week 833 Wood Working

Year 12, Week 7, Day One (week 633) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 02-25-12 Saturday

80 degrees, partly cloudy skies, some sun, a moment of weeping cloud, light breeze enough to carry the heat away. This weather report was brought to you by the City of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

No woodworking planned for today. I had two projects planned. One was to go yard sailing, and the other was to go to the renaissance fair that is running in my county.


YARD SAILING.


Boy did I go yard sailing. I got a major load of stuff. At one yard sail, I got an electric grill, a little scan radio, and some wooden beads. The grill works and heats up really fast, but the radio's batteries had corroded and I think it did too much damage inside the electronics. At least the battery compartment was trashed. No problem.

Electric Grill.

At another yard sale, I got a whole bunch of pans, a chess game, a Jeopardy game, some kitchen utensils, and a couple of shirts. I stopped at this one twice since it was right across the street of my mom's house.

cooking utensils. In the second picture, there is a spreader with a giraffe head as the handle.


two piece loaf pan sitting in a Ttuppeware tray, and a microwave loaf pan

Chess and Chinese checker set, Jeopardy game.

At a third yard sail, I got some expensive pieces of Tupperware and a couple dragons figurines.

Tupperware brand tray set. These will be a present for someone. I also had some lids for the small cups and the bowls. also two dragon figurines. The one on the right is wrapped around a rock.

More tupperware.
At another yard sail, a guy had a two piece mechanic's tool box with tools for sale. One guy purchased it for forty bucks. He was interested only in the tools. He sold the tool box itself with a few tools in it, for ten bucks. I got my truck and brought it home. It is in excellent condition. Now we have to figure out what to do with it....



RENAISSANCE FAIR


I got to the fair later than I normally do so I had to park a little farther back than normal. I had a good marker for what lane I was parking in.


Map of the fair grounds. Lower right is where you enter. Upper left is the newer section

I had planned to put on a weak imitation of a costume but had mom take a picture of me and it did not look like anything. I gave up on that. I even left my sword in the car. I just looked like another tourist.

I walked the fair grounds twice. It is usually a figure eight arrangement with a tassel off the bigger loop. I start with the small loop which includes the food court, then do the big loop which also has a food court but stretched out a bit farther along.
At the neck of the two loops is the kettle Korn stand. I always gets some of his popcorn first thing when I get to that point, and then get more for going home. I started with their small.
The big loop meets a lake and there was a spur, the tassel, that heads off to the left. I saw the tassel and there was almost nothing there. I felt a tiny bit dejected that the fair was smaller than it normally was. that is usually where they have the jousting. I headed along the lake of the big loop and found the fair was a whole lot bigger. They added two spurs on the other side of the big loop with the jousting area right between the ends. They had the pirate village on the spur along side the lake and they had live cannons sitting there. They would be fired later in the day.
I went by the blacksmith area where it always is, and there is a guy who plays a singled string violin type instrument. He uses a gourd for the body and a stick for the neck. It is pretty music even for a one string violin. He is extremely skilled. He showed me a gourd ukelele he finished this year. It had excellent sound. On my second pass, I purchased one of his CDs.


The artist and his CD picture. He is playing his one string violin

I finished my round of the fairground path, visiting three other vendors I really like.
As I was about to start a second pass around, My camera ran into a problem. My digital camera uses mini CDs to hold the pictures. I took a picture and the camera locked up while saving the image. I wanted to take another picture so I shut the camera off and when I turned it back on, the CD was inaccessible. I lost all the pictures I took of the yard sale finds and of what I photographed up to that point in the festival. I only had 35 shots to go on the CD since I had been taking pictures on it all month. I copy the images to the computer so the only images was taken of that day.

I put a new CD in and took more pictures around the fair. I did not go back to the cannons as my feet were telling me that was not a good idea. I skipped a few other things while I was at it.
Other than the Kettle Korn, I purchased two CDs One from the daughter of an artist I love. His work is fantasy, dragons, very good. I looked at one of the paintings and turned to his daughter and said, "That looks like you!" She told me he painted that for her album cover and had refused to show it to her until it was done. She played a little bit of one of her albums and I ended up buying it. She has a voice as pretty as she is.

