Shifting Gears

The Foothills Fall Festival was once again a great show with three days of wonderful weather and lots of customers.  A few days after the show, the euphoria wore off and the reality that I had very little product left over set in. I now need to kick it into high gear to get ready for Christmas orders.

I recently got a hold of some interesting Post Office doors.  I’ve seen these style doors a few times over the years, but they are not easily found like the eagles.  I refer to one as a 1911 because it has three patent dates of 1896, 1903, and 1911.  It has a dial pointer, 2 letter combination lock.  The second one is an 1886 dual dial which also uses a two letter combination lock.  This door is a little larger than the standard #1 size door and requires a larger box to hold it.

The 1911 on the left and 1886 on the right.

Like A Box of Chocolates

If you will pardon the cliché, wood is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.   I buy most of my wood rough, as it comes from the saw mill, and plane it myself because it’s less expensive this way.  The downside is you can’t really see the grain patterns in rough wood.  It has heavy saw marks, fuzzy texture, and is usually very dirty.  It’s not until I run each board through my planer that I can see what I bought.  I push the board into one side of the planer and anxiously watch as it comes out the other side.  Sometimes it’s ugly, but most of the time I get a nice piece of wood.  Occasionally, I get a surprising exceptional piece.

I was running some 6/4 walnut through my planer today was pleasantly surprised to see beautifully figured patterns come out the other end.  It’s always great to get figured wood for the price of non-figured.  Now I can’t decide what project I want to use it for.

These are both from the same board.  The one on the right is what it looked like as it came from the lumber yard.  The one on the left is after I ran one of the boards through the planer.  The one on the right looked very much the same way as the other one once it was planed.

Laid Back Day!

Every once in a while I get to take a break from making saw dust to work on related tasks that don’t require running a noisy saw and dust collector.  I just crank up my IPod, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy a quiet day.  Today I had to start putting the first of three or more finishing coats on a new group of bank boxes.   I’m anxious to get these finished because I am using Butternut and Quarter sawn oak in a few of the boxes for the first time and they are looking very promising.

Once the boxes had their first coats on, I started the ardent task of cleaning doors for these boxes.  I mixed up a batch of ammonia and Coca-Cola to soak the doors.  After about 30 minutes, I take them out and clean each one with a soft steel brush under running water.  Once dry, they get sprayed with a clear acrylic to keep them from tarnishing again, oil the locks, and tag each one with the combination.

Like Hunting For Easter Eggs

I don’t know why, but 1920 Flying Eagles are getting harder to find.   Finding them for a decent price is even more challenging.  I sold out before Christmas and many of my sources have dried up.  I occasionally see a few on Ebay, but the prices bidders are paying for them is a little insane.  Maybe this is the new norm for the Flying Eagles, but demand and scarcity is driving the price up for these doors.  It’s almost like a Easter egg hunt as I constantly search and haggle with people to get these doors.

I think all the vintage P.O. Box door styles are beautiful.  They are ornate, American made, and represent a significant piece of Americana.  Some are more ornate than others, some have the letters U.S. cast in the door, and some have different size eagles on the front.  The Flying Eagle is the most dramatic in my opinion.  It screams with a large eagle right in your face, and the brass versions look almost like gold when thoroughly cleaned.

I was fortunate to recently acquire a few more and should have some available for sale online by this weekend.  These were apparently in storage for a long time and were very dirty and tarnished.  It use to take me about an hour per door to clean them using Brasso, but I have recently switched to soaking them in a solution of equal parts ammonia and Coca-Cola.  Yep, it sounds weird, but I can soak the doors for about 30 minutes and the tarnish and grime almost falls right off.  I rinse each door off under hot water and do a little light scrubbing with a soft wire brush, and they are done.

This is a couple of the Flying Eagles soaking in a pan.

The one on the left is before, and the one on the right is after soaking and rinsing.

What Stress?

December has been a blur.  It feels like I spent more time at the Post Office than in the shop for the past four or five weeks.  The P.O. Box Banks were such a huge hit that I completely sold out two weeks before Christmas.  Lazy Susans were also very popular.  I lost track of the amount of bubble wrap and peanuts I went through this month.   For those who have emailed me wanting the P.O. boxes, I will have more in my Etsy store the first week of January.  There is a batch drying in the shop right now and I am starting another run this weekend.    I needed a couple days off to read a novel and gain 10 pounds.

The week before Christmas got me a little stressed out because I wasn’t able to start making the Christmas gifts for my Mom and eldest Daughter until the Monday before Christmas.  In fact, I put the final finish coat on both items on Christmas morning.  I gave up a couple rounds of golf with my buddies that week, but it allowed me to hit the Christmas deadline.  This year I did serving trays.  

My Daughter specifically asked for a tray, but my Mom didn’t expect hers.  I made Mom’s out of the red oak from church pews that my Dad rescued from their church, so it has very special meaning to her.  My Daughter’s tray has jatoba sides with a bottom of figured maple, walnut, and zebra wood.  These are a little labor intensive for me because I am not set up for production runs and have to do everything the hard way, but they both turned out very nice.  This one is 15” x 20”.  The bottom is not inlay, but 1/2” thick all the way through.