage.

4. And I make this joke every time I pick it up. Never gets old.

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R is for Router

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R is for Router

Router, router, blah, blah, blah. Let me tell you about the time this router almost killed me. Or rather, how I almost killed MYSELF by combining extinction-level-event stupidity with this router.

Ready? Here goes.

This router is a DIY home handyman version. It has a 3/8" chuck, which means that the maximum diameter of the shaft it will accept it, you guessed it, 3/8". Years ago, on some project (I forget what), I needed a special kind of bit. The terror of that day has so screwed up my memories of it that I don't even remember what kind of bit it was.

Was it something to make a fancy edge on something? Was I trying to make a sliding, open dovetail joint? I can't imagine that I needed a special bit to make a simple rabbet, which is just a wide slot cut into the wood. What the heck was I doing?

Anyway, I couldn't find this special, special bit with a 3/8" shaft. However, after much searching, I did find one with a 1/2" shaft. (This was before I paid much attention to things like chuck sizing and maximum shaft sizes). I took it home and, naturally, it was too big. It would have fit a heavy-duty contractor's router or a stationary router table, since those have bigger 1/2" chucks.

Now we come to the This-Is-How-Stupid-People-Die part of the story. Did I curse and take the bit back to the store? Did I learn an important lesson about chuck sizes and grades of power tool? Did I rethink my entire project to work out a construction method I could accomplish safely with the tools at hand?

No, no, and no.

Instead, I did one of the most breathtakingly ignorant, stupid, and dangerous things imaginable.

"Golly, gosh, darn it," I say to myself, "it almost fits. I'll just pop over to my bench grinder and shave that 1/2" shaft down to 3/8"."

Any of you woodworkers reading this have probably sat bolt upright in your chair and are screaming OH MY GOD NO NO TELL ME YOU DIDN'T TELL ME WEREN'T THAT STUPID and I'm sorry to say that, yes, I was that stupid and yes, that's exactly what I did.

To all you non-woodworkers: you must understand, routers - even my home handyman one - are designed to make complicated cuts in wood. They do that by using a very powerful motor to spin a very sharp piece of heavy steel very, very, very fast. I think mine goes at 7000 rpm. Dremels and other ultraspeed tools go at 10,000 or 15,000 rpm, but they are spinning bits that are tiny. Router bits can be BIG. The forces placed on a router bit are directly proportional to the size of the bit. For this reason, router bits and shafts are made of a special kind of tempered tool steel that can handle these kinds of stresses (all of this I know now, but didn't know then).

Since my bit had a honking big 1/2" shaft, you can imagine just how big the bit was. Actually, never mind. I'll tell you how big the bit was: too big for my router to run safely.

And grinding down the shaft was catastrophic.

• It thinned the shaft, giving less support to the spinning chunk of metal.
• The grind was uneven, placing more stress on one side of the shaft than the other. And did I use a micrometer to confirm that my grind was even? No. I eyeballed it. What a moron.
• The process of grinding made the shaft super-hot, which ruined the temper of the steel and weakened it badly.

It took a long time to grind that bit down, but I got it done. So proud of my own ingenuity, I popped the modified bit into the router and set it up over a test piece which I'd secured to a set of sawhorses. I turned it on and got about two seconds of operation before the router detonated in my hands.

As soon as the bit got up to speed, the weakened shaft snapped. The walnut-sized bit shot through the far side of the router housing, smashed through some pegboard and tore a huge chunk out of the concrete basement wall, shattering into an explosion of shrapnel.

If the shaft had held on for just 1/20,000th of a second longer, it would have completed another half-rotation. Instead of flying AWAY from me, that bit would have come TOWARD me. That big, spinning chunk of sharpened tool steel would have gone right through my sternum, right through my lungs and right out through my spine. The hole would have been in the concrete wall BEHIND me instead of IN FRONT of me... and I would have been dead.

My heart rate is up and my hands are shaking slightly just to think back on the visceral terror of the moment I realized what had happened. At the time, I remember that I set the router down, turned off the shop lights and called it quits for the day. After that, I have no clue. I don't remember if I went for a walk or turned on a golf tournament on TV or went out to mow the grass. Whatever it was had to have been mindless. I was in shock, pale and trembling and loose-boweled at what had just happened.

Another 1/20,000th of a second and my kids would have been without a father, my wife without a husband. But none of that happened. I didn't die. I wasn't even hurt. In the most literal sense, I dodged a bullet. In the years since, I have wondered often about the meaning of my escape from the just consequences of my own stupidity.


I've used the router since then. It was gut-wrenching to fit a bit in and fire it up the first time after my near-death experience, but I did it. It works fine - a great tool, so long as you use the right bits, follow the safety instructions and don't act like an idiot.

To be honest, though... the router isn't my favorite tool. Not anymore.

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Q is for Quick-set epoxy

For my other posts about woodworking tools, follow this link. Don't forget to read the story based on this post, "Quickly, Staunch the Wound".

Q is for Quick-set epoxy

As you can see from the label, this kind of epoxy is usually used in plumbing applications. It's a tube of thick, gray epoxy resin with a core of gel hardener. To use it, you slice off how much you think you'll need and knead it (no pun intended). In moments, the hardener starts to react chemically with the epoxy, making a sticky putty.

This stuff is GREAT for emergency repairs to pipes. It's an epoxy, not a glue. That means it hardens due to the chemical reaction, not as a result of drying. You can spread this stuff on a cracked and leaking pipe, wrap it tight with duct tape and in an hour or so, the pipe will (mostly) stop leaking. That buys you enough time to get out of emergency repair mode and into normal repair mode.

