Year 12, Week 1, Day One (week 628)

Year 12, Week 1, Day One (week 628)(skipped the missing weeks)


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


07-22-12 Sunday






85 degrees, mostly cloudy in the morning, 88 degrees in the afternoon just before some heavy liquid sunshine passed by. This weather report is brought to you by the city of Pompano beach department of tourism.






WHY I HAVE NOT BEEN ON LINE.


Back on Easter, I was involved in a "supposed to be" fatal accident. I spent a month in the hospital, and then nearly two months in rehabilitation. I since have stayed in my mom's house for 24 hour care. week before last, I was allowed to give up the walker and go with a cane and full weight on my right leg (I have a plate at the top of the shin).






My leg is my main problem and that is improving. I do have some internal problems but they fall under "nagging or ignorable" at least for the time being. Hopefully, those things will be gone when my leg is back to normal.


My truck was totaled and my brother unloaded my truck at the towing agency. They were shocked when they saw seven saws pulled out of the truck.






PAST WOODWORKING.






I have not done much in wood working until this weekend. One weekend while on the walker, I litterally dragged my carving basket to under the awning. That was all I did that weekend.


I had a whole lot of stuff in there in my truck. a bunch of it went flying. I remember looking at the passenger seat and wondering how my tool box got into the front. I now realize the lid came off and the contents of the tool box had gone flying.


I dug through the bags of what my brother collected from my truck, mainly looking for a few key items. I found a few but others were not visible.






The first weekend after I could put my full weight on my leg, I dragged out my machine lathe box. I removed a bag of truck stuff from on top the box, which was lighter than the box. That told me I could handle the weight. I then carefully positioned myself, lifted the box and set it on the wagon in one move. I then towed the wagon through the garden mulch to under the awning, cleared where I was going to put it and, after some planning, lifted the box onto the cart. That was all I did on that day.






On another day, I cut a piece of two by two for a "tall cool drink of a man" carving. I did not do anything else that day.










SUNDAY










This weekend I decided I had to do some work. Saturday was a failure as we did a whole bunch of running around and I had to rest when we got home to have some recovery for an evening meeting. Working outsdide was out of the question.






Sunday, I had time and got outside quickly. After feeding and petting Scarface (Beggar, the beast of the back yard disappeared earlier this year and has never returned), I opened the machine lathe box.






I decided to machine some wooden rods for crochet hooks. I started with a piece of Mahogany and used my knife to rough round one end to fit in the chuck of the lathe. I started machining the tailstock end of the stick. As the cutting tool worked down the length of the wood, knocking off the corners, I got a catch and the rod hopped off the lathe, landed behind it and then dissappeared. I have no idea where it went, but it sounded like it landed on concrete.






I took out a stick of oak that I had cut from a wine cask, and started machining it. I rough rounded one end with the disk sander since I was standing there after I cut it to length (lathe has a limited length that it can handle). I then started machining it from the tail stock toward the chuck.


Once I had the rod rounded, I swapped ends and machined the end that was once in the chuck. I did not quite get it centered and while I got it really close, I used sandpaper to remove the mating edge.






After I finished the rod, the sky looked threatening so I put the lathe away. I dug the dremmel box out of the shed.


I cut the hook into the new rod and two others I had on hand to make them croche hooks. One really thin rod got a handle to make holding it easier.






As the sky looked even more threatening, I put the dremmel away and grabbed some carving stuff. I started on the top of the hat of the cool drink figure. I stopped for a moment and was relocating some stuff. My knife rolled in my hand carving hand and kicked my thumb, my number one kind of cut I get. cuts on my holding hand are more rear nowadays.


I took care of a few other things after stucking a Band-Aid on the cut just to make sure little else is painted red from the very shallow knick, I saw that my mom got home from a meeting. I also felt a few driplets from the sky. I put the carving stuff out of range of any weather and went inside. Three minutes later, we had a good squall line going through.






Based on the way scheduals are going, I don't expect to do any woodworking until Sunday.






Next weekend, I do plan to do something more in wood working, maybe some machining or some carving, I don't feel I am ready to use the big lathe yet. My balance is not the best and it is hard to work the lathe while holding a cane. The little lathe is used sitting down.

Will see what I do next week.