Shrunk wool

I have been saving any and all woolen items that shrunk in the wash, for mittens and maybe for a rug.  I did need new mittens, my old ones were from a shrunken lambswool sweater and were wearing right out.

The sweater I used this time had been shrunk three times, two when I first got it to de-oversize it, and then the one unintentional time.  I did the usual--tracing my hand, adding width for seams and for the thickness of my hand and wrist, sewing a zigzag stitch on the line with extra reinforcement at the thumb joint, and then cutting them out.

I found out that they were a little too thick to sew together on the sewing machine, and had to be sewed by hand.  There was about a week where I was wearing mismatched mittens because I hadn't yet sewn the second one.

I also found that it would be better and much easier to leave the seam edges on the outside, and just wear the mittens inside out.  

So, as usual, they came out looking odd, but they are very warm.

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I also went through my smaller and less usable odds and ends of wool, and made a quick mat for boots and shoes.

My idea, based on an entry rug in the store that I almost bought some time ago, was to attach wool "rocks" to a backing.  For the backing, I used some synthetic felt that I had.  It was black, so I was looking for something to go over it.

Having my fabrics sorted by size turned out to be a good idea.  I quickly found several in my medium-size drawer that could be used for a sort of shoreline, and quilted them over the backing.

Since it was to be a mat, I allowed some of the cut "raw" edges of the fabrics to show, and only made the mat's edges neat.  I also allowed the fabrics to not always lie flat on the backing, to simulate shallow water.

Cutting out the "rocks" from the different wools was fun.  Many of them looked a lot like rocks that I've collected.

For attaching them, I used some old craft glue I had.  It is water-based, but also fairly water-resistant when dry.  If it is not enough, I can sew things together later.

It seemed best to brush a layer of glue over the back of each "rock", and then add a few more dabs of glue to engage with the backing.

It turned out well enough, aside from me not noticing until it was finished that I had forgotten to cut the backing to the width I wanted--!!  The glue stiffened the mat a lot, but it bends enough to fit on the shelf I made it for.

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I have a running question in my head about how long I can go before my household starts to be afflicted with wool-eating moths, as seems to have been usual before synthetic fibers.

Snowy and cold

I'm not sure hot glue is the best material for sealing gaps around a window frame, but I had a small below-zero breeze coming into my bedroom, and it was worth a try.  I expect that it will be easier to remove than caulk.

My most recent hot glue craft project was gluing white cardboard leaves onto a cardboard rectangle.  It turned out okay, but proved a little harder to hang up than the effort I wanted to put into it.

I've also been carving two little wooden goblets for toys, using a well-seasoned section of maple branch.  I've decided to not put a finish on them, or even to sand them.  I used a Swedish slojd (don't know how to do the umlauts; aka sloyd) knife from Rockler that I got for Christmas last year.  It is a bit large for most of the woodcarving that I do, but worked well in this case.  My husband has one too, and somehow managed to break the tip of the blade off.

A fake bowl for the fake flowers

 I finished the coffee filter hydrangeas that I was making. Since I was using paper and paint instead of coffee filters and food coloring, I found that I had to paint each side of each cutout separately. And I air-dried them, instead of using an oven at low heat.

When I bundled them together, I just used a paper clip at the bottom of each bunch, and left the leaves loose. I have some spools of fine wire, but I didn’t need them.

With the flowers finished, I looked around the house for a good bowl to put them, but didn’t find anything suitable. So I ended up taking paperboard from a saltine box, and using strips from it to make a “bowl”.  The quotation marks are because it has no bottom, and is actually only a ring.

I made it by taking two long sides from the box, and making interlocking slots at each end. Putting them together made a shape that was more like an eye than a ring, so I did the same thing with the other two long sides of the box, and slipped the second eye inside the first, rotating it so that the whole thing was reasonably round.

I glued on some scrap paper to cover and hold down the protruding tabs, then I painted the outside with craft paint. The unprinted side of the paperboard soaked up most of the water in the paint, so I did the second coat right away, and from there went straight into applying white puff paint in a geometric design.

The puff paint dried with a shine, while the craft paint didn’t, and the shine contrasts with the non-shiny flowers, so I’m glad I used the puff paint, even though it did run downward a little on the vertical surface. Otherwise, I would have added a coat of something clear like Mod Podge for shine, since the bookshelf the bowl is going on has almost nothing shiny on it, and could use a little sparkle.

