We love this lonely highway and the gorgeous mountains (snowy in the north) that follow us all the way to Vegas. We do take a detour at Ely, NV and take Hwy 6 and 318 rather than 93 – faster and lower elevation. The order of the shows determines whether we take Hwy 95 to Needles or, if Scottsdale comes first, continue on 93 to Kingman and I-40 toward Flagstaff to visit good friends (the Carpenters) in Sedona, AZ before heading to Scottsdale. Here's Galen Carpenter's fabulous woodturning. We sometimes turn off from I-40 at Ash Fork through Chino Valley (Hwy 89) and Hwy Alt-89 through Jerome and Cottonwood northeast to Sedona. Nice drive. Here are several photos of Jerome and Sedona.

If La Quinta comes first, from Vegas we decide if we want to make good time (95 to I-40 then 95 again down to I-10) or drive along the Colorado on Arizona Hwy 95 to Quartzsite at I-40. Quartzsite isn't all it's cracked up to be so don't make an extra effort to go through there. This year we decided to drive a bit of old Route 66 on the way to the Coachella Valley. After reaching I-40 drive west and take exit 115/Essex. Fun drive to Amboy where you take a left to Twentynine Palms at Hwy 62. Along Route 66 is where we bumped into the Shoe Tree. Not sure how it started but hundreds of pairs of shoes have been tied to a washed up tree (flash flood in an arroyo.) Some shoes from very far away – Europe, Japan, etc. People have also been leaving their initials, names and other notes, written with rocks, on every inch along the low berm that runs the entire length that we followed, about 60 miles.

Here are two photos from the La Quinta Arts Festival. Beautiful venue.

And a photo of our booth last year in front of the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Also a beautiful venue.

Our return trip is of course also dependent on the order of the two shows. From La Quinta we'll head back the way we came through Nevada stopping at Ely for the night at the Great Basin Motel, an old fashioned, inexpensive but clean place. Black and white tile floor in bathroom and this year the thickest towel I think I've ever run across. Here are two more photos of that great drive.

Alternatively if we return from the Scottsdale show we'll visit the Carpenters again and then, depending on the weather forecast for the next few days, take 89 up through the famous Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff and continue on through Navajo country, through Page, AZ to Kanab and Panguitch, UT to Hwy 20 and over to I-15 and home. Another beautiful, lonely drive (it's before the tourist season.) Of course visit the Grand Canyon – the road to the Canyon, Hwy 64 off 89, halfway between Flagstaff and Page, goes through the area where California Condors are making their comeback. Here are two photos of the Kanab area.

If you have time, be sure to visit Bryce Canyon, just south of Panguitch. If you're lucky there will still be pure white snow on that stunning rapidly eroding red, well, you can hardly call it rock since you can hear it eroding like sand during snow melt.

Quick and easy sawhorses. It doesn’t get much simpler than this, particularly considering they are pretty strong sawhorses that, when folded, take up about 3 inches of space. Just make sure you don’t accidentally saw through the hinges at the top! The photos tell you all you need to know. Some 1″ x 4″s and five hinges. I’ll leave the joining up to you. I used dowels at the time (about 15 years ago!) but might put some extra effort next time and use floating tenons. The last photos show a jig for holding a kayak I was building in our tiny shop with NO space to work on a 20′ kayak. Using a bicycle hoist rigged with longer rope, it’s a simple matter to drop it down from the rafters for working on the sawhorses.

UPDATE. Well, the old sawhorses actually did give up the ghost last month so I made two shiny new ones. This time I did use the floating tenon joinery (using my Multi Router) instead of dowels. On the old ones almost all the dowels eventually failed. Here are three photos of how they went together and the dimensions. Each sawhorse takes two 8ft 1″x4″s.

First, we have finished sanding to 220 grit on a belt sander. We simply keep pouring on the CA until we have a fairly thick, solid coat with no dull areas, occasionally spraying accelerator to set the CA. Be careful with the accelerator as too much too fast will result in a white crusty foam. Practice! We spread it carefully with a toothpick, moving the CA puddle around to keep it in a dull porous area until it sets. CA tends to move away from a porous depression for some reason.

After we have a rough impervious coat over the whole inset, we use a file to roughly get the surface smoother. This will show any low spots that we again fill.

We then move on to sanding it with 220 and (this is the trick!) scraping it with a slightly curved single-edge razor blade, again filling low spots that are revealed. This is laborious but well worth it and is actually faster than sanding. It’s also satisfying work.

Then we move through 400, 600 and even 800. After a quick buff with Fibral synthetic steel wool or regular steel wool we finally end up with a very smooth surface ready to finish along with the rest of the box. We will be lacquering and lightly sanding and buffing later so any very small depressions are usually smoothed down enough to not be noticeable. It feels good to save this beautiful wood that otherwise barely makes good firewood!

Here’s a quick and easy way to make your steel or cast iron mechanic’s vise wood-friendly. The usual way to cover those jaws is with some slip-over affair or double-stick tape or other awkward scheme. Instead simply cut two pieces of wood to match the size of the jaw faces. I use my supply of ever-present and ever-handy Baltic Birch ply – in this case about 3/8″. Drill two holes with a 3/8″ Forstner bit and carefully press in 3/8″ (about 1/4″ thick?) rare earth magnet discs with the vise. Presto, easily removable protectors. You could of course use larger magnets for stronger grip, these 3/8″ ones were just handy. Next time I will use thinner but larger diameter magnets so I can use thinner ply – I can use all the capacity I can get.