More plywood seats

Carved up two seats tonight. I have four lined up for tomorrow so far. With my brief window of opportunity tonight, I decided to work on the plywood seats a little. Basically I got the cutting and shaping out of the way. The next time I get to work on them, I'll drill holes for the plastic bumpers and hinges. Then stain and poly the seat and underside of the lid. this is taking a little longer than I had first imagined, but doing things in stages like this seems to drag it out. I decided to take another stab at adding a short video to the mix. One of me cutting the seats from the plywood with a reciprocating saw( Black and Decker! YEAH! Can't wait till I get my band saw!) And one of me routing the edges.My camera assistant was not in the mood to deal with the huge amount of dust and chips the routing table produced, so the video is short. But you should get the idea. I had to do my own taping with the Saw, which is not the safest or smartest way to do things. After trimming them flush, I rounded over the corners. A small note on the short vids. One: long videos are boring and I find people talking are kinda distracting. ( exception, Wood Whisperer) Two: Blogger takes along time to upload one even as short as a 15 second one. I'll have to work on editing some longer ones in the future. (Music is much nicer on the ears than the roar of the tools) A small note on the router table. In case you can't see it, the seat is attached to a jig I cut for it. I put handy dandy handles on the top so I would have something to hold on to and keep my hands safe and clear. The router table scares the hell out of me! I give it the utmost respect! There is no attaching a severed appendage ( think finger) after a router bites ya! ( think blender)

Video Experiment

So I finished carving up the five seats that I had tonight. I decided to try to make some small videos of the process to shake things up a bit. Since I had to ask the help of my wife and tear her away from her sewing, the quality might not be as good as I had hoped. but the new camera makes it rather easy to just point and shoot. Perhaps we can make it a regular part of the updates. Since they seem to take a long time for a 15 second video to download, I'll try to limit the number. They are not edited like my other videos.

Catch up Sunday

The weekend is almost over and I have totaled 11 seats! I carved up 6 tonight and have 5 set up tomorrow. It's not the best to leave things to pile up on Sunday, but this weekend was kinda messed up with a family event on Saturday. With a little luck the seats should go out tomorrow. I still have to finish the plywood seats and get them ready since all our seats are accounted for now. Cheryl had to order boxes and bubble bags already! I'm hoping things will continue like this through and after Christmas. I feel like the cats on days like this...

Making new seats.

So on Friday I purchased a sheet of 3/4 inch Baltic plywood and cut it up into workable pieces to begin the custom seat making. It was late so I did not finish it yet but got a chunk of the work done. The need for the seats has become more apparent than ever as we had to go to Grand Rapids and raided three stores and still could not find enough seats for this weekend alone. The Solid wood seat is becoming an endangered species! I still have to cut out two and finish routing around the edge.

4 Seats with some shop cat help.

Carved up 4 tonight and have another elongated that will have to wait till Monday. My weekend is looking short because we have a family event to attend on Saturday. As the Title hints at, The shop cats help me out this way. Cheryl was able to capture it for once. Usually they step on my painting and sit on my templates when I'm trying to transfer on designs. Other than that, Kinda a boring day. No movies to watch and Heroes was not shown this week. Bla! I was able to catch The Office though. Tomorrow I'll try to get that plywood home. Tonight it was windy and rainy. nto the best conditons to bring a sheet of wood home that is attached to your roof.

boxes and soap.

No carving today, we just made soap and I labeled some boxes. only have one elongated seat to carve up and it seemed like a waste to carve up only one. I'm getting set up for bringing some plywood home tomorrow. Since I don't have a truck, I have to get "creative". perhaps I'll post pictures then.

Six Seats, No wait...

As usual, we woke up with only two seats and by the time I got home it had become 6! Actually, we sold another one later but could not squeeze it in. I'm thankful for the crazy sales at this time of year. If you had read my august posts, you would see me whining about how few sales I actually had. Now it's like the monsoon season! Also today Cheryl got her pin cushion from Stellabird. Cheryl was totally in love with it and couldn't wait to break it in. She also got a cute little magnet with the package. Cheryl sewed up a custom stocking for one of her Etsy clients, A black cat that loves to catch mice was the ladies guide lines. I think She did pretty good. I told her she now has to make stockings for our three cats. I'm already out of seats, so tomorrow will probably be another seat hunting day. Wish us luck! I think the new camera is working out well! The pictures seem brighter and more detailed. Maybe it's just my impression though.

Sunday Funday!

Totally caught up tonight, then sold two more ( yeah!) Cheryl and I also finished the table. with only one minor hiccup ( I broke a tile trying to "negotiate" it into place) It's all ok though, since the tiles are fairly cheap to replace. I'll just have to be more "gentle" in my persuasion next time. We also broke down and bought a new camera. I took a couple of pictures of the old one to show you the "clamp cam" as Cheryl calls it. It was doomed to fail eventually. And we found this camera on sale for a fair price. Smaller, fewer batteries, better pictures, more mega pixels, and zoom! Only draw back is that we need a memory stick for it! ( baaa!) It does take 11 pictures without one though. In other news, A mouse chewed through a vacuum hose in our furnace tonight. How do I know? Cause I had to climb under the house and fix it! I'm thankful sometimes that I'm a "man of action" even when I don't know what I'm really doing. I was able to trim the hose and push it back into place without calling the furnace guy or the landlord and wait till morning to get some heat. ( I'm also very thankful that it was something very VERY easy to fix!) So, we did a lot and the shop cats are all showing it! It must be exhausting being a cat, because after an entire day of stepping on seats, shedding on the felt, pushing brushes and felt on the floor, and getting food and pets from the "staff" ( Cheryl and myself), it's time for a nap on Cheryl's sewing table.

Gathering and carving seats.

Carved up the seats tonight, will paint them tomorrow. While going to Grandville, we hit the World Store. It's like Pier One Imports only better. They have stuff from around the globe. coffee, tea, wine, soap and furniture. And they play the coolest music there. You can totally get surrounded in some culture. Being a Traveler myself, I love experiencing new places. So we bought some soap, exotic Chocolates, and a couple of cat toys. You can see the Toucan seat being carved up here. It's an older video, but it shows you a little on what carving a seat involves.

Lazy Friday

Took the day off to work on painting the table. Then the camera pooped out on me. It needs batteries, but there is the bigger problem of the broken battery cover. Now the cover is cracking and inevitably going to make the camera totally useless. I was able to snap one picture though. If I remember, we will pick up some more batteries and I can get a coat of poly on it to finish it.

Hope your Halloween was a fun one. November first is write your novel month. 50,000 words in 30 days! Find out more in the previous post.