Common Sense Political Thought

Gort was apparently trying to pick up the slack for me:

It shouldn’t snow on the weekend

I noticed that Dana hasn’t done his usual bad weather post blaming Al Gore so I’ll pick up the slack. The forecast says this will over before the NFL playoff games in Pittsburgh and New Jersey tomorrow which is disappointing because I love watching football in the snow. But I’m sure we will still see the obligatory shots of idiots without shirts. I blame Al Roker.

OK, So I didn’t write about the snow, but I have an excuse: Mrs Pico was making me work!

I haven’t been moving as fast on the kitchen project as she would like, and she insisted suggested that I get my lazy ass to work on it.  So, I spent that part of Saturday not involved in snoveling the show cutting wood.

I’ve only used cope-and-stick joinery once before, for a door on the medicine chest in the bathroom; this project is considerably larger.  Considering that the first piece is a radiator cover, I was concerned that carpenter’s glue alone wouldn’t hold it, but would get weakened by the heating and cooling cycles.

In the current issue of Fine Woodworking, there’s an article about strength tests for racking on different types of joinery — and cope-and-stick, which is fine for things which don’t get much stress, came out poorly.

So, I said to myself, “Self, I wonder if it would be possible to reinforce the joint with pocket screws.”  Because the tenon is longer than the exposed wood, it made using the pocket hole jig a bit trickier, and I was concerned that the tips of the screws would emerge through the finished face.  A test set on a couple pieces of scrap showed that I could use the pocket screw technique to reinforce the joint.  As a side benefit, the use of pocket screws will create as much pressure on the joint as clamping, so that just helps with the gluing process.

So, yes, I did fall down on the job of blaming Al Gore, but I had an excuse: I was actually working!

However, the forecasters are calling for high temperatures in the single digits by the end of the week, with lows below zero; I hereby blame our former vice president, in advance!