In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 26, Day One (week 1026)

July 4th

Year 19, Week 26, Day One (week 1026)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
07-04-19 Thursday

INDEPENDENCE DAY

It started out at 80 this morning and got up to 89, at least officially in the afternoon. The 70% humidity was felt by all. I was outside most of the day. Partly cloudy, most of it was high plates and feathers, but some lower. A nice breeze picked up just before people started showing up at about two and that helped keep the area under the awning cool enough. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

We got most of the stuff out to the BBQ area quickly with few wasted trips. Each time I do this, I get more done with less trips. I had come by and put some of the stuff out ahead of time, like tables, chairs, the BBQ, etc. the stuff that could be out over night or several nights under the awning. Most of the other stuff I had packed in flat boxes so I could carry more stuff in one trip. The stuff for the coolers were packed later in the day and brought out. One cooler has wheels while the other one was on a hand cart.
I had kept a bunch of the bottles of water in the fridge over night,, then put a layer of un-cooled water bottles on the bottom of the cooler, then several layers of ice cold water bottles on top of them, then I took out the ice from the freezer and set that on top. During the day, others put some beer in, most of which was used in cooking, and also added some juice packs. When I took the bottles out at the end of the day, they were still cool, even on the bottom level. Even being in the cooler all day, mostly in the sun I still have some of the ice from our Christmas BBQ. That ice went back in the freezer.

It was about two when everybody showed up. My nephew cooked up all the brats, about 2/3s of the dogs, and all but one pack of four of the hamburgers. He also cooked some flank steaks and some chicken mainly for himself. We concentrated on mostly ate meat using just a few sides. We all ate our fill and still had some to take home.

I held the new baby for about half an hour. Mom and her mom took pictures. I hope I did not break their cameras.
That reminds me where they showed a picture of a really old man with a newborn baby on his lap. The picture said, “I found a picture of you from 60 years ago. Who is that baby on your lap.....

Just after my brother left with the kids, my other nephew arrived. His brother gave him something to eat from the leftovers he was taking home.
There were some keyboards (electric piano) in the mom’s neighbor’s house from the previous owner. They were too good to toss but we could not figure out how to get them to work. We went over and loaded my nephew’s car up with the keyboards and the stand (That stand would have made a good lathe bed, as sturdy as it was). He will try to figure out what works and what he needs to get it to work. I told him that if he cannot use them, maybe he can sell them. He has access to a lot of the sound stuff that could make them work and knows where to find stuff he does not have. He also has outlets that might be able to use the keyboards. If we could have gotten one to work, we would have kept it.

The older of my grand nephews spent most of his time playing online games and watching games played by experts. I am not exactly sure what the younger one did. I know he was here and there all day long. I think he was mostly bored.

My brother and nephew have a squirrel-cage style fan they use on the job like when they are working on the roof. It is really powerful. They brought that out as a way to air-out the dining area. That reminded me that I am interested in a couple pedestal fans for under the awning. We used some under the awning for years but the humidity caused rust and the rot of the plastic did them in. Those fans worked well on the worst days of humidity. I would have them blowing on me while carving or while wood turning out in the sun and it made things a bit more bearable.

Near the end of the day my feet were hurting so I took off my work boots and put on shoes, but found that I have a spot on my right foot where a blister is wanting to develop just under the edge of the callous on the ball of the foot behind the big toe.

All the key stuff was put away but the tables and the grill still out, that I will put away tomorrow and also have to straighten up the work area so I can return to my projects. Some of that was put up during the week and may take a couple days to put away..

July 5th
Year 19, Week 26, Day Two (week 1026)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
07-05-19 Friday

84 degrees in the early morning, 92 late afternoon. The humidity was 80%. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

Today I woke at 5:30, but got to mom’s at around nine. I went outside intending to start cleaning up the outside, but mom asked me to help her clean her carpet. She had a carpet cleaner and had me do the cleaning while she sprayed soap and picked up lint bits. She said that this is hard on her shoulder and stomach. It was a lot of work but we got it done. I took down the tables outside, moved the equipment back to where they needed to be. Later I disassembled the BBQ and scrubbed it down and cleaned the parts, some in the dish washer and some by hand. Most of it got partially cleaned before I put it in the dishwasher.
I also went through the supplies and put them away, table covers, plates cups, seasonings, tools. Later I swept and mopped the kitchen floor.
I would do a little bit of work, and then rested. Then do more, then rested At noon, mom and I had lunch together I had some hot dogs and mom had a brat. Not too long after that I took a short nap.
Cleaning up was a lot of work but it is all done. I decided not to do any wood working.

I will see what I do tomorrow.
Roger.

July 6th
Year 19, Week 26, Day three (week 1026)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
07-06-19 Saturday

82 degrees early morning, 84 afternoon with 74% humidity. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

There was an explosion in my county. It appears to be a gas explosion at a pizza shop. It was in national news. A friend asked if I was all right. It was about 20 miles away and in an area I don’t frequent.

After breakfast, I did a quick drive along my yard sale route, but because of a shower during breakfast and more looking to come during the morning, there were no yard sales. It was a nice drive and I needed something at the grocery store anyway.

