In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 24, Day One (week 1024)

Year 19, Week 24, Day One (week 1024)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
06-22-19 Saturday
It was up into the 90s and clear today. Humidity was somewhat high, but not too bad. It was a good weather to end the day in the air conditioning. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

THURSDAY

The turning club was good. The demonstration was on dust safety, mostly, with other safety concerns also. He covered the effectiveness of different dust masks, ear plugs, face shields or goggles. The cheap dust masks are next to useless as the smallest dust is what does the most damage. He showed breathers with the filter behind the back. And other kinds of masks and filters. The ones that are for chemicals are the best ones.
He uses a face shield when roughing out the work where bark and debris is flying everywhere. The face shield prevents you from getting hit by large debris. When he has the piece mostly finished, he wears goggles. He showed a pair of goggles that he wore when working with super glue on a piece. He had not waited long enough after applying super glue to a piece to keep some bark from a natural edge piece he was working with, and when he turned the lathe on, some drops flew and hit him in his face. He wished he wore a face shield then, but you could see drops on the lenses where they saved his eyes. That is why he always wears goggles. I have had pairs of glasses with dots of super glue or varnish on them.
We had new a young member who had been in a demonstration class in school, where they made pens, and then went to one of our workshops and made a vase and joined up. We have demonstrations at various parks during gatherings such as orchid shows or art fairs and have gained members from those events too. Many of our members are involved in outreach in the community and schools. You never know when you will touch a heart.
We had about 25 people at the meeting this time, and they said that they had removed those members who had not paid their membership from the listings by the beginning of June and we now have 75 members. That is pretty good.

At work they cut down a tree on Monday. I was going to take just one piece of wood, and then told them put it all in my truck. At the turning club, one of the wood experts examined the wood had no idea what kind of wood it was. It does not look like anybody got any pieces of the wood, though a couple people pointed to one stick and said that would make a nice natural edged goblet. I am not sure which one that was. I decided to unload the wood from my truck for now and will turn some into mulch (by turning it). I will decide what to do with the wood as time goes on. It was suggested to cut the bigger pieces into smaller ones and put pieces into the garbage each week.
There is no rush to do anything with them. They are there and I can decide what to do over time.
This might not be the best way but what I did while transporting them, since I did not tie them down, was, when I first started out, began moving slowly, then hit the brakes hard to force the pieces up against the cab side of the truck bed. I had most of the ends in line with the truck. I did that a couple times so that if there was a panic stop, the wood would not move too much. It is the flying piece of wood that is really dangerous. I then started gently after that. For the most part, they stayed put.

SATURDAY

It was a nice clear day, so I decided to go yard sailing. The first three yard sales had nothing I absolutely had to have. One had the old style torches that dad used when I was a little kid. These used white gas and had the can below and the torch itself above it. I considered them for half a second and glanced away. While it would be cool to have, I don’t need them and would never use them. I remember dad fighting with them some times to get them going. That yard sale was really big. I have no idea how I walked away without anything.
I was about to head north and saw a yard sale sign aiming a bit south of where I normally go so I decided to check it. Big mistake. At one yard sale I got some plastic storage drawer units. I paid more than they were worth but I felt good about the price and she was really thankful. There were wheels in one of the drawers and they fit the two drawer units and the big units. There was two stacking drawers, a there medium drawer unit, and a big three drawer unit. The big unit is not put to use yet, but the others have been.
At another yard sale I found a real percolator. This one sits on the stove to make coffee. Nothing automatic. I checked and it held the normal twelve cup easily. I had wanted a good percolator for if there is a very long power out like a hurricane. This one is stainless body steel and has a hinged lid. The basket and stand are aluminum. It can hold more than the 12 cups but I know how to make for 12 cups so that is what I will do.

I had some celery that had to be used as they were beyond limp and was a bit woody, so I had started the last of my mixed grain and some of the lentil soup cooking in the crock pot. I have accumulated some 19 different grains and I mix them together and use them like I would rice. I don’t do it for any other reason other than I can. I had fried the celery with onion, then added chicken and fried them together, added them to the grain and let them cook together.
I showed mom what I found at the yard sales. She tasted my concoction and said I added too much pepper (when I fried the chicken). She had me add some noodles to take up the seasoning. I also added some frozen veggies to it. It turned out to be really good and mom had several servings.

I unloaded the wood from the truck. I dropped them down onto a hand cart and rolled it to the back of the house. The biggest piece was the toughest but I was just able to handle it. Mostly dropping it on the handcart with some tugging into position, then tipping the handcart to dump the piece. That was the piece I first told the guy that I wanted from the pile, before I told him to put all of them in.
Because this is fresh, wet wood, what I really need to do is take the wood and rough out pieces, like an inch thick. Then let them dry for a few months, before I remount them complete the turning to finish. Usually an inch or so is about right to allow enough wood in a bowl shape for the wood to warp out of shape, then remount it to turn it round.
I could just do production turning a whole bunch of pieces. I am hoping to do some turning tomorrow. I will have to see how things go.

I added more super glue to the handle of the tea pot. I want to make sure it is as strong as possible. I have some sanding to do on it but I wanted to make sure it is least likely to break.

