Weekend 23

My balcony has been annoying me. There’s no chairs, no tables, just space for me to work on my projects. This has worked out fine, but lately, I came to the conclusion that I needed a shelf there. Having one of the planters take a spill because the railing on the balcony was a little bit too narrow to hold it properly was pretty much the last straw. So Saturday, I built a shelf for the balcony.

I wanted to see how my spatial reasoning skills were doing, so I built the shelf without any sort of plans, blueprints, or anything. I had every joint, every board mapped out in my head. I wrote down the sizes so that I could be sure I wouldn’t need to run out to the store in the middle of it.

Some conclusions:

  • I can build things in my head. I didn’t miss any details. It came out wonderfully.
  • I over-engineer, to an insane extent. I probably should have used a 2x2 post, but I used a 4x4 post that is probably enough to hold a deck up. I haven’t done cross-bracing yet, but I probably still will.
  • Woodworking takes about twice as long as I think it will.
  • I now know how to use a router. Although the best way to do things didn’t dawn upon me until I was nearing the end. I did know all along to do many many passes and shave off just a little each pass but everything else didn’t come together towards the end. Thankfully, all of the really lousy routing is hidden behind my probably over engineered design. ;)

Then I spent part of Sunday volunteering at the crucible. The Crucible’s new building rocks. It’s going to be quite cool when they get it done — the space is several times larger than the old one and the ceilings are higher, to boot.

After all of this, I feel totally worn out. There are whole groups of muscles, mostly in my upper body, that just plain HURT. I have four wounds, and I only know how one of the four happened.

Why weekend 23? It should be obvious if you are into the same sort of things that I am. If you get it, give yourself a cookie or something.


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