Birthday

As I approach my birthday I had planned to rent a beach house with my twin around Bodega.
Brother had other plans ultimately and I wondered if I would go anywhere. I then found a place to spend a few days and happily found a wonderful Asian art store just a few steps from my little villa.

This table at left was about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide. You can see tenon in the corner. What you miss is where the two pieces of the corner meet. There at the 45's and from the center of the edge going in is a key. When the corner is put together a pin is inserted to pull the pieces together. It is such a great joint but I cannot think of the name right now.

The store Orientations located in Monterey, Ca. had some nice Asian art pieces. An old building that was always an Asian store, Orientations has both a Chinese and Japanese garden on its grounds. In addition to the art there was another interesting thing I had found. The owner designed the carpet to mimic tatami mats. But, this carpet will have no issue with wine, nor much else that comes with shows and customers. The staff was extremely helpful, yet left me alone to view the pieces without standing overhead.

I'm minutes from a bit of yoga, then a glass of 05 Robert Foley Merlot. Somewhere I'll get a piece of cake in advance for tomorrow.

Fence pogressing

Since we are always a bit behind on the gate project (we just assume since we have a year, but want to be ready if we are real slow...) we had a mid week meeting to try to work out some fence issues.

The small group of us mortised all of our remaining (for this span) sections of fence. I pared some 2x4 runners that their tenons will be placed into the 6x6 and 4x4 posts. These also will be what we will nail the cedar planks for the vertical fence boards against. I adjusted the majority of the tenons to fit easily into the mortises. These are not compression fit like most of our joints which makes it easy to do.

The photo at the left shows a 6x and some of the 2x4's I had been working on. Notice the handy little saw horses. These are only about 15" tall which allow me to sit with the beam between my legs and a foot resting on the stringer below. After using these at Laney I rough cut a set out at home and just have a few hours work to finish them.

Test fit of post and rail

The first section of fencing for Merritt is to be assembled in the next few weeks. We have done some test fits so far. It is difficult sometimes because we have various people working and simple things like leaving too much material after a saw cut can lead to quite a bit of work paring away with your chisel.

I took a quick picture of how a post and top rail fit together. Turning the 4x4 on its edge gives natural slopes for the little roof that will be housed a top, but is a lot of work and required some angled holds while sawing and chiseling.

We should have about 16 feet installed in the next few weeks. It is really slow going, but doing it all by hand is very time consuming. It does really become a meditation while working, which is good for the soul I think.