64 Degrees overnight, 68 degrees when I got outside, 84 as a high. the sky was an Indian sky -- Apache -- Blue sky with lots of nice moving puffs. There was a wind but it was barely noticeable, a very comfortable day. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach department of Tourism.
THURSDAY
The turning club meeting was Thursday.
I showed off my crochet hooks. I stuck the hooks into the hook gauge to show what I was missing. I have one in the middle and a few on each end of the gauge I have to make.
There were two demonstrations on making ornaments. One was made up of scraps glued up together in layers. He had two halves of alternating light and dark woods. He had a thin dark wood at the end of one half. He mounted each half in the lathe, shaped it except the ends, hollowed it, and then explained that he would glue them together. Rather than watching glue dry, he swapped out one that was already glued together. He hollows it as solid wood bulbs are heavy and hollowing them reduces the weight. He said that you don't want to go too thin as that would make the fragile. He also explained that there are reports of super glue giving way after a few years so he uses good wood glue.
The second demonstration was on making bells. The instructions were essentially making a goblet, but instead of the stem and base, one made a stem shaped to be held. For the clapper, he gets those bells for toys and dangles them from an eye hook with a brass wire. Rather than clapping as a wooden clapper would do, it tinkles.
One of the members brought in a whole milk crate full of little pieces of wood. I picked out some pieces I know I can use and no more. I figured if the box was there at the end of the day, I could take it. I was happy someone else took it. there is a limit to how many small pieces I can use. it is one of those things where if I don't have it, I will need it, but if I have it, it will sit for decades in the way.
Mahogany, Popular, three genuine tree wood, Oak rod, genuine tree wood, Purple Heart. The genuine tree wood indicates I have no idea what it is.
SATURDAY
We stopped at a church yard sale. Big mistake. A bag of yarn leaped out and grabbed me and threatened to choke me to death if I did not take them home. More expensive than other finds, but I saw the cotton yard and like that. I can make some useful stuff out of that.
Yarn I picked up. expensive compared to other yarn finds but not a bad price.
At the second yard sale, I picked up a scale. I figure I will give it as a present to someone. They told me that they were car shopping and they want something that will go from zero to one fifty in seconds flat. I hope not to be in the room when they open the present....
Scale I picked up at a good price. I can read it.
What I don't like is that it is close to accurate
Mom had a "LITTLE" project. the barrel of her wishing well was coming apart She wanted me to help raise the metal band and add a couple screws to hold it in place. As we were working, the staves were escaping us. We could not keep them together. She gave up on that idea. We figured out that the lower band, which was in small rusty pieces, was not there to contain the staves on the bottom as we tried to put in the upper ring.
Her wishing well had a plastic tub in the middle of it for the water.
I decided to try something and stood the staves up against the fountain's pot with a stone half ring to hold the bases in place. I drove stakes in the ground at each side end of the staves I put in. I then put in some screws into a few of the staves and stakes in back to try to hold the ring up. It just did not look good.
Attempt at faking the staves of the barrel. It was not good enough.
I then talked her into letting me try doing a stacked stone effect. I did about three rows and mom said NO. It looked chinchy.
We then tried edging stones, the ones with the bumps across the top. We had to make corrections a few times but we got an effect that does not look too bad. We had some interlocking pavers and we laid them on top to make a "cap stone."
Finished scene with well stones stacked up.
Mom re-did the entry to the back yard with this pretty display.
We then had to fix a hose. We have a utility sink out back and it is fed with a hose to a spigot. Mom found that the plastic connector on the hose at the spigot broke. we tried to remove the hose from the tub, a short connector hose from the damaged hose, and they would not release.
She had some hoses with problems and we decided to toss them. there were repair parts and we removed them. We then decided to cut off the good ends of the hoses before we tossed them.
There was one end that was the right kind so we used he hose connectors to connect that end to the hose. It was a trial as the end was smaller than the hose and required some work to get the connector inside it. We finally got it working.
Mom had a plant she had placed in a half of a wooden barrel. The metal rings gave way. We took the staves out from around the tree which had gone into the ground and set them to the side so that the ants could leave them. We then tossed them in the trash. The outside looked like they were usable, but the inside was really rotten since it was in contact with the potting soil.
Since the tree is in the ground, she will leave it. she will pile mulch around it and leave it as is. She will likely keep it trimmed to remain small.
The staves from the wishing well are in excellent condition except for the end that was on the bottom and a couple has some surface rot from being wet most of the time, but otherwise they are in good condition. We saved all of them for now. I have some ideas for how to use them in my projects. Mom said she had an idea for them. I told her go ahead. We will see who gets to them first.