So why is this here in a series of posts about woodworking? Because I find that it's great for use in old screw holes that have been stripped. When the screw no longer stays in the hole, you can sometimes effect an emergency repair by putting in some toothpicks or slips of paper to give the screw threads something to bite into. For a proper fix, though, the kind of long-term repair that won't leave you worried, you need to refill the hole.

I still like Plastic Wood for many space-filling operations, but Plastic Wood has to dry in order to set hard. Not a problem for thin applications, but when you fill in a hole, the big mass takes a long time to dry. Also, for any load-bearing application, Plastic Wood has a tendency to fracture. With this quick-set plumber's epoxy, it sets hard from the inside out. Sure, it looks like hell, being gunmetal-gray and all, but who cares? This is reserved for applications that no one will ever see.

You slice off a chunk of the quick-set, work it to an even consistency and thumb it into the hole. Then, before it sets hard, you use a nail to give yourself a narrow pilot hole. When this stuff sets, it's almost as hard as cast iron. You just need to drill out a new set hole for the screw and voilà, you're good for another 30 years.

Another advantage of this quick-set epoxy putty is that, unlike liquid epoxys, you can use it overhead and upside down. It's good stuff - cheap, easy to work with, durable. Granted it's a rock-solid pain in the ass to wash off your fingers, but that's a small price to pay.
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#FridayFlash: Quickly, Staunch the Wound

This story is continued from last week's story, "On Bended Knee", and is based on today's A to Z Challenge post, "Q is for Quick-set epoxy"

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

"Stop what you're doing, old man, and put your hands up. Now! Or I'll kill you right where you're kneeling!"

Potemkin froze just as the angry young man had instructed. With a jerk, he sat back on his heels, his entire body and demeanor conveying the shocked surprise and fear he knew they wanted to see. In a moment, he would let his shoulders slump and bow his head. He would be the picture of a defeated, scared old man.

Then they would all die.

"Get up!"

With slow, pained movements, Potemkin braced himself to rise. One hand on the tree, one on his knee, he levered himself to stand. In the moonlight, he could see the guns all the men carried. Assault weapons over their shoulders, pistols on their hips. They all had knives, too, long bush knives strapped to their thighs. The eight young men looked angry and hard; their leader mixed speculation and suspicion with his anger.

The trees had warned Potemkin of their approach, warned him that they were armed. They hadn't simply killed him from a distance, so the only dangerous moment was now passed.

He looked from face to face. So young... they were all so young. Or was it that he was so old?

Two of the men grabbed him from behind and bent his frail arms back. He cried out in real pain. No, there was nothing to fear... except the pain he had to endure before his task was complete.

"What were you doing there? Tell me!" The leader raised his weapon and put the muzzle under the old man's chin. "Tell me, you old bastard or I blow your head off!"

"I was looking for truffles." Potemkin's Polish was fluent, but his American accent made all the men raise their weapons and scowl.

The barrel of the leader's gun pushed upward, digging it into the soft, flabby flesh of the old man's neck.

"You think I'm a fool? An American, digging for mushrooms, here? In the middle of the night? You insult me again and I will kick your teeth in again before I kill you. There are a hundred places I could dump your body and no one, I mean NO ONE would find you. Now, answer me! What are you up to?"

"I'm a tourist, on a cheese tasting tour. The light of the moon makes the flavor of the truffles stronger. Please," Potemkin said, "I meant no offense. I'll go."

"Sasha! Dig in there, see what he was doing."

Another man in the group nodded, slung his rifle up behind his back and bent to scrabble in the dirt Potemkin had loosened at the base of the tree. After a moment, he pulled up an irregular, brown lump the size of a walnut. He smelled it.

"It's a truffle, Taddeusz. Do you think he was telling the truth?"

"Keep digging."

Sasha returned to the hole, widening his search. After a moment, he shouted a curse and yanked his hand away. Then he reached back and pulled out a short knife, barely two inches long at the blade. He held it in his bleeding fist, waving it at the old man.

"It cut me! That wrinkled old son of whore buried this knife in the dirt and it cut me!"

"Give me that knife." Taddeusz held out his hand and Sasha handed him the blade. The blade seemed to absorb the moonlight and give it back in a silver swirl. It was a long time before the leader took his eyes from it. When he did, Potemkin could see that he knew. With a gesture, the younger man motioned Potemkin's captors to turn toward the path.

"Let's get moving. We're taking him back to the chapel. The Bishop will want to see him."

"Tad? Are you sure that's a good idea? Don't you think we should -"

"Be quiet, Sasha!" Taddeusz looked at Potemkin. "I know what you're here for, old man. You want the magic wood. You're a greedy American who knows nothing about the underpinnings of the world. The wailing wood is valuable and that's why you're here, right?"

Potemkin raised his eyes to meet those of his captor. Their gaze locked, but only for a moment. They were interrupted by a CRACK as loud as a cannonshot. A heavy branch, as thick as a man's thigh, dropped directly on top of Sasha and the four man standing with him. They screamed as branches stabbed downward into their upturned faces, impaling eyes, cheeks and throats.

Like reactive machines, Taddeusz and the men holding Potemkin stepped back, readying their assault rifles. As they did, each of them tripped, their heels caught on looping roots. Gunfire erupted upward, spraying into the leaves as the men fell.

Unlike the men crushed by the fallen limb, these three men died almost instantly, stabbed in the back of the neck by a thick root, newly risen up in the exact spot where their heads hit the ground. All the roots were covering in clinging, fresh dirt.

