In My "Spare" Time: Year 16, Week 36, Day One (week 868)

Year 16, Week 36, Day One (week 868)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
09-17-16 Saturday

86 degrees early morning with high humidity and no wind. Some towers over the ocean. Some feathers and milk above. Puffs appeared here and there, but there was large sections of blue sky most of the day. A light wind picked up in the afternoon that helped. No weather all day long. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Department Of Tourism.

During the week, a weather system passed close to us. I noticed it on the weather radar after it was already north of us. I saw movement in the Doppler where the rain patterns circled one area. A bit later, I saw it was reported as a storm. We received some feeder band activity, but that activity was not great as most of the rain event was over the ocean and not over land, which made it nice. If it had not been above us on the map, I would have thought that we were all going to die. It did gain a name after it finally was completely over water east of Georgia.

THURSDAY

The wood turning club meeting caught me off guard. All I had to show in the instant gallery was my drum sticks. Only three people brought something in to represent finials. A couple people brought in work that they hated. One said that his big bowl, about 2 feet in diameter, ended up in the garbage three times. His wife pulled it out of the garbage each time. It had laid around for a long time so he threw it in the garbage. His wife pulled it out and painted figurines on it. His adding the finish messed up her paintings and he tossed it..recovered it and fixed it and then they got a good finish on it. He still does not like it, but it does look good. Another brought in a decorative little container that was up on stilts. He hated it, he did several things to it, then his wife wood burned on it and made it impressive.
Both cases are examples of where we know what it is supposed to be like and it falls far from our image. Someone else has no clue of what we had in mind, and they liked it.
I have found in many kinds of art I’ve dabbled in, the artist knows what it was supposed to look like and is very disappointed. Everybody else only sees the end result and are impressed

The demonstration was on making pepper mills and salt mills. There is several steps of drilling and you have the have the hardware to make sure the holes are the right size. The difference between the hardware for the salt mills and the pepper mills, is that the pepper mills can be metal, but the salt mills HAVE to be ceramic because salt will corrode metal. One can get the rods in various lengths. He explained what to do if the rod is too long. The top of the rod is threaded. One cuts on the end that has the mechanism and then re-bends that end to crimp the mechanism in place. Never cut the thread unless you have a way to thread it again. Most people don’t.
Once the drill holes are made, the outside is basic simple turning. If the wood is interesting, one should keep the parting slots as thin as possible so the wood looks like it was from the same piece of wood with no gaps.
For fitting the parts in, he had modified a scraper to get the proper angles on the surfaces. He said that each mechanism comes with instructions on how they go together and work.
I will say that the masters make absolutely anything, no matter how complex, look easy. It makes my wood turning look like it is done by Godzilla.

SATURDAY

The weather report was good, so after breakfast, I headed out on the yard sale circuit. I visited 9 yard sales and skipped 4 (they either always have sales or nothing was on display worthy of stopping for). I was shocked at how many I stopped at after I counted them up.
The only thing I picked up was a stuffy kitten. It was in a box of stuffies. I moved them around, setting several of the little teddy bears upright as they are supposed to be. When I grabbed the kitten, it started purring. It wiggled in my hand. When I set it down, it became a stuffy again, except the green eyes blinked at me. After that, I realized I could not leave it there. I really could not take it home as my teddy bears are very jealous and won’t accept any other stuffies. I solve the problem by letting the kitten stay in my truck on the dash, to look at me while I drive.

I saw a whole lot of stuff that in previous years I could have grabbed. There were doll house furniture. There was several cooking appliances, such as a two bladed french-fry cutter. There were bread machines and various electric cooking devices like pancake maker, rice cooker, sandwich makers, etc. I am getting a little better on being picky on what I get. I do have days where I am weak, though. Several pieces of furniture I have no room for. One woman had a copy of a master’s painting. It might have been painted. If I had room, I would quickly run out of room anyway.

