Full of muscle aches today after so much activity yesterday. I processed the vocals for the other two Christmas songs, and added those for the somewhat moving 'Heaven's Day'. I will keep musing on the first draft of Candy Cane.
Then, I made a mistake on the alcove cabinet. I marked the exact height of the side pieces late last night, and today cut to the mark, but only then realised that I needed to cut off the bottom, not the top. When marking, I should have (counter-intuitively) flipped the pieces upside down to mark them. So, a crisis moment. The wood was the correct length but the shelf slots all wrong! My instant thought was that I'd ruined everything and would need to buy new wood and start afresh, but not all was lost.
The top shelf space was larger than the 133mm I needed, so to fix the length I could cut the right amount from the top and glue it onto the bottom. This would lead to a visible cut line near the bottom, but like many pine lengths today, the wood itself is a composite, so the grain and hue is uneven anyway, and it is all destined to be stained. The cut line would be near the floor, not obvious, and mostly covered by the door, but even that aside, I could cover the line with veneer or some other decoration with ease (I will probably do this, I have lots of veneer in stock).
There are no dowels here, so after gluing, I aim to add screws along the length for strength (it hardly needs it, the weight compresses the joint). The screws, I realised, could be loosened or tightened to adjust the exact length far more accurately than trying to shave slices from the wood. The bottom 5mm or so is hidden by the moat of carpet, so everything is ripe for a height adjustment system. All in all, the mistake is not so serious, and the length adjustment is a design benefit I'd not have thought of otherwise. Next step, to check the sizes, sand and tidy the look, perhaps add that veneer, then fix the arch, and stain.
In the afternoon, Deb and I went to Congleton Library for the launch of Go Sprout The Grain!. A lovely reading with many friends present, and two new attendees from Newcastle. We were amazed and delighted to see Alan; enthusiastic poet and comedy performer, blacksmith and volunteer from Morecambe Poetry Festival. He travelled from Preston for this event. Everything we do in Congleton is a delight.
My throat was and is too tired from yesterday's singing, perhaps too rushed, or not technically correct enough, or just too much. My body aches. Time to rest.