Destini and the album cover her father painted of her.


When I made my second pass, my camera's battery was giving out-of-power warnings. I skipped a number of pictures I could have taken.

Of the pictures I lost, I had pictures of some young girls doing the Irish high step. I had several pictures of the "pope" and his entourage. I had pictures of the cannons and of many of the booths as I had gone around.
I had also lost all the pictures I took of my yard sailing, along with one picture of me in my get-up. That one was a loss except it was a picture of me....



Last week, One of the yarns I got was a flat yarn. It was in a mottled tan color. I decided I am going to use some of that for my dream catcher. It has a resemblance of leather thong.
One quick project to do is to turn an acorn. According to the story, bad dreams pass through the dream catcher and there is something in the center to catch the good dreams. It might be a sea shell, a bead, or something else. I am going to make a large acorn to act as my dream catcher, and then have my carved leaves also captured in it. I have the string, the leaves, the ring and just need the acorn to work on finishing that.

I also need to work on my tea pot. I should mount the pot itself on the lathe and touch it up a little. I would like the walls a little thinner in the widest point of the tea pot. The outside comes out to sort of a point, but inside it is a more gentle curve. Once I fix that up, I then can turn the tenon off the bottom. That and of course, a whole lot of sanding too. I have some work on the handle and spout to get them ready to be mounted on the tea pot. I also need to get some epoxy to attach them when they are ready. I figure I will sand and varnish each piece before I put them together.


I will see what I actually do tomorrow.



Year 12, Week 7, Day Two (week 633) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 02-26-12 Sunday

74 degrees when I got out back, 78 mid day and stayed there. The clouds were weeping at home, almost like a fog, but I drove out of that within a mile. Interlocked pregnant gray puffs filled the sky, breaking up enough to let some brightness below a couple times in the afternoon. The strong wind moved sawdust around nicely but seemed to ignore wind chimes or twirling things.
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THE FAIR YESTERDAY -REPRISAL.

I went to the fair yesterday and only after I got home that I realized I handled it all wrong. I rushed to see everything as fast as possible. When I lost my pictures, I then rushed to recreate the pictures and killed off my feet. What I needed to do was to act like I had all day and watch the shows, sit and watch the people in costume, REST and be off my feet for long periods of time. It closes at like six or seven. I got there after ten and left after one. Darn!!!!

My feet bothered me when I went to bed and they were stiff when I got up. I thought I was getting a blister but there is no sign of it now.

When I had rolled the tool box to the back yard, the beast of the back yard disappeared and I never saw him at all. Scar face was there, but not the beast.


SATURDAY

The beast of the back yard was waiting for me. I gave him lots of food and lots of attention. He was gone for an hour and returned when I was getting ready to sit down and just sand. He stayed nearby, actually sleeping at my feet, for a while, something he has not done very often since my mom removed the train set from the side of her yard. I was very hesitant to disturbing him. I was able to do quite a bit of work even so.

My first project was to make an acorn for my dream catcher. I cut some black walnut since it was about the right size. The black walnut was rectangular so I cut a small length and then measured the narrow width and placed a felt tip pen mark on the band saw, and flipped the piece on the side and made my cut at that mark. The mark wiped off with just a swipe of my finger.
I mounted the wood in the lathe and rounded the end. I started rounding the end, bringing it to a point the way an acorn would look. Once I got that to where I wanted, I made a step where the cap started and then shaped the cap down to the stem. My big bowl gouge ended up a bit big for the space I was working, and changed tools several times to get the look I was after. I sanded on the lathe and then parted it off. I still have the waste wood I can use for something else of nearly the same size.
I will sand and varnish the acorn. I might pock-mark the cap with the motor tool, but will decide on that a bit later. I will still have to drill it for the cord to run through it like a bead.