Potemkin waited until the screaming stopped. His heart pounded and his head swam. Four years he'd been searching for this grove. Four years from completing the floor, and now his final task was well and truly begun. He could afford to wait to catch his breath.

From a pocket he took a mass of gray putty, wrapped in plastic. From the dead Taddeusz's jacket he retrieved his knife. Then, Potemkin went to the tree that had given its limb to save him. He leaned against it, his hand on the rough bark.

"Now, Alexi... their lives have opened the door... wedge it open, just as we taught you... you must act quickly, Alexi... set us free..."

Potemkin unwrapped the plumber's epoxy putty and kneaded it until it was sticky-smooth. He wrapped the mass around his left thumb and pressed it against the tree bark. He counted a thousand heartbeats, trying to keep his breathing slow. With a tug, he tested the epoxy and found it already beginning to set.

"Alexi... hurry..."

With a deep breath, he held the knife at the base of the thumb, just at the joint. In a smooth motion, he swiped it upward, severing tendons and cartilage as though he were slicing through cardboard. He yanked his hand away, leaving the thumb stuck in place.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH..."

Blood sprayed in pulsing jets as he pressed the flat of the blade to the ragged, bleeding joint. Burning moonlight flowed into the wound, an agonizing, icy cauterization.

"Almost there, Alexi... almost there..."

Tears flowed down the old man's face.

"Courage, Alexi... almost there... almost there... you must be ready to go to him, Alexi... be ready... you are almost finished... we are almost free..."

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~ 

This story concludes with "Living Stones, Living Wood", a piece based on next Friday's A to Z Challenge post, "W is for Whetstone"

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P is for Pencils

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P is for Pencils

Notice that I said "pencils", plural. I suppose you could do woodworking with just one pencil, in the same way you could work with only one hammer or one kind of clamp. But... why?

My pencils are always within arm's reach. I keep one in my toolbelt, at least one or two in each toolbox, a cup of pencils on my workbench, etc. Pencils are cheap enough that you should never have to go hunting for one. Buy a gross and scatter them everywhere.

Like a lot of things in the workshop, pencils straddle the line between a tool and a consumable item. Carpenter's pencils are distinctive because they are flat, with a rectangular lead in the core. The shape derives from the function. Quite simply, flat pencils don't roll away when you set them down on uneven surfaces like rafters, beams or items held at odd angles during fitting & assembly.

If I could offer a criticism about the Home Depot pencils pictured here, it would be that the orange paint coating makes them a bit slick, sometimes defeating the "stay where I put you" functionality. However, that bulk pack was cheap and the color makes them easier to spot amid the crap of a messy workbench. At some point, I'll probably rough them all up with my pad sander.

This pack of pencils came with a special sharpener, a rotating kind for flat pencils, which is something I'd never used before. After sharpening all these pencils, though, I've decided I don't like it. It puts a long point on the flat pencils, much as you'd see with a round or hexagonal pencil. The lead in the flat pencil is the wrong kind for that kind of point and they keep breaking off.

I'll go back to sharpening them with a utility knife. That gives a square lead tip, much better for marking measurements, cut lines and drill holes. Also, a big, fat lead is much better for writing those all-important directions to yourself, such as CUT OTHER SIDE or THIS END UP or GLUE FACE GOES HERE.

You might think I'm kidding about those little notes, but you've never seen me work in my shop.

The regular pencils are for drawing up plans, making lists for the store, doing design work on graph paper, etc. Woodworking is as much about mapping things out on paper as it is marking and cutting wood. I've got a bunch of odds and ends pencils for that. I also have a mechanical pencil for when I'm feeling especially fussy.

HISTORICAL SIDE NOTE: Ever wondered why yellow is a such a popular color for pencils? Back in the 1800's, when the graphite in pencils was sliced from naturally occurring blocks found in coal deposits (1), some of the very best quality came from China. It had very little grit or crud embedded and therefore gave a smooth, perfect line. Therefore, to give a mental association with China, pencil makers painted their pencils yellow, a color associated with China and chinoiserie, the Chinese art style which was so popular in Europe at the time. Yellow = China = quality lead.

It's true! You can read all about it and many other interesting facts (2) on the subject of pencils in "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance" by Henry Petroski. If you have any interest in how form and function come together to become design, this book is for you.

1. ... and when pencil leads were often square as a result of the cutting process...
2. For example, Henry David Thoreau was able to go live in a cabin for two years on Walden Pond because he came from a wealthy family. The money came in large part from the family's pencil factory and associated rolling mills used to process graphite to make pencil leads.

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O is for Opener

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O is for Opener

I know, I know... who needs a specialized tool for opening paint cans when a screwdriver works just fine?

Take a look at the gouged lip of your paint cans, genius. See those little dings and points? They keep your can from sealing properly when you tap the lid back in place. Your screwdriver levered the lip curl both UP and OUT. The opener you see above you only levers the lip curl UP. Small difference, but it preserves the integrity of the lid.

An opener like that is only three bucks. Go buy one and stop using a screwdriver to open your cans.

BONUS TIP: When putting the lid back on a can of paint, drape a cloth over the top of the can. That way, when you tap the lid with a hammer, the paint splatters are contained by the cloth and you walk away spot-free.
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N is for Nippers

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N is for Nippers

I'm not feeling the love today. After the bombing in Boston yesterday, I'm feeling like me writing a blog post about a woodworking tool that starts with "N" is as stupidly self-absorbed as things get. The only reason I went ahead with this is that it was pointed out to me that the flow of good which most people pour into the world must never be choked off by the evil that some people force into existence. Keep calm and carry on. Therefore: nippers.

