Cedar Chest #2

 

Cedar chest after a coat of varnish - I think it looks pretty good. It would have been nice if the wood on the outside looked as good as the wood on the inside. The inside doesn't have any of the white stripes, but compared to what I started with, it'll do nicely. I still need to do something with the drawer front, however. I checked the stains available at Menards and they have some reddish colors but nothing specifically red cedar that I found. I was wondering if I could add a little oil base red paint with some brown to get a pretty good color match and then add it to the varnish. Menards does have small cans of stain for less than $10.00. That's probably my best bet. Find something close, stain, varnish and call the project done.

I should look into getting a new man door for the barn while I'm at Menards. The one on there now is a steel door that has the bottom few inches rusted off and the seam on the lock side where they joined the inside and outside sheets has opened up. It's a 36" door that measures a little under that. I'll have to take a tape measure with me and measure a replacement to make sure it'll fit in the opening. I'll probably run up there one day this week - nothing else on the calendar this week for a change. 

Cedar Chest

 

I have several wool bicycle jerseys and a couple of them got attacked by moths. The one is an old timer, so a couple of small moth holes didn't really bother me, but one of the new ones I special ordered all the way from New Zealand ended up with a couple of holes on the front of it. Since I paid good money for it and another one from the same outfit, I don't want any more damage to befall them. The Missus found a cedar chest so I bought it and drug it home.

The above photo shows the results after spending some time stripping all the blue paint off it. It's a Lane chest, so it was well made initially, but someone took a disc sander to it to strip off the initial finish. That left a few divots and a rather uneven surface, but I figured I could get it half-ass decent with some judicious sanding.

Here's the front after running the belt sander on it to level the surface out and then finishing with the random orbit sander, or DA if you're a body & fender guy. It appears the side panels will look similar if I sand the brown finish off them as well, which is the plan now. If you look closely on the front, you can see the faux doors have a brown frame on them. Originally those were raised about 1/4" to decorate the doors. They had been hit with the disc sander in a few places, so I shaved them down with a block plane prior to running the sander over the front. The inlet pieces are walnut that should give a nice contrast to the cedar after a coat of varnish.

Hoping to get the sides sanded down today, as well as plugging the hole where the lock used to be.  

Radio Free Kersey

 

I usually listen to the radio when I'm working in the shop, however, the reception is somewhat limited so I usually listen to one of three stations. The problem is the playlists become pretty monotonous, so I'll pull up You Tube on my phone and play something I don't normally hear on the radio. You Tube will then make a "mix-tape" for me but there's a commercial that jumps in after damn near every song, which means I have to stop what I'm doing or listen to some BS about prostate health, stuck poop or diabetes parasites. 

I really miss my MP3 player since it died a couple years back. I'm going to have to work on finding some type of replacement and load it up.

Rainy Days & Mondays

 

Monday wasn't a total washout, but the previous three were. Lots of rain, which curtailed my outside jobs, but I did get a few things done inside and a wee bit in the shop. Nothing much to write home about but I did get quite a bit of reading done - book reports will be forthcoming. 

I took the dog to the groomer yesterday and stopped for gas on the way home - $4.29 per gallon. That's about a buck more per gallon than it was two weeks ago. I usually just pay at the pump but none of the pumps would allow that. Since I was driving the Missus' new car, I didn't know what it was going to take to fill it up, so I just got $20.00 worth. It got the gauge up over half, but next time out I'll try a different station so I can get it topped off. 

Another restaurant in town closed along with one in the next town south where I get salads when I'm down that way. Gas over $4.00 and restaurants closing, yep, it's getting ugly out there.

 

Happy 92nd Birthday

Constitution Day

 

Ella 's got her basket.

And the Missus has hers - with a new rivet holding the handle on, as seen in the right side of the photo. I don't know what type of rivets were used originally, but I had a shiny steel one in my supplies. I cut it to length, opened up the hole in the handle and the basket just a bit, drove the rivet in, then peened the backside so it wouldn't come out. Another satisfied customer.

However, I threw in the towel on fixing the broken recliner. It was going to be a serious pain in the ass to fix it, and the Missus was still going to have a hard time getting it to recline. "A man's got to know his limitations."

It's Constitution Day today. The Founders did a great job coming up with that document. Unfortunately, seems like the majority of our "leaders" in Washington don't seem to care much about it, especially the Bill of Rights. If they would have been honoring them and balancing the budget, the country would still be great. Instead, it looks like it truly is the end of the empire. As a result, hard times are coming - keep your powder dry.

It's a Very Strange World

 

And this would be exhibit A:

Looks like they used a 5-gallon bucket of hot glue to "decorate" those rigs, but, hey, to each their own.

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I saw something very interesting here, and he got it from here. The second link will take you right there.

It's a fairly long article, at least by my standards, about what you should be doing to prepare for the end of civilization as we currently know it. It's not so much the beans and ammo thing, but what you can expect depending on where you are located as well as advice on deciding if you want to try and go it alone or form an alliance with your neighbors. One of the things mentioned is everyone with a smart phone can now get aerial views to determine a ripe target, and how to get there. Strongly suggest reading the article.