Hope everyone had a great Saturday. All is well on this end. It was a really warm day here…but it sure felt nice to sweat in the shop! I have to start off today by giving an update on our lost dog Bleu from last week. We spent a lot of Sunday looking for him also with no luck. It was about 7:00 Sunday evening and the cute little neighbor girl brought Tammy a handful of dandelions and greenery to cheer her up because her Mom had seen the postings on facebook. Tam went out and talked to that neighbor and the one across the street and about an hour later the neighbor from across the street had found a posting of a found dog on the community page for our town. It was Bleu! So Tam called and we went over and picked him up. He had made it less than 1/2 mile before they found him and took him in….and spoiled him all weekend. When we got there and all took turns holding him….big tears were rolling down his face. I’ve never seen an animal cry before. You can see the tears in the picture. Glad to have him home.

Today started by finishing up the wedding gift. I will attach a picture of it next week. Then I prepped the wood, Hard Maple, for the lower pieces on the wall version Anniversary Clock. This week I will talk about Wood Conservation and Pattern Layout. These pieces are roughly 12″ x 12″ so I would need to do a glue up regardless of how I did this. I took the pattern copies and split them in half and cut them out. I then laid them out on the boards to get the optimum usage of my wood which was 9″ wide. Once I got the size figured out that I would need, I squared up the 3 boards on the tablesaw. I laid the patterns back on the boards and drew a line to separate them. I cut this on the bandsaw and then with my 6 halves I matched up the best pairs. Next I made a jig using a piece of plywood to provide a good flat surface. I clamped another board to it that will provide my straight edge for lining up the tops of the 2 halves. Next I clamped one half in place (be sure to use wax paper under your work piece), applied glue to the other half and clamped it in place. You need to make sure to get them glued as flush as possible to minimize mismatch. After the glue dried, I sanded them and put on the pattern halves lining them up with the center seam. You can use this basic concept when laying out any of your patterns to get the best utilization of your wood. These will be homework for this week.

I then glued on the trim for the floor on the wall clock. This is exactly like the way I installed it on the box last week. After I got this all sanded, I glued the front head overlays on the 2 Anniversary clocks.

Then I started in on the Memorial Box. I glued on all of the side overlays and custom sanded the length (I always leave brackets a bit long) on each of the lower and upper corner brackets and glued them on. As the glue was drying on all of this, I cut out Terri’s name and years. This went amazingly well. The eye surgery has paid huge dividends already. The box is finished up now except for the finish and the flocking. I will try and knock this out over the long Memorial Day weekend.

It was a good and productive Saturday. It is also nice to get 2 projects off the bench. Next week will be totally focused on the Anniversary Clocks. There isn’t much left to finish up on these. Kyle and I still need to get a few more pictures for the back ad page of the mini clock book but the rest of it is at the printers. Also I have finished up the updates to the lighthouse pattern and it will be available in about a week or so. This is going to be my next project after the Anniversary Clocks. Be sure and check out the new customer photos from this week on the website www.wilckenswoodworking.net and on facebook. Also don’t forget to check out the approved vendors. Hope everyone has a great finish to their weekend and a good week next. And as always…until next time….Keep the Sawdust Flyin’…..