In My "Spare" Time: Year 16, Week 09, Day One (week 843)

Year 16, Week 09, Day One (week 843)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-12-16 Saturday

75 early morning, 80 afternoon. Blue sky with periods of clouds zipping by with hat-tugging gusts. A truly beautiful day in Paradise. Come visit and spend your money, then return home and tell your friends about your visit here. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.

We knew there were some yard sales to the south of us, but we headed north. Neither one of us were full of energy this morning. We hit two yard sales on our road. At one, run by a church, is going to be the last that church will do for a long time. The officials don’t like the mess of the stuff having to be gathered and stored for several days before it happens. They don’t have any storage space for this stuff any more. Much of today’s stuff was from a woman who passed, and gave it to the church to help the kid’s club items. I got a little nothing and paid more than it was going to go for.
A second yard sale right near by, had part of a meat slicer. The motor was missing. I also got some buttons. I later cleaned this slicer up and realized the blade might fit the slicer I have at home since I am missing a blade. When I got home, it did fit so I have a complete slicer now. In a real world test, I found my motor worked better on this frame, than when I put that blade on my frame. I am sure someone out there has a broken frame of a slicer and the slicer frame might help them. I will pass it on in some way.
Later, I picked up a coffee warmer. It just gets warm enough to keep a pot of water or pan of food warm, but not hot. I am going to try to stop grabbing things for the replaceable cords. I have enough, I think.
We were almost home, hitting quite a few yard sales that had everything except what we needed or wanted We had skipped a couple such yard sales during the day because from the street you could see everything they had. With this last yard sale, it took a little effort to find this it. There was almost nothing on display and were going to leave when we noticed they had some wood laying there. Out of curiosity, I asked if they were sale. I liked the price and got them. There was some nice square 4x4s, slightly rounded 4x4 fence posts. and some 2x4 and some one bys. I really don’t need more wood, but this was a good deal for some boards that were useful. These were all cut-offs, not full length. That did not matter to me. The wood was worth it.
A couple months ago, a friend had passed. I was given two milk crates of books in the evening. I did not have time to look at what I got.

We got home and we all took a nap. Mine was short, just enough to refresh me. I went out back, sorted my finds and took pictures.
Now the square 4x4 posts were yellow pine. It was exactly what I needed for a project. A couple of weeks ago, I had made a platter with a knob in the middle for a friend, and it was not what she was after. Last week, I picked up some small glass bowls at the dollar store with the intent of making a base for them to be held at the center of the platter. During the week, I was trying to figure out what wood I needed. I might even have had to glue two pieces of wood together to get the size I needed. If I did that, though, I would not be able to turn the piece until the following week as the glue has to fully set to work with it.
I checked and found these 4x4s were just about big enough. I had founda solution so I could finish my project!
I used the SawsAll to slice a chuck off, more than I really needed. It cut the wood nicely. I prefer this saw to other methods of cutting wood like this. I considered using the band saw but then I realized I would have to change the setup and also it has that meat cutting blade and does not work good on anything thick. The chain saw could have been used but the kerf of the cut is so wide. The SawsAll was easy to grab and less work to set up than the band saw or any other cutting implement I might grab and the blades are thin. The idea of using a hand saw was out of the questions. I have my morals, you know.....
I marked the centers of the wood on each end. I opened the jaws of the chuck all the way, which was smaller than the end of the wood, put the tail stock in place, right on the center, and tightened everything up. I knocked off some of the corners but little else, and then next to the point of the tail-stock, I turned the end down until it would fit inside the chuck as a tenon. A technique I learned with making crochet hooks on the mini lathe from square stock, is that I know that the end at the tail stock will be spinning at center. The three jaws on the mini lathe cannot gab a square object, they are only good for round stock. I basically let the rest of it be as out of straight it wants to be. I just round the tiny part at the tail stock, in this case, cutting it down until it will fit inside the jaws of the chuck. What little out of alignment it might be, is not enough to matter.
I flipped the work around and clamped down the chuck while making sure the point was dead in the center of my marks. The error from straight that the tenon because of possible angles, was not enough to effect anything. It was centered on the point of the tail stock.
I nearly rounded the work with the point holding it in place, because there are strong forces of the corners slamming into the cutting tool during this process. I did not want the piece to slip in the jaws of the chuck and be thrown out of center
Once it was nearly round, I removed the tail stock. Now there is sometimes little errors caused by possible slight angle differences or stresses in how the chuck holds the wood alone comparted to when held by the tail stock point. With the work now supported only by the chuck, I rounded the work a little more, stopping with a couple flat spots on the sides still showing. They were not important as when I got to them, they would be removed as I shaped the piece.
I addressed hollowing the end. I had not done this in a while. I had to remember some things as I was going. I am not totally satisfied with how I did it. I could do it better, quicker and get a cleaner cut. Hopefully, next time I will get it right. When the bowl was close, I used the glass bowl to check the fit. I kept checking as I removed material, until I had a nice solid fit, which including removing a slight bump in the center. I then used a scraper to get a really good surface and then sanded until it was right enough (my work is never actually good, since I cannot sand through all the grits while the work is on the lathe, but good enough is what I was after).
Then I addressed the outside. I got the area just below the lip nice and smooth, well sanded before I went any farther. Then came cutting in the base till it fit the knob on the platter. I had gone quite a ways down when I realized I should measure the piece to see if it would fit nicely on the knob of the platter. I grabbed a clamp since it was at hand and set it to the diameter of the knob, and then put it to the cup I was making. I found I had gone in deeper than I intended to go, so I marked on the curve of the bowl where the diameter was found, and cut in there so I had a bead. I then shaped to the bead, and then cut the bottom flat while creating what could have been the stem of a goblet. This would have made a nice goblet at this point, but I was after something else. When I got the stem small enough to act like a dowel and everything sanded , I cut the work off.
The next step was to drill a hole in the knob of the platter to fit the stub of the bowl. I drilled a tiny hole straight and true, then made it bigger using the original hole to make it also straight and true and then a little bigger. I did not have a drill bit that the dremmel could hold of the final size I was after. I was not in the mood to drag out a drill or take the work to the drill press. Instead I took a conical grinding burr I had that was close to the diameter (slightly larger) and used that as a drill. I had to trim the stub a couple times to make sure it was short enough, globed a lot of water-poof wood-glue into the hole and on all the surfaces, and pressed them together. After cleaning up a tiny bit of overflow and rotating the cup to make sure the grain pattern has some logic to the pattern on the platter, I set it out to dry.
I might try another project like this again. I do like the results.

