Sunday, January 3, 2021

Year 20, Week 46, Day one (week 1089) 12-05-20 Saturday

  Year 20, Week 46, Day one (week 1089)

(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)

12-05-20 Saturday


High around 82, no humidity, light breeze, well spaced clouds crossing the sky. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.


I had the idea to try to make some foil roses. I’ve collected aluminum seals from coffee cans. They are still flexible but heavier than foil. I had an idea of how to do it but the various versions I tried failed miserably. Later I went on line and saw four different methods and none the way I was doing it. I had already given up for the day.


Last week I did repairs on the box the holds my mini metal lathe. The plywood in many places were seriously decayed. I still had one spot to fix and that was on the lathe. The wood had decayed and left a jagged gap. What I did was to check to see if the thin plywood I had would work there. I then marked the hole square, and used the dremmel with a cutting disk to cut the space quite straight. I then cut a piece of my plywood to size and glued it in place. A bit later, I drove in a dozen or so brads to help hold it. And after the glue dried, I used a waterproof glue to go over the seams and fill any gaps. It is not pretty, but it did the job. 


That made it a day and I took it easy after that. 


Year 20, Week 46, Day two (week 1089)

(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)

12-06-20 Sunday


84 as the high, but the temps went down to 79 as it clouded up. We are expected to get down below 50 Tuesday. Since 56 degrees is our frost temperature down here in Florida, I expect to be slipping and sliding on the way to work.... This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.


I had an idea of how I would do my aluminum flowers, but after doing a little bit, I decided to hold off. I needed scissors and was too lazy to go get them to do this work. I will do it next weekend. 


I dug out the mini lathe and found that the lid, at the hinge was coming apart. I did not do well in driving my brads. I missed the thin plywood several times. What went in did not hold well. I will fix it better next week. 


I tried to make a part for the tailstock but the lathe was fighting me. I ended up giving up on that for now. The chuck I am using uses a rod that goes on to the hole to leverage the jaws open or closed. I had a rod that was slightly too big so I tried machining it. While it looked straight, there was a slight bend in it and that made it tough. I finally stopped and left it for a later project.


My brother, several years ago, scroll sawed some ornaments. We found them and decided to clean them up and finish them. Clean up happened several weeks ago. I was supposed to paint them white, but I could not find our white paint and did not want to go to the store today. I found some “metal” paint, that turned out to be silver, and painted them with that. They look pretty good. 


I dug out all my ornaments and photographed them. The old ornaments, remaining from over the years, and the newest ones too. While I have a lot of ornaments, I don’t have as much as I thought I did. 


My brother came and we worked on the metal lathe a little bit. He had replaced the motor and it had a new pulley. Now he brought in a new pulley and we had to ream out the hole to fit the shaft. It took some filing and grinding, but we finally got it on the lathe. There is an idler pulley that allows you to slow the lathe down, or speed it up, depending on how you arrange it. The new pulley my brother had made would not allow it to match up We now have that solved. 


We repaired a leg on mom’s table and it is not right. We will have to dig into it sometime during the week and get it right. 


I have a copy of nearly every ornament I have ever made and I put them on my personal tree. I searched the house trying to find it. I remembered that I took the box, that was in a bag to help keep the ornaments in place, out of the closet I put them in. I had no clue where they went from there. I searched all the possible places they could go, digging deep in closets, in piles, under things in places I knew they would not be. I then found them in a popcorn can in the closet where I always kept them. Dang. That was one place I did not look.... I have some house cleaning before the tree goes up. 


During the week, I was going to do some sketches of possible Christmas card designs to do, but got side tracked and that never happened. I need to get to designing. Christmas will spring onto me with no time to do anything. I tend to do 40 or 50 hand painted cards and I really need to get started as soon as I can. 


Will see what happens next week.

954

My christmas trees with 20 years of accumulated ornaments.

left side


front

right side

large crochet ornaments (by a friend)

small crochet and fabric ornaments


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