The proper use for these curved-edge cutters is to nibble away at material. I've done that, nipping off ends of dowels and wires, trimming various bits. Really, though, I use them mostly for pulling nails. As these are sometimes referred to as "nail pullers", they still work for "N". The curved edge lets you bite into a protruding eighth of a nail head; the long handles let you rock the nail out backwards. Working the bite forward a bit each time, you can persuade even a rusty and bent nail to come out backwards without a lot of awkward and indelicate pounding on the point.

If you never want to recycle wood, you can leave old nails in place. Discard the wood, burn it, trash it, whatever... a few old nails don't matter. However, if you prefer to reclaim wood so it can be reused in new projects, that means pulling the nails. On a DIY construction site, it's a matter of safety, too.

I once stepped on a nail-studded board that some jerk had just cast aside after a minor demolition. The nail went through the bottom of my shoe and into the bottom of my left foor, in the soft spot along the center line just forward of the arch. In the process of hopping backwards trying to pull the nail free from my foot, I was terrified that I'd step on another board and sustain another injury.

Confronting the jerk in question, I expressed my dissatisfaction with all the eloquence at my command. As I recall, my remonstrations grew so vigorous that some of the other guys had to intervene before the verbal became the violent.

But enough Marcel Prousting. Suffice to say that although it was a long time ago, I am still vigilant about nail-studded boards left lying around the workshop.

Also, nippers are ideal tools to give to young people so they can help with woodworking projects. There's a saying that has a deceptive amount of truth: "every good carpenter started out as a kid pulling nails from old wood." Pulling nails helps to teach you how wood behaves, what it will stand and what will destroy it. It's a good place to start.

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Boston

My condolences to all of the innocent victims of the bombing today at the Boston Marathon. By its nature, a marathon is the culmination of months, years, even a lifetime of striving.

When the bombs went off, the leaders had long since passed the finish line. The explosions didn't hit professional racers. They hit the second- and third-tier runners, the ones who weren't there to make world-record times, only a personal best... or just the personal triumph of making it up Heartbreak Hill and over the finish still upright.

To have the moment of fulfillment turn into a bloody wave of horror... to be a spectator waiting for a chance to cheer on your wife, your husband, your grandma, your friend or some other loved one, only to have your legs torn off in a deafening roar... to be an eight year old child, perhaps understanding why the Boston Marathon is such a big deal, perhaps not, but excited and happy anyway, only to have a moment of fear and pain be your last moment on this earth...

... these are things I cannot forgive.

My heart goes out to you, Boston, and to all those who were, just for a day, your adopted sons and daughters.

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M is for Micrometer

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M is for Micrometer

For most jobs, I use a tape measure. For some specialty measuring jobs I use an interior folding rule. For other specialty jobs, I sometimes use a micrometer.

Micrometers aren't just for establishing very small distances with great accuracy. Like any shop micrometer, mine (pictured to the left) can measure in thousandths of an inch or in fractions of a millimeter. Since mine is a purely mechanical micrometer, it does this by means of a finely machined ruled scale (two, actually: imperial on top, metric on the bottom) and another finely machined slider. In taking a reading, the zero marker for the slider will probably fall between one of the markings on the rule. You simply count up the slider until you find the slider marking which is precisely aligned with a scale marking and, presto, that's your fractional measurement.

In practice, you can discriminate proportional half-shadings between "a big bit off" vs. "a tiny bit off" vs. "zeroed" (1). A "tiny bit off" corresponds to 0.025 millimeters, i.e. 25 microns, the smallest gradation that can be measured by a trained eye in any practical sense. To be honest, I wouldn't try to put a spacecraft on Mars using measurements THAT fine, but it's useful for measuring wear on certain kinds of contact parts.

I don't generally do woodworking that requires thousandths of an inch. Since wood expands and contracts with the weather, the time of year, how sunny the room is, what kind of finish you've applied, how the piece is used, etc., there's not a lot of point in measuring beyond a sixteenth of an inch (2). Finer distances than that are done by feel.

No, where I use this micrometer most is in determining the sizings for round parts. See, putting a tape across the end of a dowel will sometimes give you a bad reading if you're not cutting directly across the center. A micrometer does a three-point alignment with the perimeter, so it always gives you a true diameter.

The lower jaws are for measuring exterior diameters, the upper prongs are for measuring interior diameters. You stick the prongs in the hole, open the mic until it stops. If you're a clumsy sort of person, you can tighten the set screw so that the reading won't be changed by a hand bump or dropped mic, but who among us has ever done anything so dumb? (3)

When the mic opens, the centerline probe extends from the end. This isn't just part of the mic's sliding mechanism. It's used to measure depths, especially of blind holes were a normal tape measure can't reach. Again, since I work mostly with wood, not metal, I rarely need to know the depth of a hole to a thousandth of an inch. While I used this a lot back when I did a lot of engine repair work, for woodworking I often use less precise methods.

Micrometers nowadays are digital and much easier to read than mine, with onboard memory that records multiple readings. However, since I don't have much call for such precision, this one is fine for me.

1. The machinists who taught me how to use this micrometer referred to these as, respectively, "off by a CH", "off by an RCH" (4), and "dead nuts". Machinists are a foul-mouthed bunch.

