Team Savoy

It’s finally that time of year again! This Saturday was opening weekend for the Urbana Farmer’s Market. It’s about the only thing that can get us out of bed at a reasonable hour on a Saturday. And after months of cold, snowy, rainy, icy, depressing weather, it was great to stroll around with our coffee in hand, taking in all the market has to offer.

Our first stop was the C-U Herb Society’s sale inside Lincoln Square.

Then, it was onto the market.

In addition to produce, you can also find meat & poultry

plus crafts…

and entertainment.

I’ll be honest, though. This is what I really came for:

Ah, kettle corn. How I’ve missed your sweet and salty goodness.

I like sausage. But… K doesn’t. We really should have gone over that before the nuptuals, but it’s a little too late now. So, a couple months ago when K started planning a girls weekend out of town, I decided that I would buy a food grinder, invite over a couple friends, and have a sausage weekend. Like you wouldn’t.

So, what is sausage fest? It’s a bunch of guys hanging out, playing Xbox, drinking beer, and making sausage from scratch. For a good sausage fest, you need a few tools. A food grinder, sausage stuffer, and a book on how to make sausage (we used Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn):

Then, you need meat. Lots of meat. Pork butt to be specific.

Cut up that meat…

and add in some other ingredients. Yes, he is using a power drill to help grind the pepper.

Then, put it in the fridge and let it sit. What can do you do while you’re waiting? Oh, I know. Play Guitar Hero!

When you’re ready to go with the sausage, start by grinding the meat:

Then, ya gotta stuff it in the casings.

When you’re done, this is what you get:

Hmmm.. Now what? Ah, yes. More Guitar Hero:

Then, more sausage:

When you’re all out of meat, twist the casings, and this is what you get:

You’re looking at a nice batch of Mexican Chorizo, Spicy Italian, and Marjoram Kielbasa just waiting to be devoured. We didn’t get a picture of it, but we used some of the Italian to make a Chicago style deep dish pizza with an awesome solid layer of sausage. Very tasty.

In all, I’d say it was a very successful sausage fest. Maybe next year we’ll add in some bratwurst!

I was sleeping soundly early Friday morning until about 4:30 a.m. when I woke up and realized the bed was shaking, as if D was trembling uncontrollably next to me. So, I sat up and looked over at him at about the same time he sat up and looked at me. I put my hand on his leg and he put his hand on my arm and we were both looking at each other like, “Are you okay? No, are you okay?” Then, I realized our semi-empty water glasses on the nightstand were rattling. “What is that?” I asked. D answered, “I think it’s just a train…” before stumbling out of bed to look out our bathroom window. Which would have made more sense if you could actually see the train tracks from there. Or any other window in the house.

Anyway, he comes back and says, “Yeah, it’s just a train…” Which sort of made sense since we could hear the familiar horn of a train in the distance. I jokingly replied, “Are you sure it wasn’t an earthquake or something?” Instead, we dismissed it as nothing and went back to sleep. Because when was the last time we had an earthquake here? Tornados, maybe. But, not earthquakes. Besides, aren’t dogs supposed to be really in tune to stuff like that? Ours pretty much snored through the whole thing.

The next morning, D was looking through the local papers online and found that all the main articles were about the earthquake that shook central Illinois. Huh. Who knew? Thanks a lot for the heads up, Emma.

About a month ago, we finally purchased a new tv, which D had been coveting since before we got married. The day it was delivered, he stayed home from work to bask in all of its sleek, modern glory. Our old tv looked like a dinosaur in comparison. When I came home from work, he was on the couch watching a woodworking show on the new tv…which was on the floor. He was waiting for me to help lift the old tv, or “the beast” as I will now be referring to it, from the tv stand. That was not fun. However, we somehow managed to hug the tv from both sides and shuffle a few feet over to the corner where we lovingly sat it down on the floor. It would reside there for the next few weeks because my desire to stop seeing it there did not override the fear of my lungs bursting and arms snapping off in an attempt to move it down to D’s office in the basement.

