Happy Saturday fellas.

Meat smokin day.

Morning folks. Only thing smoking around here is da sidewalks. Signs up to tell people to not walk their dogs between 9am-4pm.

Not unless they want burnt puppy toes... poor puppy dogs. 😞

Good morning dudes and dudetts. Another clear sky day here in north central MA. There is a town wide yard sale thingy today. Prolly like 40 to 50 yard sales going on. Great day for it. May or may not go check some out. Then again I have too much $hit as it is. Maybe Jonsie will be in town finding some good deals.

Since it looks like it will be clear and mild next few days, I might roll down a layer of stain/sealer on the deck. My guess is it's been a few years since the last sealer and the deck boards could use a dose of weather proofing to suck up. I'm going with cedar colored semi-transparent sealer. I don't need to pressure wash it, just sweep off any dirt and stuff. Prolly a 2 day process - Move deck stuff to one side and roll down the sealer, wait 24 hrs for it to dry then move the stuff to the other side and repeat. I figure its a 4 hour task in total.

Might have to smoke a cigar and contemplate this Herculean task and develop a project plan with milestones and stuff.

I need to do that too bucky. Normally do it every other year, but I skipped last year. Made the mistake of doing a semi solid? Maybe semi transparent stain and it ended up being too paint-like and I was hoping it would weather away more if I skipped another year but now it just looks flakey n stuff. So I'm stuck doing thicker coatings from now on if I want that covered.

Howdy gang...............[ram27bat]

Annual eye exam this morning. 🙄

Good Saturday Morning to All! IT's a cool 67° on the way to 84° today. Breakfast, coffee and a neighborhood trash pickup done.

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I'm not a "paint the wood" fan. My personal preference it to seal it but still have the grain of the wood visible. I work at a furniture manufacturer and we have all different flavors of wood but mostly oak. All different colors of stains to chose from. From just clear coat, no stain with it's natural color to dark mocha. It pains me to see some beautiful oak wood being stained to dark mocha - essentially black and you lose the natural the grain look.

Whatever. Just like looks, books, tastes, music and cigar selections... they are all subjective. What I like may not fit to what others like so who am I to say.

Should've checked the forecast before I made all these plans. Started lightly raining at 8am so I quick hopped on the mower and knocked the grass down. Now I'm delayed on the smoking activities and gotta setup the ez up over the smoker. Hopefully the wind doesn't pick up. Forecast don't say storms, just rain.

I agree, Bucky. I like the natural look of the wood with just some clear coat to protect it. It's what I did with my cabinet shelf in the garage. Left the butcher block alone. Sanded it and then put Behr oil based polyurethane on it. 3 coats IIRC. Looks awesome.

My neighbor just built his wife a cart for their new Ninja thingy... he came over to the house to see what I used on the butcher block. He did the same... sanded and polyurethane and it looks badass.

Walked the dog, went to the gym. Wife is making a cucumber salad later with corn, red onion, avocado, tomato and an olive oil/lemon juice vinaigrette to go along with some ribeyes.

Need to degrease the grill right now so I don't get a conflagration when I cook the steaks.

I like a clear oil finish, though oak looks better to me if the open grain is treated with a filler that has a stain slightly darker than the final finish.

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We have a lot of butcher block in the warehouse but for some reason customers have drifted away from butcher block furniture. Polly too expensive.

On a positive note, I have access to lots of wood. The butcher block stuff makes nice cutting boards. Just slather it with some mineral oil, let ti soak in, and do it a couple times and you gots a nice cutting board.

Summer is here and it's our busy season. We sell a lot of furniture to universities for dorm rooms and common areas and such. UMass Amherst is a yearly big contract. They place orders for solid oak for their dorm rooms every year. This year is for 600 or 800 dorm rooms of solid oak beds, dressers, desks, chairs, night stands and so on. It's like a small village of folks each year! Figure 2 students/room. That's about 1,200-1,400 beds, dressers, desks. nightstands... all in solid oak

Some in natural finish with just a clear coat and others with cherry stain and clear coat. It depends on the dormitory motif.

Sorry to say, my current occupation is based on harvesting trees.

Good day to you, BsOTL, hope you that were not feeling 100% are better and those who need recuperation are healing quickly.

I actually made a cutting board from the butcher block I bought. The place doing my garage cabinets told me if they put it in it'd be $1000. Also said I could get the same one they'd buy at Home Depot for $300 and do it myself... so I did. He left me the screws to mount it. It was $278 + tax - 10% military discount.

I needed 7' and the ones they sell at HD are 8' x 26". Made the wife a cutting board out of that last foot. It's 12" x 26". Of course she uses her plastic ones most of the time. [frypan]

In San Diego I renovated my kitchen. Had butcher block put in on one side and granite on the other. Loved the butcher block and had a large cutting board with the left over.

Lawn mowing plans have been drowned out. Searching for plan B at the bottom of my coffee mug

Had an Irish Coffee? ☕️

Not yet. Maybe the next cup

I don't drink coffee much anymore but when I do it's straight up black with a bit of sugar. I use to drink a probably 4 cups of joe everyday of various blends. The more caffeine the better but in the past couple years my belly doesn't like it. Maybe I'm getting old.

I'm more of a tea guy now. Earl Grey, regular black tea, green tea or various herbal teas. You can find iced tea in my fridge at any given tine even in the winter.

(Tea) Tree five NINE!

I drink black coffee in the morning and I drink Red Rooibos on ice with evening meal. I have to make it extra strong to taste right on ice.