In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 06, Day One (week 996)

Year 19, Week 06, Day One (week 996)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-16-19 Saturday

69 degrees early morning, 80 late afternoon, (I hate these horrible winters) light breeze scattered clouds, good breeze, sometimes strong but not under the awning where I worked. Humidity was low so it felt good. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

We stopped at two yard sales on the way home from breakfast. One had mostly clothing, the other had party favors. I ended up with some letter beads kit partly worked on. I will find a way to use them, EVENTUALLY......

Later, Mom wanted to go to Walmart. She thought she saw red mulch on sale. We found several yard sales along the way. I was doing pretty good. At one, I got a bunch of metal skewers for the BBQ. I have a bunch somewhere but cannot find them. I figured the price was good enough to get these. The mulch Walmart had was more expensive than she intended to pay. I was driving, and getting into and out of my truck was hard on her. I saw a yard sale along the road near our house and I stopped and got out, telling mom she could stay. She sat for about five minutes, then got out. I saw a few religious items and asked if this sale was for a church. It was. Mom got out to have a look. found out that one of the people working it was her good friend. They talked a long time, while I looked around.
I have some large pots that don’t have lids. There was a really big lid in a shopping cart of copper pans. They would not sell it without the pan. I ended up finding the pan at the very bottom and got it out, and the price they asked was worth it just for the lid. I could make a big dish, for the whole family at a gathering, in that pan. I how have to un-bury my big pans to check to see if the lid will fit them also.

During the week, I sprayed varnish on the gnome home. I got a nice gloss on it. It is not a quality finish, but it is good enough.
I sat down with my portable drill press and drilled six holes in it, two for the platform, and four for the ladder. The drill is not really firmly bolted in place on the drill press stand so the drill tipped a little when I was pushing the drill bit to the angled wood. The first two holes were not quite in line. The wood on one side of the wood is slightly punky while the other side is comparatively firm. For the posts for the ladder, I used a dremmel grinding bit to form a “shelf” for the bit to dig into at the points I wanted them to be located. I glued in the posts, and, a bit later, added the platform for the entry. Hopefully, I will add a few more pieces to it tomorrow. For now it needs to dry. I ran out of time.

Year 19, Week 06, Day Two (week 996)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
02-17-19 Sunday

Sunny, patchy thin clouds up high, good strong breeze, 70 late morning, 85 in the afternoon. This Weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

I added more pieces to the gnome home, forming the ladder. I also shaved wood away on the side of the house to create a flat surface for the door. My shaving of the wood next to the hole gave more bonding surface for the door to stick to, and it removed some of the varnished surface so glue could bind two raw woods together.

I took some pieces of yellow pine, and after marking them with some care, I cut them off the block they were in. These were three inch blocks, which were leftovers from a project I did a few years ago. I marked the centers, dug out mom’s forsner bit set and drilled the near center of the blocks (I have to say near as I did not get the points exact when lining things up), with the grain running side to side. I then made a new holder for the blocks on the lathe, with the peg sticking out for the blocks to slide into and keep them centered, and then rounded the blocks. I am using whitewood for the peg block and it is not holding the pieces on well. It needs something to keep give them ore friction to keep them from spinning.
I have to crank the tail stock’s screw every so often because I am getting slippage. I think the head stock needs to be tightened. I downloaded the instructions and should cinch it properly. I had to use a very light touch on the blocks as they spin on the peg easily. The tool kept catching all the time as the wood would bend up rather than cut. Anyway, I drilled and rounded six pieces.
I wanted to flip them around and shape them, for a pleasing look, but did not have time so I left them as they were, and after making the holes slightly bigger with the dremmel, I put them onto the cane. They do not look horrible, but they don’t look quite pretty.

I took a ten inch diameter platter blank, mounted a face plate to it, and rounded the outside edge. I then measured it for the six inch sandpaper disks I got during the week. I chose part the outside edge of the disk with a parting tool leaving me with a near right sized disk and a rough ring. The ring needs work if I were to use it for something, but I figured this would be the least amount work to get the disk to fit the sandpaper.
I flattened the face of the board because it had a wobble. I touched up the back not covered by the by the face plate just because. I could not find a couple tools I like to use, so I did some cheating once I had the face fairly flat. I put my tool rest up against it and let the metal edge of the tool rest to scrape the wood flatter over a large area. I did some tool work to remove the high points so the tool rest could level the face. Once I had it quite flat, I hit it with sandpaper with a block of wood inside it. The sandpaper I was to attach to this disk is designed for an orbiting sander. I mounted the sandpaper to the plate of wood. It fits. I might later flatten the outer edge and glue some emery cloth (sand paper) strips onto it. I made something like this some years before. The sanding disk on the lathe is nice as it spins much slower than the dedicated disk sander. The emery cloth’s edges do create a bump where the edges meet but there were projects where that was useful for getting certain places on the work I was sanding.
One thing I did a long time ago, was I made a shapely vase body. I wanted to add a handle that matched nicely to the vase so I glued sand all over it. I spun the vase and held the handle to the sanded body. The handle was nicely shaped to the body. Removing the glued on sand created some problems and ate up the edge of the tools. You are cutting hard sand.
I could easily spread glue on the outside edge and coat it with sand. And thatt would act like a sand paper, though I would have no idea what grit it was. I am in no rush to do any more modification to the sanding disk. I can make my decision at any time.

I have a turning club meeting Thursday. That is why I am rushing to get things done yesterday and today. I will finish up the gnome home, giving it varnish coat on the added pieces of wood so I can show it at the club meeting.

It is fun to have a lot of possible projects and have the chance to work on them.

I will see what I do tomorrow.

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