Finito!

Everything finally dried yesterday, and the organizer got moved into my office. I was pleased to see that the finish matched that of the desk quite nicely. It appears well integrated with my office scheme. The three pictures I'm posting here include the finished version, an image of the original design sketch, and a photo taken after loading it up with stuff. As you can see, I stuck pretty close to the original design. I did have to lower the ruler holder bar thingie, else I figured I might have problems with the rulers catching on the overhanging top board when I went to take them out.


Then there is what I have been calling "the bow" of the thing--that angled bit of wood in the front. In the original design I showed it being straight cut with sharp corners, but in the end I decided to give it graceful curves that better complimented the curves of the vertical risers. I think I had always planned on having that be cut in a curve--it's just that I got lazy with the design software I was using! :)

I have referred to it as the bow because it reminds me of the bow on a Russian ice-breaking ship. And given how my workspace tends to get during crunchtimes, that's not a bad analogy. You see, I tend to get stacks of paper that take over my desk, along with big atlases that I need for cross referencing when doing map work. So now those piles can dash themselves against the bow of the organizer, but the contents contained within will be oblivious.

And that's really the reason I built the thing in the first place. I needed something that I could put stuff in so that they could be held above the morass and chaos of desk level. Case in point, I was constantly searching for the stupid magnifying glass. I'm always needing it for closely examining maps, but every time I went to use it, it would be buried under some book, paper, or tunafish sandwich. I was threatening to put it on a lanyard and wear it around my neck.

But now it has a home...a safe port. And I have to figure out what to build next! (After a bit of a break, of course.)

Down to the Finish

Well, I guess I've been working on the desk organizer for about a month. It's been mostly evenings with a few long days thrown in. It also includes a few stretches of several days where I was working on actual work projects.
But now it's coming down to the final stretch. I have a few shelves to cut, the drawers to make, but this piece is just about finished. This top photo is of a recent dry assembly, where I just push it all together and check that everything is fitting together properly (hence the presense of the can of stain in the front--it's holding up the "bow" of the piece).



In the lower picture, I had taken it back apart and applied stain to all the individual panels, so this shows more the color and finish of the final piece. (It also shows how messy our garage is...yuck!) I am currently between coats of urethane, and I am hoping tonight to be able to perform "The Big Glue". This will be to apply glue, clamps, and let it sit for 24 hours...and then it will be done. (During that 24 hours I will be making the four little drawers.)

Hmmm. I wonder if I can parry this momentum into a try at the coffee table!

In a Room Filled With Dancing Shadows

We went to a wonderful event last weekend. In conjunction with the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Mel Novikoff award was being given to Kevin Brownlow. To celebrate this, Mr. Brownlow gave a couple of lectures and screenings of silent film. We went to the one on Sunday evening, and it was fascinating.

Kevin Brownlow is a British filmmaker and film historian, and is a downright God in the field of film preservation and restoration. He has worked on a number of documentaries about the films and stars of silent films, and has worked on restoring a number of silent masterpieces. In many cases, he and his efforts were all that saved classic films from oblivion. It's a horrendous race against time...many early films were shot on nitrate stock, which is highly volatile. Out there are countless bits of cinematic history, silently dissolving into goo. Many have been lost already.

He didn't talk much, but instead chose to show a wide variety of film clips. Some from as early as 1900, and on into the late twenties. Some were just little oddities, whereas some were excerpts from longer works. He was making a case for showing the beauty of early cinematography; something that has gotten a bum rap for many years.

It was a great event, and a good warm-up for the Silent Film Festival, which will be happening in San Francisco in July. We tend to make a yearly pilgrimage of that.