Weeks go by. The new tv is great and I was getting pretty used to ignoring the beast in the corner. Until last Saturday when I heard D running cable through the wall down to his office. My immediate thought was, “Oh, crap. He’s going to want me to move that stupid beast downstairs so he can hook it up in his office. Well, it’s not going to happen. No way can I move that thing. He will have to ask one of the guys to come over and help.” I continued watching the Bachelor while remaining in complete denial. Eventually, I heard the familar sounds of woodworking and I began to relax. “Okay, he realizes there is no way I can help drag this thing down there so he has moved onto another project,” I thought. So, I went back to wondering why that annoying girl on the show has to sing to the bachelor every chance she gets. Seriously, do the girls this season think this show is actually some sort of talent competition?

Anyway, I’m watching my show and then here comes D, holding this cart he has fashioned out of scrap wood and some wheels (I am just now wondering as I type this where those wheels came from). It reminded me of the carts they had on move-in day at the dorms to help make moving all of your stuff in a little easier. Okay, a little easier on my dad and/or brother who usually ended up doing most of the heavy lifting.

He shows me this cart with a huge smile like he is so proud of himself for making this task easier for me while I am thinking, “Are you freaking kidding me?!” because I realize we can’t just send this cart careening down a flight of stairs. He goes on to explain how we just have to lift it on the cart and then roll it to the stairs. “Yeah.. then what???” I asked, my tone a tad sarcastic. “Well… then we carry it down the stairs, but I will go first to take the brunt of the weight and when we get to the bottom it goes right back on the cart. Really, it won’t be that bad,” he replied.

You have to admire the guy’s technique. He knows there is NO WAY I was going to move that thing without some kind of assistance. So, I start thinking maybe he’s right. Maybe it won’t be so bad. And it would be nice to get it out of the living room. So, we load it onto the cart, which honestly wasn’t that hard. Then, we realize one of the wheels has already buckled due to the weight of the beast, so we take it off the cart. He fixes the wheel, we put it back on. We roll it out of the living room, through the kitchen, and into the hall. Piece of cake! Then, it’s go time. Right before we are about to attempt lift-off, he gives me a speech about bending my knees because my form wasn’t that good before. After letting him know that if my form wasn’t good enough, he could find someone else to help him, we went for it.

Now, ladies. If you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, I recommend that you be the first one to go down the stairs. Because while it may seem like that person has the harder job, the other person immediately ends up bent over at an awkward angle that no amount of proper knee bending can help. And it’s like that the whole way down. About halfway through this horror, I asked for a break. My grip slipped a little and the tv landed with a bit of thud as we set it down. We took it stair by stair after that. The whole time I was silently cursing my husband and thinking about dropping that tv for real to teach him a lesson.

Somehow, we made it to the bottom and put the beast back on the cart, which we wheeled through the woodshop and into his office, its final resting place. D was pretty triumphant about it. “See? We did it! I told you that you could do it.” I was not feeling so triumphant. That last thing I told him before I went back to my show was that when we are ready to dispose of that thing, we will be beating it with a baseball bat Office Space style and removing it piece by piece.

Since I am using maple for the edge of the curved desk, I have to curve the wood - something it doesn’t really want to do. I chose to use a steam box to actually bend the wood. It’s not the easiest way, but it will look awesome when it’s done. To accomplish this, I had to first build the steam box and start filling it with steam:

Then, I suspended the piece of maple inside the steam box to let steam circulate all around it.

Then, I just let it steep (cool, huh?)

at about 212 degrees…

After an hour or so, I took it out of the box:

and started bending it around the desk:

I added lots of clamps and used curved blocks to hold the banding in place:

Then, I just let it cool down overnight.

The next day I took the clamps off and voila! A curved piece of wood:

As with most bending processes, there was a little bit of “springback.” Springback is like wood memory. Since it doesn’t really want to curve, it tries to retaliate by bending back a little. I was a little dissapointed at how much springback there was. Oh, well. I guess it doesn’t matter too much in this case since I’m just going to reclamp this to the desk. Next step: glue this piece on…

After finishing the inlay, I focused my attention on the curve of the desk. The desk couldn’t be a simple rectangle unless it was 24 inches wide. I want the desk to be 30 inches wide, but because of the layout of my office, I would run the risk of stabbing myself in the leg every time I walked into the room. So, I decided to make the right side of the desk only 24 inches wide and then curve the rest out to the full 30 inches. This will make more sense when you see it installed. So, how did I make said curve? I’m glad you asked.

I drew a curve on some MDF and rough cut it. And I mean really rough. Then, I used a file and my sander to smooth things out. Once I was satisfied, I traced the curve onto the desk and rough-cut it there. Then, using the template as a guide, I flushed the desk curve with the aid of a flush-trim router bit. At this point, I was left with a solid slab of plywood with a curve cut on one end. Unfortunately, a plywood edge is ugly and so it needs to be banded.

