For the first time in my career, glue has failed on me. This was Titebond's cold press veneer glue, a bottle that I've leaned on a few hundred times without once being let down, and well inside its date besides.To say I am miffed undersells my feelings considerably.

What let go was the last of the desk's structure to go in: the drawer cavities. They hold the frame square, give the span of the top something to rest on and keep the drawers from living on the floor. Well, "a" drawer cavity does; these ones will be doing nothing.

There is nothing so costly in this "business" as having to do a thing twice; this particular twice will run me somewhere near two thousand dollars to set right.

The commercial Red Gum veneer I'd laid down is spent, and there's no more of it to be had. The sheets that lifted are good now for little beyond starting the living-room fire - which is, I will allow, a use, only not the one I had in mind for them.