I then decided I had better make a new lid for my tea pot. I took the same piece of wood I cut last week's attempt from, but this time was from the other end. I cut my square, marked the circle and nipped the corners.
I rounded it on the lathe and made a tenon to hold it with the chuck. I then started fitting the part that goes inside the mouth of the tea pot. I got that right by making sort of a cone and placing the tea pot to it to see where the wood would burn. Once I got it just fitting over it and meeting the edge of the rest of the raw disk. I put the pot in place on it with the tail stock holding it in place and was shaping the lid to match it. I turned the gouge wrong and dug into the tea pot a little. I smoothed that out quite a bit, then continued on making the top of the lid. I got another catch and it broke the edge that met the tea pot. it was toast. no way that could be saved.
I cut another disk of wood and tried it again. I decided to make a design change. I started cutting in for the handle kob near the chuck so there was a thick ridge where the pot met the lid. I decided to create a design there so I could make it remain thick and look like it was intended to be thick. That worked. I sanded the results and parted it off. Some hand sanding and having to grind a tiny bit was necessary to make it look good.

I had damaged the surface of the tea pot and planned on re-finishing it anyway. I decided not to touch the inside of the tea pot, leaving it as is rather than correcting the side thickness a little.
I mounted the tea pot in the chuck and got it spinning. I used my bowl gouge like a scraper to even out the slight wobble that you automatically get when you take a piece off the lathe and put it back on. I then worked to remove the worst of the gouges. There was one really bad gouge that I worked some sawdust and glue into, then sanded it until glue that got on the rest of the surface was gone. I stopped the lathe and hand sanded some places several times.
I then turned the vase around. My chuck does not close down enough and I was not in the mood to shape a piece of wood into a jam chuck that goes into the hole to hold the vase in place. I opened my chuck as big as possible and just put the vase against it, and put the tail stock into the tenon which still had the original tail stock point hole. I trued up the bottom, then cut in a ring to hold it up off the surface. It should have been inside a little more but the tool I was using to cut the inside of the ring was a bit wider than needed and that dictated how far from the center the ring would be. When done with the ring all I had was a little stub sticking up that the tail stock was pushing onto.
I removed the tea pot from the lathe, sat down with my dremmel and a grinding bit and removed the post. I then finished the bottom.
I also used a dremmel flap sander to touch up some rough spots, then hand sanded them to remove the flap sander tool marks.
I sanded on the handle and spout. One thing I did for a little bit was to take a strip of emery cloth and stuck one end in the vise and held the other end tight. I then rubbed the handle across the sanding strip, rotating it as I moved it. This rounded some of the corners better and removed some nick and tool marks. I then sat and sanded by hand until I got it looking right.


Acorn for the dream catcher, the finished lid and the unfinished lid I broke.

I took all the pieces for the dream catcher and the tea pot home. I am varnishing everything, giving them a good number of coats until I am satisfied with the finish, then I will prepare to assemble everything.
On the tea pot, I have to determine exactly where the spout will go, and drill a series of holes for the tea to come out. I don't ever plan for this tea pot to be used, but in case it is, it will work.

I had seen some dream catchers at the fair and saw that they did not drill for the strings. They tied the strings around the rim. I will do it that way, using the string tension to hold things in place. I do have to drill holes in the leaves and the acorn for the cords, but that should not be a problem. I figure it will be next weekend before I will be close to being ready to think about assembling the dream catcher.

fair dream catchers

For next week, My Saturday wood working time will be cut short as I have to go to the antique shop where my stuff is on display and pick up my work for the art show. Of course, I will be checking for any yard sales to see if there is anything of interest. that will also cut into my wood working time if there are several. My tea pot and dream catcher are my main projects.
On Sunday, I will have all my stuff from the antique shop, along with anything I bring from home and all the stuff that is kept at Mom's house. I plan to set up a three foot by eight foot table that I will have at the art show and practice setting up my display. That will show me what will make the best display and what will likely stay in the boxes. It will also tell me what needs repair or touch ups.
the following weekend is when I will be having my art show and I will practice my display again. On that weekend, I will sharpen all my knives, get my equipment ready, get my sticks to carve during the show.

For this weekend though, I will have to see what I actually do.