This afternoon I spent some time thinking about the cabinet and came up with a rough idea of how I want to approach it. What that usually means is that I either bust out the graph paper, start drafting, and making note of precise measurements or… jot down some chicken scratch numbers and sketch out what I want the thing to look like. In this case I went with the latter and came up with this:

It’s fairly straightforward and combines a few different ideas I got out of the decorating catalogues we get. Overall dimensions will be apx. 36″H x 42″W x 14″D (inside depth). The main cabinet carcass and facade will be painted an earthy green color and the top will be stained a shade of oak. Even though I’m going to paint most of it, I’m going to attempt to use as few mechanical fasteners as I can, and stick with traditional joinery and glue, just to try and challenge myself a bit. I used biscuit joints on my last cabinet’s face frame for example, but then nailed it to the carcass with brads. I’ll try to use the biscuits in this case again, but I may have to combine that with using lap joints to join the 1×2 rails with the 1×3’s stiles and mid-stile. Either that or possibly do a series of through mortiseses and tenons - I’m just not sure about doing that on such narrow stock.

Wow… This was a bit unexpected. Two sets of the romaine seedlings have already germinated as well as one of the cucumbers…

In continuing my efforts to try and get a process down for creating these raised panels, I ran two tests through my table saw again tonight. I first ran a scrap 2×4 through my dado blade to get a notch that cleared the blade. Then I clamped it down, perpendicular to the blade so that it could act as a guide for the boards.

I left the dado on for this the first test run, thinking that the wider cut might help - I wasn’t impressed. It was a bit difficult to run the board through, but I may have been a bit overzealous in trying to cut too much material out on my first pass.

I removed everything, including the dado, and put back my normal blade. I reset the guide and clamped it down.

This time I started off with a shallower cut and ran another test board through. I did a 2nd pass on all four sides after raising the blade a bit more and that seemed to give me decent results.

A little sanding on the slopes and these should look nice.  At the same though, I’m not too fond of the tension that seems to be on the blade when hitting it perpendicular like this. I’m hitting the blade on the back side and I’m wondering if I reverse the blade if it would make the cut a bit smoother - perhaps another test is in order…

I’ve decided to create a buffet-style cabinet for our dining room.

As part of the build, I want to try my hand at making raised panel doors. It seems the easiest way to do so is to router them out with a set of door construction bits. These sets usually come with at least three bits - two to create the stiles and rails, and one to create the panel. I still have to do a little more research to find out if my router has enough horsepower to run the larger of the three bits.

I dug through some woodworking plans I have in pdf and came across a couple articles that show how to make very simple raised panels with the use of your table saw as well. I tried the one method of running the board on its end, with the saw blade set at an angle. I didn’t like the way it turned out - it just wasn’t steady enough to make a clean cut. Another method I came across last night here, has you running the board perpendicular to the blade to create a concave shaped cut. I’ll try this method tonight and see what happens.

My daughter and I sowed this year’s seeds in a starter tray this afternoon. I’ve got them sitting in my studio under a 75 watt fluorescent light bulb on a timer that will stay on for about 16 hours per day. If all goes well, in about 6 - 8 weeks they should be ready to be brought outside. The tray has a clear plastic dome lid that sits on top and is able to turn the thing into a mini greenhouse. I’m hoping I see a difference in these seedlings from the ones I started last year in just a simple foil tray without the enclosure. I also used a couple drops of Superthrive in my spray bottle and filled the tray liner with about 1/4″ of the water/Superthrive mixture.

Of the seeds I kept from last year, we added the cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and the cucumbers. I’ve got two other varieties of tomatoes in there as well as another cucumber. I probably didn’t need to start the cucumbers at all, seeing as how last year when I first tried my hand at this, I threw them into the containers outside around May and was picking huge fruit just a couple months later. There’s also broccoli, romaine lettuce, and banana peppers in there. Of the herbs I wanted to try this year we added basil, parsley, and rosemary.

I often find myself trying to rationalize with my 4yr old. I’ve been doing this since she could speak. Of course I know you’re not supposed to, or at least not the way you would with an adult, but I do it anyway. She usually has this glazed looked on her face until I finish. At which point she simply asks me again why it is that I don’t want her to do whatever it is I’m trying to get her not to do. And the circle continues.

I don’t normally drink bottled water, but this afternoon I grabbed one out of the fridge to have with my lunch. The moment I picked it up, the bottle itself crumpled under the slight pressure of my fingers. In this bottle manufacturer’s probable goal to save some money by using thinner plastic they’ve failed to take into consideration my senses and the confidence I unconsciously have in a beverage container that it will be able to hold the half a liter of liquid inside of it.

I started looking through and sorting the seeds for our garden this year. Over the holidays I had picked up a handful from Burpee, but I also kept some from last year’s yield. The last frost around here should be somewhere between the end of April and beginning of May so getting them started indoors this week should give them plenty of time to sprout and get situated. For giggles, I recently kept some pear and apple seeds to see if I can get them to grow. The likelihood of them growing is probably slim, and even if they do, the likelihood of the trees bearing fruit is even slimmer… regardless, it’ll be fun to see what happens.

…Well, in reality this isn’t my first blog post. Perhaps it’s the first post of this particular blog, but this is the 4th installment of a blog that I’ve decided to record my not-so-random goings on in.

 A little history…

My first blog, which really wasn’t a blog at all, but had some blog-style components to it, was a site I had put together to show my paintings. This thing was started back in 2000 and lasted a couple years, as back then I was producing a lot of new work on a fairly regular basis. It’s still up on my server, though not publicized at all.

The 2nd one, launched somewhere around ‘00 - ‘01, was a repository of design-related things and was my first official play in the yet-to-be-named ‘Blogosphere’. It held the title of this blog, and even had it’s own domain. Much of my random Flash creations and fun-with-Photohop-experiments called this site home for a couple years. I kept it going at the same time as my other site, but lost speed with it too after some time. When I finally realized that was the case I buried it on the server and have since removed it.

Not too long after that I started yet another blog - this time around it was focused on my photographs. Some of the images were artsy, but most were just of random things happening in my life at the time. This particular site lasted up until the summer of ‘03.

So now it’s 2008… Weddings have taken place, relocations have occurred, and children have been born. Much has taken place since back then and much is going on right now - and that’s what I plan on making this version of my blog all about - my life, right now.

Enjoy.