Morning, Evening, and Bonus

A few pictures from this morning:

I've been working hard on that crazy railing project.  

I managed finally to do some assembly of pieces.   

It was a bit of a chore gluing, screwing, holding everything in place, and attempting to keep everything spaced appropriately.

And even with all that, there is still some bending, warping, and twisting going on.

A few pictures from this evening:  

I burned down the brush pile again.  

That means we have to make hot dogs and smores.

The wagon is a good table and chair.  

It looks like he's done this before.

 Practice makes perfect.  

And a few bonus pictures:

Kiddo #3 made up a new game.  He calls it "Bowling Ball Lever".  Don't ask me how he came up with the name, but he sure likes it.  He stands up tall on the arm of the sofa and pretends he pulls a lever, then falls straight backwards with no notion of fear.  

He can even do "bowling ball lever" forwards!

Crazy kid!

Poor furniture!!

Back to the Porch Railing Project

I'm fired up to get my porch railing built and installed.  

Many years ago, perhaps 4 or 5 years by now, I took out the old railing.  I painted the front porch and took off the railings and found they were too rotten to put back up.  I decided to make new, but my projects take forever to finish.

On my computer, one of my screensaver pictures is a landscape picture of our house back when it had the porch railing, and I really miss it.  So, I'm doubling up my efforts to get this project finished.  I'm now on my final push to get it all done and put together.  Here are a few pictures of my recent progress.  

I am making square pocket holes for my columns to fit into.

These pockets are about 1.8 inches square 

with 0.25 inch radius corners.

I made a little template out of a scrap piece of maple flooring.

I clamp that template to my railing - hopefully in the right location.

Here's a closeup.  You can see my pencil centerline.  It looks like my pocket will cut into a knot in my ceder railing.

Here's my tool:  A little palm router.  I've used this for a ton of projects, including rounding over all the edges of my railings and columns.  I now have a pattern bit installed - it is simply a 0.5 inch diameter router bit with a bearing on top.  That bearing follows my hardwood template.

Here I completed cutting out the pocket.

The template is still clamped down.

Here is the finished pocket without my template.  It makes a perfect smooth edge.  It zips right through those tough knots.

And here is the finished product.  My column fits real nicely.

My railing has a total of 57 columns.  I am currently about 80% done with this pocket making chore, and then I can move on to priming, assembling, and painting.

Post Script:  Daughter and I just did the math to figure how many linear feet of rounded over edges I traversed with my palm router.  We calculated that I travelled 690 feet with my 1/4" round-over router bit for this project.  Wow!