This is half the staves from the well barrel.
The ends at the base, set at the top in this picture, was really the only rot.
After lunch I took a short nap. It helped. I then started cleaning up my stuff.
When we first came out, the Beast of the back yard was begging for attention but we were involved in the project and I forgot all about him. He showed up as I was packing up so I called him over and gave him a full half hour, to forty minutes of attention. I read some of a book while I was petting him. It was only when I decided it was time to get going that I interrupted his pleasures.
I stopped at the hardware store and picked up a buffing wheel for my dremmel.
when I get glasses, I get mono-vision glasses and reading glasses. The mono-vision glasses has one lens a reading lens, and the other long distance. The mind quickly learns which eye to look at things out of as you are glancing around. Within a couple days, it becomes automatic and you don't even notice it. the reading glasses are set to the minimum allowed for driving.
the anti glare finish of the glasses have been pealing. It slowly gets into your vision area which makes the glasses look dirty. When my normal glasses got bad, I switched to my reading glasses and have worn them for years. I am at the age where my nearsightedness is getting better. If I was normal sighted, I would be losing my close focusing vision, but since I am badly nearsighted, it is getting better.
This weekend, I ran across my normal glasses and found that they were in better condition than my reading glasses. After a few days, I can see pretty much normal in them except for at my monitor at home. It is at THAT distance where one lens is too close and the other is too far.
I had been told by several people that if you take tooth paste and rub the lens with a cloth, it will eventually clean up the surface. I picked up the buffing wheel and will use my FORDUM to see if it will clean up the surface of my reading glasses. If it works, I will do it to my regular glasses too. One has to use slow speed as high speed will melt the plastic of the lens. The dremmel will not slow down enough so I will use the FORDUM instead.
I also picked up razor blades at the hardware store. I want to make some wooden thread cutters that can be worn on necklace. I will be braking small pieces of the edge off and sticking them between two pieces of shaped wood.
I never got any of my work done, though the stones for the wishing well was one of MY projects.
For tomorrow, I will have the metal lathe out, but will work on that later. I want to make some seated snow men blanks and some Pole Cat blanks. Last year I made some cats as Christmas ornaments and someone asked me for one. I will make some blanks. cutting the ears was the hard part last time as I was trying to bandsaw the two by two while holding it on the corner. I also want to make the spout for the tea pot. that is really the last thing I have to do to finish that project besides removing the tenon on the bottom. I have more projects than time for.
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 11, Week 41, Day Two (week 615) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 10-23-11 Sunday
64 degrees very early morning, 70 degrees when I got outside, 74 late in the day. Computer weather said good weather until afternoon. Thee was liquid sunshine as I drove up to Mom's house. There was Liquid Sunshine at different parts of the morning, a couple times quite hard, then a few hours before it showed up again a little bit. The clouds were thin, not towers, and coming in fairly quickly from the ocean. The sun shown a couple times during the day, but that was fleeting. There was, though, a lot of blue sky between the clouds. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
I have a wood pile made up mostly of boards, two by sixes, two by twos, two by fours, four by fours. Most of that has been there so long that they show the weather real bad. I looked into it and there were some two by stock that looked familiar. I checked and they were black walnut. they had seen better days. I may have to trim the worst side away, but they will be serviceable. I cut one up and stuck the rest in the shed.
I cut up a white wood two by and turned a couple ornament blanks out of it. I made some POLE CAT ornament blanks and some seated snowmen blanks.
I don't think I like the looks of the wood. I might toss all that wood as it has seen better days and pick up a length of fresh two by two next weekend. fresh wood do a lot better.
I dug out the little lathe. At Thursday's turning club meeting, I had picked out a piece of purple heart. I cut a sliver from that piece and then cut that in half. I mounted the worst of the two pieces in the mini lathe and made a thin rod out of it. Purple heart is brittle. I do not know if it will do well as a crochet hook, even if I can make the hook without it breaking.
My brother came up and gave me a couple pieces of aluminum. He and my nephew had made a crucible and melted some aluminum of different kinds together in their forge. He put the liquid metal into a muffin tin. He cut one in half to see if there were any bubbles. It was solid. My nephew took one of the halves and I got another.
newly melted aluminum ingots
I cut the aluminum on the bandsaw and mounted a piece in the lathe and started machining it. This metal will be easy to work. I mainly wanted to see how it worked. my piece was really too big and not square for anything I would make out of it.
We will now have to make molds for stuff we want to make. The machining will then just be for finishing up the project.
Next weekend, I will pick up a stick of white wood two by two for my ornaments. I will try to get serious about the carved Christmas ornaments.
I will see what I actually do next week.
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