the ancient art of shalom » Shots

Chinatown Shot: Kuo Wah Cafe – “Double Yummies!”

Jason — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:35:22 +0000

Gotta love the slogans of a Chinese restaurant bearing my surname.

Kuo Wah Cafe (San Francisco, CA). Olympus E-P1, Lumix 20mm f/1.7.

Kuo Family Winter Garden 2011-2012: Mid-Season Update

Jason — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:04:42 +0000

Our winter garden is now about two months old (though the planning and seedling starts began in August 2011), so I thought I’d give a (partial) pictorial update of what’s been happening in our 250 square foot plot.

Fava Beans

First up, we’ve got 48 square feet of fava beans growing, occupying two of our 6′ x 4′ raised beds. There are somewhere around 100-125 plants or so, and half of them (the bed in the background) were started via direct sowing of the beans 3 inches under, and the other half (the bed in the foreground) were started in seedling flats and transplanted three weeks later. So far the transplants seem to be doing a little bit better, and are about two feet tall. While most of them are growing pretty straight at the moment, eventually they get to about four to six feet, at which point we’ve found they need some support. This first patch happens to be growing where I set up a cold frame, so we’ll rely on those pvc pipes to help hold these plants up.

Why fava beans, you ask? First off, they are what the biointensive method calls “heavy givers,” meaning that they give to the soil instead of taking away. To do proper crop rotation, you need to have a three-part rotation between heavy givers, light feeders, and heavy feeders. Second off, they’re easy to grow in SF, do well in cold and foggy climates, and produce some actual beans you can eat! Third off, they provide ample green material that will later be used in our compost pile. It’s a pretty good win-win-win crop, and we got a whole lot of seeds for a relatively inexpensive amount.

Next up we’ve got parsnips!

Parsnips

We’ve never actually eaten parsnips before, but from everything we’ve read they’re just like carrots, only white. Moreover, they’re easier to grow than carrots! Here we’ve got about 4-5 square feet of them, and the leaves are quite strong and robust. They’re planted on four inch centers, and we probably have about 40 plants here, and another 15-20 in another patch that was stagger planted so they’d mature at different times.

Batting third…Swiss Chard!

Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard did quite well in our garden last winter with three plants, and looks pretty good this time around as well. We have about fifteen plants, all started in flats. After a somewhat dicey start with some slugs eating a lot of their leaves, they are now quite robust, producing a lot of deep green, healthy looking leaves. We just ate a spinach and chard quiche this week, and it was delicious!

A Wide Variety of Potatoes

Next up is our potato patch. Pictured here we have eighteen potato plants, and the blank spot to its right now has about 8 or 9 potato plants coming up that were stagger planted. You know how the eye of a potato sprouts after a while and starts looking gross? Well, that’s how you start new potato plants! Once they’ve sprouted for a couple weeks, you cut up the potatoes so that each piece has about two to three eyes on it, let it sit for a day so the cut can scab over, and you stick it in the ground 6 to 9 inches deep, eyes facing up. Wait two to three weeks, watering frequently, and plants come up!

The crazy thing about growing potatoes is that you have no idea whether they’re actually developing underneath the dirt. You simply have to trust the process. Once the plants die, wait a couple weeks, and then gently dig them up with a spading fork. Last year, it was an exhilarating experience to do that and find…potatoes!

This year we have a variety of potatoes growing, including Yukon Gold and red potatoes. The other thing to keep in mind with potatoes is that you can’t grow them in the same place within a three or four year period. Last year we grew them in the patch right behind (where you can barely see our cereal rye growing), and we put it down in our historical chart so we know where we planted before.

Lacinato Kale

Lacinato (or dinosaur) kale is our next featured crop.

