Her Book of Shadows – Canada Day Sale
This doesn’t have much to do with woodworking except as a partial explanation for why I’ve spent so little time in my shop lately. The other part of the explanation is that I’ve got my house torn up as we’re installing wood flooring, new moldings, etc. It’s woodworking but hardly something to report on. Besides it makes my knees hurt too much for me to want to photograph it. But I thought some of you might be interested in how a woodworker writes a mystery novel so…
Canada Day Sale 
I’ve decided to have a ‘summer’ sales of my eBook, Her Book of Shadows 
If you like to read mysteries without serial killers, sex and lots of violence, you’ll like Her Book of Shadows
Review comments:
“This is such a well written mystery, and full of make you laugh out loud lines. I loved the setting of Quebec City, and the snippets of the French language scattered throughout made it so authentic.” – esldonna
“How refreshing to find that Larry Marshall’s first is a who-dunnit in the best tradition of well crafted stories of crime solving.” – Polystamper
“This is a beautifully crafted book, full of interesting convincing detail and engaging characters.” – Janet Guerrin
Book Description:
In Her Book of Shadows, retired cop, Scott Riker, lives with his wife and daughter in Quebec City where he heads a group of interventionists. Directed by Quebec business mogul and philanthropist, Luc Duchesne, the group uses their talents and resources to stand between people in trouble and the criminal elements who would do them harm.
Riker agrees to find Jodie Burke, a teenage girl whose parents say ran away. But when Jodie’s friend turns up murdered on the Plains of Abraham, it becomes clear that Riker faces something more than just a runaway girl. Time is running out and he must find Jodie and prevent whoever is trying to kill her from succeeding.
Riker struggles with his emotional involvement in the case, caused by the similarities between his daughter and Jodie Burke. This, and his attempts to reconcile his risky business with his role as father and husband add to his internal conflicts but maybe the two roles can be compatible.
Planning My Bathroom Vanity – Help!
I’m struggling with the design of the vanity area of a bathroom, as described in a previous post. While I’ve been keeping SketchUp warm, everything I come up with looks like a big box and I’m not sure what to do about it. So, I’m coming to you. Any and all ideas will be appreciated.
Here’s one idea I’ve come up with and it does meet all the criteria laid down by my wife. Its inspiration comes from Tom Fidgen’s Made By Hand book, specifically his small cabinet project. It kinda sorta works and if I’d take the time to orient the grain in the proper direction on all the boards would look decent. But it’s lacking something, maybe many somethings.
Here’s where I’m leaning towards at the moment as this approach produces a more ‘free’ look in my view. Again, Tom provides the inspiration as does Krenov but I’ve to use trim to provide a flow between the two cabinets. What I can’t figure out, though, is what to do about the mirror. No matter what I do, I can’t get it “right.” I’ve left the area blank in this drawing. Anyone have any ideas on how to fill it in? Would sure like to hear from you.
Cheers — Larry
Location, Location, Location….and Available Space
We often find ourselves building a cabinet or furniture piece for a particular space. I thought it might be useful to report on my actions as I stumble through the design and creation of a set of bathroom cabinets.
I must start with a confession. Years ago, in a galaxy far, far away…no, that’s another story. A long time ago, I decided to remodel a small bathroom in our house. As with most projects I jumped in with both feet and ripped out the walls, mouldings, fixtures, etc. I installed new drywall, a new floor substrate, painted, installed mouldings, added a ceramic tile floor and installed new fixtures. It was a great day when the toilet and sink became operational.
We all have projects that stall and, for me, this was one. I ran off and had my prostate removed. I took advantage of the “don’t lift stuff – and I mean it” prescription to learn SketchUp.
But the bathroom was still in my mind and so I drew it, at least as much to see if I could as anything else. This sort of thing is made easier because of the SketchUp 3D Warehous\\ where you can get SketchUp models of fixtures, windows, lights, etc. In the end, I had a good model of the bathroom.
Much to my wife’s chagrin, I procrastinated on the bathroom project until I needed yet another operation. At the time I thought this pretty sneaky on my part but the bathroom project didn’t go away. And so it is that I now need to build some cabinetry for the room. My marching orders require that I:
1) Provide a mirror for my wife to admire her beauty.
2) A shelf where my wife can place bottles of “stuff” that have something to do with her beauty.
3) Vanity cabinet space sufficient for the rest of the bottles and maybe a toothbrush or three.
4) A small cabinet for toilet paper.
In addition to these minimums I am not allowed to have any cabinet space above 6-feet as my wife isn’t very tall. There are also the more typical dimensional limits for cabinets overhanging sinks and around toilets.
So with this work order I used my bathroom drawing to play around with cabinet and mirror sizes, generating this simple graphic. Note that I’m not dealing with design details here. This experience was valuable as it let me look at and determine the overall dimensions within the confines of the space and requirements. The vanity cabinets shown are 14″ wide, 26″ tall, and 6″ deep.
Using these overall dimensions, I hope to design two cabinets that will satisfy. At this point I’m envisioning something similar to a single-door version of this Tom Fidgen cabinet. While Tom used paper as the panel insert, I’m thinking that frosted glass might be better in a bathroom. Tom suggests there’s never a reason to build more than one small cabinet in a particular style but maybe I’ve found a reason to build two.
