The hickory gel stain was curing on the yet-to-be-assembled pieces of Marcia’s new quilt ladder at the end of last week’s cliff hanger episode. (Vendor and product names property of their respective owners, duh!) Here’s the rest of the story, in pictures:

The glue-up was straighforward. A dollop of glue (Titebond III) in each dowel socket, a bit of assembly, and a bunch of clamps. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to back up the glue with a #6 x 1-5/8″ finish trim screw through the rail into the end of each dowel. Some fastening is good, more is better.

Applying the finish to a single ladder nearly 8 feet tall would have been a pain. So would have been moving this piece around. So the initial design involved two-part construction that permits the ladder to be handled in two parts. Makes finishing a lot easier, too.  A clamp at the end of each rail, at the overlap point, holds the ladder sections vertical while I applied the finish to most of each section. Then rotate, and do the leftover bit, followed by rinse and repeat (with two or so hours in between each finish application) In this project, I used two coats of Minwax Water-based Oil Modified Polyurethane. It really brings the hickory gel stain to life.

The quilt ladder’s home, at least for the time being, is in the front foyer of the house. We had a couple of framed pieces on those walls, but they’re already re-homed. Details: The feet are cut at a 6 degree angle, to configure a safe leaning angle for the ladder. A couple of small rubber bumpers are affixed to each foot to prevent slide-out. And I think that the ladder looks pretty good, if a bit lonely…

Four quilts currently adorn the ladder, and Marcia professes to like her new quilt display device. She’s been after me to build her something like this for years. Finally, I found the inspiration.

The biggest single direct cost of this project were the dowels for the ladder rungs, at a bit over $20. The rails were fabricated from shop scrap. All the other costs were for materials of which I only used a little bit for this project: I either already had some around (glue, finish) or have lots left over for future projects (sealer, stain). I made one tool purchase: a 1-1/8″ forstner bit was something I previously lacked in the shop.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Maj. John D. Gerrie, 42, of Nickerson, Kansas, who died on Jan. 16,  in Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, from a non-combat related incident.

A full work week to start the new year, and things are going well. I’ve lots on my plate, which is a good thing. Interesting new projects combine with ongoing operations to make my working days exactly as I like them.

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On the home front, I’ve been working on building Marcia a quilt ladder, which she’s been wanting for years now. I’m fabricating it out of shop scraps and 1-1/8″ dowels. Here’s the fit assembly, before I started on the finishing:

All of the material is pine, so after the fit assembly looked fine, I took it all apart. On Saturday, every piece got sanded, then wiped clean with a damp cloth. I rested the materials for a couple of hours, then gave everything another light sanding to deal with the initial raised grain. Another wipe down, then a coat of pre-stain sealer. This is an important step with soft woods, since they tend to take up stain unevenly. I let that sit overnight.

This morning, after shopping, I came back down to the shop, and sanded everything again with 320 grit. Then I applied the hickory gel stain:

Each piece got a coat, followed by a couple of minutes of rest, followed by a wipedown to remove any excess gel stain. I’ll let that cure for a couple of days, then do the assembly. The last step will be a couple of coats of polyurethane. So by next weekend, perhaps, this will be done.

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Our condolences to the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Matthew Q. McClintock, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who died on Jan. 5, 2016, in Marjah District, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when the enemy attacked his unit with small arms fire.

Happy New Year, y’all!

I’ve spent the last two weeks holidaying, eating, reading, relaxing, doing chores, and fixing things around the house. Tomorrow, I go back to work. Grumble.

Not really grumble. I enjoy my work. I appreciate and respect the team of people I work with. Especially, I love to stay busy. I have specific goals for the next two weeks – a lot of stuff to accomplish and document in a relatively short amount of time, so I’ll be very busy indeed. That makes me happy.

In the woodshop over the last few days, I’ve been working on building a quilt ladder for Marcia. Pictures in a week or two, as it approaches completion.

That’s all I’ve got for now: I’m looking forward to this year.

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DoD has reported no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

Another busy weekend gone by. I was doing some clean up in the shop, and came across a stack of 2×2 acoustic tile matching the small section of drop ceiling in the basement kitchen. Wonderful – I have a few of those that need replacing. A couple of them had holes in them, not hard to replace. Another one, though, was severely bowed by the HVAC vent attached to a floating, insulated feeder. The additional weight had bent the tile nearly an inch out of true. Were I to just replace it, the tile would be good for a year or so, but as the moisture in the house fluctuated over the seasons, it’d have bowed again. So I glued a plywood reinforcing bar to the back of the tile, and let it cure overnight.

I installed that back in the kitchen today.

Also today, I worked on (finally) patching the section of sheet rocked basement ceiling that I pulled out when we had the upstairs fridge water line leak., back in the middle of the summer. I first put the work off because the remaining rock had to dry out. Then I put it off because, well, I forgot about it. I so rarely go through into Marcia’s fabric room. So today I cleaned up and made the opening rectangular, and lapped in some half-inch ply to perform as a stop as well as something to screw the new rock to. Using offcuts from 2″ x 2″ x 1/2″ drywall (I don’t keep full sheets laying about), I patched the hole, and overlaid the gaps with mesh tape.

I then applied the first coat of mud. More work on that project tomorrow. Remember – I’m not planning on being back in the office until 4 January.

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The unseasonably warm weather has continued – I was walking the dog after dinner while wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and dock shoes. I could have been wearing shorts – it was still 65 F out at 1830 this evening. But according to the NOAA, we’ll be back to normal, below freezing overnight temps by the end of this week.

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Our condolences to the families and friends of these fallen warriors. They died Dec. 21 of wounds suffered when their patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

• Maj. Adrianna M. Vorderbruggen, 36, of Plymouth, Minnesota.
• Staff Sgt. Michael A. Cinco, 28, of Mercedes, Texas.
• Staff Sgt. Peter W. Taub, 30, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Staff Sgt.  Chester J. McBride, 30, of Statesboro, Georgia.
• Technical Sgt. Joseph G. Lemm, 45, of Bronx, New York.
• Staff Sgt. Louis M. Bonacasa, 31, of Coram, New York.