Seb Palmer

Today, after an early morning shift, delivering in Peterboro’, I continued working on the writing desk. Is it a bureau?

Things reached a frustrating impasse, regarding sourcing appropriate fabrics. I needed something that’d work as hinges, as well as cloth for the base and the folding writing slope.

My first attempt at ‘fabric hinges’, using some kind of woven plastic tape (from Storey’s, in March), was an abject failure. I tried using wood glue to bond it, but that simply wouldn’t adhere to the plastic. I wound up having to remove the ‘tape’, and clean up the glue residue.

After lots of ringing around, trying to find local haberdashers with the right material, I eventually went to Ely. Looking to get better hinge material, and – hopefully – the green velvet for the folding writing surface. City Centre Cycles duly obliged.

Cleaning up the base was a lot more work than anticipated. Firstly due to the ancient and very dusty fabric remnants, and secondly/mostly, on account of the remains of a very sticky adhesive.

There was also a crack to be dealt with. I thought about using two part epoxy. But I wound up plumping for plain ol’ wood-filler. After all, the crack will be protected by and glued to a new baize cloth.

Better. But, alas, a bit of a balls up. I used spray adhesive. Which is effective but horrid. And, as can be seen above, one edge of the baize/base doesn’t quite align right.

Once this was done, I glued the new fabric flaps – using card or paper like material called buckram. I used spray adhesive again. This appears to have worked much better. Certainly way better than the wood glue failure!

At this juncture it seemed appropriate to re-attach the two ‘halves’. I used all new screws. One screw had been a nightmare to remove. As a consequence the hole that was left was a bit oversized. A bit of cocktail stick, sanded down and tapped in to said orifice, made a workable plug.

Projects like this are usually plagued – at least in my experience – by minor irritations. Perhaps avoidable, with better planning and forethought? A significant one arose at the end of the day: the new green velvet for the writing slope wasn’t sized correctly.

It was my own dumb fault, frankly. In taking the bureau apart, I’d forgotten that the original cloth was a single piece. I’d allowed myself to think I’d be re-covering the two halves separately… Doh!

This necessitates another long trip to Ely – poss’ prior to S&F tomorrow? – to buy an appropriately sized piece of cloth.

Took the writing desk I rescued from the local dump into S&F today. For a second time. First time I was just sizing her up. This time I set to work.

There was no brass sheet, as such. So Karl suggested I use a bit of brass from a door latch plate. Cutting g the latter with a fret-saw was raking aeons. Transitioning to a (?) saw cut down my work time (boom boom!) dramatically.

Walter has said he has Walnut veneer, and will bring it in. Fab! Hope that’ll match? No idea what wood it is… Asked Clem, he thought poss’ walnut? I also think it might be teak, or mahogany. who knows!?

I had a pleasant time at S&F, despite my own work there being rather disappointing. once home I revisited what I’d failed to do at S&F, which was the two missing bits of brass ‘piping’. These prices a damn sight harder to make and place than I’d anticipated.

Superglue failed to do the job (as usual!). So I had to resort to Araldite epoxy.

I added some wood-filler, where I’d wound up carving out a deeper flatter, squarer channel, for the brass piping. This will support a strip of veneer, in due course.

After separating the lid – see the above gallery – which, again, proved really hard work (old screws rusted in situ), I really cleaned up where the green velvet and material hinges had been. Once again, really hard work going.

And the final job this evening? Making a brass plate to replace all the damaged wood, where there was a slot for locking one of the writing surface boards in place.

This involved making a brass plate with screw (mounting) holes, and a slot. And cleaning up and repairing the very damaged area where this will sit.

Blah…

I tried to remedy numerous issues, such as: a prod dowel (tapped back down); a missing dowel (first image, below); filling some holes in the top surface, etc.

The lower portion of the lectern also required so e more drastic work. Clamps and glue alone – even using a thick mix of glue and sawdust – were failing to fix the broken ‘feet’ of the two side panels.

Ultimately they required the use of penetrating dowels. Which worked admirably. I also put the little ‘feet’, removed at an earlier stage, back on. Albeit in slightly new positions. And again, dowels were used, rather than screws.

Annoyingly I don’t seen to have pictures of the addition of the feet…

I’m not a great joiner, or group-think acolyte. I recall attending anti-poll tax and ‘reclaim the streets’ events, in the ‘90s, and being distinctly uncomfortable.

However, that said, I am totally with those Americans protesting against Trump’s rapid goose-stepping towards fascism in the US right now.

I was really gutted there was nothing going on locally here in the UK, that I could get to. London is too far away and too expensive for me to visit, right now.

Of course there’s an irony in showing solidarity with the US ‘No Kings’ demos in a country that still has a King.

I was very worried that Trump’s jackbooted ICE goons, MAGA-moron infiltrators, and other such ne’erdowells would attempt to disrupt and tarnish at least some – if not all – the many events in the States.

So far it looks like that very much didn’t happen. Rather satisfyingly I read on one online source that in all the 2,700+ events, wit total attendance of over 7 million people, no arrests of demonstrators were made!

By contrast, 22 MAGA supporters had been arrested, attacking or attempting to disrupt the protests. I hope all of the above is true? It may be too early to say. But at least it appears to have all happened peacefully, as was intended.

*Compare this with the utterly ridiculous situation currently occurring – see above image – in the UK, with peaceful protesters (many of them very elderly!) being arrested for saying that we mustn’t support genocide in Gaza. The alleged ‘terrorist’ offence is supporting a proscribed organisation (?).

As I’d feared, the new pad I ordered, via Amazon, wasn’t an accurate match; the four mounting holes on my sander being just a wee bit closer together. This can be seen in the pic’ below (orbital sander ring, on top of the new pad, illustrates the issue).

