Things I Learned Today Pt 2 ...

1) Achieving a nice looking finish on MDF is like trying to polish a turd; as Mythbusters proved, it is possible, but it requires more time, effort and cost than a sane person is likely to commit to the task.

2) As a corollary to the above; real wood looks amazing with very little effort, a bit of sanding and a couple of coats of varnish and it is beautiful.

Following on from the above:

3) Instead of spending a load of money on stain for the MDF, i should have taken the hit up front and bought real wood for the shelves. It would have ended up costing the same, taken less time and would have finished looking much better.

4) After around 40 hours of work, i have realised that i probably would have been better off just buying a couple of bookcases from a shop. Ok it is nice that the bookcase i made fits perfectly in the space and maximises the number of books i can store, but it took a hell of a long time and is far from perfect.


I wanted to capture what i had learned incase i forgot, there will be a full blog post on my bookcase project within a week or so.

Things I Learned Today ...

1) Trying to varnish a large flat surface with a brush is an exercise in futility; you - or at least i - cannot escape brush marks.

2) Trying to precisely cut-in varnish along a 2 metre length is equally futile; it won't end up straight … ever.

Following on from the above:

3) My new favourite thing in the whole world is a small foam roller for applying goss finishes. It gives an awesomely smooth coating and is seriously quick to use.

4) Masking Tape is your friend. It might take 2 hours to mask off the trim on 4 shelves, but combined with point 3 it takes 5mins to put a coat of varnish on a shelf instead of 30mins with a brush.


To explain the above - shortly there will be a post about my experience designing and building a bookcase, be afraid, be very afraid.

Previous Post Update

In April - holy crap where have the last 2 months gone? - i wrote a couple of posts about backing the reprint of Art Space Tokyo on Kickstarter, well it finally arrived!

Package Contents - Letter, Signed Uncut Signature & Book

My Name In A Book (line 14)

So far i'm really impressed with the quality of the book, more of a review when i get a chance to read it.


PS I was going to shrink the photos a little, but i actually kinda like how they run outside the content box ... thoughts?

Nihilism

"When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis." - Wikipedia Page on Nihilism

The Bizarre Appeal of Sports Events Pt2

An interesting observation relating to last weeks *cough* post.

It appears that a large part of the appeal is frequency. I noticed a significant decline in my interest when it went from 3 games a day to 2 and now that there is a 2 day gap before the quarter finals, i knida don't care anymore. When it is easy to become immersed in the event for a reasonable amount of time every day it seems much more interesting. Alternatively i may have just watched so much football that i will have no desire to watch any more for the next 4 years ...