Desk Nearing Completion

For today’s entry of inanity I offer the following:

Drawers suck. I don’t mean that it’s bad to have drawers in your cabinets or that drawers serve no useful purpose. Heck, drawers hold things, slide in and out and are ideal for silverware. All I’m saying is installing drawers sucks like a black hole, like a hoover wired to 220, like a million shop vacs set to maximum.

See the rub is that the drawer rails have all these fussy tolerances. My first attempt failed at meeting these tolerances failed by a half inch, this attempt was dead on. The drawers (making the box isn’t hard, cutting the groove for the bottom is simple) came out exactly one inch smaller than the enclosure. Perfect. Of course installing the slides in the enclosure is a bitc..very tricky thing. Gotta be level, gotta have a 1/4″ clearance at the bottom, 5/8″ at the top and they simply must be 5/64′ from the edge of the enclosure. 5/64″???

Okay 5/64″ seems like a lot when you’re manufacturing metal parts, our tolerance was 30/1000″ And our processes could hit that mark easily. It also probably seems like a football field of space to Vern. For the guys at American Chopper 5/64″ might as well be a nanometer, they measure everything with tape measures and the error of a tape is 1/8″ (don’t listen to me, go get a tape and see how much travel there is in the metal thing on the end). I know those guys have a lot of experience, etc.

In any event I got the drawers in and they both work which means the final steps are approaching. Slap some good looking plywood on the A surfaces, stain lightly, cover with polyurethane, trim excess with a flush cut router bit. But I’m feeling low, the facing plywood will never match the desktop. First off I’ve got about thirty coats of poly on the top and secondly the stain was too dark on the top so I sanded it off… mostly. The result of all that work is a fairly unique color…

Time for links, cause who doesn’t love links?

Whee a clip from peoplefallingover.com. Yep, I submitted this link. It seemed to fit the site.

If this was in english it wouldn’t be as amusing.

Sure you use a Mac and the latest security issues are making you wonder just what the point of Mac ownership is… Well before you jump ship check out:
Realistic Internet Simulator Its just like Windows. Me? I’m keeping (pun unintentional yet duly noted) my Mac.

Scary article of the moment: Secrets of Surveillance How the gubmant, mostly folks working for J. Ashcroft, use the Patriot Act in computer spying.

CKS/BL tridiot rating: I know people think I make this up, but I don’t. This is a solid computing task. Today I relied on an Emerson Arcadia Sure it’s a little known computer but the result is the same: 105.02354%

Note to novice woodworkers: Gorilla glue is great, sure pro’s can get a bond stronger than wood with Elmers and spit but if you have a few gaps in your stuff Gorilla glue is pretty sweet. Rule of thumb when applying: Ooze all the glue you think the thing needs, glop like crazy. Wipe every bit of it you can off quickly. If you can tell a surface has residue on it then that should be about right. Actually I just made that up. All I can say is it takes a lot less glue than I thought it would and that the stuff is strong.