(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
04-04-15 Saturday
74 degrees early morning, 84 degrees afternoon. Patchy but mostly blue sky, light breeze, mostly sunny. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
There was a lunar Eclipse this morning. Mom knew about it and we all went out and watched it from the corner of our block, two houses up, and saw the moon head down fast, and the shadow cover most of the moon, before it went behind a badly placed palm tree. We went back in until it was time to go for breakfast.
The first yard sale after Breakfast was a woman trying to unload a bunch of stuff and was almost giving the stuff away. There was a stack of cook books and the top book was on pasta. I kept looking at it as I walked by. The woman offered me to take the entire stack for a pittance. I took them. I turned out to be a stack of 12 cook books. Four were really desirable. Two I will unload as soon as I can get rid of them. I will never throw out books. That is against my better nature. I would rather pass them on so someone else can make use of them.
We got home, talked a bit, then I headed out on my own. There were four other yard sales, but they had nothing at all. Two I have visited previously and they had nothing new. One of the two has antiques. He had a small metal knife sharpening device that was kind of interesting. You simply scrape the knife in slots and it sharpens by scraping the metal. I did not get it this weekend because, “how many knife sharpeners can you really use at one time anyway?” Because of my nature, it would be interesting to have, as it had a large number of different knife or scissor sharpening spots. If he has another yard sale and that is still there, I will get it, but not until then, though. Maybe someone else who really needs it will get it.
I think that the main reason there are few yard sales, not that four is few, but the snowbirds (partial year residences who come down during the winter and head back north in the spring) have flown North. They had their yard sales to get rid of stuff they did not want to store or take with them and now only the locals will be having sales.
Generally, after Easter, only the locals are left in town. Traffic should really become lighter after this weekend.
After I got back from my search along one of my “rabbit runs” for yard sales, , I spent time and looked at the cook books I got.
I had to do some traveling, which included going home to pick up something I had forgotten. When I got back we all napped for several hours( mom was up all night). The day was over then.
While watching TV, I nearly finished stitching a new teddy bear. It will be set to the side until I can set up and create the face, stuff it, and finish the stitching as I am supposed to. Those are not things to do “on the run” as the body of the bear is stitched.
I really need to do some sort of wood working. I keep getting sidetracked by other things.
I will have to see what happens tomorrow.
Year 16, Week 11, Day Two (week 757)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
04-05-15 Sunday
On a lark, I pulled out nearly all my cook books. I was stunned to have over 70 books. It is time to start culling them. I have books by TV cooks that are no longer doing books or have since passed. I have special books that I have to keep. There are specialty books that should be kept. A lot of the rest of the books fall into the category of “Maybe I will want that some time.”
There are times when grabbing a book is better than searching on the internet, especially since a problem cropped up on my printer that could well be beyond my skills to solve. Some books will go. I will put them in a box and next yard sale or opportunity comes up, off they go.
I knew I had a lot of cook books, but never knew I had this many.
I had an idea for a project. I did not know if it would even work but worth a try. I have a couple food processors that slicer and grater attachments fit onto a post that goes into the machine. On one, the post broke in half. On the other, I got it without the post. The chopper works well on both of them, but the other fittings would be nice to use.
I have some Sea Grape wood that I had split, and decided I should make a new post out of that since it is a strong, hard wood. It MIGHT be as strong as the plastic post that broke. I took one of the food processors with me.
My first attempt, I used my knife to split and shave the end that needed to be square until it just barely fit.. I then mounted the piece of wood on the little metal lathe and rounded the other end. The piece just was not right, so I went to the disk sander to square up the square end. When I was done, it was too small.
Time to change tactics. Since the wood was from a piece I had split, and the wood grain was going the right way, I decided to start with the disk sander and get the entire stick square first. I chose the flattest side and sanded that even flatter.
Now my disk sander has a wooden table with a Masonite top. Because of loose sanding papers over the hears, the space between the sanding disk and the table is a bit wide and there are spots where pieces can fall in. I do need to fix that some time. It is on my long list. I took a piece of 1/8th inch think plywood and set that at the table and used that to span the space between the disk and the table so the wood could not fall down and would have something flat to sit on.
I set the flat side down and sanded the flattest of the two sides, making it and the bottom square. I then flipped the piece around and did the second side, and then the top, and then kept flipping it, sometimes end for end until I had it square. I checked for fit and slowly got the piece to where it would fit inside as it was supposed to.
I then took out the little machine lathe and after finding the center of one end, I put that end into the Tail Stock of the lathe and rounded the end to a distance. I then worked the diameter down to where it would fit into the hole of the food processor. Once I had a tight fit, I used my knife to shave one side flat so it would fit in and lock in palce (the original had a flat on it )
I finally checked the total fit and made the shaft on both ends to the right length.
My final step was to drill for a pin that goes through the shaft and helps to spin the accessory. I had a dull “Roto-Zip” bit and after drilling that through to create the hole, I then used the dremmel to cut it off on the smooth shaft end at the right length so the smooth shaft will stay with the wood, and the remaining twisty part is still available for use. Finally I glued the remaining shaft into the wood.
I did run the machine a couple times, while it was wide open, working the safety switch with a thin stick. There is a wobble to the disk of the accessory but it worked.
After I got home, later in the day, I tried it out with a potato and onion with the slicing plate on the accessory disk. It wobbled, but it ran and sliced the potatoes. A couple times, a piece would get caught on the slicing blade which is kind of aggressive, but the shaft held solid. It might have needed to be a bit taller, but the accessory is useable again. It would have been nice to have the original to measure length with.
It was fun to figure out the solution, create the part and test it out. Now after my test, I was reminded that the food processor is really best when working with a large amount of food, as the effort to clean it is sometimes more than the labor saved.
Right after I finished the post, my brother and I started talking, and later the rest of us got together for dinner and discussion. That pretty much ended my day.
I have another of the food processors that could use a shaft like I made. Of course, I have more projects than time or materials. It was satisfying to accomplish something that really worked.
I will have to see what happens next weekend. Mom might have other plans for me.
The accessory disk in place. Later tests shows it works.
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