All screwed up

The bench-on-bench rumbles slowly on; got the vice jaws planed up yesterday. Cunningly I made a shallow rebate in the back of the rear jaw/apron so it'll register against the top easily come glue-up time. #45 to plough a shallow groove at the correct distance, followed up with the #140 to complete the rebate. I'm still in the learning curve stage with that darn plane; every time I adjust the depth I feel I should cry out "thar she skews" in some sort of misplaced Moby Dick fantasy. That is, she skews when I don't want her to, which is a small irritation. Now I've become more aware of it in the LNs I'm finding it everywhere I look. Mildly annoying, once your attention is drawn to it.

Then today it was a hike between w'shop and garage to turn up a couple of vice screws. Before I've had excellent success with old wooden curtain rods for taking a clean thread, so that's what I turned up, all nice and neat and matching. Took me ages, I'm so out of practice. The trouble is, as well as the lathe no longer being handily "there", it also involves unlocking another padlock, removing the sheets shrouding the lathe and grinder, plugging in, turning, cleaning up the mess, re-shrouding the lathe and grinder etc etc. It's such a pain, I tend to get lazy and avoid doing anything at all... Anyway. Gave the new sizing tool for the bedan a trial, and once I'd filed off the swarf it was, well, okay. I'm not sure it's that much more helpful than just having a handy spanner of the required size ready to test as you go, to be honest. Could be my technique though. Probably is. My turning has gone from mediocre to "hack" I'm ashamed to say. Anyway, back to the ranch, soak in BLO and go to tap the threads.

Merde. Threads crumbling left, right and centre. This is in no way the same timber I had success with previously. In short, it's No Good. Bum. Okay, so beech would work, and I just happen to have some skulling about. Square it up on the bandsaur, traipse back up the garage, remove all the protective sheeting from the lathe again, plug in, set up etc etc. Grumble, grumble, moan, moan. Turn the first one and, gott in himmel, the last inch and a half has suddenly acquired a split and is breaking up. For the love of Norm, who's black cat did I strangle while standing under a ladder? Damn it, I'm not mucking about again, so I reduce the length of the "boss" to increase the available thread length; not as much as it was, but this vice in potentia is for dovetailing, not holding a 2x4 widthways. Much to my relief the threading went a-okay, so at least I ended up with something to show for my efforts.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear I failed to take any pics at all yesterday, and only one (of the subsequently failed curtain rod) today. Sometimes words are enough to convey it was just One Of Those Days.