(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
08-10-19 Saturday
82 degrees early morning 94 degrees as the high, humid, sky filled with feathers and spilt milk. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
After breakfast, we stopped at a yard sale. The woman, if I remember right, is a cleaning lady. The customers give her stuff and when she has enough, she has a yard sale. Everything she had was a dollar. Mom found a complete set of metal crochet hooks for me. I also picked up ANOTHER cast iron fry pan. I have a picture of my cast iron collection from a couple years ago and showed them that. I got a wow from them.
Last week I got some stainless steel bowls and I dug out all my bowls, and I have like 20 of them. I want to separate them into sets.
When we got home, I had to go to a couple stores so I drove most all the yard sale route. I found two more yard sales but there was nothing I had to have. Some interesting stuff, but did not need it.
At Lowes, I picked up a stand-mounted fan for $20 for under the awning, and two sticks of wood, a half by two furring strip and a two by two. I decided I needed some wood for the ornaments I am making. I found that the fresh wood from the store is much easier to carve than the stuff that has been laying around all year. I have some serious carving to do.
At home, I went out back and tried to make a book ornament and a flying bird. The first book was too small. I made a bigger one. Mom likes it but suggested a little change in the book. That is minor. These will mostly be power carved.
I made one bird with the grain running down the wings. I knocked off the tail. I made another with the grain running up and down through the body and broke a wing. I glued the wing back on but am not going to go any farther with it. If I made the flying bird, I will have to use a stronger wood. Yellow pine might work but that will force me to power carve it more than with the knife. There will be some knife work but most will be done with the dremmel.
I roughed cut another rocking horse. I will rough cut all the others I started last week before I will even bother carving them.
The day was thick in the morning. We got out of the car and our glasses fogged up. The windows on the restaurant was fogged up with drops. When walked out of there and our glasses fogged up again. The sky was fairly clear. As the day warmed up low clouds showed up. We got a couple very light passing showers but the results were gone almost as fast as you noticed it.
The fan I bought today really made the difference. I had forgotten that years ago when we were doing work heavily, we used to use fans on the thickest days. I would aim the fan on me when I was out in the sun, turning wood to help stand the heat. It was enough to keep me going. I was looking for them in yard sales recently but had not seen them. Maybe in the winter. This fan was easy to put together. It is easy to disassemble. It only needed a screwdriver to work the screw that locks the head to the stand. Everything else is worked by hand. It has three speeds and can oscillate. I never use the oscillate feature. What is strange is that it starts in low and you turn the knob up. Most start on max to get the blades moving and you back it down once it is going.
I will see what I do tomorrow.
Year 19, Week 31, Day two (week 1031)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
08-11-19 Sunday
90 degrees, 68% humidity. Puffs built up, some later ones had showers and later ones had actually thunders. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
Mom handed me the trimmer. I got the message. I dug out the lawn mower and mowed the front lawn of mom’s neighbor’s house. There was a lot of the “grass” growing over the edge of the pavement. I pushed it back onto itself with my foot and a rake, and then mowed them. It needs more but that was quite an improvement. The whole front yard was mowed and I was done in from that. I need to mow the back yard but did not have what it took.
I worked on Christmas ornaments today. I figured out a real quick and easy way to make hearts. I took a stick of two by two, that was about 12" long, and drew on one end a heart using as much wood as I could by placing the tip in one corner. I then removed the top corner, and then removed wood, mostly with a knife to form the gully where the two circles met. Some shaving on the side and some sanding and cleaning, I got it to where I thought it would be nice. I then sliced the pieces off the stick, coming up with a dozen of them. I sanded them, squaring them up. Now I will round the edges. I need to figure out whether to make the edges all rounded, or just slightly rounded while keeping the sides flat.
I cut a bunch of blanks for books. I may need to make more as some are not cut the way I was after. I tried one more flying bird. I used some of that tree I got pieces from at work. It is strong enough but won’t be fun to carve. I think I will skip that design until late in the year or next year.
I have an idea of how to do the boats fairly quick. I will wait on doing that one until I get more of the others along. The rocking horses will be a bit of work and will take some time. Even the blanks will take time. I sort of intended on roughing out the blanks today but the other projects got in the way. And it is hard to work while talking with my brother and working noisily at the same time.
Mom had mentioned her air conditioning sounded strange. I found out that the sound was from the disk sander. Yesterday I tried to get it to turn on and it refused to move. I lost track of what position the switch was off. I had left it on. It finally decided to start and ran all night. I turned it off and mom’s air conditioner stopped making that strange sound. Her air conditioner is on the same side of the house.
Everybody sat outside and talked with the fan going. It was nice. It made a big difference. My niece is not used to being out in the heat so it was too hot for her. I learned long ago that some people believe that any perspiration is too hot for them. A lot of people live in temps 76 and below. I made a point to make myself able to handle the heat. 80 is a nice temperature for lounging around.
1220
first two books, bird and rocking horse blank
first two books, bird and rocking horse blank
the start of the hearts, top corner cut off and knife rounding on side corners.
another bird attempt with stronger wood.
another view of bird. more wood has to go. harder to carve.
the heart blank rod almost done.
almost done heart blank rod
cut out hearts. just sliced off rod
the day's work, two rocking horses daylighted, three birds, one missing tail, other with broken wing later glued back on, and the third really roughed out.
the hearts and rough books.
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