Sometimes it’s enough to just get the heat-activated edging material and iron it onto the edge of your plywood. That isn’t going to work in this case because I want the underside of the desk to have a bevel, mostly for asthetic purposes. So, I’ve got a 5/8″ x 1.5″ piece of maple hardwood that I’m going to edge the desk with. This is easier said than done.

I started out by clamping the piece of hardwood to see if it would even bend around the curve. And for the most part, it did. However, I can’t settle for “mostly” right. Plus, I’m concerned about the wood ripping itself apart once I take the clamps off. Luckily, I have some tricks up my woodworker’s sleeve. Stay Tuned!

So, I made a trip to Schnucks today to pick up some allergy medicine because all of this fabulous fresh air makes me sneeze. When I left, I drove through the Pages For All Ages parking lot. As I began to slow down for the stop sign at the crosswalk, I noticed an older gentleman using one of those walkers with wheels making his way to the entrance. By the time I reached a complete stop, he had shuffled about halfway through. It was at that very moment that someone nearby honked their horn, which caused the older gentleman to halt his progress and look up at me as if to say, “Are you kidding me?” Meanwhile, the people in the van on the other side of the crosswalk looked at me with total disgust for being so rude. I tried to make a variety of hand motions while mouthing, “That wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! Not my horn!” However, I don’t think anyone understood and I felt like a total jackass even though I hadn’t done anything except try to get some sinus and allergy relief for the day.

 I took a week off of woodworking because I felt I was getting too obsessed with it and not giving other things I like (cooking, my wife) as much attention as I’d like. Last Saturday marked the end of that woodworking hiatus (ok I cheated once) and we drove off to Bloomington to pick up some wood. I needed some 2 inch thick birch or maple to band the edges of my desk (since it’s made of plywood).

After a frantic glue up (thanks for the help K), I’ve got two sheets of plywood laminated together to make a 1.5″ thick desk. Since the plywood was 8 feet long and the desk span is more like 10 feet, I had to “extend” the plywood by gluing some additional material to the end. If it were a perfect world, that’d be the end, but it’s not. Since the plywood butt-joint created a seam where they met, I routed out a slot and inlayed it with some solid birch. After planing this inlay down, it’s as smooth as it gets. I’m hoping a dark stain will cover the fact that none of the grain matches. Here’s what it looks like.

On Saturday we took a drive over to Bloomington so D could buy some wood for the desk he is building. It’s a good thing the back seat folds down in my awesome Chevy Cavalier or we would have had to throw the wood on top of the car and one-arm it the whole way home. In your face, BMW.

After leaving the wood store, we met up with Christa & Kent for lunch at the restaurant formerly known as Delgado’s. It was great to see them since it had been a few months and those two are always good for a laugh. We’ll definitely have to meet up again sometime soon, maybe after the release of the Aerosmith edition of Guitar Hero! After lunch, we checked out the new (to me, anyway) Shoppes at College Hills. I’m glad to see they have done something with that area since it was pretty vacant when I was at ISU.

I would also like to brag that in a fit of spring cleaning, I eliminated 3 garbage bags full of clothes from my closet yesterday. Seeing all that empty closet space makes me want to go shopping. I wonder what Christian would think of my remaining wardrobe…

The wintertime is traditionally woodworking season for those of us not lucky enough to live in a warm climate that supports outdoor activities year round. Like any other hobbyist woodworker worth his salt, I have way too many projects going on at once. For the past two months, I’ve been working on an outfeed/assembly table for my shop. It looks pretty much like this one. Once I finish attaching the doors, it’ll be almost completely done and I will finally have a good place to put a lot of my tools. Hopefully my efficiency in the shop will improve. You wouldn’t believe how long I used spend walking around looking for different tools.  I bet my dad would believe it.

In addition to that, I’ve got a desk that I’m building for the home office. It’s been in pieces for awhile now and with the new assembly table, I’ve got a good shot at getting it done. We’ve also been in the planning stages for a new dining room table in time for Thanksgiving. But, as a rule of woodworking, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some new tools before I can get that one cranked out. I’m really looking forward to eating on a proper dining room table. So is K since the only thing occupying the dining room when she moved in was a poker table.