Someone tossed out a little stair climber unit. The cable had jumped the groove of the pully and dug into the plastic. I picked it up, out of curiosity, partly to see if I could fix it. Partly to see how one of those things worked.
I completely disassembled the pulley assembly. I was supposed to use a large allen or hex wrench on one side, but instead held that bolt with plyers on the sides of the head while turning the nut on the other side. Once I was able to slide the pulley out, I could see exactly what had happened. They must have loosened the knob a bit too much and the cable slipped. Then when they applied pressure, the cable slid beside the pully and damaged the ridge of the disk.
It was at this point I figured out how the thing worked. There are shock absorbers to slow the motion and give resistance. As one places weight on one peddle, it is pushed down, and the cable pulls the other pedal up. The second foot essentially has be lifted to make the next step and overcoming the weight on the first foot,. This is where the exercise comes from. I put the bad part of the groove on the opposite side of where the cable restedand put it all back together. The pulley only turns less than a quarter turn, at most, with each step so the bad spot never comes into play. It is fixed.
It is not coming home, that is for sure. I don’t want any “Mediaeval Torture Devices” anywhere near me. “Confess or you get ten more minutes!”

I am not totally sure what I will be doing tomorrow. I will have to see. We have the time change and plans might be shifted around. I never know exactly what I will do.

Year 16, Week 09, Day Two (week 843)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-13-16 Sunday

75 degrees morning, 79 afternoon. A nice clean blue sky early morning. A line of clouds came by in the late afternoon to the south, watering the plants nicely. It was about a mile wide at most. It was blue sky to the east of the shield clouds of the shower line, and mostly blue sky to the west of the clouds. Typical for Florida. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Department Of Tourism.

You know that hour I lost this morning? That was the hour I planned on exercising during. Oh well...

While my brother and I talked, I dug out my dremmel and a flap sander and worked on removing signs of glue on the inside of the bowl. Of the goblet I broke and repaired last week. I dipped the goblet in some water. Where the water was repelled was where the glue was. If water could not penetrate, neither any finish I might try. That is why you need to be very careful when you are gluing. I then sanded to remove as much as I could before I tested it again.
I got it to where only little bits of glue within little tear-outs (signs of bad technique) I had in the bowl was where the glue was showing up, that and the very center where I glued in the stem. For now, this is pretty good. Everything I do could do with more sanding.

My brother brought the piece of metal he is working to become a knife. He had welded soft metal outside the file in the center, and cut strips from a circular saw blade and welded them on the outside. He then folded it over and was working on welding the fold together.
He has a problem from the fact that he is using charcoal briquets. They get the metal hot enough for bending and forming, but he could not get the fire hot enough for a proper welding. He could get the metal yellow hot, but a good weld is white hot. He only had one bag of charcoal on hand so he could not really build a proper mound to get the heat he needed.
He has learned a lot from a knife making competition he has watched on TV. These metal workers have a limited time to make something from the materials they are given. There are different tests they have for what they made. My brother said that on one show, two guys made knives from files. One ground off the teeth before he started. The other did not. The guy who removed the teeth did not have lots of problems. In another competition, they had to use at least three different kinds of metal One guy meticulously cleaned the pieces of metal before he welded them. His welds were quick. Another did not and he spent a lot of time just driving the slag out between the metals with the hammer.
My brother’s fire is small, he can only do half the piece of metal when heating it. That makes it tough to heat it in the center. He is going to change his forge so he can get a better angle on the metal (he built his own forge). A bigger pile of charcoal might help too.. He says that even though he knows a lot of what he is doing, because he read a lot and seen a lot of shows, there is still a learning curve. He is hammering with his weak hand as his dominant arm is messed up right now. He found it is easier than he thought, though.

A friend of mine passed several months ago and her executor finally got access to her belongings. I glanced through some of her books I got last night and separated them in three sections. One pile was cook books and game books which I intend to keep for a while, the other is novels, and the third was a few devotional booklets. Mom got the devotionals. (I will keep some of the cook books and pass on others) I was told I have a chance to get some of her kitchen stuff next week. Whether that happens will be something else.

This is going to be a really big week. I have the turning club meeting Thursday night. I have my chip and dip platter and that goblet to show off there. Friday I was invited to a concert and will be going to that. Since both these things are well past my bed normal bed time, I do expect to sleep a lot on Saturday in an attempt to recover. If I do more than yard sailing, even if the weather is good, I will be really surprised.

I will see what I do next weekend.
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