Sweetwater Days 08, Part 2

In Part 1 of Sweetwater Days 08, I told you about some of the things I did before Annie and I took a four-day trip to Sweetwater, our lovely hunting/camping/playing-with-the-grandkids-in-the-woods, cabin.

Believe it or not, I’m not ready to tell you about that trip yet.

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On a previous, solo trip to Sweetwater I had taken the opportunity to get a couple projects done.  That visit was short, giving me only one full day to work at camp, so I was a little reticent about starting a big project. 

You may remember me telling about the table I made about 30 years ago for our young family using a full 4’x8’ sheet of ¾” plywood for the tabletop.  I loved that table just as it was, but Annie thought it would fit the cabin better if I cut it down from 4’x8’ to 3’x6’.  While I could see her logic, I could also see how much work it would take.  So I argued with her for a little while, then agreed to do what she had wanted me to do in the first place.

Yeah.

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First I took the top off the table and removed all the trim around the plywood.  Next I started marking the sheet off so that I could narrow it by one foot and shorten it by two. 

I quickly ran into an interesting and unforeseen little problem.  Interesting and unforeseen yes, but in no way surprising.

Many years ago I started putting my name and the date completed on the things I built, and that table was the first creation I signed.  Even with Annie’s requested modification I wanted to be sure my name would remain part of it.  I had no trouble finding where I had originally inscribed my name.  However, as I measured one foot from the other side, I found my second youngest son’s signature in his five-year-old scrawl.  At some point in the intervening years, he had written beside that, “Sneaky Andy, 1995.”

Now, how could I destroy that? 

So my original signature would have to go, but it quickly occurred to me that the one-foot width of ¾” plywood I removed was just the right width for a shelf.  So I would save it for that future use.  However, an eight foot shelf might be a bit too long, so I decided to remove the one-foot width after I removed the two-feet from the end of the full-width table.  As I measured before removing the two feet, I noticed some more youthful hand-writing.  At about the same time Andy scrawled his name on the table, six-year-old Bobby had signed it too.  Only his was within two feet of the end.

So, of course, I cut off the other end of the table, then removed the one-foot width I had signed, and was left with the eating surface for the now 3’x6’ table.

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Next I had to narrow and shorten the trestle assembly that the eating surface sat atop.  I partially disassembled the trestles and removed the two-six foot 2”x8” spacers that separated them yet served as strengthening braces.  I shortened the braces by two feet, then removed the T-nuts with which I had originally attached them to the trestles.  I measured the now shorter trestle, drilled, and drove the T-nuts in.

Perfect!

Since the tabletop was narrower than it had been originally, I had to also narrow the top cross-pieces of the trestles by eight inches (four-inches on each side).  That done, I bolted the trestle assembly back together, centered it under the tabletop, and screwed it all together.

At that point, all I needed to do to complete the table itself was to cut down and reattach the trim.  As I was measuring that, I found another “treasure from our past”.  At some time in our family’s history, someone had shot my creation with a BB gun…a pretty powerful one I’d say.  The BB had imbedded in the trim until the projectile was flush with the surface.

I think I know which of the little Matthews marksmen fired the shot that now decorates my table, but he will have to admit it before I can find out whether he did it after I stored it in the shed or when we were still using it in the house.

Not that it matters which, now, but the one would be met with head-shaking and a chuckle, and the other with the same head-shaking but with the chuckle replaced with a disapproving, “M-m-m, m-m m-m,”

A dad’s gotta be a dad.

Either way, it should be a good story.

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Maybe I was thinking about all the family history that table had been part of, or I was thinking about my much-younger sons who had signed or shot it, but my mind must have wandered just a little bit.  As I was reattaching the trim to the table top using my battery-powered Ryobi brad-nailer I was careful to keep my free-hand away from the business-end of the nailer.  In the process of using the tool, sometimes the brads would hit a knot or hard spot in the wood and bend slightly, penetrating the side of the wood, and ending up with some of the sharp brad sticking out into open air.

It wasn’t a big problem when a brad stuck out like that.  I’d just grab it with a pair of pliers and bend the soft metal back and forth until it broke, then toss the piece in the trash.  I could shoot another brad in if it was needed. 

Like I said, no problem…except for one time when there was.

That time I was attaching the end of the piece of trim…the piece at the end of the table, so there was no obvious place to put my hand to steady my work.  With no place to put it, and without thinking further, I let my hand stay just a little too close to one possible path the brad might take if it bent and went out the side…which it did.

Yeah.

In a split second the two-inch long brad curved to the side, pierced the wood, and went completely through the thumb of my left hand.  It entered the ball of the thumb on the outside edge (the part away from the other fingers) of the underside, barely missed the bone, and exited behind the thumbnail on the inside edge of the top.

Instinctively I yanked the pierced digit off the brad so fast that it didn’t even get any blood on the metal.  From there, however, it got blood on pretty much everything else it passed over.

As the blood welled up from both entrance and exit wounds, I moved quickly for an old, fat guy, at least one more concerned about getting blood on his wife’s floor than his own pain.  I was only a few feet from the door and got swiftly out of the cabin and across the porch to hold the injured digit over the rail where it dripped blood down to the ground ten feet below.

Thankfully, since I have stopped taking my blood thinner, my blood has regained its coagulating properties.  The bleeding stopped within a minute or two and I was able to wipe up the few drips that had fallen on the cabin’s linoleum as I fumbled with the doorknob.  I did leave a couple impressive drops on the porch floor though.  Gotta have something to show the boys you know.

The injury hurt but, just like Jesse Ventura in the movie, Predator, “I ain’t got time to bleed.”  The pain didn’t prevent me from getting the table resizing done.

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Throwing in the towel…rack.

In the days before heading out to the cabin, I had cut off the three remaining tines on the broken elk antler I told you about a few posts back, so that the ends were pretty well square with each other and the cuts were in the same plane.  I had then fastened the antler to a rough true-dimension 2”x4” from the old barn.  To do that I first bored 1 ½-inch wide holes about halfway through the board, so that the cut-off tines fit pretty well into the holes.  Then, using several long screws and the ever-faithful Gorilla Glue, I attached the antler firmly. 

We’re talking solid…as in rock-solid.

Some old leather laces covered the gaps between the circular holes and the non-circular tines, and the elk antler towel rack was rock-solid and ready.

On the same solo trip where I cut down the table, I mounted the rustic towel rack firmly to the bathroom wall.  The result is that I’m pretty sure any of my grandkids could do chin-ups on it without pulling it off the wall.

Now it’s time to tell you about the four-day trip with Annie.  But I’m going to make you wait until next time.

Nah, na-nah, na-nah-nah.

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