In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 28, Day One (week 1028)

Year 19, Week 28, Day One (week 1028)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)

07-20-19 Saturday 82 degrees in the morning, 90 in the afternoon, 65% humidity. It is getting so hot that I might have to move up north where it is cooler...... (hotter up there) Radar showed dots and splotches of showers were coming in off the ocean with a slight north tilt to their path. It was mostly mixed clouds, high, low, and thunder heads here and there and a light breeze. It got up to 90 degrees and was about 62 humidity. I did get a little shower early morning while working. It was enough to wet the ground but not enough to penetrate a thin layer of sawdust I had left on the ground when I moved my equipment under cover when the first drops hit.

THURSDAY
We had a water break in Fort Lauderdale On Thursday which caused a boiled water order. Of course the way news is disseminated, very few people likely knew about it. I make the coffee in the mornings so Friday morning I brought one of my big stock-pots filled with water from outside the Fort Lauderdale water district and used that to make the coffee. I filled it near the top, put plastic wrap over the pot, then set the lid on and put a layer of plastic wrap over the lid. I did not notice any spillage in the truck. I also brought a very large mug with handle and used that to scoop water into the coffee pots.

THE TURNING CLUB

The demonstration was on resin casting and the turning of cast resin. He explained that local bottle brush trees get an infection and create a ball of wood, a burl, on their branches and they have interesting figure in side them. He has a bunch of them that are really too small to use, so he started casting them in resin to make them big enough for projects.
He gets said that for what you pay at the hobby store for a tiny bottle of resin mix, you can get a gallon of the stuff at auto body shops, boat shops, and on line. He gets the resin in gallon jugs, one jug of resin, one jug of hardener, they are mixed equal parts by volume.
He will put his piece of wood in a tube. He found that the cardboard tubes have to be turned off and cardboard acts like sandpaper on the tools. His favorite form is using PVC pipe. To un-mold a couple light cuts with a chisel and it comes off easily after the resin cures.
He likes to turn a piece of wood to fit into his chuck with a slight indentation for the PVC pipe to fit into. He will super glue it in place using the glue to seal the contact area. He then glues the piece of wood inside the tube, and if necessary, turning it as little as possible to fit, and then super glueing that in place so it does not rise up with the liquid gets beneath it.
He will pour the hardener and resin together and start mixing them thoroughly, and it will become slightly milky, then as you mix it farther, it will become clear. He will then add his color and “pearl” flakes, to it as desired. He will pass a torch over it to knock down any bubbles on the surface.
He will very slowly pour it into the mold on one side and let the liquid flow down below the piece so it flows up the other side, and doing it slowly to reduce the amount of bubbles that might form. When he gets it high enough, whatever resin is left will be poured into a container he has nearby. He layers the resins of other colors he has poured over time and that becomes another project later. He raps the project and will put it on something that vibrates. A lot of the bubbles will float to the surface where he can pop it with a quick blast of a torch or sometimes even blowing on it.
He has a pressure chamber he puts it into. He pumps the air in and that causes the remaining bubbles to become really small. The smaller they are, the better. He will use the resin he has set out in the “waste” container to make sure the resin under pressure sets properly. When the resin outside is set, he knows the stuff in the pressure chamber has set also.
You have to be careful with this as it creates a lot of heat. Large pieces really get hot. He said that there have been times where his pressure chamber (which looks sort of like cast iron) got seriously hot because of large pieces he has had in there.
Depending on how much color you add and what else you do can create interesting effects.
I am sorry to say that while this was interesting, it won’t be something I will likely do in the near future. I am still learning to play with the wood itself, let alone get into other materials, though I would like to work with metal of various forms including spinning sheet metal.
Our gathering was a pretty good group. Likely the best we have had at this location, in spite that the room we normally use was taken up for a concert. Some of the new people are really growing in quality of their work. I brought basically unfinished pieces. I did add varnish to my tea pot but I was unable to complete the job as I could not find my can of liquid varnish and I ran out of the spray can varnish.

