How to make a board

Years ago I read a funny article by a failed shop student.  Do they still teach shop in highschools?  You know where the girls took cooking and sewing and the boys took woodworking and mechanics.  If they do, I expect all take all and so they should.  A woman that can't at least check her own oil makes me crazy and every boy should know how to cook in case he gets married...but I digress.

The article was entitled "How to make a board" which was about as good as this person got in shop.  All I remember from it was the tools you needed to paint the board included a brush, a can of paint, a chisel, and a gun. The gun was to protect yourself when the shop teacher caught you opening the paint can with the chisel.

Anyhow I made a board or I should say an official dog house for Volk.  After almost 6 years.  It will not be as warm as the makeshift one that the dogs used for years, a lean to, made from old doors, covered with old carpet, with an old mattress inside.  Oh, and it was inside a room in our outbuilding to boot.  However the room got cleaned out and a new concrete floor this summer and all the material disappeared.

I do like to work with wood but have not done much for years.  When the kids were little, 35 years ago, I made wooden toys.  I started with a set of three Craftsman tools from Sears. A 1/4" drill, a pad sander and a jigsaw, all in a red tin box and did most of my work with them.  I gradually accumulated real tools but never had as much fun though did more precise work.

The train I made for my son out of 1x4 and dowels

No idea how many sets of these I made.

Now proper wood in Ukraine is a rare commodity.  We have a "sawmill" two blocks from our place that brings in a truckload of pine logs periodically and sells rough cut full dimension lumber, much of it not even edged as it is used for strapping on roofs to which metal or otherwise sheeting is attached.

So I ordered 12 meters of 2x4 (actually 50x100 mm) and 35 meters of 1x6 (actually 25x150 mm).  It was delivered on foot, two 4.5 meter boards at a time.  This is GREEN wood.  I cannot emphasize enough the word GREEN; it is wringing wet and heavy.

I had a vague idea of what I wanted to build, having sketched it out on a piece of scrap paper, but mostly made it up as I went along.  My tools consisted of a jig saw, a try square, a tape measure and a carpenters pencil. Oh, and my trusty 20 oz. Estwing leather tang hammer that I've had for 40 years.

Too late I learned that the edges of the boards were not necessarily square and that 150 mm width the full length of the board was a guideline not a specification.  By the time I finished there wasn't enough 1x6 left to make a small fire, only FOUR nails and not a square corner to be found anywhere on the dog house.  I blame it on the metric system.

Anyone who wants to steal it will need a forklift.  It took two strong men (not one of whom was me) to carry it to the dog run and that was with the roof off.  The roof is removable for easy access.  Whether Volk will use it or not remains to be seen.  He did pee on it so at least he knows it exists.  Tomorrow I will put some food inside to coax him into it.

Homesteader's shack or trapper's cabin

There is 2" of Styrofoam under the floor and also under the roof