Drawer Fronts and Flat Wood

Last Thursday I cut my drawer fronts all to Length (25 3/8") and drilled pocket holes in 8 of the pieces in preparation for putting 16 of the pieces togehter in pairs to make 8 panels I could cut to size for the bottom 8 drawers (my stock is wide enough for the top drawers).

Last night (Tuesday) I went in to glue up the panels and found that over the long weekend the pieces I had cut had all cupped, so none of them were flat.  Luckly, I now have a 10" Jointer / Planer and I spend the evening flattening one face and one edge of all the pieces.  Tonight I hope to run them all through the planer and get them truely flat, then I can finally glue them up.

I only hope jointing and planeing them will not make them so thin the pocket holes I drilled for 3/4" stock will still work.

I love a new tool!

About the only thing missing from my shop was a thickness planer and decent jointer.  I saw a video review of the RIKON 12" Combo Jointer / Planer and thought it would be a great idea for my shop (and its rapidly vanishing floor space) to get a combo set-up.  That way I would get rid of the old (nearly broken) 4" jointer I have and replace it with a combo.

Now the RIKON is supposed to be about $1600.00 and that was a lot of money for me drop on any tool (combination or not).  I did some web surfing and found another video review of the JET 10" combo Jointer / Planer -- and the good news is that it was on $399.00 at Woodcraft.

Well - long story short - it turned out to be cheaper by about $30.00 for me to buy it at Amazon.com and pay $419.00 for it - free shipping.

Yesterday was the big day, and the box was dropped of by ABF.  I moved back into the shop and put the beasty together.


And here it is:

Hand Cut Dovetails - Why?

I have started attempting to cut some dovetails by hand.  No one has shown me how, though I've watched it being done on The Rough Cut Show.  My wife wanted to know why I was doing dovetails... what for?

Well I guess, in my mind, being able to do hand cut dovetails is a milestone skill for woodworking.  It would make me feel good knowing I can do it.

Here are some pictures that show I really can't do it ... yet.

This end pin is actually pretty good:

This one is OK.

This one is not so good (and neither is the picture).

And this is just aweful.  I don't know what happened here, but hey, that's why you practice.

It's not health care, it's Simon Says...

Now I do understand that Simon Says isn't exactly the correct metaphor to use here, but it makes for catchy reading. I went to see one of my (currently 5) doctors as "we" fight "my" cancer. After stuffing a camera up my nose and down my throat (I'm pretty sure he went far enough to check out my colon for goodness sake) he finds a Granulanoma in my voice box and prescribes for me some kind of generic Prilosec, 40mg, 2xday.

I rushed right over to my local pharmacist (well, 2 days later) and proudly hand her my prescription form (which was actually hand written, haven't seen that in a long time). Cue the dramatic interlude music....my insurance company won't approve that drug. How about this other one instead? "Sure" I say. Well another drug means I have to call the doctor's office back and he has to re-prescribe it.

An hour later the pharmacy calls me and says my insurance company won't approve the prescription because it’s written for 2xday and they only want me to take it 1xday.... who the heck are these people! Do they even know WHY I'm taking the drug? How can they know I'm only supposed to take it 1xday?

Because I'm a big $$ patient I have nurse case manager with my insurance company. I call her (and I'm in a pissy mood now cause they are screwing with me again) and when she calls me back and I explain to her what's going on she tells me I need to get the prescription PRE-APPROVED by the insurance company because my DOCTOR wants me to take it 2xday which more than the normal dosage....

Here is the kicker, PREAPPROVALS have to be submitted by my Primary Care Doctor, and he is NOT the doctor (remember I have 5 now) that prescribed the drug in the first place. So I have to call his office and explain what going on to one of the admin people there. They submit a request to my insurance company and 2 (business) days later (today, 4 days after I submitted the request to my doctor’s office, now 7 days after I got the prescription) they say Yes, I can get the medicine I was prescribed.

Now my Primary Care Doctor NEVER SAW ME, he doesn't know WHY I need the pills 2xday, he probably doesn't even know I was prescribed the pills because his office people took care of it. I don't understand why I had to ASK the insurance company before I could submit the prescription, you would think the mere act of the pharmacist submitting it would be enough of an ask. It’s just another hoop, another level of paper work, another thing adding to the cost of health care. Remember the insurance company never got any more information for the PREAPPROVAL then for the initial request from the pharmacy...

Simon Says you may NOW get your prescription filled...

What a load of crap.