SATURDAY

Because of the spacing of the radar dots I decided not to even bother doing yard sailing. You can see if the dots will miss you and by how much or how long, even when they are changing shape as they move. I figured not many people would chance dragging their stuff out when it could well get wet several times during the day..
I went out back and made two bowls out of a piece of wood I had split. I took a short break between them. I have a large “industrial” dust pan and between the two bowls, I filled it three times. The second one seemed to have more sawdust in it as it was the one that took loads. I am not sure why as they were the pieces of wood and the end resulting bowls were same size.
I had sharpened my tools recently and the wood came off in spaghetti most of the time, which happens when you have fresh, wet, wood and very sharp tools. I have a “bull nosed” scraper I’ve had for a few years and never used. I finally took it out of the original package and sharpened it a few weeks ago as no tools from the store is really sharp. One thing is they use a six foot diameter grind stone compared to our six or eight inch diameter stones. That extra curve improves the cutting of the tool. Until this year, I NEVER EVER had a sharp turning tool. I still cannot explain what I am doing but it seems to be working. I am doing it by feel and intuition. I do still make mistakes but then correct them moments later.
While using the scraper, I was amazed that it was cutting as other tools did. It was sending out strings of sawdust everywhere. Just having that effect made the turning I did today a true joy. I almost giggled at it, but it was not quite that exciting so “almost” counts most.
I did pretty good on standing and turning. Several times I would turn away from the lathe and my legs let me know they did not like standing, but that faded after a few steps. I would sit for about five minutes and then be able to move around and return to turning again.

I did get a little shower during the first bowl. I felt a few drops and pulled my lathe under cover, then went inside for a drink and a bit of relaxation. The shower was just enough to wet the ground but not enough to penetrate a thin layer of sawdust, that when I swept that up, it was dry under the pile. I have seen yard sales close up because of just that much watering.

Year 19, Week 28, Day Two (week 1028)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
07-21-19 Sunday

77 degrees early morning, 90ish in the afternoon. Mostly blue skies.

I did my yard sale drive I saw some signs but no sales, well there was one with some furniture out front but I did not stop. The guy was not outside so he might not have been ready yet. None of them pieces were something I needed. Would not fit my decor (early American yard sale and side of the road) even if they were in my price range.

I went out back and decided to make brand new feet for the four footed cane. I had lost one last night. I had a spare but was dissatisfied with this batch. I drilled the holes too deep for the size of wood they were and the actual depth that the cane feet penetrated.
This time I measured how far the feet could actually go into the hole, then went just a little bit deeper. I also started with more wood around them than I did before.
Last time I had drilled 4 holes across the four inch wide wood, this time I did only three holes across the wood. I took extra time to measure and mark and MAKE SURE I HAD THE RIGHT MARKS before I was to drill. I made several mistakes and caught them. The extra wood made the pieces much bigger which meant there was more wood to remove, but it also made them easier for me to get the outside surface centered on the hole (it is known as cheating). I used one of my bowl gouges to slip inside the hole. I used that to rotate them against the disk sander. There is always more than one way to do anything, and in this case, the disk sander was far easier to do this project than the lathe was.
The drilled hole is slightly smaller in diameter than the pipe of the foot, so I have to dremmel them out a little. After I made them and had them on the cane, I decided to taper them so they don’t look so blocky. It is a bit tougher to do this after enlarging the hole as my rod does not fit quite as well. After tapering them, they still do not look like a commercial foot and they are still very bulky, but tapering helped the look some. Even so, they are still big.
The first wood feet I had made were well worn down quite a bit. One was as much as a quarter inch shorter than other two (I had lost one which was why I needed to make more). I never marked which foot each went to, which would have helped knowing how they wear. I figure if I don’t lose any of these, they will wear down for a very long time before they have to be replaced. That is why I drilled the holes just inside rather than the deep ones from before. There is over an inch of wood to wear down. These feet make the cane an inch and three quarters taller than it was with the commercial feet, and that is kind of nice but not really noticeable in practice.

Mom gave me some eggs that were stuck to the carton. I had seen on line where they microwave eggs in the shell. I poked a hole in the shell on top, put that half of the carton in the microwave and started it cooking. I heard a double boom, and immediately turned off the microwave. Two eggs were gone and there was not two eggs worth of mess in the microwave. I had a nice mess to clean up. I instantly figured out some of the things I did wrong. One is that you must not only puncture the shell, you must also puncture the membrane and I think, the yoke. THEN, it might have worked. Oh well. There are times when you remember why your attempt fails AFTER you failed. This is how you learn to fail differentlyeach time.

I will see what I do next week.

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