2. Imperial measurements go in binary fractions down to thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths of an inch. Below that, it switches to decimal fractions as thousandths of an inch. If you want a bunch of foul-mouthed machinists to laugh at you and call you a "dumb-ass college boy", suggest that this is a more cumbersome system than metric. Go ahead - it's a formative experience.

3. Me. Of course, once you drop a precision measuring device like a micrometer, it's no longer a precision measuring device. It has become what machinists call "a worthless, lying piece of shit, you dumb-ass college boy".

4. According to the link cited above (5), a real RCH was actually measured with great precision and found to be 30 microns. Those machinists knew what they were talking about! 

5. Only here at Landless will you find footnotes that are themselves footnoted. Tell your friends!
  
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L is for Laser level

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L is for Laser level

I've been drooling over this tool for years, but finally was able to justify buying one a few months ago. It is an beautiful piece of technology.

But first, some background about levels - probably unnecessary, but you never know. A level is a tool that tells you the orientation of something. From as far back as people cared to build things that were truly flat, people have used levels. From the Romans back to the Etruscans, Egyptians, Phoenicians and before, carpenters would fill a marked pan with water and set it on top of a wall. When the level of water was the same all around, the wall was flat. If you put two holes in the pan at opposite ends, right on the level line, you could use the pan level as a sighting tool for building level roads, piers, aqueducts, cathedrals, etc.

An open pan of water is a bit awkward, though, so as soon as it was practical, instead of looking at the level of water in a pan, they put the water in a little bottle with a flat bottom, then (because bottles break) they embedded the glass into a flat piece of wood. Convenient, that, since it's easier to make wood flat than it is to make glass flat (1). Eventually, somebody had the idea of using a glass tube mostly filled, instead of a little bottle insert only partly filled. Instead of looking for the surface of the water to go flat, you looked for the bubble to go in the middle of the tube (2).

Really old levels have only one bubble glass, level with the block of wood. Modern levels typically have three bubble glasses: one flat (3), one vertical (4) and one at a 45 degree angle (5). I have four big levels, ranging from 2 feet to 4 feet, in wood, steel, plastic, and fiberglass. I also have all the silly little levels built into my drills, saws, adjustable squares, etc.

A big advantage of the laser level pictured here is... well, there are several. Instead of laying a long level against the wall and marking spots across the wall that a true level (for laying tile, installing light fixtures, hanging pictures, etc.), you turn on the little vacuum pump built into the base of the laser level and hold it against an adjacent or opposite wall. It holds itself in place, shooting a flat laser beam across the entire wall you're working on (6).

The laser electronics swing free inside the case, so even if the thing you attached it to isn't level, your laser line is. With a tweak of a knob, you can adjust the line up or down to be exactly where you want it. It stays on as you work across 10, 20, 30 or more feet of wall (7). Also, the beam can be set to a flat line, a vertical line or both. This cross hairs feature lets you align the picture your hanging with respect to the vase below (8).

I know this is a specialty tool. Believe me, I've gotten by with long levels and plumb bobs, hose levels and taught pieces of string. I've installed drop ceilings, dug French drains, built stud walls, brick walls, fieldstone walks and lots of other things that absolutely HAD to be level and/or pitched at an exact angle.

But this laser level turns an hour's work into ten minutes. It's a thing of marvelous beauty.

1. A downside is that Incidentally, since the little bottles were sealed, they couldn't change the water. Since water gets scummy and cloudy after a while, they pretty soon switched to using alcohol or mineral spirits in the glass. Hence the old name, "spirit level".

2. This led to the colloquial term for someone who was a little off as being "half a bubble off plumb".

3. For floors.

4. For walls.

5. For no earthly purpose. Who in the world measures an angle with a level? Crog the Caveman? That's like trimming your fingernails with an axe. To get an angle properly, you measure rise and run, then calculate it.

6. So damn cool, I'm about to cry remembering the first time I used it.

7. *sniff sniff*

8. Or, more importantly, align the light fixture wiring with the outlet and/or sink underneath it, so you not only have the fixture level, it's wired properly between the studs, missing interfering pipes other wires.

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K is for Kneepads

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K is for Kneepads

Much like I didn't used to wear gloves, I didn't used to wear kneepads. Unlike with gloves, the "no kneepads" thing was pure testosterone.

I couldn't be bothered, didn't need them, didn't want them. Wusses and rookies wore kneepads. Callused knees were a sign of virtue and work ethic.

Kneepads got too sweaty. Kneepads were too binding. Kneepads were too awkward. Kneepads never fit right. Kneepads always slipped. Kneepads looked dorky as hell.

The cheap foam kneepads didn't last and didn't do any good anyway. The slightly less cheap kind with the hard plastic pads were unstable and uncomfortable, worse than no kneepads at all. And the high-end kneepads? Who in his right mind would pay $30 for a pair of kneepads? Silicon gel comfort wide elastic strap velcro adjustable blah blah blah... forget it!

Above all else, kneepads were for old men, the kind of guys who made those old man grunting noises when they got up off the floor where they'd been laying tile or setting floor joists. Kneepads were a mark of weakness and decline.

All of this I believed, and not just believed but lived out to the fullest extent. That makes this bit of self-examination somewhat awkward.

I'm not quite sure when I came to my senses. Was it when I laid the Pergo in my kitchen? Laying the flooring in my bedroom closet? When I laid fiberglass insulation in the attic joists and then installed flooring on top of it to get more storage space? When I did the oak flooring in my bedroom?

I know I wore kneepads to lay the drystone walk in the backyard, and I was wearing them for any hands-and-knees job by the time I did the tiling by the front door.

