Wristrest

Woodworking

So I’m still cleaning down the shed from the cot (finally got all the shavings under control…) but yesterday an officemate (hi Gary!) was looking at MassDrop (think “what to get for the rich geek who has everything” with a pricetag to match) and specifically at a wrist rest. For those who don’t type all day, it’s something to rest the wrist on while typing:

If you type all day every day like a lot of software engineers do, this is a pretty necessary thing or you wind up with carpal tunnel syndrome. I’ve had that, it’s not fun (it’s why I’ve used kinesis ergonomic keyboards for twenty years).

So the specific one Gary was looking at was wooden, and nice enough if a bit simple:

I mean, it’s not some gel-filled cushion, it’s not articulated, it’s just a shaped plank of wood.… Read the rest

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Done…

Sidecar CotWoodworking

Well, thank feck.

I lined the drawer with green baize felt, which was as complex as “apply glue, shove cloth in place, run knife around inside to trim”. Then I drilled pilot holes and screwed on the drawer pull. Took the drawer inside, put it in the frame, evaluated how bad the rocking was, and trimmed the two high legs and re-chamfered the new cut surfaces. No more rocking. Then I assembled the whole thing, put on the mattress and a fitted sheet, and that’s it, it’s done.

It didn’t turn out too badly I think, given that it started life like this:
Have to say thank you to Herself Indoors here for looking after Junior for too many weekends while this got done. There’s a small army of stuff around the house that got ignored while trying to get this finished, I think that’s going to be my shed work for the next few weeks (not to mention that the garden is in dire need of fixing and the shed itself is now buried in shavings and rubbish and needs cleaning and the car boot needs fixing and we really need to change the car while I’m at it and ….… Read the rest

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Foostering

FinishingSidecar CotWoodworking

Right, I just need one or two hours of calm dry weather and…

*sigh* Feck’s sakes. Fine.

But at least I can put in the glue blocks to support the top panel. Yesterday I trued up a corner of a stick of walnut I had as an offcut from the drawer front and then cut it into four ~10cm lengths. Granted, this isn’t traditional, glue blocks are traditionally whatever cheap softwood was lying around, but I had this as an offcut so why not.

Then today I had a few minutes of trying to figure out how to clamp them in place because I didn’t know how this was done traditionally. One quick internet search later and yup, you just paint the glue face with glue (hide glue is traditional but apparently any wood glue works), rub it on the spot where you want the glue block to stick to ensure both sides have glue and there’s no air in the glue joint, then hold it in place for a few seconds and there it sticks.… Read the rest

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