Friday, September 7, 2012

[Offtopic] The Littlest Shop Dog

As is often the case this time of year, the shop is not getting quite as much use as I would like. A stream of visitors, some travel of our own, and sadly, the loss of my tiny shop dog, Poppy:




She was a rescued Boston Terrier, who in a former life had been squeezing out puppies in a shady breeding operation. We tried our best to rehabilitate her and gave her a pretty good life on the farm for the past 4 years. She had been dealing with cancer for a year or so, and finally found ultimate rest. She will be sorely missed.

In happier news, this weekend we are off to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival  where I hope to meet up with Jim Tolpin and Tim Lawson of the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. When I return, I'll update with workbench progress. The base is almost complete, and I am just waiting for the vise hardware to show up. I've been learning a lot about creating dowels for drawboring. You probably already knew this, but do not bother trying to use mass-produced oak dowels. They explode more than 75% of the time. My riven (rived?) oak, cherry, and other dowels have closer to a 80% success rate.

More soon!

2 comments:

  1. thanks for the wonderful but sad story and the amazing pictures. Have fun at the festival. I went last year and had great fun.

    Hopefully, the Mr. Lawson isn't using that goofy picture of my holding a hand plane again in their booth.

    Hope you have fun!

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  2. so sorry for your loss rob. dogspeed to the noisy sleepy poppynandi. i send you all much, much love and compassion.

    alana x

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