Progress! Progress! And more wood . . .

Well here I am at 3:15 AM, the wind has been howling and the rain pouring down. I can hear the wind blowing the coverings off of my wood piles. I am sure they will be scattered around the yard when I check it out in the morning. Luckily no serious harm will be done, I'll just get things all set up again, ready for the next storm to mess it all up!

Speaking of piles of wood I picked up another maple log last week. It was so long I cut it in two. All of the maple I have slabbed recently have been split-y and this was no exception. I think I will pass on another maple that is down in the cutting area.

I slabbed this one a bit thicker for reasons of practicality and laziness. With thicker slabs there is more freedom to straighten the grain out for things like table legs (= practical). With thicker slabs there are fewer cuts taken out of a given diameter log (= laziness).

Anyways I have no more room left on the side of the house for wood and it is simply piling up in the backyard, unstickered and really not well protected from the sun. I guess I will have to start piling it up against the north side of the garage now, which is in the backyard and kind of visible, and also kind of damp and mossy. Should be OK for the summer I hope.

Good news-wise, I finally glued up the last shelf with its nosing!! I also cleaned up two of them, still need to level the nosings on the other three. After a long period of just slogging along on this, I really feel a renewed enthusiasm for it, as I see the end of the project approaching.

I calculated that each shelf has 25 separate pieces of wood in it! No wonder they took so long to make! The main bookshelf carcass has only 22 pieces in it!

I REALLY hope to get some finish on this and move it into the living room for my wife very soon.

However, there is a new time sink that has arrived, a 1976 Austin Mini that will require a total rebuild. Its pieces are scattered between my garage and a warehouse in town. I have three engines for it, six carburetors, two front clips, etc. Looks like it'll be a lot of fun!