These kneepads you see in that picture up there... when did I buy them? These are the third or fourth set, and they're a serious cut above the previous ones, which are still in use by Mrs. Noland for her gardening and DIY projects. When did I buy these Cadillac kneepads? It was certainly long before I did all the restoration of the downstairs shower, which was many months before I did all the tiling and plumbing for the master bath.

When did I start wearing kneepads? Probably when I got tired of bruised knees, numb thighs and being stiff-legged for two days after every big job.

I guess these kneepads make me an old man who has to pace himself on a big job, working through the hours with measured pace rather than the simple furious energy of a young buck.

Funny how I don't much give a shit about such categorizations anymore. Must be the kneepads.

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#FridayFlash: On Bended Knee

This story is continued from last week's story, "Exotic Wood", and is based on today's A to Z Challenge post, "K is for Kneepads"

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Potemkin cupped the last piece of wood in his left hand; in his right, he readied the knife. The blade was only two inches, barely longer than the piece of wood itself. Curved and watery, the Damascus steel held a swirling dark pattern that fooled the eye, tricked the unwary into misjudging just where the cutting edge was. It was a knife that had to used by touch and feel more than by sight.

He set the last piece of wood into the last space in the parquet floor. The intricate fractal pattern spiraled outward from the center, seventy-five feet on a side, combining carefully shaped pieces into a combination rose window and sunburst. A hundred different species of rare and lustrous wood had gone into the floor, everything from angelwood and purpleheart to yarrowfen and zebrawood. The floor contained every color of the rainbow and every shade from bone white basswood to midnight black ebony.

And, of course, the wood that sings and cries...

Intermixed among the normal woods, slips and slivers of the most precious wood in the world lived and hid and adorned. Here making a line, there making an angle, here making a centerpiece, there making a frame, they were each at home among the other woods, drawing strength and comfort from them as they never could while kept apart, locked in an ornate box. Closely fit, without a hairsbreadth between them, they were many small sections that made up a single, glorious whole. No glue, no nails, no clamps, dogs or wedges, just the wood itself, shaped by the hands of a master.

A master who had to cut the wood apart before he could bring it back together.

The last piece of wood was a shade too wide for the last space. Potemkin sighed and readied the knife. It was the product of three thousand years' rediscovered bladecraft combined with the most up-to-date nanotech fabrication metallurgy. The deceptive, darkly beautiful blade was sharp enough to go straight to the bone on a single pass, sharp enough to whittle away a tungsten steel bolt, sharp enough to cut away anything a man's hand had strength to work against.

But it still wasn't sharp enough to work this wood without cost.

Still kneeling, his legs numb despite the kneepads his old frame demanded, he steadied the last piece of wood in his left palm. It would take only another sixty-fourth of an inch to make the fit perfect. He held the blade to the last piece of wood and closed his eyes. The wood cried and begged, the long suffering of repeated tortures spilling out in a shriek of pain and terror. He felt the anguish enter his heart, wrap itself around the shriveled husk that remained of his soul. Potemkin became one with the pain, opened his eyes and sliced the blade into the wood.

His vision blurred with the weight of shared agony. A paper-thin wisp of wood floated off and away, fluttering down, down, down, gasping in its newly severed isolation and horror before it fell to the floor, dead.

The pain of the wood lived in him and surrounded him, but Potemkin did not weep. He hadn't wept in fifty nine years, not from pain or fury or grief. He knew that when he finished the floor, he would have to bear an entire lifetime's worth of sorrow, taken all at once like a draft of boiling hemlock. His old ribs thudded with the fear that he might not be able to withstand it. As the cries from the last piece faded, however, he knew that the strength that had brought him this far would see him through to the end.

He set down the knife and picked up the mallet.

The last piece of wood again went into the last space in the parquet floor. This time, it slipped snugly into place. One tap to set it and the floor would be finished. After so many, many years, it would be finished and his life's work would then enter its final phase.

Potemkin readied the mallet. Eleven years since he'd purchased all the precious wood that Waterview had. He'd been forced to buy up Waterview's entire stock of normal woods as well to swing the deal, more than nine million dollar's worth. Time and money... what did they matter now? With a smooth stroke he brought the mallet down onto the last piece of wood THWACK and locked it in place. The last piece of wood made a shocked cry of alarm and then... nothing.

For long minutes, he waited. On his knees in the middle of the finished floor, he waited and heard nothing. But then... the sigh of a contented, happy child, the sound of comfort and love and release.

The old man recoiled as though he'd been kicked in the chest. Tears erupted from him, great flooding tears of joy and regret. He dropped the mallet and clutched at his face, crying out at the burning pain from the too-long unfamiliar sensation of weeping. He bowed his head and fell forward onto the floor, sobbing and convulsing as his lifetime of loneliness and bitterness came welling up. His tears plopped down, spreading and soaking on the last piece of wood and on all the pieces of normal wood beneath him.

During hours and hours, the uncontrollable weeping went on. Hyperventilating and cramping, Potemkin wept and wept and wept. A stroke, a heart attack, an aneurism could have taken him, so violent was the pounding in his head. His fragile old bones might have snapped under the strain of his own gasping and crying.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry for hurting you... I had to... I'm sorry..."

Finally, exhausted and spent, he slept, shuddering sobs still wracking his body as he lay curled on the wide, beautiful, intricate pattern he had created.

And in the timeless space between sleeping and wakefulness, a voice called to him. Rising up from beneath him, all the finely cut pieces of the wood that sings and cries spoke to him with one voice. It came to him soft and sweet, like the memory of a song sung in long-gone days of innocence and joy.