What I've been up to

Resting after Wardrobe in a Week.

Mopping up a few last things from that week.

Being sick.

And finishing these:

Which are a kind of slipper or light shoe (flat heel and very thin sole), based mostly on the method of Mary Wales Loomis.

I don't have her book, although I'm sure it is marvelous and well worth the money, if you want to make your own shoes.  I have gone off the information she has helpfully provided on her site, paying back with prayers for her well-being.

Her method is to make a pair of plaster casts using shoes you already have, then build up the inner parts of the shoes with stiffened buckram and structural pieces scavenged from old shoes, then sew up the uppers (around the top edge), stretch them around the forms, hand sew back and forth across the bottoms to hold them in place, then glue on the soles and heels, and put in the insoles.

Here are my forms (plaster plus some papier mache filling out gaps; I didn't have quite enough plaster, and not enough got down into the toes), with my stiffened buckram drying around it:

I was in a no-buy mood at that stage, so I used burlap scraps for buckram at the sides, heel stiffening from an old pair of shoes that I pulled apart (very educational, deconstructing a higher-quality shoe; highly recommended), and for the toes I handwove crochet cotton--something that is worthy of a post of its own.

After this step, I set all this aside to work on WiaW, and to be sick with a nasty summer cold.  During that time, we had very humid weather, and my plaster/papier mache forms started growing mold inside their loose plastic bags.

When I got back to them, I found the mold, taped the bags completely closed, and tried to get the shoes finished off quickly, so I could throw the forms away.

The hardest part in making shoes is actually fiddling around and thinking about the next step.

Cutting leather is not that hard; I use kitchen shears, and occasionally a steak knife.

It is indeed a wonderful thing to have accurate models, to build up your shoes around.  Note that these shouldn't be shaped exactly like your feet, but instead like the space that your feet will need inside the shoe. So the better fitting the shoes that you make your forms from, the better the final result will fit.  That was what held me back when I was trying to start making shoes, several years ago:  I didn't own any shoes that fit me well enough to be worth duplicating.

There were several points in the shoemaking process where actually buying the book would have been helpful.  This was certainly a very challenging project for me, and I was tempted at times to give up.

One point where I had a lot of problems was how to keep the edge of the upper from sliding around or stretching out of shape while stitching across the bottom.  I did run a few long stitches across the hole to help hold the shape, but it wasn't enough to keep the entire top edge from ending up about 3/8 to 1/2 inch lower than I had intended--which is a lot, for a shoe.

Another is that the cotton upholstery velvet that I was using is thick, and was hard to gather up underneath the foot neatly.  I decided that the underside was too bumpy to glue to directly, so I elected to do a two-needle saddle stitch around the edges of the sole, making holes with an awl (which could be improvised from a nail and a small chunk of wood, if necessary, but I happen to have one).

(Sometimes people cut a little groove in the leather for the stitches to sit down in, but in this case the leather was too thin.)

Still, the slippers are wearable for the intended purpose, and I learned a lot that may be helpful in the future.

Costs:  $13 (at full retail) for vegetable-tanned leather for the sole, cotton velvet was handed down to me (and dyed with some leftover dye during WiaW), inner lining is from an old skirt, sole was stitched with about $3 of waxed braided cord left over from an earlier project, inner sole is about $1 worth of scrap leather from surplus store, buckram was handmade from hand-me-down materials and scraps, fabric stiffener fluid was handed down to me, a pair of teardown shoes for potential parts (only heel stiffening used) and assembly hints was $7 at Goodwill, and the thread was a Christmas gift.

Barge Cement (available at Hobby Lobby) was $8, but I ended up not using any for this project.

The shoes I disassembled did give me one valuable hint about how to make the shoe bend in the right place:  put a pattern of little slits into the inner sole at that point, enough to make it more flexible there, while not reducing the strength of the leather by too much.  In these shoes, the inner sole was not even leather, but a high-quality paperboard--no wonder modern shoes start falling apart when they get wet!

How to fix a cracked vacuum hose

A while back, my vacuum's hose cracked, right near the end fitting. I poked around on YouTube, and learned that some hoses are easy to disassemble, trim down, and reassemble, but apparently mine wasn't one of them.

We were out of duct tape at the time, and my chewing gum repair attempt failed to ever completely harden, so I kept on thinking about it. I looked through our hoard to see if we had a length of pipe in the right diameter that I could put in, but we didn't.

