(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-18-17 Saturday
68 degrees early morning, 83 in the afternoon. Nice breeze, patchy clouds and some sun. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
THURSDAY
We had the February Gold Coast Wood Turning Club meeting. We didn’t have as many people there as we normally do, and there wasn’t as much on display in the instant gallery as we normally have, but the meeting went well.
The demonstration was by a gentleman who, when young, had nearly died from Carbon dioxide poisoning, then was a fire fighter and fire inspector. His presentation was about wood working dangers to your lungs.
His first demonstration was he gave out coffee stirrer straws and then had us try to breath through them. He then explained that there are people who get only that much air in a breath. He said that by the time you get to that difficulty breathing, it is too late. One must protect the lungs long before you get to that point, and it is best from the very beginning.
He showed us relative sizes of particles and what dust masks really capture. Masks that capture .3 microns of dust is only partially good enough. A whole lot of the particles we produce when turning and sanding wood, are much smaller than that.
He explained that there are also chemical reactions that happen as the turning tool rubs on the wood and some of those chemicals are really dangerous and they get into the air too. A lot of dust remains in your environment, especially if you are working inside, and if you are working outside, only a really strong breeze that is blowing the dust away from your face will work, otherwise you are not as safe as it looks.
He then showed where certain particles of dust get caught by the body. Larger particles get caught in the throat and gets caught-out or swallowed. Smaller particles get caught at the start of the lungs and is driven out on mucus by the cilia. It is when the particles go into the air sacks that the danger really happens.
He had a great big ring, about four foot in diameter, and that is the individual air sack. He then showed a softball sized object and said this is the size particle that can enter the sack and get stuck, and showed that it could well block the ports that the oxygen and carbon dioxide is transferred to the blood. He then took out a broken piece of wood and said “these particles don’t look like a ball, but instead like this piece of wood.”
He suggests using masks that have air hoses either from behind you or even pressurized air from a clean source.
He emphasized that efforts you take now to protect your lungs, will help you when you get very old after damage accumulates from normal living.
A couple guys are involved in a project in making Urns for the ashes of soldiers that had not been claimed by their families. This is in association with the South Florida Woodworking Guild. The guild does the glue-up of the urns, and then the wood turners round and shape them. They were very nice. One of them said that the fact they were having problems pointing out who made which ones, showed they were doing well at making them the same.
I showed off my goblets. I was happy that I actually created something and was able to show it off, no matter how bad they were. I figure I will wait until they dry and then finish them, thinning them out and correcting any thickness or shape problems they have. That will take a few months.
SATURDAY
Although the weather was good, I stayed inside and worked on some indoor projects. I had to sort through some papers and helped mom sort some craft stuff. It was just one of those lazy days to do as little as possible and take it easy.
Year 17, Week 06, Day Two (week 892)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-19-17 Sunday
66 degrees early morning 77 late after noon, blue sky and a light breeze. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach department of Tourism.
When I arrived, Mom asked if I wanted to go out for lunch. I said Yes.
When I got home, I napped for a short time, then decided to try out that Mr COFFEE coffee grinder and grind some Turkish coffee I have had for a lot of years, that someone brought back from Israel. I mostly keep it in the freezer.
I had a little bit of work done in my home and I plugged in the coffee grinder and nothing happened. I was thinking that the people got rid of it because it worked sporadically. I tried both outlets, then grabbed another coffee grinder. It did not work either. I then realized they had flipped the breaker for that outlet. Then it worked.
The coffee grinder has several settings.. How many cups one is grinding and how fine a grind one is after. Peculator grind is courser than drip grind. I chose the setting I was after, and held the button down and it ground until it stopped. The grind was even.
The coffee had an interesting flavor. It is more like Espresso than anything. I made it at normal coffee strength, not concentrated, so it was not overpowering, just strong in flavor and interesting after flavors. Not bad for many years old. That is a special occasion coffee.
I have worked on a scarf since well before Christmas. I had gotten some yarn at a yard sale that had a really pretty red yarn. I knew that a red fabric was not going to look like something interesting, so I added yellow and green yarn in stripes, making it a Christmas scarf. Well, it is well past Christmas and I am still working on it. I have finally started edging it with black yarn. I went down one long side, across the bottom, and up about a food on the other long side, and realized it was warping and twisting. It would never lay flat. It dawned on me that I was adding well too many stitches along the sides. I was trying to cover where I run the different colored yarns up the sides.
I had started with Red yarn and created three rows, then wove a yellow yarn to start and did three rows, then added green and three rows. Each time I came to the end, I would have to carry the yarn color up the edge until it was time to use it again. The edges looked horrible because of the multi colors running up it. The black edging covered it nicely, but because there were more stitches in the edging than the stitches that I was supposed to go, it kept wanting to bend and warp the fabric.
I am going to have to rip the yarn out and start the edging all over again. I will just have to find time to first, rip out the edging to the start, then wind the yarn into a center pull ball like I prefer to do. At one time, I thought everyone should learn how to wind balls like I learned. I found out that people with arthritis cannot use my method of winding center pull balls. It cramps the hands too much.
I do see that the black edging works really great with this color combination. My second choice would have been a brown, but black is much better.
I will have to see what next weekend looks like and what I can accomplish.
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