I went out back and split some wood and started rounding the pieces to make drum sticks. I used two hatchets and a hammer to do the splitting of the wood from the tree I picked up the other day. I used the thick hatchet to start driving the wood apart and the thin one (made from diamond plate with a pipe welded to it) to cut some wood sticking them together and to do splitting farther down the crack.
Wood is strongest when the shape follows the grain. Wood grain can be thought of as a bunch of straws glued together. When you split the straws down their length, they remain the strongest. They will flex but not break. If you cut through the straws so they are stacked rather than down their length, they can be separated easier.
I mounted the two selected sticks on the lathe and made them round. By then I was covered with sawdust. It was only like 87 degrees out but high humidity (it says it was officially about 82%) caused everything to stick to me and I was wet with sweat. I decided to take a moment break, and as I was about to go into the house I saw threatening clouds to the south (the cells were heading north, while coming off the ocean) and the radar said it was close. I glanced outside and it was already raining. I dashed out, pulled the lathe cover and covered it up, picked up a few things but left the sawdust alone. It was just a minute but the lathe was nice and wet. I will deal with the sawdust tomorrow.
These sticks are at least twice as big as I need to be for the drum sticks I was making. Fresh wet wood is not the best thing to work with on something like this, but I felt I needed to do this with this tree. By splitting the wood, I get nice straight grain.

Mom went to a funeral of a relative of a friend. I decided to have lunch early so I finely diced a BBQ burger and dog and fried them together a bit, added water, seasonings, some frozen veggies and a “little bit” of noodles. Actually I added far more noodles than I intended so when I was eating, there was no broth left. It was no longer a soup but it turned out really good in spite of it.

I will see what I do tomorrow.

July 7th
Year 19, Week 26, Day Four (week 1026)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
07-07-19 Sunday

80 degrees early morning 89 late afternoon with 87% humidity. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

I took the rounded sticks from yesterday, and brought them close to drum stick shape and size. I have to remove more wood but a number of things were giving me fits. I think I have to sharpen my tools again. The wood flexes and the tools were being pulled below the wood and there was a lot of vibration. They are close, though.

Some of this can be solved with sharpening of the tools, and some could be solved if I broke down and made a steady rest. A steady rest is usually, but not always, wheels that ride on the work to keep it steady. It usually has a frame that fits on the lathe and has two or three wheels that are slid to rest on the work. When working with a piece that is long, thin and flexible, the steady rest will support the work at midway or closer to the end you are working on, preventing the work from flexing. There are many designs and I just need to choose one and start building one. My biggest problem is that I am more interested in making projects rather than tools.

I decided to find out how this wood carves so I cut a piece off and just started working on it with the knife. I had no plan, just wanted to test how it carved. I got a good start of a man kneeling. It is green wood and when dry, will carve differently, but it is not the worst wood I have carved. I developed a blister on my middle finger on the middle joint from the knife. It later popped while I was still carving. I does not hurt at all. That will become a callous later. When you do some extensive carving, you develop hard skin where the most rubbing happens (guitarists cherish the ones they develop on their fingers). When you stop for a long period of time, they disappear and you have to start over developing them. Since I am not doing a lot of carving, I really don’t have any right now..

I found one yard sale today. The girls were selling a bunch of toys they out grew. I picked up a porcelain doll made in England. She is really cute and I like her outfit. A couple weeks ago I had shared a video on Facebook from a crochet site where it showed several dolls in many different crochet clothing. The dolls had nice faces and the clothing looked great. I won’t get into that but it would be an interesting project. My doll was really more than I should have paid, (I looked on line and that is about what she is going for on line) but she stood out compared to the others both in face and in outfit.
I also got a stainless steel kitchen set for children. It was too good to pass up. If I don’t pass them on to the children when they are of age, I might use them in crafting. The largest pan was about 4 inches in diameter and I was thinking that if I go on a diet, these pans might end up being too big still......

I eat pieces of banana when I get leg cramps after a hard day. Tonight I made some banana based chocolate ice cream using a mix of mostly mint chocolate with some milk chocolate as part of it. I pour it into a small lined sheet pan (fits into my toaster oven) and freeze them. I then cut the sheet into bite sized square pieces.
Tip, If you heat the chocolate in the microwave (which works good), and then add frozen banana, most of the chocolate will blend, but some will stick to food processor bowl like concrete. It would be better to use fresh bananas for chocolate ice cream. The very first batch of chocolate ice cream was made where I put refrigerator cold semisweet baking chocolate into the food processor and ran it until I basically had sand sized particles. I then added the frozen bananas. It was good. I like the particles in there, it adds an additional flavor spike when the bits come away from the banana base within your mouth and starts “melting.”
I had bought some bananas today, thinking I needed more. It turned out that I did not need them. I found a baggy of McDonalds grape jam in my fridge. We got it at work when they gave us breakfast a while back. I don’t know how many there were but there could have been as many as 40 of them. I took the fresh bananas, added the jelly in the food processor and made grape flavored banana ice cream. All are in the freezer but will take all night to become fully frozen, I assume. The grape might be over sweet, but it will not bad no matter how it comes out.
My intention is only have a piece or two of banana a night, especially after doing a lot of work while on my legs. I am sort of wondering how the jam ice cream will freeze, if it will. I am not sure if jam freezes. It is mostly sugar if I remember right. Will see. I could have it in a container as soft ice cream, but I think it will freeze completely. (The jam ended up being a soft ice cream rather than a popsicle or ice cream bar, and tasted really good. It would be better with less jam, and likely with a different flavor).

I will see what I do next weekend.

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