don't know about you all, but i've been loving the spoke-shave posts that Paul Sellers has been uploading recently!

The spokeshave is my favorite wood working tool.

It's part sculpting, part carving, part planing. Using it, I dance with the wood. Of course the wood always leads but for me the spokeshave lends the best feedback sensing how grain flows, and reverses direction. All of his posts are worth reading, and I'm linking them here to assist their findability.

Thank you Mr. Sellers for uploading them!

• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/the-151-spokeshave-where-i-mastered-this-unique-plane/
• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/restoring-a-151-record-marples-or-stanley-spokeshave/
• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/spokeshave-restoration-the-paul-sellers-blade-extender/
• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/final-on-151-spokeshave-restorative-work-series-maybe/
• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/in-defense-of-151spokeshavesand-wooden-spokeshaves-and-veritas-spokeshaves-too/
• http://paulsellers.com/2014/07/a-lighter-touch-on-wooden-spokeshaves/

I'll be going heavily into spokeshaves while shaping the desk table supports for our library. Here they stand, rough alignment and jointing work in progress for the weekend. Suerte!

reclaimed doug fir shelving part v: LED/trim install

I proceeded with the LED tape install for the shelving once the vertical trim pieces were scribed into place. The tape is a convenient system that I bought off of Lee Valley. There's a dimmer as well, which emits a subtle buzz under lower outputs. I plan on housing the switch body in a wooden enclosure to minimize this, though.

The bust pictured needs a whole other post (blog...website...existential realm). This will be where the piece cools its heels in the red room. The tape lighting actually lights it well, and it's hard to get a good shot of the entire wall with my diminutive camera.

The lower left side section remains unlit as this will be where the desk is arranged.

Here's the switch: power from teh AC/DC converter in, to the circuit out. I'll house this in something

It took me a long time to figure out the wiring, but the easiest solution appeared to be running a line underneath the drawers for the lower lighting unit, then sending the "main" line up along the back of one of the uprights, where I could do all the connections from above. The tape is placed on overlapping bevels of the trim. It's nice and warm.

Here you can see the wiring placed along the space between the ceiling and the shelving carcass top. I used thumb tacks with electrician's tape to support the tape along the horizontal spans until the top molding was installed.

the connectors you get with this kit are about 5" end to end, which wasn't quite enough to make it through the gap between the ceiling circuit and the trim connection points. So I busted out some 18 gauge twisted wire from my motorcycle wiring days to lengthen them...yep.

reclaimed doug fir shelving part iv: capstone installed

the shelving hung over the door uses a couple points of bearing: the 3/16" dados for the lower tier, the overlapping tabs of the upper tier, a few screws in the aft tab affixed to the upper tier mounting tab, and then a middle "septum" with wedged thru-mortises to hold the two tiers together.

I made some reference edges using some strips of mdf hot-glued to a few cast-off pieces in the shop, gluing each in situ after detaching the hand clamp here

I used a similar marking/layout strategy for the upper deck, and applied a few tabs to the side that cannot be seen between the ceiling and the wood so that it lays in place.

the next trick was to do a middle septum here, using thru-tennons with wedges to hold the two decks together. While everything was in place here, I found the center along the top, and then projected that location down to the lower tier using my japanese square. This point would act as the index mark for laying out the joinery.

I assembled the piece with wedged through-tennons and applied some temporary battens to stabilize the piece during installation. here's what she looked like at 3:00pm today. I wrote a message on the top side of the upper tier, the date, and an expression of hope that this ridiculous composition would actually slide into it's housing without complaints.

a big ask, you know.

it was awkward humping the assembly up on a ladder into the position, but it tapped into place with minimal application of surly metaphors.