"Alexi... Alexi... we know what you have done... we forgive you, Alexi, but your final task remains undone..."

In his sleep, the old man whispered, "Will you help me?"

"You are alone, Alexi, always alone, in this as in everything... we cannot help you, Alexi... but we will guide you... get up, Alexi... get up and gather your tools..."

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~ 

This story continues with "Quickly, Staunch the Wound", a piece based on next Friday's A to Z Challenge post, "Q is for Quick-set epoxy"

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J is for Jack plane

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J is for Jack plane

The plane is one of the canonical tools of a woodworker. In every soft-focus TV ad that wants to convey tradition and craft, you see a shot of a cabinetmaker running a plane along a piece of wood. There he'll be, putting the finishing touches on something with a tool that everyone will recognize. Perhaps in close-up, perhaps in an pan shot, you'll see the gnarled old hands of the master easing the plane forward, a thin curl of wood shavings rising up and away like the breath of an angel sent back to heaven.

I'm here to tell you that when you use a jack plane, that's exactly how it is. I recently had to trim a sticking door, which was square but was sticking because the doorjamb was not. With my jack plane (one of only a couple I own), I angle-shaved one corner until it matched the dimensions of the jamb. When I was done, it closed perfectly. While I was planing the door down, I got a whole mass of those angel curls. So, yes, it's just like in the TV ads.

That is, it's just like in the TV ads IF you have the wood oriented properly with respect to grain and angle of cut, IF you have the depth of the blade set properly, IF you have the backing plate set at the correct angle, IF the blade has been sharpened properly, IF the blade has been set square in the plane clamp, IF you press down with the right pressure (but not too much) and IF you go forward with smooth, steady confidence (but WITHOUT going too fast or too slow).

If any of these are done wrong, the plane bites and binds, taking chunks and pieces from the wood, stuttering and rasping as you shove it along. What you end up with looks like it got caught in a gravel crusher instead of being as smooth as melting ice.

There are a thousand ways to hack a piece of wood up with a jack plane, but only one way to gently remove long curls of wood 1/32" thick. When you see those commercials and watch that old geezer shaving up the workpiece with an expert touch, just realize that it's harder than it looks.

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I is for Interior Folding Rule

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I is for Interior Folding Rule

Click to enlarge - it's worth a close look!

These little babies are pretty obscure. To be honest, I don't have much call to use them, but they are so interesting, I'm glad I have them. As you can see from the photo, folding rules with an extension section have been around for a while, but continue to be made. The small one dates from the 1950s and belonged to my grandfather. The larger, newer one is much more recent - 1995? 2000?

Unlike Allen wrenches, drill presses, hammers, and many of the other tools I've been discussing, the interior folding rule has one function, which it does supremely well. It's a real specialty item, used for measuring the exact interior dimensions of closed frames, such as windows, door jambs, boxes, dressers, etc. Why is it so specialized? Allow me to (briefly) explain.

Folding rules are the precursors of modern tape measures. Any carpenter always had a folding rule in his kit. In the old days, a "tape" measure meant a long piece of cloth tape, 25, 50 or 100 feet, coiled around a hub or in a small round drum. Any distance shorter than about 10 feet was measured with a folding rule. Any distance longer than 10 feet used multiple increments of the folding rule or (since that led to errors) a single use of the tape(1).

Even after the innovation of the modern tape measure - a thin tape made of retractable, flexible spring steel - a problem remained. How do you measure the inside of something? This sounds like a dumb question, but it's more pertinent than you might guess.

If you measure from edge to edge on the outside, you're only interpolating about what the measurement is on the inside, based on the assumption that everything is straight, square and plumb. Good luck with that, Skippy.

On the other hand, if you put your folding rule (or tape measure) down inside and measure directly, you can put the far end flush against one side, but you have to hold the rule at an angle against the other. That means you must estimate the true measure based on an eyeball of where the rule is in relation to the far end(2). Again, you can be off by as much as 1/8", the difference between square and crap.

Enter the interior folding rule. It goes inside the space to be measured and is unfolded into as many units as the space will fit. What's left over is measured with the extensible brass slide. The rule is placed flush against one side; the extension is slid out until it's flush against the other side. Length of rule units + length of extension = interior space width.

The REALLY great thing about this tool is that it allows you to take incremental measurements of the interior space. In a bright, shiny world where every doorjamb is a perfect rectangle  and every window slides easily in a perfectly square frame, this is unimportant. In the real world, however, where doors and windows stick and bind, it's pretty useful to know the real shape of the materials you have to work with. As you run the interior folding rule down the space, you can slide the brass extension in and out to account for the changes of the space, in 1/16" increments.

I haven't had to rebuild window frames in a while, but I just recently did some cabinet work where this tool came in handy. As I said above, it's a specialty item but is an absolute champion at what it does.

1. REALLY long distances needed surveyor's cord, but I won't get into that.
2. Some tape measures note the width of the tape itself so that you can extend the tape, take a reading and add the tape width. In my experience, those width measurements are not very accurate, and get less so as a tape measure gets dinged around.
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H is for Hammers

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H is for Hammers

I'm not going to belabor this: I've got a few different hammers.

Like any tool, different hammers are designed to do different things. Yes, you COULD get by with just a regular carpenter's claw hammer, just like you COULD get by with just one kind of pen. It's a generalist tool and does most jobs well enough. Whatever extra power, control, finesse or leverage a given job requires must be supplied by the ingenuity of the wielder.