Finally, I worked out a solution: gluing in a tube made of leather, to bridge the gap. (Remember, old-fashioned materials are often very good materials.)

For leather, I had a scrap of medium weight leather, about five inches long, left over from other projects.

For glue, I had Barge Cement, which I have recently found at Hobby Lobby in the leathercrafting section for about $8 a tube. (Disclosure: no one pays me, so I have nothing to disclose.)

The tricky part is that Barge Cement is a contact cement. That means you coat both surfaces with it, let them dry for a few minutes, and then press them together firmly, and that you shouldn't count on getting a second chance to position them correctly....so how do you do that when you are trying to maneuver a leather tube into a just-slightly-larger plastic tube???

My solution for that was to not actually seal the edges of the leather tube together, but to cut the circumference of the tube a bit wide, put on the cement, roll it up very loosely lengthwise without gluing it to itself, push it into the hose end, and then use a stick to push the leather against the inside of the hose. Repeat with the other piece of the hose; not too difficult because my break was so near the end. There would be a small hole where the leather bridged the gap, but I could live with that, if the Barge Cement would hold onto the plastic--something I wasn't sure about. Or perhaps I could patch that up later with a little more leather.

So that was the plan, to be carried out outdoors, because this stuff has fumes that are not at all good for you.

In practice, this sort of went well, right up until the point where it didn't, and I was almost in a Brer Rabbit situation of getting inextricably glued into the hose myself, despite wearing latex gloves. But I pulled myself loose enough from it to work, and I found that I was able to reposition the leather just enough to put it where it needed to go.

Since then, I have been using the hose and putting the repair to the test. There is a small hole where the leather overlaps itself, which reduces the suction of the vacuum somewhat as it pulls in room air. The repair held through a couple months of regular vacuuming, although I was trying to be more gentle with the hose than before. Finally, we reached a point where replacing the hose was more fiscally appropriate.

Once we got the replacement hose, I gave the repaired hose a harder test, with a strong, straight pull, maybe 75% of my full strength. It didn't budge. I didn't try twisting or wrenching it, which would be more likely to make the adhesion fail, but it did get some of that as I used it.

Substitutions:  I think other leather and shoe cements, such as Tandy Leather's house brand (last time I checked, forever ago, they only sold Barge Cement on a wholesale basis, not retail), or Shoe Goo, might also work, although probably not as well. There is a contact cement is used for gluing down countertops; I've only tried that stuff once, but it might also be an okay option.

Catching up

I got out to my favorite rummage sale. The pickings were not so great this time, but I found a pair of dress boots, that only needed some gentle scrubbing and some boot oil. I recently retired my one pair of dress shoes, and had been thinking about how to make a pair from scratch because I seem to only find shoes in my size by a direct act of God. (Mary Wales Loomis is the person to look up if you want to make women's dress shoes.)

Related to that, I found that Hobby Lobby carries Barge Cement in tubes. This is the contact cement you would want for gluing your shoe materials together.

Also at the sale, I found some children's winter boots. I recently took a winter coat that I had been given, which needed a new zipper, and cut it down to child size (before replacing the zipper). I took the layers apart to do this, to reduce the bulk that I was sewing through as I dealt with keeping the down stuffing contained, but later saw how I could have saved myself some trouble by keeping the lining more intact. For a pattern, I measured the child, added some inches for movement, a couple more for growing, and then a bit for seams. I more or less kept to the original shape of the coat, and just made it smaller. The main lines of a coat are relatively simple. With the coat done and the new used boots, we nearly have our children ready for winter. I think we still need a pair of snow pants.

Elf house

I received a copy of Lloyd Kahn's Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter: Scaling Back in the 21st Century for Christmas, and have been studying it closely ever since. He is an old surfer hippie, and has a number of shelter books, going way back, that I haven't read. In this book, hundreds of pictures show tiny homes of all kinds, from boats to converted horse trailers to hippie vans to hobbit houses to treehouses, where the builders were constrained by resources more than by building codes.

Building under those conditions is a lot of fun. But I am not in a place in my life where I want to build a tiny home for myself.

However, I had the twigs that I had saved from the Christmas tree, and some bits of bark that a tree in the back yard had shed, and some twine, and a glue gun...so I made an elf house. Apologies for the low-quality picture, but there is an elf chair on a small deck of twigs, and a bark shelf with an acorn bowl of pine needles. There is also a high, round perch. I built it up a little at a time on a cookie sheet, with pauses to let the hot glue solidify (I use the high-temperature-melt glue). I wrapped twine around the more visible glue joints. It was a lot of fun to "build", and I only burned myself once.