We sort of overdid the number of seedlings we started in response to the 2011 Slug Attack, so we had too many kale plants for the space we had. So we made some modifications to our garden plan. Here’s one patch of seedlings in our side 1.5′ x 6′ beds, alternate spacing at about 10-12 inches. Last year we had a very productive kale crop through the summer, so we’re hoping for some good success this time around as well. We probably have around 25 plants or so. Our main consumption method for kale is in chip form: clean the leaves, spray olive oil, sprinkle some salt, and bake them for about 20 minutes at around 300 degrees. When they are nice and crispy, take them out, and enjoy! The kids love them too.

That’s it for now. I’ll let you know how the rest of the season goes!

Get a Year-Round Supply of Green Onions for Two Bucks

Jason — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:46:31 +0000

Green Onions!

A tip we got from our friends the Satakes: Instead of repeatedly going to the grocery store to pick up a bunch of green onions, and wondering how in the world you’re going to use all eleven bunches when you only needed one, you can plant some in your garden straight from the market! We got ours from a farmer’s market, organic ones, took them home, and stuck them in dirt. Those roots will take and each bunch will become a fully thriving green onion plant.

Every so often when we need some green onions, we’ll cut off exactly what we need, and use it. Or, when they are growing too rapidly, we cut off a bunch, cut them, and freeze them. The cool part is these will keep regrowing a new stalk when you cut one off, and thus you end up with a continual supply of green onions. These here have been in our garden for seven months, and they’re still going strong. We expect to have to replace them eventually, maybe at the year mark, but it’s a great, sustainable way to have fresh veggies with minimal work. Pretty nifty. Think Strega Nona, but vegetable style.

How I Built a Custom-Sized Red Oak Dining Table for Under 200 Bucks

Jason — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:18:30 +0000

As some of you might know, we’ve been trying to do as many things on our own these days. Marcia has crafted tons of clothes for our kids by reusing some of my old tattered shirts and sweats and making some pretty awesome sweatshirts and t-shirts. If you ever see m or o sporting an amazon.com t-shirt, you’ll know where it came from. I think there’s a lot to be said about learning how to do stuff on your own. You get to know the ins and outs of something. When something breaks, you can fix it. This applies to a wide array of commodities from clothing to computers. Over the spring, I finished a cedar patio bench that turned into a living room bench. Then came the next project–a custom-sized dining room table. Our kitchen has an open space that’s big enough to feel spacious with nothing there, but not quite big enough to put a standard width table. So, I set out on a journey to build a solid table that would seat six (and eight in a pinch), fit two place settings face to face, yet still fit in our kitchen space. It was time to get back to the power tools and make some trips to the lumber yard and the hardware store. So how was it built?

It started with a plan from Ana White’s Knock Off Wood site–the narrow farmhouse table. That’s how it started at least. I was going to custom modify the dimensions to fit our size: about 28-30 inches wide and around 5.5 feet long. I picked up some great tips from the site my first time around building the bench, the coolest of which was the Kreg Jig, which allows you to join wood while hiding the connection point. Pretty nifty. The more I got into actually working with the plan, though, the more I realized it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. So I started modifying, pulling out paper and pencil, scaling things with rulers, even pulling out a couple geometry tricks or two. Pretty soon I had something that was quite different from the farmhouse table. So without further ado, here’s what I did:

Part One: Materials

First, my hardware and lumber list. Note that this is what I actually used in the final product, so it doesn’t include mistakes (which I made many), and prices are approximate (I can’t quite remember everything, but I’m really, really close):

Lumber in a Sedan - You can actually carry 10 foot lumber in a four-door

1×4 Red Oak S4S (for the aprons) - 14 feet @ $0.95/foot = $13.30
1×6 Red Oak S4S (for the tabletop) – 30 feet @ $2.15/foot = $64.50
2×3 Red Oak S4S (for the legs) – 10 feet @ $3.50/foot = $35.00
1×3 Red Oak S4S (for the corner and cross braces) – 8 feet @ $2.00/foot = $16.00
Tabletop Fasteners – 3 packs of 8 each @ $2.69/pack = $8.07
8 Hanger Bolts (for the corner brace-leg attachment) – 3/8″ x 4″ @ $1.19 each = $9.52
8 Nuts and Screws (for the hanger bolts) – $0.45 each = $3.60
Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane = $6.27
7 – 3″ Foam Brushes @ $0.98 each = $6.86
24 Kreg Pocket Screws = $1.25
16 – #8 3/4″ Wood Screws = $1.00