Once I was back, Mom had a red Cedar tree that was dying. She had me top it, then cut just below the highest green branches. The thickest part of the trunk was about two fingers wide. She had a Tababulea that kept sending up shoots from the top that would rush to reach the sky. It had developed a knob on top. She had me cut that knob off. She will see how it reacts to that. I did those cuts with a hand saw as I did not want to drag out the extension cord for such small cuts. With the last cut I was making, I was wondering if it would have been less effort to drag the cord. It likely would have been the same.

I then brought out all the oak branches I had accumulated from my brother’s oak tree.. I decided that I was not going to keep them as many were not in good condition. I chose to cut them up into smaller pieces so they could go into the garbage. I used the saw-all with a not sharp enough blade. Once the blade got part way in, the branch vibrated wildly which is not efficient cutting.
I kept the two largest pieces, removing excess branches from one. I could have unloaded those two, but I decided to give myself a chance anyway.

After lunch I went out and decided to cut some blanks for wood turning from the board I picked up. The first thing I found out was that it was a two by ten, not a two by twelve. That means the blanks are actually nine inches across.
I cut on one board with the circular saw and it got stuck. It was also not going straight like I wanted. I changed to the saws-all and that did even worse on going straight. I cut a second blank and decided to change projects.

I already had some blanks cut but needed the corners removed in order to be able to turn them. I had started on one last month but stopped because it was hot and I was lazy, so I decided to finish that one. The saw was still fighting me. I changed to a sharper blade and it was still fighting me. I should have opened a new blade but didn’t.
I was cutting away when something hit me on the back of the head. It was like a closed palm hitting me. Solid but no edges. It could not be what I was working on as that was the exact opposite side of where I was hit and it was a small piece I was removing, having removed the main bulk of the corner before. That piece would hit me on the top of the head, not the back of the head. My vision blurred for just a second, I yelped out, then turned around. I looked over the entire area for what it could be and could not find anything.
I was going to do some more cutting, but just felt uncomfortable because I had no idea what hit me. There was no sound of anything bouncing off the house before or after. No swishing sounds of things being in the air.
I decided it would be a good idea just to pack up and call it a day.

SUNDAY

I stopped at one yard sale I saw yesterday since it was up. I still did not need a french-fry cutter or bread maker. I did pick up some recipe booklets. No, I did not need them. They looked interesting anyway. You know how addictions are, you do well for a while then you get a weak moment.

My brother was up. I arrived and we talked about Model railroads for the most part. Most model railroads are designed to see trains run around the tracks. We, though, are into dropping off and picking up cars, or delivering passengers. We discussed how to improve the model railroad layout we have in my house, drawing a few examples. The layout I have inmy house is what I consider the ultimate model railroad layout on a 4x8. He was talking mostly about simplifying it, make it more challenging. We also talked about building self powered engines for the railroad. He wants to go to a big scale where he can use drills to power the engines. I want to stay with HO and use battery power with the batteries in the second car. We don’t do much with model railroading as our schedules don’t mesh. Also, to get my railroad ready to run trains, we would have to spend several sessions just clearing the layout and cleaning tracks.
Beyond that and some talk about welding and machining, we accomplished nothing.

Hopefully, I will actually accomplish something next weekend. I can cut a bunch of blanks from the boards. In trimming the corners of the blanks I already have. With the 2x10s I don’t have to cut quite as close to the circle as the two by twelves require. There is more room to spin the blank from a smaller boards.
I have a lot of wood that wants to be made into something, and a lot of projects that were started and never finished. I need to give up something unimportant such as work, and sleep, in order to get more done.

All the way down the Atlantic coast is a dune area referred to as barrier islands with what was originally fresh water behind it. With dredging, engineers interconnected the inland ponds and lakes behind the barrier islands to create what is now known as The Inter-Coastal Waterway. One can take a boat from New England all the way down to the keys in the protection of the barrier islands.
Down here in Florida, if a city is established entirely on the barrier island, they gave themselves a name with Beach on the end of it to separate themselves from the city on the main land. You get Miami Beach, Dania Beach, Pompano Beach. Hillsboro Beach.
I thought you would like to know.

I will have to see what I do next weekend.

1977