Footstool

I was going to call this project the Nomadic Footstool, because cardboard furniture reminds me of Papanek and Hennessey's Nomadic Furniture,  but I ended up using much more foam and adhesive than I had originally planned, so it's more like regular furniture. The center core is tightly rolled-up cardboard, which rolls up much more nicely if you pre-crease it every inch or two. I used duct tape internally to secure the ends of each piece of cardboard, and then made notches to secure the final end to the side. Once rolled and secured, the cardboard is quite strong. On top there is a double layer of one-inch memory foam; I had a large scrap from trimming down a rummage sale mattress topper to fit a smaller bed. I found, after making the top, that I had enough foam left to put a single layer around on the side. The foam is attached to itself and to the cardboard by heavy-duty spray adhesive; I had half a can of this left over after the couch project. The fabric is a sort of microfiber fake suede, very soft. I sewed strips together for the sides, and hand-sewed on circles for the top and bottom. You can see where I rolled down the top edge of the "sleeve" and sewed on the top circle.

Functionally, it works well. The top is squishy enough to be comfortable. The foam on the sides feels nice when you pick it up. It is easy to scoot out of the way, and strong enough to sit on. Visually it is too small next to the armchair that I am using it with, but it adds an element of roundness to a room that contains mostly rectangular objects.

Fun with hot glue

I have a hot glue gun, but I rarely use it. Today, however, called for spending some time playing rather than working.

I had some card stock samples in various colors, and chose matte gold. The simplest thing to do with random paper and hot glue is to cut out leaf shapes and glue them together, so I did. I wanted something to hang on the inside of the front door; something more angular than the wreath that was there, because of the shape of the door's window. So I cut a while and glued a while, and came up with something that I could hang on the door. It works well there; the metallic card stock shines without glare, and brings some light into that relatively dark corner.

Then I took the wreath that had been on the door, and hung it in the dining room, where it contributes to the color theme of red, deep teal, and white that is developing in that room. (This wreath was from the recent rummage sale, and I have been moving it around, looking for the right place for it.)

I also braided some scraps of paper to hang on the outside of the front door, but only temporarily as I plan to hang baby booties there when the time comes!

How to make a blank hardcover book, part 2

(Part 1 here.)

Here are the first, second, and third handmade blank books that I have made.

Continuing from Part 1:

Step 8:  Trim the text block. I skip this step, as you can see from the picture. As I recall, the best way to do this is to clamp the block firmly between two pieces of wood in a vise, and trim the edges with a very sharp chisel.

Step 9:  Cut the cover boards. (I make these from the heavy paperboard inside old three-ring binders.)  The cover boards should be somewhat longer and wider than the text block; if anything, I made them a bit too large on the most recent book. You may also, depending on your book, want to cut a piece for the back of the spine; I didn't.  A utility knife works well for cutting these, although it may take more than one pass. One source recommended slightly rounding the edges of the boards after cutting; I did this by burnishing (rubbing with some pressure) with a tool handle.

Interlude:  Making flour paste

Homemade flour paste is simple, cheap, and stronger than you might expect. The covers that I have glued on with it have stayed on, through months of daily use and abuse. PVA glue will also work for any of the gluing and pasting steps that follow.

Flour paste recipe:  1.5 cups cold water, 4 Tablespoons white flour. Whisk the flour into the water in a saucepan, and then stir constantly over medium heat until it boils. Let cool. This recipe makes far more paste than you need for a single book. Leftovers may be refrigerated and used later, until they start to get moldy.

Step 10:  There are different ways of dealing with the spine of the book at this point. The method that I learned is to make a flat tube of lining paper as wide and as long as the spine, and glue it to the spine.

Step 11:  Set cords into cover boards, and glue. (If you are using tapes, I believe they are simply glued to the outsides of the cover boards.) Make a hole in each cover board, about 1/2 inch in from the inside edge, for each cord to go through. (The cords will go from the spine to the outside of the cover boards, then in through the holes, where their ends will be glued down.) I used an awl to make the holes, a sharp nail would also work, or drilling. To keep from the cords from making bumps that show through the covering material, use a sharp knife to cut a shallow channel for each cord to run through to its hole. Then, one board at a time, bring the cords through the holes, trim so that there are two or three inches of cord to the inside of the cover board, and glue/paste the cords in place (on both sides). Since my cords are braided, I unbraid each end to the hole, and spread out the strands as I glue them down. Make sure the cords aren't pulled so tight that you can't open the book. Let dry.