Total (including tax): $180.25

Look at any furniture catalog, and there’s no way you’ll find a table that is solid wood and built really well to be anywhere close to this price. There were some mass-produced ones from Pier One Imports for $299 or $399, and other solid wood tables from places like Pottery Barn or West Elm that cost close to a grand. Of course, I had to put in the time, which all told was about two and half months, almost exclusively on weekends while the kids were napping. Toward the end, I started getting up at 5 in the morning to really power through it and get some woodworking in before work, but all told, it was worth it.

Part Two: The Tabletop

The five 1×6 pieces were meant to be joined together, lengthwise, to form the tabletop surface. A lot of tables you see out there today are either plywood or cheapo particle board (think of that IKEA desk that you screw the legs onto, the VIKA something that yes, we have). But I wanted to build a super sturdy, long lasting solid wood tabletop. It was gonna be around six feet long and around 30 inches wide, so that meant getting five boards that were 6 inches wide (in reality, about 5.5 inches even though they’re called “1×6″) that were each six feet long. 30 feet of red oak is really heavy. I was originally going to join them with pocket screws, but after talking to an experienced woodworker, Greg, he told me that biscuits–small pieces of wood that slides into slots created in the side of the planks and clamped with glue–were the way to go. So I borrowed his biscuit joiner, some biscuits, and a whole mess of clamps and got started. My buddy Remy came over to help me with this (no way could I have done this part solo–thanks Rems!). Here’s what it looked like:

Biscuit Slot

Biscuit Slots Cut, Preparing for the Join

Glued, Joined, Clamped, and Drying

After the tabletop was dry, I had the edges trimmed on a table saw (thanks again Greg!), and then I sanded it like nobody’s business. Even though the biscuits hold the boards relatively in place and each board was technically the same thickness, they were still slightly off. So I took my 1/3 sheet pad sander with 60 and 80 grit sandpaper and sanded it. It felt like hours. My hands were buzzing after each session, but I had to keep doing it to make it a smooth tabletop. I worked much harder on the side that had the fewest imperfections because that would end up being the top facing side. The top ended up being 65 inches long by 28 inches wide.

Next, I had to do something about those edges. Since this was S4S wood, the edges were sharp! So I had to round them off. I toyed with the idea of doing this manually with a sanding block, but quickly realized how much of a pain that would be. I had to learn how to use a router. No, no, not one of those Linksys things, but an actual woodworking router which has a bit that spins really, really fast and can custom shape wood. I took a 1/4″ roundover bit to all the edges and smoothed them off, following it with a coarse to find sandpaper treatment just like the top. Things were shaping up.

Part Three: The Base

The base consists of a few simple components: four legs, four aprons (the piece of wood connecting the legs to each other), two cross braces, and four corner braces. I cut all of these to size, based on my final tabletop size of 65″ x 28″, leaving a one inch overhang from the aprons. In addition, the aprons were set 1/4″ away from the edge of the legs. I routed all the edges of the legs, all the downward facing edges of the aprons and cross braces, and mitered the corner braces at 45 degree angles. (Additional thanks to Anthony for helping one afternoon with some routing and sanding). Each of the aprons had two Kreg pocket holes drilled into them so they could be attached to the legs. The corner braces also had two 1/2″ holes drilled into the center for the hanger bolts, which would be used to attach the corner braces directly into the leg at a 45 degree angle, adding some super support. Each of the corner braces were also drilled with a countersink bit for the #8 3/4″ screws that would affix them into the aprons. Perhaps this would make much more sense with a picture (note my little helper m still in her pjs):

Dining Table Base

You’ll see some additional biscuit slots cut into the inner sides of the aprons and cross braces. These are for the table top fasteners, which allow the solid wood tabletop to breathe–simply sticking screws from the bottom into the top would trap the top. Over time, solid wood tops expand and contract, and the screws would impede movement, causing it to crack. Thanks to Greg for alerting me to this!

