So it’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a bad week. I’m trying to stay positive and figuring out a way to make lemonade out of these lemons but so far the recipe has eluded me. So what happened you ask…Well let me start with the miscellaneous stuff.

The finish is coming along quite nicely on the tops for my gate leg folding table. I’m not sure I like the Waterlox finish though. It’s quite expensive, and I find that it seems a little more finicky than the Minwax I normally prefer. I wanted to give it a try, as that is what they use at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, but so far I’m just not sold and will probably not use it again.

The gate legs are mostly complete and just need a little touch up sanding and final assembly before finishing. I was pretty proud of myself too. I love woodworking, but I need to view what I do as a business as well so I need to be efficient as possible when pumping out new pieces. However, in this case I wanted to see how efficient I could be by hand planning all the pieces prior to glueup. Then all I would have to do was some minor sanding and go. Plus I really wanted to give my new Scott Meeks mulberry smoothing plane a good workout. It did not let me down. I’m still a big metal plane guy, because I’m just not proficient enough with making minor blade adjustments as I need to be with the new smoother, but overall I love the feel of the plane in my hands and I noticed my hands don’t hurt as much as they do with a full plane session with my Lie Nielsen’s. And I found I was just as quick as I would have been using my Festool sanders. Plus I could listen to my stereo while working so, bonus! I do still have to sand, but literally it’s once over with 180 grit and go. Oh yeah, I also used my domino XL on this project as well. I normally use 10mm x 50mm tenons for my table base joints, but for this I used the 10mm x 80mm tenons. Doesn’t sound like a big difference, but it really is. Also the XL is very nice to use!

Yesterday was pretty not bad. When I got home from work, this was waiting in the mailbox for me:

That’s right; it’s my official welcome package from Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. I already had most of the information, but it was still nice to receive. It’s official now. The one part I was anxious to get started on today was a questionnaire they send to get more information as to your furniture background, what you hope to get out of the class, etc. I was really excited this morning to make it through the day and to get started when I got home as I had plenty of things to write about…and then mid-morning the wheels fell of the bus. Not literally but very, VERY figuratively. Just before lunch and in the span of an hour or two at the most I found out that not only did my funding for the class fall through but also that my work was considering canceling the leave of absence approval they had already given! Wow, nothing like crushing a man’s dream so thoroughly! I won’t go into a lot of detail on what exactly happened. But sufficed to say I was pretty dejected on the drive home. I haven’t given up total hope, and I’m still surprisingly optimistic considering, but it will pretty much take a miracle for me to be able to go now. I still have until the end of December before final payment to the school needs to be made, so there is still lots of time for something good to happen! So if you’re into prayer, please send one for me! Or just good thoughts will do! Also if you do know a recipe for making lemonade from the kind of lemons I received today please let me know.

Oh and I’m still going to go forward with my tool give away, once I can iron out the details!