The fourth is on a Thursday this year. I will be off Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If it was on a Wednesday, I would take the year off......

I will see what I do tomorrow.

Year 19, Week 24, Day two (week 1024)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
06-23-19 Sunday

It was hot and humid out. It got up to 93 with about 70% humidity. The sky was mostly blue with little wisps once in a while. Clouds built up, shrunk and built up again over the Everglades. The shield clouds of thunder boomers, which are mostly heading north, has blocked the sun near the end of the day. While I am more used to the heat than most people, I am not ready for the humidity. I have to work on that, mainly by forcing myself to stay out there.

I grabbed one of my “logs” from this small tree. Total height was at about the building roof line. It was cut because it was getting too big and was next to the building.
The piece of log I selected (first large piece I grabbed) had rot in the center, just a soft and wet sawdust-like pulp. I split it using a couple axes and a hammer, I need to see about getting or making a fro, not that I would use it much. I flattened one piece quite a bit then cut it for turning using the bandsaw, first cutting it to length, then knocking off the corners. I first mounted it between centers and rough flattened the bowl face and then made a tenon. I flipped it around and rough rounded the bowl into shape and put a tenon on the bottom. I flipped it around again and just begun the hollowing process when the bowl came off the chuck. The heat and humidity was such that the sawdust was sticking to me everywhere so I decided it was a nice time to stop. I should do more next weekend. I just wanted to start something.

I decided to make chocolate ice cream. My semi-sweet chocolate morsels were in the fridge so they were cold and hard. I put them in the food processor and left it on until they were mostly like a powder. If I had warmed them, they might have liquified and blended with my base. Maybe next time. It took a while to get it to a sand consistency.
There are people who have a lactose intolerance. Making ice cream using bananas as the base is a good way to get around that. It is best when slightly soft. The recipe I first saw served it right out of the food processor using frozen bananas as a soft ice cream. It said if you wanted it more stiff, put it in the freezer for a bit. I will taste it after blending, but always freezes it and eat it that way.
I then added some white and brown sugar, not too much, but I figured it would be enough to make a difference. In the previous banana based ice-creams I have made I sometimes felt it needed a little more sweetness. I have made this with strawberries, mixed fruit (blueberry-black berry based), mangos, just to name a few.
I then added my bananas. They were frozen and I softened them by letting their baggy sit in hot water for a little bit. They blend better when softened.
I originally intended to only make half a batch, but then decided to make a full batch and use everything up. After everything was blended nicely, I checked the flavor. The chocolate was a tiny bit grainy. I knew I should have but did not do anything to melt or liquify the chocolate. I laid out a sheet pan with plastic lining it and poured the mixture into it and it went into the freezer for a couple hours.
When it had set up, I cut up the slab into bite-sized chunks. I could pig out on this. It turned out better than I expected. Yes, it would be much better if the chocolate was liquified and well blended, but I am not complaining. You get the rich, dark-chocolate flavor from the semi sweet morsels, and yet it is sweet enough to make it feel like ice cream. This is the best I have made.
My previous attempts with fruit added their own water, which causes ice crystals to form more noticeably. The banana does not have a whole lot of liquid. One store I go to puts out past-due fruits and veggies into ninety eight cent packages. In their bananas, you get a good bunch of bananas in the package. I found that even the over-ripe bananas (parts becoming mushy) make good ice cream.
I have some mint-chocolate from Christmas that I found and gathered in one package when I last cleaned the fridge. I intend to make the next batch of banana based ice-cream using that. I know now that it will work though I do intend to soften it enough to blend completely with the banana.
I have always ate bananas to prevent or cure cramps. It works pretty good and tastes good. By making ice cream with it, it is more fun to eat.

Mom’s neighbor was tired of the low bandwidth of the WIFI when using his bedroom computer so I grabbed some ethernet cord I recently picked up at a yard sale and ran it wildly from the cable box to his computer. It goes under the door, behind his dresser over another door to his computer. He had tried to drill a hole through the wall near the end of his bedroom into the closet of the office and ran into the block wall. I tried to help and used a “really long” concrete drill bit and made it through the cbs block but did not have the length to go through some other hard substance, and even then, the hole was way too small for the tip of the WIFI wire. I would have to drill the hole even bigger. I now have a hole to fill.
I re-booted his computer, then unplugged the WIFI-based USB unit. He was giddy because he was getting on line through the hard wire now. There is a big difference. There has been a few times where I heard a glitch, like click in the radio station we were listening to on line, but it did not cause the computer to search for the signal again like it used to on the WIFI.
I have many options to take care of the wild running cord. One is to tack it to the walls with wire hooks of some type. I could also run the cord through a whole the wing wall at the door then into the wing wall in the closet to reduce how much is seen. I could also borrow or buy the right size and length concrete drill bit to go all the way through the wall at the hole we already started. He is in no hurry right this second. For now I just shoved the excess cord into the closet for this moment so it is not an eye sore. Hopefully the cord will solve the problem he have had.

Next week, I have to prepare the awning area for the Forth’s BBQ. It is on a Thursday so I need to make sure everything is ready to bring out in just a few trips and start cooking. I have a few other projects to work on.

I will see what happens next weekend.

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