Thinking how to fix things…

In the end I used the holes on the little metal ring (that goes ‘twixt pad and sander) to drill more accurately located holes on the new pad. To my great relief, this worked.

To get accurately drilled holes in the hard plastic (and thence through soft foam!), I double/clamped the pad to some sacrificial timber.

It seems that a good few of these generic near brand-less power tools suffer from similar issues, re maintenance: non-standard fittings, and non-existent support!

But if I can muddle through, and keep them functioning acceptably? All told, at the end o’ the day, it seems to have worked. I now have a working orbital sander again.

Chapter 20 of All Hell Let Loose, ‘Victims’, is proving both fascinating and very disturbing.

For example, something that’s very scary, in light of Trump’s current slide into ever more violent degeneracy, is that ‘… in one of the most highly educated societies in Europe, it was easy to find men willing to murder those whom their rulers defined as state enemies, without employing duress.’

The stance of Trump and his goons, particularly towards Blacks and Hispanics, is blatantly racist and fascist. Equally appalling, is how the Far Right of American politics – now in power – belittles and dehumanises even those of their own ‘tribe’ deemed to be their enemies.

If a relatively cultured people – Germany – can be turned into barbarous killers so easily, how much more so might mobs of moronic MAGA types gladly do the violence incited by those in power?

As Hastings puts it: ‘… there is ample evidence in modern experience that many people are ready to kill others to order, once satisfied that this fulfils the wishes of those whose authority they accept.’

One of the greatest ironies, to my mind, as much of the World appears to degenerate along an Axis of evil and ignorance, under the banners of populist nationalism, is the oh so eager adoption of The Great Replacement idea (GR, henceforth, for brevity’s sake!), not just by right wing America, but around the world (inspiring violent nutters in the US, Europe, and the Antipodes).

Before we even get to the whole GR imbroglio, it’s worth pausing to take note of an incredible example of both the monumental hypocrisy and beyond myopic lack of self-awareness that seems to blight contemporary American culture, such that, given the historical/geographical proximity of the genocide of First Nation peoples*, American diplomat George Ball can unabashedly say: ‘… the idea of massive extermination was so far beyond the traditional comprehension of most Americans that we instinctively refused to believe in its existence.’ A quote cited by Hastings, in his aforementioned ‘Victims’ chapter, on US reluctance to accept the reality/scale of the Holocaust.

But let’s go to France now, and the unlikely seeming origin story of the GR trope, or meme. In its ‘trope’ form it’s the offspring of French intellectual and former poet, Reynard Camus (no relation to Albert, as far as I know?). Adherents of Camus’ GR theory in its bastardised dumbed down meme form, of the far-right extreme-violence variety, would probably – for the most part – be rather put out were they to learn that the originator of their beloved ‘philosophy’ is a gay French poet and intellectual.

*I guess the big chief – sorry! – difference is that the American genocide occurred, relative to the German/Jewish one, in slow-motion.

Yesterday I put two coats of gloss lacquer and orange sparkle glitter on my pancake snare.

Today I intend to put down several more layers of gloss varnish. And perhaps work on my ‘Hannibal’ lectern, as well? That needs sanding, staining, etc.

It’s amazing how quickly things in the US appear to be ‘going south’, right now.

I remember posting on my mini-military blog, a book review, in which I lament the rise of right wing ‘plopulist’ politics, as a dangerous step towards political and social fragmentation, and thereby possible conflict.

I’ve also coined a few expressions, two of which I’m particularly pleased with: the ‘shelfie’ (now in popular use), and ‘plopulism’. The latter being shit ideas that gain socio-political traction.

Trump, Farage, Bojo, are all ‘plopulists’. And the danger they represent covers a spectrum, from – at best – the continued and increasingly unbridled ascendancy of rapine disaster crapitalism (more from Seb’s word-mint!) to – at worst – world war three, and even potential anthropocide, through self-immolation.

As Noam Chomsky points out, the word evil is just nowhere near strong enough to describe these kind of folks; the kind who will gladly sacrifice huge swathes of fellow humans to long slow painful deaths, via poverty, ill-health, and suchlike, or more quickly (but no less traumatically) in war, and poison our very life support system – Earth, herself – in pursuit of immeasurable personal wealth and power.

Several movies seem prescient right now: Idiocracy (2006), for starters. And, more scarily, Civil War (2024). I’ve thought many times exactly what this reviews’ byline states: Idiocracy looks more and more like a tragic documentary, as opposed to a comedic ‘mockumentary’.

And Trump et al’s vigorous efforts at provoking their ‘enemies’ look shamefully and blatantly like an attempt to precipitate civil unrest/war. We haven’t reached the bodies burned in pits stage yet. But Republican use of naked and unaccountable force already resembles Hitler’s use of the SA and SS, against their chosen scapegoats.

If those Americans who can see these fascist goons for what they are – and there seem to be plenty who do – don’t act en masse, decisively and immediately, Trump, and his lunatic enablers and moron minions, might drag all of us into very dark times.

*

At present I have three wooden snares on the go.

The newest addition to the workbench is the Pancake Snare. I was inspired by the video below, to try this. And I just happened to have a leftover ring of shell, from making some hand drums.

Step one was cutting bearing edges. I did that a while back. Poss’ at S&F? There was some tear-out, of the outermost plus, inside and out. So I filled anything like that in, this morning.

After sanding the filler, I taped the inside and bearing edges, ready for an orange sparkle coating.

This video is helpful:

https://youtu.be/RjA6JuWLEB8?si=a37JCZ9_G6jR6Zz7