Vacation, sharpening, shooting board and drawers

So, my vacation is almost over. Much has happened to keep me out of the shop. My mom and my sister Anneli, came out for a visit from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There was my cousin's wedding last Saturday, My daughter Vanessa's baptism on Sunday (and it was my first Father's day), lots of bar-b-que cooking by yours truely and plenty of card playing.

Card playing is a long time family tradition. We play a game called "May I?" (apparently it's similar to old maid) and Euchre. When my mom and Anneli partner up in Euchre, watch out!

It was sad to see them go this morning, but I'll see them again at Christmas this year. Normally, I only see mom once a year, so this year is going to be a treat!

Today, I got back into the shop to rebuild the drawers for the Nursery Cabinet. It seems that due to my eagerness to make progress and learn on the fly is coming back to haunt me. See, when I installed the face frame, the drawers were too big for the opening and also, I used big box store pine to build the drawer shells, so here were twists to the boards that I didn't notice until fitting the drawer front. That was before buying my planer or hand planes (not that I can hand plane a board flat and true yet).

There I was with some freshly flattened 1/2" pine tonight, cut to width, but without a way to cut square to length. My mitre saw will only cut 5" widths, and I question the trueness of the cut. So I decided that there was no better time to make a shooting board. It was not very difficult to assemble one out of scrap plywood for the base and bamboo for the fence.

I also had to sharpen my Veritas low angle smoothing plane, and thanks to Ron Hock's book on The Perfect Edge, I was able to get the blade sharp enough to take some hair off of my arm. That is a tale for another day though. I will put Ron's teachings to the test with some chisels and my mastercraft hand plane blade.

All in all, it was a great wood working day with much accomplished and a feeling of personal accomplishment. Sorry I didn't post any pictures, but my camera was down. I'll try to get some in on my next post.

Tomorrow I golf and will tackle assembly of the drawer frames. It's great to be back after a well deserved break.