(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-06-18 Saturday
80 early morning, 90 in the afternoon, mostly blue skies with some clouds zipping along, clouding up more in the afternoon. The predicted showers never arrived here. Mom had to water her plants that are in pots. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
I am not doing much yard sailing lately. The time to do my yard sale runs leave no time for any kind of wood working. We did stop at a couple yard sales right after breakfast on our way home. One guy is in a neighborhood that is being bought up for a project. I am not sure what it will be. I picked up a stainless steel pot, with interior strainer and a steamer basket. No I don’t need pots. I liked the idea of the steamer basket, though. He had a lot of lids and I should have picked up the big ones as I have pots without lids. He did find a glass one that fits the steamer basket.
Last night, I took a few pieces of wood I was thinking of using as my rocking horse blanks. I had mom draw a rocking horse on it. At home, I dug out my wood working stuff. I rough cut the rocking horse out, but did not get near the lines, using a dremmel cutting disk. I did not have the bits I need. I have to search for my good dremmel kit. It has the grinding bits I need to clean up my rough cuts. The only bit I had for grinding was going to take forever to remove the wood. Nothing is where it belongs.
I cut a gingerbread house and a tea pot from the two by two. I have the tea pot nearly done, but only removed the bulk wood from the gingerbread house. It dawned on me that by ten, the shade at the vice is gone. That was when I packed up the woodworking. I think what I need to do is to spend my time cutting blanks at the vice while it is in the shade, and then go into the corner of the house and carve while that is shaded. I need to get more than one of each thing done.
I really need to dig out the scroll saw to work with. Digging is the right word, by the way. It will make the rocking horse ornaments real easy. I cut two legs, one body and then glue them together, and later carve them rounded to be more like a rocking horse.
At home, I made some ice cream. Well sort of. I had a lot of bananas frozen and some frozen blueberries. I have tried this before and have seen it on the web. I pureed the blueberries and the bananas together, they have to thaw some to work into a cream. My bananas were in a big zipper bag and I poured hot water into a bowl and flipped the zipper bag a bunch of times until the bananas started thawing, then dropped them into the food processor until they became like cream. I mixed the berries into it and then put some in mini loaf pans lined with foil, and the rest in a foil lined sheet pan and froze them.
When totally frozen, I slowly pealed the foil off. Just work really slow and it comes off very well, except for one loaf pan where a fold stuck deep into the ice cream. I t hen sliced the sheet pan ice cream into chunks. The loaf pan ice cream sliced into thin disks. Back in the freezer they go. I added nothing else, no cream, no sugar, just the fruit. It is really good. It is not too sweet but tastes good.
I will admit that I likely ate half a cup of ice cream while “licking the bowls” when this is gone, I will make more.
I really need to get more efficient on the ornaments. I think I am going to get sawsall from mom (she knows where it is) and use that to do my cuts. It will be faster and likely more accurate.
I will see what I do tomorrow.
Year 18, Week 39, Day two (week 977)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-07-18 Sunday
80 degrees early morning, 89 in the afternoon (in the shade). I got to mom’s and found that the vice was in the sun. I really did not want to be out there working with hand saws with no shade. Instead I hung around moms until lunch was ready and we watched TV and talked for several hours.
At about four, I decided I really needed to make some blanks. I saw that the vice was in the shade so I took my stick of 2x2 and started cutting. As mentioned last week, hand saws require skill to use properly. It is one thing to simply cut a piece of wood. It is another to cut accurately. The little fine toothed rusted saw cuts nicely but slowly. I am finding that the big course toothed saw cuts fast, but also, for some reason, cuts on an angle. The cut always tips to the right. Even when I tip the saw to cut left the cut still goes a little right.
There are techniques I have seen like lining the reflection of the wood on the panel of the saw with the wood itself to make it square. The saw I am using does not have a really good reflection and even so, there is a slight tip of the cut. There are ways to keep the saw from flexing. Either I cannot remember what they are, or they don’t work.
My biggest problem is when I cut the angle of the roof of the gingerbread house. The cut angles out, rather than going straight. I put a positive angle on the blade and it still tips out.
Today at four, I cut four blanks for the gingerbread house and decided not to bother on cutting the roof angles on the fourth. The other three fought me way too much. They are sloppy and one of them I cut the house too short so it might not be too useable. I will likely make it work, but still. The corners of the roof are at all different heights. Being end grain, it is not easy to correct this with the knife. It would be easy to fix if I had the sander out also. But since I don’t.....
I really do need to concentrate on wood working. Having three ornament designs this early is a real treat. Usually November comes and I am still trying to come up with an idea. Whether a forth design comes up, I am not worrying about that. It is a lot of fun to be creating and doing this. If I can get the blanks done, it will be easy to carve these.
At home, I have some 19 grains. I mix them and use the mixed grain instead of rice. I do it only because I can, not for any health considerations or anything like that. I was really low, maybe one more serving left, so I dug out all my grains and mixed them again. Several kinds of rice, rye, steel cut oats, bulghur wheat, millet, several kinds of quinua, buckwheat, just to name some of the grains. I had remembered that it took me a long time to mix them the last time, a couple years ago, but this time it took me about ten minutes. The plastic mayo jar is mostly full when done, adding about a quarter cup of each. Mixing them when done was easy. I just slowly turn the lidded jar end for end a bunch of time. As the grains tumble down the slope, it mixes and after about ten (I think I did it about forty times, turning the jar a quarter several times) rotations, the grain is well mixed.
I intend to borrow mom’s saws-all next weekend and see if I can get a lot of blanks done quickly. If I can get all the pots and houses roughed out, it won’t take too long to carve them. I might get mom to help me get the scroll saw out (It might have to be stored in the neighbor’s garage, more lawn mowing to keep him happy) and work on the rocking horses. I can stack the wood and do them quickly.
Our normal summer weather is where the storms pop up parallel to the ocean and then move from there. Either driven west if they develop more towards noon, or they go east if they develop in the later afternoon. This summer, we have not had much of that pattern. Mostly we have had a flow from the east with dots of showers rushing across the shore line. A lot of them disappear quickly before they get very far. From my understanding, there has been a series of highs over the middle east coast of the country and that is driving the showers from east to west.
There is a storm developing over the Yucatan and that is coming north. Indications is that it will be a high category one storm, or a low two when it hits Mississippi, or the arm pit of Florida. Most of the rain will be to the east of the storm so most of the western florida coast will get wet. There is indication that the Carolinas will get it again. They don’t need more rain.
example of pop up showers
example of popup showers
example of popup showers
pop up showers showing where everything is in relation to them.
Will see what I do next weekend.
1644
coffee pot (was supposed to be a tea pot) and gingerbread house from last weekend.
mom's drawing of the rocking horse, the legs are different piece from the body.
rough cut rocking horse using dremmel saw to cut it out. Need to cut closer to lines.
molding boards being used for rocking horse.
my saws with two by two stick.
the coffee pot, the house and rocking horse from this weekend.
there was a knott running side to side through the house. If I had thought about it, I would have had it go through the front and back of t he house and make them into door or window.
house, rocking horse and coffee pot from this weekend.
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