Part Four: Polyurethane Coat

Between Polyurethane Coats

Next up, I had to seal and coat this thing. I didn’t want to stain it, since I like the natural look of oak and our kitchen cabinetry was also a very natural (or slightly golden tinged) oak. I assembled the base before doing this, but I coated the top and the base separately. So I set about with some polyurethane and a whole bunch of foam brushes. To get this right, I had to apply three coats on all surfaces, with a fine sanding in between coats, gradually increasing my grit with each coat (first coat, then 320 sandpaper, second coat, then 400 sandpaper, third coat, then 0000 steel wool). For the tabletop, I ended up doing six coats, since it would have the most exposure to things like pasta sauce, apple juice, and soup.

This took way long. I had to wait at least 4 hours between coats, and probably longer because San Francisco is so damp! So to do six coats on the top, well, you can imagine, was spread out over the course of many days. But in the end it was worth it, because even after some spills and use, the top is still pretty resilient.

Part Five: Assembly

Now that everything was coated and ready, it was time to assemble the thing. First off, I had to get the two pieces upstairs from the basement. Mind you, red oak is very, very heavy. It’s nothing like pine that most people have probably worked with before. It’s unbelievably dense. On top of that the base was already assembled, and the top was almost 30 feet of wood glued together! I wasn’t sure if I would make it, but I did. I don’t want to do that again. By the time I got it upstairs, it was too late to assemble it because it was bedtime for the kids. So I set up the pieces, and then got up at 6am to get it all assembled before the kids got up. Here are the final stages:

Corner Brace Fully Attached

Tabletop Fastener Attached

Tabletop Attached to the Base

Drove in the final screw just as the kids were getting up. And here is the dining table on its birthday, October 20, 2011:

Red Oak Dining Table

And another shot to see the side detail:

Side Apron Detail

It was worth it. I comfortably typed this whole post on this table.

Next Project: Antique Chair Restoration

Jason — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:43:55 +0000

Bentwood Chair Restoration. E-P1, 20mm, 1/80s, f/2.8, ISO 400.

Downtown Shot: A Crate of Apples

Jason — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:46:56 +0000

This lens is awesome. So is the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market where this shot was taken. I love this city.

A Crate of Apples (San Francisco, CA). Olympus E-P1, 45mm f/1.8, 1/1250s, f/2.5, ISO 200.

Leaf Near Yerba Buena Gardens

Jason — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:16:25 +0000

Leaf Near Yerba Buena Gardens (San Francisco, CA). Olympus E-P1, Lumix 20mm f/1.7, 1/640s, f/1.7, ISO 200.

Downtown Shot: Resting Broom

Jason — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:43:57 +0000

Resting Broom (San Francisco, CA). Olympus E-P1, Nikkor 105mm f/2.5, 1/125s, ISO 200.

Red Bug

Jason — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:15:05 +0000

Some local color from our recent church retreat.

Red Bug (Guerneville, CA). Olympus E-P1, Lumix 20mm f/1.7, 1/1000s, f/6.3, ISO 200.

Shot: Save the Earth

Jason — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:42:52 +0000

A quick shot from an Academy of Sciences exhibit that had kids write their solutions to saving the earth on a card and hang them up on this wall. I especially like the one in the middle: “Do not use cars,” with the X through the car and (I presume) Henry Ford’s name. I like the bus. I used a Picasa filter that desaturates the image starting at a certain radius from a point, leaving color on the instruction plate but rendering all the cards black and white. That little program is pretty powerful!

Save the Earth (San Francisco, 2010). Olympus E-P1, Lumix 20mm, 1/300s, f/3.2, ISO 320.