It may be remembered by some - and held against me - that I rashly promised to make a cot for David's son from a messmate (E. obliqua ) I cut down 6 m from the house long before it reached its adult height of 40 - 50 m, this being the first of eight 'threatening' trees I received permission to remove because of bushfire risk to our hovel. The others are even closer, some only 3 m from the verandah...
The messmate is also popularly called 'Tasmanian oak', one of a series of eucalyps so described to enhance their appeal to the furniture trade, and boost their price. I'll come to the point in a minute.
Because of circumstances beyond my control (Bianca rushed in with a cot, a pram, a nappy-washing machine and a refrigerator, with nary a cent change from $A2000, while I refused succour due to CB's behaviour), Giulia thought she could require such magnum opus for her first-born, on his second birthday but I demurred.
Instead, I found a page of plans for a brilliant range of modular nursery furniture - that could be stools, tables, bridges, rockers or benches depending on the mood of the moment - in a 'seventies Sunset Magazines furniture-making booklet.
The task seemed simple enough, requiring no more than two sheets of 3/4 in A-A birch ply and some 105 ft of 1- 3/8th closet pole rounds, plus some glue. The necessary tools I had in my shed, I believed...
Having converted the measurements to metric (19 mm ply, 35 mm dia. poles) I set off to buy in the ingredients: the A-A (two good faces) plywood was available in hoop pine marine ply at $A153 (reduced from $A170) per 1200 x 2400 mm sheet, if I was prepared to wait a few weeks while the store got it in. Four weeks later, it had arrived and I let the guys make five main cuts ($A2 ea.) on their big panel saw, for accuracy. Raphael's birthday was looming large, being only a fortnight away...
The 35 mm round poles did not exist in our nick of the woods, but I thought I might get away with 25 mm dia. of Tasmanian oak poles at $A15 per 2400 mm length, so I bought these, together with a 25 mm Irwin wood bit ($A10) for drilling the dowel holes in the plywood. After all, Tassie oak is rated F17 for strength, whereas the Sunset designers might have calculated their dimensions on balsa wood, for all I know... A few days later, having considered that the diameter of the poles was perhaps intended to give ample support to toddlers' bums, I returned the thin poles and the drill bit. Instead, I bought an expandable Irwin wood bit, reduced to $A61 on account of a few rust flecks (nobody buys this kind of gadget in our area, the salesman commented), in case I found 35 mm dia. poles elsewhere. I tried Bunning's Hardware in Taree, a mere 120 km round trip, and left empty-handed after the shock of my life: the 35 mm poles cost about $A70 per 2400 mm length (Tassie oak, to be sure!). That will be $A1,4000, thanks... Thanks but no thanks.
Meanwhile I've made the first cuts in the ply with an old AEG 8 1/4 in portable power saw, having just fitted it with a new $A50 Irwin blade, 40 carbide-tipped teeth that sliced through the heavy ply effortlessly and cleanly...
I'm presently looking at prices for tool handles, broom handles and the possibility of buying a little lathe and turning the poles from 40 mm x 40 mm radiata pine, at $A4 a metre... (just kidding, about the lathe, I mean).
Since then, an 80-plus acquaintance of ours, Keith Taylor (who had many hundred years ago sawn up a fair amount of Tassie oak into little cubes for me for use in a "wokery" I'd designed - a sort of butcher's block barbeque for oriental cooking), offered to turn the damn little dowels for me on his lathe. I'm almost tempted to accept, but will explore all other possibilities first - it just wouldn't be fair...
We'll get there, in the end, I know - it's just that I'll definitely miss the birthday deadline, Raphy, sorry 'bout that. But the furniture may be ready for the birth of your little brother on May 13 - here's hope!
This gives me enough time to hunt down a new jigsaw (sabre saw) capable of slicing neat curves through 19 mm marine plywood, as I don't trust my old tiny AEG model to do the job. I've already seen a likely-looking 700 W job ade for Makita in the UK... a steal when reduced $A40 to a modest $A280! Don't tell Bianca...
And of course I can also still buy, at my leasure, the drill press my new expandable drill bit requires (in the fine print). Ah well, it will all come in handy one day when I go for another round on my hobby horse... After all, there's a Harley in the neighbourhood! (Thought you'd eventually guess my little private joke about David's son...)
PS: this whole saga fatally reminds me of the day, almost 40 years ago in Hamburg, when I found a thrown-out scooter on the footpath and thought: 'hey, this only needs a coat of paint and will be as new for Master Marco' - then about one year old. I took it home, and cleaned away the rust. Then I dashed out and bought a spray pistol. Then I bought the paint. Then I realised I needed to adjust the viscosity, so I hunted down a 'viscosity cup'. Then I figured that, ideally, you'd measure the flow or trickle with a stop-watch. So off I went and bought the neatest such gadget on the market... I don't do things by halves, you know!
(I can't for the life of me remember if the scooter was ever painted, let alone used. But the spray outfit came in handy when I had to spray that new bonnet on my Renault R4 after our accident in France, which Marco survived unscathed in his travel cot in the back. Baby capsules didn't exist in the sixties, I think. Bianca took a bump on the nose as the R4 insisted on wedging itself under a prime mover in that bend, despite all my braking...)
(I had another accident in southern France a few years later, driving alone, when the R4 got written off by a semi-trailer. I stepped out of the driver's side unhurt, a miraculous escape that made the local headlines two days' running. I must put the picture on my website... The real pain set in when the French insisted on my paying "added-value" tax for leaving a wreck in France - something I still need to get even for!)
In boca lupo!
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