Step 12:  Glue the outer covering onto the boards and spine. The outer covering is usually a single piece of material; leave extra to wrap around the edges of the boards, and to fold down in at the top and bottom of the spine. I find it easiest to cut the material on the large side, and trim it later. For the first two books I used suede and leather; this time I used denim.

Step 13:  Fold over the edges of the covering material, trim, and glue/paste down. I aim for 1/4 inch of material glued to the inside of the cover board, for each edge. I learned a handy trick for mitering the corners:  before you glue the edges, make a 45 degree cut at the corner, but instead of cutting this exactly at the corner, cut it two cover board thicknesses away from the corner. Or, you can bring the edges around, overlapping them at the corner, and cut through both layers at once with a sharp knife to make the miter.

Step 14:  Tip in end papers. End papers are folded sheets of paper pasted in before and after the text block; to "tip in" means to put paste or glue along the folded edge, and then press it into place. One source suggested doing this much earlier in the process, before trimming the text block; I tried that this time and wasn't happy with the result. Trim the end papers.

Step 15:  Line the inside covers. (If your cover material is thick, you may need to fit and glue something in beneath the lining first, to make the inside cover level.) It may be helpful to use scrap paper to keep paste/glue from going where it shouldn't.

Step 16:  Cover finishing. Fold the edges in at the top and the bottom of the spine, and perhaps glue them down, if you didn't already. With the most recent book, I cut the material too short here, and ended up sewing on extensions by hand. Decorate the cover as desired. In one version (middle book in the photo), I made a little loop of leather to hold a pen. But then I found that I prefer to use the pen to mark my spot, so that it is ready to use at all times. This time, with a denim cover instead of leather, I experimented with making corner protectors from sheet copper. I made a paper prototype/template first, cut and fitted the copper (which is from the art store and is thin enough to cut with scissors that I don't care too much about), and then secured each with a small copper rivet, through a hole drilled through the corner protector and the cover.

Somewhere in these later steps, the fancy stitching at the top and bottom of the inner spine that you see in real hardcover books can be done. I tried it with the first book, and failed to master it, and since then haven't bothered. Apparently this stitching is often faked, in commercial books.

How to make a blank hardcover book, part 1

A few years ago, I went to a system where I write down all of the things that I am thinking about, or trying to remember, in a single hardcover blank book. So everything is arranged chronologically; I can usually remember when I was thinking about or working on something, and from that find my way back to it.

I've found since then that a book of about 200 pages will last me about 18 months. I am nearing the end of the second volume, and will need a new one soon.

Both of my first two blank books were handmade (by me), following the instructions in the Family Creative Workshop craft encyclopedia (from the 1970's) article on Bookbinding. I've looked around recently, but I haven't found very similar instructions online. That means its my turn, I guess. (I always appreciate when others have created well-written instructions, so I don't have to.) I am working from memory and experience here, because I no longer have the book that I learned from, so any errors in these instructions are my own.

So, Step 1:  Obtain paper for the blank pages. I prefer older blank paper, in the standard 8.5x11 inch size. This time I gleaned almost fifty sheets of nearly-blank sample papers from old graphic design magazines. The rest is grayish paper that my husband doesn't like.

Step 2:  Fold signatures.  Take six to eight sheets at a time, and fold them in half the short way. (Real paperworkers have a piece of rounded bone to flatten the fold well; I use a knitting needle.) This makes one signature.

Step 3:  Make sewing holes. First, you should know that there are two main ways of internally supporting the pages:  the first is with several narrow cords that all the signatures are sewn to; the other is with a smaller number of tapes. With cords, there is one sewing hole per cord. With tapes, there is a sewing hole on each side of each tape, plus (I think) an extra hole at each end of the signature. I use five cords, where each cord is a braid of linen or cotton string, so I have to make five holes. I make a template from scrap card stock that is the same length as the signature height, because the holes need to line up across signatures. Using the template, I pierce sewing holes in each signature in the crease (through all the sheets) with an awl; a large, sharp sewing needle would also work.

