My Journey in Writing, Ranting, and Woodworking

The butterfly effect is often used in science fiction, when dealing with time travel, to make a point to the stupid person in group of time travelers.  Usually it is a pack of people, consisting of 2 or 3 really attractive people from each gender, a funny guy, and a character actor who will do something stupid.  The explanation  that something as simple as killing a butterfly several thousands of years ago, could lead to a woman in Suffolk, getting double mocha latte and a blueberry muffin, when she ordered a triple mocha latte and a blueberry muffin, in the present.  Of course, this would put her in a foul mood, cause her to steal her grandfathers shotgun, and go on a killing spree.  It is explained that this killing spree would likely include a pregnant woman, who would have given birth to a child who would grow up to become a mid level manager at a respectable accountancy firm in Ipswich.  Everyone nods, except the character actor who is cleaning his finger nails.

Of course, in this film, the character actor not only kills a butter fly, but destroys several shrubs and maims a rodent, and when they return they find that the ipad does include a phone and is flash compatible.  This freaks everyone out and leads to the two prettiest characters barely surviving the apocalypse  (which might have also been caused by the butterfly).

All of this occurred to me when I realized that some of the assumptions I had worked on, with regards to flattening lumber, were outdated.  (wavy lines…clock spinning back wards…it is 4 hours ago and Brian is in his shop.)

I need to make a tiny walnut box.  Perhaps need isn’t the right word, but I really want to.  I have lots of walnut which is rough cut.  The first step is to hack off a piece that is around 14 inches long.  I want my 4 pieces for the box to be 3 inches long each and a couple inches of excess seems prudent.  With my 14 inch piece of walnut on the planing jig I made, I take my number 5 in hand and have at it.  The fuzzy face become smooth rather quickly.  The board is flipped over and the other side flattened.

The last time I did this, I really struggled with getting the slight twist out of the board, and shaved over half the thickness off before I was done.  This left me with almost the exact size I needed.  Today I was more efficient, and as such, not even close to the thickness I had hoped for.  For my other steps to work, the board must not exceed 5/8ths of an inch.  If it does, a butterfly will die in 2352 BC.

The board wasn’t even close, so I did something that wouldn’t help at all.  I grabbed the Stanley 80, which I got last week, and took some microscopic shavings off the board.  I didn’t really think it was going to get me closer to my desired thickness, but it seemed like a good time to play with it.  So I goofed around with the 80 for 5 minutes and really enjoyed myself.  I don’t think I have it sharpened correctly, but I can see how it will be wonderful, when I do.

There isn’t a planer in my shop, but there is the jig I built to do planing with my router.  I set it up.  It was much more complicated to get it ready than I had hoped.  I fooled with 3 different set ups and none really did a good job.  As I stood there thinking that it really wasn’t going to work, a balding stupid, yet incredibly wealthy man looking at a dinosaur, stepped on a moth who was minding his own business, in the year 1521 DC  (dinosaur calendar).

It hit me.  I have a router table!  I could just route out a groove that is almost the entire length of the board.  The last 1/4 inch will remain unrouted and thus keep the piece even.  When I got it into my head that I needed a jig to plane wood, it was during the building of my router table, when I used my dado jig to flatten the top of the table.  I thought to myself, “I should build a jig specifically designed to do this, so it would go more quickly.”   It never occurred to me that once the router table was done, the need to drag a router and base across wood to flatten it would be unnecessary.

(Wavy lines return…back to present)  I stopped after a couple of passes and took a photo.  I haven’t completed my test of planing with my router table and I will let everyone know how it turns out.  I am already thinking of some sort of jig which might make it possible to plane an 7000 foot plank.  I might have to scale that back to six feet, but the point is, the router being stationary in the table, is easier than using it with the hand held router base, and I believe leads to better quality.

There is one other thing that should be mentioned.  There was a great conversation yesterday about the merits of a bandsaw and how it allows one to resaw lumber.  If I had a bandsaw, I would have resawed this piece and thus not wasted 50% of it.  I am almost convinced that a bandsaw may be more important than a table saw right now.  But that is a topic for another day.  A day way off in the future…or perhaps the past!