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The (Second) Year of the Dog

Bella, snow, disc — It snowed today (see: “Michigan, April”) but not this much. This video is from a few weeks ago (see: “Michigan, March).”

We’ve now had Bella for two years, and our regrets for inviting her into our lives remain, to the nearest approximation, zero. She and Pepper still get along well, though Bella still gets worried when Pepper comes out into the yard while we’re playing ball (Pepper chased her the first few times) and Pepper still doesn’t love Bella’s lurchiness when B has decided a particular room is Mine for the next couple hours.

Nobody’s perfect, and Bella has banged herself up a few times — once it was another dog at fault, the other couple of times it was her own actions that resulted in scars — causing us worry and her confusion. (“Why why why have you covered my paws and wrapped this stiff plastic thing around my head? I’m FINE.”) And though she now knows what heel means, when it suits her, she’s not convinced it’s a good idea until she’s had her fill of sniffing for rabbits, tree rabbits (aka squirrels), and megarabbits (aka deer). And that takes a while, every single day.

But she’s still a very good dog, and we still feel lucky.

So happy Gotcha Day to her and to you. (Click on the link in the caption for some action, and our scarf-muffled voices.)

Solar System Ambassador, 2023 (!)

Solar System Ambassador badge, etc. I’ve wanted to earn a NASA mission patch since the Apollo years. (Yeah, I’m of that vintage.) While it’s not a single mission, and I’m not contributing directly to NASA science or engineering, I’ve been selected as one of their 2023 Solar System Ambassadors.

And look, you get a patch!

If you’re an educator who would like to tap into NASA resources to support your teaching, please contact me however you like, but here’s a convenient way: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ambassadors/2513/ . I’m happy to work with you to create a presentation that meets your curriculum needs.

The same goes for people who handle programming for groups, large or small, who want to me to talk about missions to asteroids, telescopes looking out at the cosmos, or NASA’s planetary exploration…including how we explore our own, beautiful and (so far) unique Earth!

For fun, here’s part of what I said in my application:

I’ll start with two quotes from favorite books, one about Apollo and one about Mars, which capture some of why I think space exploration is important.

“Apollo may have been driven by the Cold War, but…in the end, it was theater—the most mind-blowing theater ever created. In fact, at around $120 per American over the nine years of the Sixties in which it ran, or $13 a year, it was astonishingly cheap theater.” from Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith

“Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education or cancer research? It is always squandered. Let’s squander some on Mars. Let’s go out and play.” from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Space exploration is play. It’s also theater. Those are enough to get people interested, but there’s more to why space space exploration is important to me, and to everyone on this planet.

We live on a spaceship. It’s a big one, at least in individual human terms, so big we don’t understand how all its systems interact, or even what all the systems are! The good news about its complexity and size is that it’s a self-sufficient ship, if we take care of it. But the Pale Blue Dot and Earthrise photographs also show us another truth: our planet is big and robust, bat at the same time it’s also small and fragile. And it looks like we may be alone as we hurtle through space.

So in addition to the drama and fun of it, through space exploration we learn better ways to handle our spacecraft, we learn how other such spacecraft work, and we’ll find out if we’re truly unique.

Sequential art, part 2: finishing the chair

We’re back with the second (and last) installment of “Jim, out of his depth.” In case you missed it, and care, here’s part 1: Sequential art (or, how I spent the week after Thanksgiving).

So, on with the picture show!

To open part two, here’s another image, where you can see some pegs and joints that need trimming so they won’t poke people when it comes time to sit.

And also, some close-ups of unsanded surfaces, construction lines…

…and mistakes. Look at that sloppy joint!

Here you can see the spindles 02-07, with fibers still poking out. I never did get these 100% smoothed, guaranteeing that nobody will ever mistake this for being machine- or professionally-made. Also, though you can’t tell from the picture, spindle 06 is off. It’s canted a little from the others — don’t know how I managed to not glue it in right, since I checked it many times. (I probably did glue it in right and then bumped it before it set. Argh.) It also didn’t take the steam as well as the others so it’s too straight. Visually not ideal, but it doesn’t seem to affect sitting comfort.

On the seat bottom (helpfully marked “BOTTOM”) you can see all the sight lines for drilling those thrilling compound angles, and also, in the lower right corner, the note to “DOCTOR THIS” where I made a mistake and we had to add a small wedge.

So, that was the raw wood. Skipping ahead, I got those joints and pegs flush, sanded everything down to 220 and then did a super-thin coat of shellac to seal the surfaces just enough to…cover everything with paint. Here’s the unlikely first coat: Barn Red from the Real Milk Paint company. I’d never heard of milk paint before this project, and it’s stuff you mix yourself from powder. Shelf life of, well, milk since it really is made with milk protein, so you mix small batches and use it fast. Anyway, looks awful, doesn’t it? I was warned that the first coat would, and to trust the process.

