(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
05-17-14 Saturday
A frosty 67 degrees in the morning. I saw my breath on the air. It got up to a comfortable 82 degrees but with strong winds, gust enough to blow a loose hat off. It was sunny all day long with blue sky, swishes and waves of white lace and diluted milk. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
I went yard sailing and the mocking birds were singing with all their might everywhere I went. It was wonderful. Those are my favorite of all song birds.
I hit several yard sales with my mom and new dad and found nothing, and then headed out on my own. I got a couple books. Mrs. Fixit PANTRY POWER (clean it and repair it faster for less. And also I got Yankee Magazine VINEGAR, DUCT TAPE, MILK JUGS AND MORE. (1001 ingenious ways to use common household items to repair, restore, revive, or replace just about everything in your life). Mom looked at these and said they are very good. They give tips and techniques or replacing or repairing things with materials you have on hand.
I got a pair of mugs one has a beagle on it. On the back side it tells where the beagle developed. The other has the Boston Terrier. I know one is going to be a gift to someone at work.
My biggest purchase was a little drafting board with a drafting real machine that keeps the blade square to the table as you work. I remembered last year needing something like this and I am trying to remember why. I might attach it to a larger drafting board. I will have to give it a close look. Right now, it is a size for working with typing paper.
My final purchase is one of those stones you stick into your drill and sharpen knives. I have that cleaver I got last week and could not quite get the angle right. I want to sharpen it properly and this stone will be perfect to get the angles.
While I was yard sailing, I went and gassed up. A woman was leaving and had a big bag she had put a case of beer in. I held the door for her and she appreciated it. I like holding doors for people. Later, I ended up at a yard sale and there she was. It was her yard sail. She remembered me.
At that yard sail, there was an interesting thing. I am positive I had seen it before but just could not quite figure out what it was. The guy said that he had a lot of those “what is it?” items. He said he might have things that are quite valuable if he knew what they were.
I attached a drawing of what I saw. The spindle on top spins, and the disk adds momentum to it. There was a metal rod sticking out which I think had a crank. The bottom was an angled box. It was all made out of one by wood. There was a lot of mess around the disk which may have been started spinning by hand.
My drawing of the "What is it?" not to any scale. it is about two foot long. The dowel and disk are likely much longer than shown. The dowel is likely 1 1/2" diameter. The disk was at least two inches diameter and might have been a little bigger.
When I got home, I took a longer nap than I planned. Other than petting and feeding the cat, I did not go outside again until it was time to leave.
I have no idea what I plan to do tomorrow. I do know I will bother some piece of wood.
We will see what happens tomorrow.
Year 15, Week 17, Day Two (week 714)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
05-18-14 Sunday
Low 80s, blue skies, light breeze, sunny all day long. This weather report is brought to you by the city of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
I made myself drag out the lathe today. I took that Sea Grape Plate I started several weeks back and put some effort in trying to finish it.
I had to adjust it to get it as centered as possible. While it had dried after I originally made it, it warped. I did not make it thick enough to allow me to just remove wood to straighten it out so I had to work with the warp.
I used the tools to get the center on both sides as clean and flat as possible, then I nibbled off the high points of the rest of the disk with the tools, leaving the lowest point alone on both sides. I finally took some aggressive sand paper and scraped the whole surface with the lathe running really slow so my hand could follow the warp of the platter. My tooling had added some chatter, where the tool vibrated against the wood and left high and low marks. Many people have special tools to create that effect, but I decided not to leave the pattern.
After I sanded both sides really good with a finer sand paper, I used a dremmel to remove the center nibs on both sides. I used heavy and light sanding to remove most of the dremmel marks.
I still have more to do on sanding and finishing this platter. It still has the bark around the outside, though the bark did take a bit of a beating in the process. It is looking good. I don’t like sanding and that is basically what I have to concentrate on now. I gave it a coat of varnish just so it looks all right for now. When I sand it, the varnish will show where it needs more sanding, as the varnish will remain in the low spots.
I cannot find my camera right now. I looked everywhere and it is gone. Darn. I will have to use my old low grade camera until I can figure out what happened to it.
I mounted that grind stone I got yesterday and mounted it into the drill and ground on the blade of the cleaver I got last week. The stone is softer than I expected, and wore away faster than I thought it would, but it got the blade shaped right. I will use a stone to grind the blade finely, strop it and it should be able to slice tomatoes. The key was to get the shape of the blade right, which was something I could not do by hand.
While putting up the lathe, the wheels caught on a ridge in the stone patios. My lathe base is designed so I can drop the wheels onto wood blocks so it will not move. There are levers that allow the wheels to be pushed down to the ground and lift the blocks back up off the ground. There are sticks of wood set so they swing into position to lock the lifting bars in place so the wheels will be locked in the down position.
While pushing the lathe, the locking block slipped and one end of the wheels (a set on each end) lifted up and the lathe dropped down to the ground. This would not be a problem, but in order to push the lever back down to lift the lathe back up onto the wheels, I had to use my bad leg in order to be in position to slip the locking block back into place. There is a bunch of pieces of wood in the bottom shelf and while they looked like they were not in the way, they blocked my foot from going down far enough. I ended up having to try to lift the lathe several times before I got it in place. I had to move some pieces of wood out of the way before I finally got it up and locked in place to roll the lathe into the storage position.
I have a whole lot of weight on that lathe cart. I have it heavy so that when I am working with a piece of wood that is badly out of balance, the lathe is not going to walk all over the place. If the wood is really bad, you drop the lathe down onto the wood blocks by lifting the wheels. I have some weight lifter weights, and lots of wood on the shelving, along with most of my turning tools mounted on the lathe. It is heavy. All that weight made shoving the bar down to lift the cart back on the wheels really hard.
Since I was using my bad leg, when I got the cart back on the wheels and pushed it into the “parking spot”, my leg hurt. I finished getting the tools and equipment put away, but I knew I was not going to do much more today, even if I was not cleaning up.
The wheel assembly drawing showing how the wheel is is locked in place to roll, or lifted to sit on the support blocks.
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