Today started out with a great Peggy-cooked skillet with nifty stuff in it along with fortified coffee. Showers came next but after that, we had to face the reality of my carpentry skills, Peggy’s beard trimming talents and the laundry. The afternoon was shaping up to be horrible.
Peggy did another great job trimming my beard and keeping dangerous sharp objects away from my talented fingers. After the trim I was obliged to continue my demonstration of woodworking acumen by finishing the shelf that had so soundly defeated me yesterday. I started by opening all the 5th wheel’s hatches so I could again gather all my tools and supplies and went to work. There are only five total pieces in the shelf assembly, two of them 18.25″ long and three of them 34.25″ long. One would not think that little, seemingly innocent pieces of lumber would not have an agenda but one would be wrong. These small wood chunks made every vicious attempt to make me put them together incorrectly but after a protracted battle that far exceeded my estimate of time required to assemble the simple shelf, I was victorious.
However, my initial design, scribbled on a piece of paper and not really checked resulted in the discovery of a rather substantial error. The 18.25″ pieces, which my design had proved were of the correct length turned out to be a bit too long and the now completed assembly would not fit in it’s designated location. The old fabricator in me quickly arrived at a new procedure. I would merely whack off the extra material with a Sawz-all and hide the cuts where only the most fastidious would find them. With the newly partially amputated wood uprights closer to the desired length, the revised construction fit in the designated space and it was screwed in with probably either too many or too few fasteners.
Feeling vaguely dissatisfied, I put the tools back in their storage spaces and cleaned up the carnage remaining from my foray into wood cabinetry. I was able to finish out the day by sharpening the knives while Peggy knocked out the dreaded laundry. I have found that I can sharpen knives quite a bit better than building wood anythings.