Second coat, and it looks nice and uniform. Per Peter Galbert‘s recommendation, I then applied another heavily thinned coat of shellac to prevent the next, and even-waterier, coat of paint from turning the previous two into a slurry, and hit it with a coat of “Arabian Night” black.

Two more coats of black and it’s both not as ugly, and uniform enough to now burnish. The idea behind burnishing is to both help the black stick better and to expose some red as well — on purpose, in places you want it. I don’t think I did a good job at this, and the shellac might not have worked right for me because there were some places that burnished nicely and some where too much black came off and even when I tried to repaint it just wouldn’t stick. But overall, the effect is nice. The chair looks completely black in low light but add a few lumens and you see pleasing red highlights.

And now I’m going to skip way ahead, though this time it’s not because things happened too fast, but rather too slow. With the paint in place as best as I could manage, it was time to seal and protect the wood, and add some shine. I wanted to avoid petrochemicals and polyurethane to keep the final finish’s look and feel more natural. Also, I don’t have a heated external shop, so I needed to work in the basement and use materials that weren’t going to kill any of the large mammals in the house. (Sorry bugs, you weren’t a consideration, but it’s winter in Michigan so you should be elsewhere anyway!)
This led me to start with a couple coats of tung oil, thinned down with citrus-based solvent. That produced a very dull gloss, just barely more reflective than what you saw in the previous pictures. Also, I’d clearly not burnished enough since I was still picking up paint dust during the second go-round. Too late to fix that, but no worries! Following the advice of our instructor Luke, I planned to bring up the shine a bit in the final coat. My plan was to mix the tung+citrus with satin Osmo Polyx — a “blend of vegetable oils (sunflower, soybean and thistle) and waxes (carnauba and candelilla) combined with a small amount of low-odor solvent.” It’s sustainable and has minimal environmental impact.
Good plan, but while his recipe for a finishing coat had all the same basic ingredients and proportions (1/3 oil, 1/3 thinner, 1/3 poly), Luke at Sam Beauford suggested different types of each from what I used.
Now, I’m not a complete dope: I’d done some samples with various mixtures on some scrap oak, and it seemed to work, but between those sticks and the chair something went awry.

Either the samples were too small and dry to be representative (I was using very hard, kiln-dried red oak scraps from another project), the tung oil wasn’t dry enough to take another coat, the Osmo doesn’t mix well, or it was bad execution by me. It was probably all four, with emphasis on bad execution. It looked good going on, since most finishes do, but the next morning it was an ugly, hazy, splotchy mess and my heart sank.
Fortunately, we planned to go to the Detroit Institute of the Arts to see the Van Gogh exhibit that day — and better still do so with some friends — so I had to leave the thing alone for a while. Couldn’t even look at it! I won’t pretend that at times that day I didn’t brood about ruining the damn chair, though, so I was no doubt occasionally bad, or at least distracted, company.
(The exhibit was great. Lunch was delicious. The friends are lovely.)

Anyway, the next day, with the disaster coat dry enough to attack, I attacked. Sanding pads and spite and self-recrimination brought everything back down to an even, dull look. Returning to one more coat of tung oil, which at least didn’t lift up any more paint dust this time, I followed up with the hardest thing ever — let that cure and truly harden for a month. No photos of this, so again we’ve skipped ahead to see the final result…

(By the way, since I finished the red coats on New Year’s Day and it was MLK Day when I put everything on hold for a month, the pace of things was driving K a bit crazy, though she generously stopped bugging me after I flat out said “You know I don’t really know what I’m doing, right?”)

So, after letting the tung oil cure and checking with Osmo customer service, who said it would work (and noted that you shouldn’t mix their product with other finishes…yup, can confirm!) I used the Osmo on its own. The results were mixed. Some parts looked good and others were far too shiny. This time I’m pretty sure the mediocre result was because I used too much finish and didn’t wipe the excess off soon enough after applying it. So I buffed it all back with 0000 steel wool and an ultra-fine synthetic pad and then it looked…not bad. It was still a little matte for my taste, but this showed that if worse came to worst I could get an acceptable sheen that way.

So I risked one more time with the Osmo, this iteration so thin you almost couldn’t tell by looking at the container that I’d used any at all. And I used the stopwatch/split feature on my old school running watch to make sure to wipe off any excess on a section (and there wasn’t much) after about 5 minutes. This last coat, including the wiping, only took 48 minutes total. (Thanks running watch!)

And here we are. It may still be too shiny, but I actually like it far more than anything I’ve managed so far. And I now know I can change that if we decide it’s too much gloss.