Step 4:  Make cords (if needed). As I said above, I braid thin linen or cotton string or yarn for the cords. Cotton has in the past proven not quite durable enough for the abuse that I put my books through, so I am using linen this time. Each cord needs to be long enough to reach around the spine of the book, with about three inches more at each end for gluing to the cover boards. Better too long than too short, at this point.

Step 5:  Improvise sewing frame, and hang cords/tapes. The frame holds the cords in place while the signatures are sewn to them. So there needs to be something to hang the cords from, something to attach the lower ends of the cords to, and something to support the signatures against the cords as the signatures are stacked and sewn. And your hands need to be able to get at both the front and the insides of the signatures. Previously, I built a frame with a platform, two sticks going up, a dowel bridging the sticks, and holes in the platform for the cords to go down into (with the cords secured underneath). This time, I took a child's step stool, turned it upside down, duct taped a dowel across the front legs, and used the underside of the step as the platform. I had to tie string to some of the cords to make them long enough to be hung this way, and then I duct taped the lower ends to the step. This worked well enough; the sewing goes quickly.

Step 6:  Sew signatures to cords. Waxed linen thread is preferred for this step; I used thin linen yarn...but I forgot to wax it this time. If I had remembered, I would have used an old candle to wax it as I went. Knot the end of the thread. Place the spine of the first signature against the cords. The needle goes into the first hole, along the inside of the fold, out the second hole, loop around the cord, back in the second hole, along the inside of the fold to the third hole, out the third hole, loop around the cord, the cord...and so on until the last hole, where it just comes out. Now put the next signature on top of the first one, and put the needle into the hole directly above the last hole stitched. Then the same pattern:  along the inside of the fold, out the hole, around the cord, back in, and along the inside to the next hole.

When you get to the last hole, bring the needle out. Now the thread needs to be brought down to catch the first signature, so that they are connected. The first time, the thread is brought down to loop around the knot. For the rest of the signatures, the needle comes down, behind the thread between the two previous signatures, coming out at the page edges, and up again to start a new signature. This is called a kettle stitch, if you want to look it up.

For tapes, the sewing is similar, but instead of looping around the tape, the needle comes out of the hole on one side of the tape, and back in through the hole on the other side.

When your thread runs out, tie a new length to it, with the knot falling inside the fold of a signature.

When all the signatures are sewn together, come out the last hole and make a knot.  Loosen the cords/tapes from the frame.

Step 7:  Gluing the "text block".  Put the block of sewn signatures between two scrap boards, with almost 1/4 inch of the spine and the ends of the cords protruding. Get the block as well lined up as you can before clamping the boards together, or putting it all in a vise. Brush a coat of white glue (I used Mod Podge this time because it is what I had on hand) over the folds of the signatures, and over the stitching. With a hammer, gently beat the glue into the spine, gradually rounding over the long edges of the spine to make the "shoulders" of the book. Put another coat of white glue over the spine. Leave it clamped while it dries.

That is where I am so far. The next step is to get the boards and covering material for the cover, which I will be looking out for on my next thrifting expedition this weekend. Old three-ring binders are a good source of the kind of hard cardboard that goes inside a book cover. I strongly prefer leather for the covering material. The other materials I can improvise from what I have.

Building up posts

At one time I tried to make a list of all the different kinds of processes involved in making crafts. It was quite long. Today's process in building the armchair is what I call an additive process. I am making the posts which will be the legs and corners of the chair.

What I am aiming for is a 4x4 post (actually 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches), with notches. I could take a 4x4, and saw and chisel out the notches. That would be a subtractive process, and would involve spending money on 4x4s and doing some careful cutting work. Or I could take the 2x4s that we already have, do a few simple cuts, and assemble them into an equivalent form:

The result is 3.5 inches by 3 inches, because a 2x4 is really 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches, but I have accounted for that in my design. I used both nails and carpenter's glue for assembly, and even drilled pilot holes for the nails, to avoid any chance of the nails splitting the wood. (For the couch, I used screws instead of nails, but we are running low on long screws at the moment.) The nail heads are barely visible in the photo. For the pilot holes, I drilled through the top piece first, pounded the nail through until it stuck out slightly, and used the point to mark where the rest of the pilot hole should be drilled. After drilling all the holes, I put the glue on, replaced the pieces, and drove the nails home. The nails aren't really necessary; the average carpenter's glue, when dry, is much stronger than the average cheap wood.