Greetings, friends. (XXXIV)

Greetings, friends. You ever have a day where it seems like you were go-go-go all day and yet you’re not sure if you got anything done?

Today I was bound and determined to hang some bookshelves. Which meant drilling the mounting holes in the brackets in Besha’s shop, sanding and finishing them, and then driving over to Vancouver, moving the couch and then getting up on a ladder to position the brackets while Besha held the bookshelves in place and read off a level.

Friends, I got almost all the way through step one.

My plan to get up early was foiled by some assholes on the street around the corner from Besha’s house who insisted on playing recorded music at high amplification with a particularly accentuated bass line, starting at 3am.

Woken from a sound sleep, I lay awake and contemplated various ways of dissuading these people from their late-night pastimes. I am loathe to summon the police, particularly if the folks bending the law might be people of color. That could literally mean death for them, if the encounter goes sideways, and I don’t want that on my conscience for a lousy noise complaint. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est.

I thought about just going and speaking to them, being 6’2” and not particularly afraid for my safety, but that would have meant getting out of bed and putting on clothes. In any event, they would likely be drunk and possibly not amenable to reason. I settled on the fantasy of driving the 4Runner around the corner, pointing the nose of the truck at the miscreants, and turning on the offensively bright aftermarket light bar installed by the previous owner of my truck, and which I almost never use because it is truly impractically bright. You know, you make my environment passively unpleasant, and I’ll do the same to yours.

But that would have involved getting out of bed. Besha turned the white noise machine on. I put on headphones and listened to a rambling album of krautrock by Julian Cope that is unaccountably missing from Apple Music, possibly because it is titled Jehovahkill. Eventually I fell asleep and had terrible dreams about work.

So of course we slept in and got a late start on the day. We had to go back to the tool library and drop off the tools which were, by now, a week overdue. Then we went to the hardware store, where Besha had some items to pick up for her massive garden overhaul project. I decided to buy another couple drill bits, because they are only a few bucks each, I have not done a lot of drilling steel on a drill press, and, thinking of my dismal experience with the masonry bits, I did not want to have to make yet another trip to the hardware store.

By the time we got home, it was already time for lunch. Besha declared a mulligan on the day and went back to bed. I put on my coveralls and trudged out to the shop.

Of course I decided that the lip of one of the brackets was too short, and I lit up the forge to re-bend it. Having done that, I discovered that the bracket was too narrow due to the radius in the L-bend. So I heated up the main bend, flattened it on the anvil, and re-bent that end, but of course now the vertical part of the bracket was too short, so I had to do it over again.

While I was at it, I took one of the busted masonry drill bits from the debacle with the concrete screws, and threw it in the forge. I wanted to make reasonably precise holes in the brackets, and for that I figured I would need a steel scribe to lay out the holes, and I didn’t have one. Sure, I could have bought one at the hardware store, but why buy razors to shave your yaks, when you can mine and smelt your own iron to make razors?

So there I was, hammering down the tip of this 3/16” masonry bit, then filing the tapered end, heating it up again, quenching it to re-harden the tip, and finally grinding down the tip to a fine point on the 1000 grit whetstone that Besha keeps for her kitchen knives and which neither of us really know how to use properly. Voilà, one steel scribe.

Did I mention I’m making a set of bookshelves?

So I used my fancy mechanical calipers to scribe the mid-line on each half of each of the brackets, and used a square and my new handmade scribe to mark the locations of each hole. The vertical dimensions of each bracket vary quite widely, because I bent them in a post vise, rather than using a brake like a sane person, and I never quite accounted properly for the radius on the bend. So I used the workbench as a level an just measured 1½” and 3” upwards from “level”. Which left a variable amount of bracket sticking above the upper screw hole, but I can’t see as that will be a problem.

These are rustic bookshelf brackets, after all. I just have to keep telling myself that. Anyway the tops of the brackets will hopefully be hidden behind my book collection.

Then I adjusted the speed on the drill press — more impressively, I found the instruction manual, which I had managed not to lose, and looked up the correct speed for drilling ¼” steel — by means of changing the placement of a belt on a pair of pulleys that connect the drive motor to the actual drill assembly. The motor literally just sits on a spring-loaded hinge that can be unlatched with a thumbscrew, and you just rotate the motor in or out to tighten or loosen the belt. It is a very simple design and quite a cool one.

And then, at last, at long last, I drilled the screw holes in the brackets. I put on some classic rock and got into a bit of a rhythm with it. I used a block of wood and some spring clamps to hold the workpiece in place. I applied a lot of 3-in-1 machine oil to the drill bit on each go, and retired my toothbrush from its original service to its new role in clearing the bit and the workpiece of the inevitable oily metal shavings. Nine brackets times two holes in the top, and two in the bottom makes 36 holes. All of them drilled straight, and more or less in the right place, and I didn’t even break a drill bit.

Riding high on this success, I swapped out the drill bit for a countersink bit, so as to be able to recess the heads of wood screws attaching the shelf to the bracket and the bracket to the wall. This involved fiddling with the drill stop in order to get the countersink to just the right depth — you don’t want the screw head to stick out, and you don’t need it to be too recessed.

Well, I got 3 countersinks in, and had the drill stop set just about right, when the countersink bit just… stopped working. By that I mean, each time it got to a fairly shallow depth on the workpiece, it would just bind up and stop rotating, and the drill assembly would make an ugly noise. I tried adjusting the speed of the drill press downwards in the hopes that this would give it more torque, but no juice.

At this point, it was basically time to make dinner. And I hadn’t even finished step one on my plans for the day.

I sat there looking at these bookshelf brackets, into which I have poured I don’t even know how many hours at this point, and spent far more on materials and tools than the store-bought brackets they were meant to supplant. I vaguely wished I had just put up the store-bought brackets, because if I had, I’d already have bookshelves and books on shelves and about a dozen fewer half-unpacked boxes still littering my apartment 4½ months after moving in.

But I guess I wouldn’t have had the experience of making them. I got my forge and anvil and vise set up, even if I still haven’t properly secured the anvil stand. I got a drill press and have learned a few things about setting it up. I suppose I’ll be satisfied when the brackets are done, and the shelves are on the wall, and the books are on the shelves. Insh’allah.

I went inside and got Besha to remove a metal splinter from my thumb.

The rest of my evening was basically devoted to packing for two weeks in New Hampshire, which I’m leaving for in the morning. Wish me safe travels, please and thank you. If you’re reading this, I send you my love.