Cheers — Larry
Making a Plane Mallet
Sometimes I’m asked where I got the plan for this or that project. Most times I don’t have a plan but in this case I do. Here it is:
Bob Roziaeski, chief cook and bottle washer at the Logan Cabinet Shoppe produces some of the finest podcasts you’ll ever see on the use of handtools to shape wood. His recent podcast, Hand Plane Tune Up goes through the process of fettling a typical steel-body plane as well as a wooden-body plane. During this second session Bob wields the hammer you see in the photo. As Bob is so much better at adjusting wooden planes than I am I know this is because of his jazzy hammer and that the one I use is one step up from a tack hammer.
And so it began (phrase stolen from Lord of the Rings), I gonna make me a jazzy hammer too. I got the idea not only from Bob’s podcast but the fact that I was rummaging in my scrap box and right there, on top of everything was a block of paduak that looked almost like a Roziaeski hammer head ™. Now I wouldn’t recommend padauk as the ideal hammer material but gosh, I had it and all it took to get it to proper size was a short time on a shooting board to get the ends square. I added to this a stick of maple for a handle and I was, as they say here in Quebec bien equipped!
I began by working over the surfaces of the headblock with a plane and scraper.
As this was a through-tenon I marked out the mortise on one side and then drilled two small holes on each end so that I could reference them while chopping from the other side. I chopped a shallow mortise from that side so that I wouldn’t get a bunch of tear out and then started the heavy mortising from the other side. On to the handle.
The first step was to cut it to length. My “plan” suggested this to be somewhere around one-foot so that’s what I cut.
I marked the base of the tenon. This was determined by the depth of the hammer head plus a bit. You choose the size of your bit. It doesn’t really matter, though, as it will be cut off before the day is done.
I then marked the tenon sides. Some might only mark two sides at this point as you really lose half the markings when you make the first two tenon cuts. I prefer to mark the whole thing so I can compare it to the mortise before I start cutting. Remarking is quick as the gauge is already set.
This is where your ‘cut to the line’ practice pays off. I cut the two sides and then use a bench hook to cut them off at the shoulder. I remark the short sides of the tenon and cut those as well. Easy peasy. If you don’t have a lot of practice with this, it’s best to cut the tenon fat and use a shoulder plane to bring it to size. It’s likely that you’ll have to use that plane to fit the tenon to the mortise in any case.
Before worrying about fitting the tenon, I shaped the handle. Most of this was done with a spokeshave, followed up by a rasp. This is really the fun part as it happens quickly and you get to play with the shaping. I finished up with some sandpaper.
Now’s the time to slow down. You need to clean up both tenon and mortise so they fit together. Repeated checking of this fit as you remove material is better than wishing you had when you find out that you’ve removed too much material. The end of this process is to clean up the shoulder of the tenon so that it fits snug to the bottom of the hammer head.
Once all that is done, cut a slot down the middle of the tenon for the a wedge. The parts should look like this.
I used this little scrap of padauk for my wedge. Notice the bit of wood I put between the padauk and my bench hook fence. This provided an angular cut that you can see in this photo. I then flipped the piece on the left and cut it straight, providing me with a thin wedge-shaped piece. Sorry, my photo of the wedge was out of focus.
Because your mortise and tenon fit so nicely together, when you pound the wedge into the slot is should produce a very strong handle/head connection, leaving you with almost nothing else to do. I used a flush-cut saw to remove the protruding tenon and then applied a couple coats of boiled linseed oil and a bit of wax. I tend to use either oil or shellac as a finish on my tools as 1) it makes them feel good in my hands and 2) they are very easy to freshen up as they age.
Thanks, Bob, for both the plan and the inspiration.
Cheers — Larry
An Important Hand Tool for Woodworkers
Do you own one of these? Do you carry it with you everywhere? Writers are fond of carrying notebooks. They record ideas, observations, facts and probably grocery lists in their notebooks. Writers tell you that to be a writer you must write constantly. Apparently they do.
I acquired this habit as a writer but I do the same thing as a woodworker. I think about woodworking a lot – almost all the time. I find a small notebook is a great tool to turn that brain activity into action. I record ideas. I record addresses, phone numbers, and prices. I even write questions I want to answer, things I want to look up, things I need to read. I confess that when writing (err… scribbling) in my notebook I never expected to share my notes with anyone, so they’re largely illegible but here are a few examples of my entries.
This is the result of some price shopping I did prior to some home renovations. It’s surprising how much variation in price that exists when buying a box of screws or a pile of 2x4s.
This is my attempt to describe a small picture stand to someone while we were having coffee. My artistic ability leaves much to be desired but she had me build one for her anyway.
Lastly, here are some notes I took at a workshop on woodturning. The funny words are French. Things happen that way in Quebec.
The truth is, these examples are those with a more complete story to tell. Mostly my notebook is full of scribbles and notes that convey a single thought whose meaning would be lost on all but myself. This is how my notebook earns its keep and I can’t imagine being without this useful hand tool.
Cheers — Larry
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