(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-03-18 Saturday
72 low, 86 high, blue sky with puff clouds. Light breeze made it nice. This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
We took a break after breakfast, and then went out to the Library book sale. I looked at every title of cook book (looking for sauces) and examined at least the backs of every craft book and how-to books. Other than one humor books, mostly what I got was how-to and craft books. One really good one was about Aluminum. It was written back when that information was secret. Now I get to figure out where they go, at least for now.
Mom saw some model railroad and train books so she ended up going after lunch and picked up a bunch for a dollar a bag.
They said these are books that are donated to t hem. I am assuming people dump their collections when they move or pass and then the library sells them for what they can. When they have their book sales. It is like Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They have an hour break for lunch. In the second half of the day they sell the books a dollar for whatever fits in a bag. I usually don’t see enough books of interest to take advantage of that.
I told an old joke to them and they liked it. “You know you are a bad author when you donate your new publication to the library and find it in the next book sale.....”
I cleaned some of mom’s neighbor’s garage. I swept the floor and slid a home made cabinet into place. It did not move, but would rotate easily. I found that as I rotated it, If I pushed against it with my good knee, it moved easily. About for moves and it was in place. It just fits in place and the owner will have to find another place for other things he wanted to put in. Beside it. There is a whole lot more visible space in the garage now. Lots of stuff still piled up, but it is an improvement.
It was time to tackle some wood working. I strung a power strip with a short extension cord so it would hang from the awing pipe between the lathe and bandsaw and plugged t hem in.
I first bandsawed two blanks for the tea pots as a test of concept. The bandsaw is so much nicer to work with than the gig saw. I drew a sort of circle on the corners and cut off the side corners, then cut straight in on each side of t he front and back corners, and then did a partial circle until the outer pieces came off. That left the spout and handle. This will work nice. I will make a bunch of them tomorrow.
I then mounted each of the drum sticks I started last week and worked them into the size and shape I wanted. I sanded them with course grit and then a finer grit. I used the knife to shave/split off the excess wood on the end of one that had been left square. The other one was long enough to cut the worst of that end off before a little shaving to size. I remounted them into the lathe. The small end was stuck into the pipe that makes the drive head and that held it while I put the tail stock to the rough end and shave them into shape.
I sanded them a lot by hand, washed them in water, which raised the grain, then sanded them again. Then I gave them a vegetable oil coating which I rubbed in lightly. I did not have to add the oil but I decided it would look less like Mahogany if I oiled them. They look good.
Saturday Nights I go to a gathering where we have food and music. We have a semi-pro drummer there. I let him test these drum sticks out and he said they feel good and they sound good on the cymbals. That makes them good enough.
I saw HOW IT’S MADE on TV where they made drum sticks. One episode was all automated, with almost no human handling. The drum sticks rolled down a rack into slot and the computer weighed each one. When they weighed the same, they would fall into a bin for packaging. The other episode was more hand made and a guy would weigh them until he got two that matched.
My drum sticks are not that close. These are not the worst I made, but they do have different weights and when carefully examined, one is slightly bigger than the other. I could fix them later, but this is close enough for now.
I had to sharpen a couple of my tools. The edges are better but not right. One I did not quite do it right and could not use it. Because I did not properly sharpen the bowl gouge I was using, it did not quite cut right. I did get the wood off, though. It seemed to cut properly in only one position. I really need to take a day to clean and sharpen all my turning tools.
While working on the drum sticks. I had reached into the chuck to shave back more of the wood. On one drum stick that worked all right. On the second one, I did not have the bowl gouge in the right position, I reached in wrong and my attention was not quite on what I was doing. It caught and slammed down and off the tool rest. It “Bopped” my left thumb. The pain went away quickly, but I could still feel it in that spot in the evening if I pushed on it. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. I needed a safe reminder. That, I hope, was it.
My mom had mentioned she was going to make some Spaghetti for Sunday. I wanted to make some Lasagna and her sauce is much better than mine. I brought my fixings to her and she cooked up a big pot of sauce. She kept a good amount for the lunch and I took the rest home.
One of the problems with political season is there are so many signs out that yard sale signs are hard to spot. This time it seems that any clear three foot square piece of grass or dirt has a sign on it.
I was on my feet a lot during the day and felt it when I napped about mid day. My leg cramped and my feet hurt. It was worth it, though, as I accomplished something. When I finally got up, my legs had no spring, but I was able to walk again.
I will see what I do tomorrow.
Year 18, Week 43, Day two (week 981)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-04-18 Sunday
72 low, 86 high, blue sky with lots of small and medium sized puff clouds. Light breeze made it nice under the awning. It felt like it was not in the 80s, nice to just sit and talk. I don’t remember the sun being blocked. This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
We had time change. I changed my watch but let my alarms stay at daylight savings time. Getting up an hour early today was not a problem. I did run into a situation. I moved my watch the wrong way and the clocks looked wring. It was not until I looked on the computer that I found out why things were all wrong. Since I was getting up later, this was not a problem. It would have been bad if I had to get up earlier. That was a strange feeling.