The red highlights show up pretty well here…

Anyway, I say “if we decide” because K (and Bella) have been very patient as I stumbled through this, and K likes it as is. Bella’s fine with it too.

So it’s time for me to let this thing go as my art project and let it get to work at being our chair.

Sequential art (or, how I spent the week after Thanksgiving)

Well, maybe “art” is too much to claim, but this was last week’s craft project, anyway. It’s called “Modern Windsor Rocking Chair.” (No subtitle.)

All 10 of the back pieces were a fresh-cut white oak log on Monday, and like the arms and seat — red oak and pine, respectively — were shaped by hand. The arm and leg spindles are maple and a few of the pins are poplar.

My hands are still sore, but we have a new place to sit and I’m amazed at what’s possible in seven days. Long days, for sure, but it all came together. Plenty of finishing work to do still, but it’s already an actual chair you can sit in, and is quite comfortable.

Luke at LongLiveWood.org is an excellent and patient teacher, and attracts students from all over the world to take his classes. And well he should. Recommended!

Sitting at the shaving horse, making big pieces of wood smaller.

The uprights, rough shaped but not yet steam bent. (A draw knife, my best friend for the week, is off to the right.)

And now the back/headrest, also rough shaped and unbent. (I was bending, though!)

Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can't carve the engineer+librarian out of me. — Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can’t carve the engineer+librarian out of me.

You start by making a place for your butt... Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got 'em all within tolerance, to my shock. — You start by making a place for your butt… Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but we did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got ’em all within tolerance, to my shock.

7/8" down at its deepest, swooping up. — 7/8″ down at its deepest, swooping up.

A travisher and a scorp. (Not shown: spokeshaves.)

There are the spoke shaves! And a kinda sorta seat shape.

Okay, I'm done. (Okay, I'm not.) — Okay, I’m done. (Okay, I’m not.)

Holy #$%&, they fit and are vaguely symmetrical!

Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I'm lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that's curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing. — Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I’m lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that’s curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing.

Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren't my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said "Don't WORRY about this. It'll be fine, you'll see." (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.) — Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren’t my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said “Don’t WORRY about this. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.” (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.)

Arms shaped, drilled, and spindles fitted.

The uneven, blocky, square, ugly but now curved back spindles.

Not something you'd want against your back. — Not something you’d want against your back.

And 30 (or so) minutes later, something you might be okay with resting against.

Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000", and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn't take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you're gluing.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn't much larger than the drill holes... ...and at this point, Luke's "It'll be fine" gave way to "Don't mess this up, because I can't help you recover from a mistake here." Thanks. — Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000″, and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn’t take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you’re gluing and wedging.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn’t much larger than the drill holes…
…and at this point, Luke’s “It’ll be fine” gave way to him saying “Don’t mess this up, because I can’t help you recover from a mistake here.”
Thanks.

All of these pieces have to go in at the exact same time, so you torque and bend and squeak to fit. Have I said harrowing before?

Again with the Holy &^%$! They fit and are aligned.

Again, fast forward. This time all the way home, with all the spindles glued in the bottom, slotted in the top, wedges driven into every support, and pins added to the head rest.

Einstein is here. (He’s always been here!)

Our book about Einstein is out now. It’s been a long trip from conception to publication, and I’m proud of Absent-minded Albert what Jerel Dye and I (along with Alison Acton and Alex Lu) have made. I’ve been talking about it a lot on the social media sites, so if you follow me there you’ve seen many excerpts. We’re celebrating its launch with some events:

Nov. 15, 7pm: Brookline Booksmith

Nov 16, 7pm: An Unlikely Story

And I’ve done a little media about it as well:

Pint o’ Comics

John Scalzi’s “The Big Idea”

The Virtual Memories Show

So if you want to learn more about what we did and why, please join us at one or more of those real or virtual places and we’ll talk about genius, science, and how those come together in comics!

Book recommendations

I’ve recently read a few terrific books that are worth telling people about. So let me tell ya…

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton is subtle, sad, beautiful, and doesn’t waste a single panel.

Ragnarök, Volumes 1 & 2 (The Last God Standing & Lord of the Dead) by Walt Simonson are witty and simultaneously nostalgic and new.

Why Knot? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving, and Secure Knots!, by Philippe Petit will teach you things. It’s quirky and unique, like its author…whose resume you should look up, if he’s not already familiar to you.

The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter is a book I avoided reading for years, and I have no idea why. These reflections by ballplayers of yesteryear, not all of whom are famous, will warm your heart.

And to round out the list, I should mention Einstein by me and Jerel Dye. It comes out November 15th, and you can pre-order it here.

(The panel excerpt is from our book, of course, and is a nod to this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, which relates to one of the many things Einstein wanted to be wrong about, but wasn’t.)

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