Santa's workshop is up an running

Buenas dias from Costa Rica my friends,

Once again it is a sunny 70 degree day here in Costa Rica. I hope you have been enjoying the posts, although not much has been posted about the rocker project. Thanks for visiting though. I haven't been write any new posts for awhile, things have been pretty busy in the ministry getting ready for the Christmas cantata in the church.

The title of this post also explains what has been happening here lately. As I mentioned in my last post about how we has missionaries live on the field and how December was a tough month, it taught  us quite a bit on our priorities and what we wished to teach our children about Christmas as the world commercializes the holiday more and more every year. So I have been in full swing building the Christmas gifts. The wood arrived late as my Tico friend was really busy in his work and couldn't get here sooner, so I have a little over a week for the kids presents and a bit longer for the in-laws (their coming down on the first). As you can see in the pictures I got 4 planks of 4/4 Guanacaste about 24" wide and 7' long. It came wetter than I had hoped but we are getting by. This may sound like a lot of water to you all up north but the average for the wood was about 20%. As I said we are coming our of the rainy season and back in October, the peak of the rainy season, the wood can be at about 24%. During this time the lowest you can usually get it is about 14%. during the height of the dry season you will probably get it down to about 11%.. We live in a high humidity area being that C.R. is the size of West Virginia, and is surrounded by oceans. Here in Sarchi we are about 3500 ft. above sea level so that is why the temperature is rather nice. An hour drive away you will find yourself at the Pacific ocean with temperatures up around the 90's and very high humidity.

So back to the building of the presents. I rough cut all the pieces for the different presents, I am building two pochade boxes for my girls, three ring toss sets with six posts to play a form of Frisbee golf, a Chinese checker board game, a small marble hockey game, and a small Foosball table. Later I hope to build. for my in-laws, two small versions of the card catalogue project Tom Fidgen built. So what I did was cut the pieces out and then planed all the surfaces to expose the wood. I then left it a day out in the sun turning it periodically and now it is down to about 15% and really didn't warp much. I have to say it was quite the workout planning all that wood but well worth the effort. The immortal word of Hulk Hogan come to mind when after a tough round of wrestling someone asked him how he felt he said, "the pythons are hurtin brother."

 Here is the end result with all the pieces drying and waiting to be formed. Just so you know I didn't use the table saw. It has turned into an assembly table, but will be leaving the shop next month as I sold it to a fellow missionary. She was a faithful servant to me for many years and I will miss her dearly.

After a day of planning I filled three garbage cans full of shavings. First thing tomorrow,sharpen my plan blades. 

I don't know if you can see the different colors in the grain here but the darker lines actually have a purple hue to them. It is quite beautiful when you see it in person. 

 I hadn't put the handle on yet but I really enjoyed building this project. This box was for the young lady who has come to help us, for the next year, with our children's homeschooling. Since I get all my wood 4/4 I had to do some resawing to get all the pieces down to 1/2" thickness. Tom's kerfing plane and frame saw really came in handy for this. I have two more boxes to build so I will be resawing quite a bit very soon.

I will keep you updated on the progress and then post some finished pictures. Well my friends, keep up the good work, don't grow weary in well doing, and have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

God bless
Mark