One of my other nephews from my sister’s side was supposed to come up with his daughter from another part of t he state and get their earlier than I normally do, so I left to get to Mom’s in time. It ended up that he had a bad cold so he chose not to come. My brother was early, though.
I had gotten onto the bandsaw and made a bunch of blanks for the tea pots. It was a quick job.
My brother came with a project he did during the week. He made a Cross Slide for my mini machine lathe. I could always go up and down the lathe like resizing a piece of rod, and I could go in and out, like you were cutting it off. The one thing I could not do is cut on angles in order to create cones or angles. The only way to do an angle was to “fudge” it, cutting in with tiny steps and then using a file to even out the ridges.
My brother made a cross slide where it can go in and out on its own through a screw attached to the tool holder itself. One can rotate it on an angle and with just the knob on the tool holder, one can cut in and out on any angle. One can dish out the end of a piece or cut a nice accurate point on a bar. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. Now I have to remember what all those projects I wanted to do and could not do it at the time.
He happened to have a block of aluminum available so he used that. He was worried that it might break as aluminum is not as strong as steel.
During our tests, it did all right. We were not putting it through a serous test, but it was a test to see if it worked.
I then sat down and started carving teapots. I quickly found that I chose the wrong corner for the spout and handle. The way this wood was cut, was that the center was near one corner of the wood. The growth rings arc from one side corner to the other centered on the first corner. When I cut the tea pots. I decided to make the handles and spout on the corners based on the center. Once I started carving, I learned two things. One, the corners where the growth rings end are hard to cut. The other is that the corners radiating from the center split off easily. I quickly found that I could have saved myself a lot of effort if I used the other corner s for the spout and handle. I broke off a handle on two and one also lost a spout. I could have glued them on, but instead I just cut back farther until I had them again. It really does not effect the pot too much anyway. It might be oval but no one will really notice.
I now have nine pots roughed out and four more blanks to go. I have ten gingerbread houses roughed out. that is a pretty good start for the first weekend of November. I am usually at this point at the end of November. It will catch up to me quickly.
My other nephew, the one that lives nearby, came with his wife and children. The youngest is about five and is energy looking for an outlet. When he was a toddler, my brother described him as having a high pain threshold and a short memory. That one was throwing my ornaments around and banging them. I got him away from them, and gave him two cut-offs of two by twos. He was suddenly in heaven. He could so anything he wanted to them. He banged them, he scraped them on a metal plate, he tried to pound a screw into one, he would throw them around. He had fun and did no damage. Those were the best toys I could ever have given him.
I got the idea of making a set of “blocks” for him, the ones, twos, threes and fours, that he cold learn addition and subtraction with, and stack them and throw them. I will have to think about that. The two by twos are a bit big for such a project, though.
For lunch, mom fixed a gigantic batch of shells in her sauce. It came out good. After I got home, I made lasagna. I thought sure I would have lots of sauce left. I ran out. There is a way to layer the lasagna. A noodle, then the cheese (ricotta or cottage cheese), then your sauce and then your cheddar or American cheese, then repeat the layer. I made mistakes on some layering. I have these tiny foil loaf pans. They could be two servings with side dishes, or one serving as the main meal. I ended up making six of these lasagna. I ran out of the ingredients all at about the same time. I knew they use a lot of fixings but did not realize how much it took.
I put all of them in the freezer and will bake them when I am ready to have them. I figure that since they have to be thawed and heated anyway, it would not be too much bigger bother to bake them from scratch.
My legs were complaining to me by the end of the day. It was, though, a very good day. I felt I accomplished a whole lot this weekend.
I will see what I do next weekend.
2281
Black Walnut drum sticks with a vegetable oil finish. there are differences between them but not as bad as some I have made.
I had this clamping miter and decided to try it with the bandsaw. the cut off blocks were the squares the tea pots would be made from. I quickly found that this did not hold shorter pieces as the clamp was strictly over the miter slot.
some rough cut blanks for tea pots with a couple roughed out ones in back.
this shows the rings of the pieces of wood. the faces of the rings split out easily while the edges of the rings hold well. In this case, I broke off a piece from two of these as I was working with them.
My collect ion of blanks and roughed pieces. Every piece needs a lot of work to get them somewhat close to finishing..
the new cross slide my brother made for me out of aluminum.
a better view of it. The cutting tool is sticking out on the right, next to the rod in the lathe chuck. the knob on the left moves it in and out. the nuts in a row just holds the tool in place when working. the knob facing us can lock it in place so it does not move. The nut on top holds it to the tool mount and has a head that fits in the slot below. My brother said that if t his breaks, he has the ketches and will make it out of steel rather than aluminum.
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