You COULD live that way, but I can tell you from experience that it gets old. A destruction job that a 48-oz sledge hammer would do in four strokes, a 16-oz carpenter's hammer will take fifteen or twenty strokes... or thirty. Similarly, a fine finish nailing that a 4-oz tack hammer would do beautifully will end up looking like it was done by Crog the Caveman if done with that 16-oz carpenter's hammer.

Here are the hammers in this picture, clockwise from top:

• 48-oz short-handled sledge (not pictured is the 10-lb long handled sledge I use for big knockout jobs)
• three 16-oz carpenter's hammers (I have three so that, on jobs that need several people, I can just hand out hammers and get everybody to work)
• 22-oz ball-peen hammer (for metalwork)
• 22-oz framing hammer, flat face (angled, blue handle) (used for framing... duh)
• 22-oz framing hammer, check-face (angled, black handle) (notice that the framing hammers have a tapered steel shaft, integral with the head, while the other hammers have a steel head attached to a wooden shaft. Framing hammers are very end-heavy, very long-handled and hit almost as hard as a sledge. They'll drive a ten penny nail in two whacks.)
• dead-blow rubber mallet (for "persuading" soft materials)
• double-faced hard-blow rubber mallet (white=soft, black=hard)
• wooden mallet (used with chisels)
• head from my grandfather's 12-oz ball-peen (useless as a hammer, but I think of my grandfather every time I look at it)

Not pictured are various other hammers - a 4-oz tack hammer, a silly combo hammer/screwdriver thing I keep in my car, the 10-lb sledge, and probably a few other hammers I've forgotten about. The picture shows the ones I use most often.

Also, I didn't picture the prybars, crowbars, superbars, linesman's combo tools, wood chisels, concrete chisels, cold chisels, etc. that go hand-in-hand with these hammers. If I have more than three nails to pull, I rarely use the claws on the back of the hammer; a pair of prybars work much better.

Hammers present you with a refinement of the classic line: use the right tool for the right job.

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G is for Gloves

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G is for Gloves

I wasn't wearing a glove for this.

I didn't used to wear gloves.

This was not because of the normal stupidity and bravado that pervades young men, that inevitable consequence of being steeped in testosterone and ignorance. In my own way, of course, I was as drunk on that cocktail of youth and inexperience as the next guy, but I've always been a careful and risk-averse person(1). No, this was a considered approach to woodworking and DIY in general. Two things went into the decision: the quality of the work and the nature of workplace injuries.

Gloves necessarily separate you from the work. Whatever you're doing - sanding, carving, framing - gloves inhibit your ability to control your tools and to get the feedback they're giving you. More importantly, gloves prevent you from sensing the work itself. Wood can lie to your eyes and to the tape measure, but it can't lie to your hands. Your fingertips, your palms, the heel of your hand... these are the means by which the wood talks to you, in syllables of thousandths of an inch.

Is that joint really square? Did that knot sand down properly? Will that cross-grain catch fibers? Are those four pieces really the same length? Should that veneer be re-set? How much flex is on that plane?

For many years, I simply regarded the quality of the work as more important than the safety of my fingers. Being able to sense the wood, to listen to it and work with it, was the first priority. I can't tell you how many splinters, cuts, stabs and slices I've had over the years. I've never kept track. The "mystery cut" is familiar to any woodworker: after a day spent in the shop, you look down at your hands and realize that you're bleeding - sometimes impressively - from a big gash torn in one or more fingers. The mystery cut is bloody, dirty and crusted with sawdust, perhaps with a largish flap of loose skin. It's the kind of injury that should really be washed off as soon as possible. The thing is, you simply can't recall what caused it. Being so deeply in the zone, focused so intently on the work, it happened without your noticing.

Who needs gloves to get in the way when you're having that much fun?

With regard to the potential for really serious injuries, though, I subscribed to the theory that gloves could make them worse. The logic goes like this: your fingers are too close to the whirring blade of your table saw, band saw, miter saw, etc. If you're bare-handed, you get a nasty cut, perhaps even sever a fingertip(2). If you're wearing gloves, the blade grabs the glove and yanks your whole hand in. After that, you're the guy who has to hold up two hands to order four beers. It's the same logic for not wearing loose clothing or unfettered long hair around your power tools. Better a single bad cut to a finger than being chewed up completely because you were wearing gloves, right?

It took a certain amount of distance and perspective before I realized that the real key to not getting badly injured was to keep your fingers as clear of the whirring blades as practical. These days, I use push sticks, grippers, handles and other devices to let me have good control of the wood without having to run my fingertips a quarter of an inch from the blade.

I also wear gloves for rough work. Maybe I've gotten soft in recent years, maybe I've allowed my oxhide calluses to fade to nonexistence, or maybe I've gotten tired of taping closed my wounds with homemade butterfly bandages and digging splinters out of my fingers. Whatever it is, I've changed my behavior. Not for all things and not for all jobs, but much more than I used to.

The gloves you see here are the latest pair of leathers. Spending the extra couple of bucks on good gloves buys you:

• seams that don't rip
• fingers that are long enough to be comfortable, not so long that you flop at the tips
• linings that don't pill and fray
• surfaces that don't make your hands sweat
• backstraps that allow a solid closure fit, yet are easy to undo with your teeth.

My recommendation to you: gloves are protective gear. Wear them under any circumstances which warrant the additional protection. Same goes for eye and ear protection.

1. That is, when I wasn't being deliberately self-destructive.
2. I took a big chunk off the top of my left thumb once. It hurt.

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