Watcha doing?

[RabbiKnife]

When perusing a newspaper I'll sometimes try to enlarge a photo using two fingers

What’s a noose paper?

[tango]

When perusing a newspaper I'll sometimes try to enlarge a photo using two fingers

You probably won't need to do that to my pictures above

[IMINXTC]

When perusing a newspaper I'll sometimes try to enlarge a photo using two fingers

What’s a noose paper?

A hard to lose old habit

[IMINXTC]

When perusing a newspaper I'll sometimes try to enlarge a photo using two fingers

You probably won't need to do that to my pictures above

Nope. We're good.

[IMINXTC]

Rain & fireworks Sunset Dunes to Point Lobos. 5 miles stretch of waterfront. 12am
Folks are persistent.


Happy New Year!!!

[IMINXTC]

Was told by two eccentric ladies today that so many people pack into Times Square to watch the ball drop that peeing one's pants is not uncommon. 


One cannot move, nowhere to go, too many drinks!


Which leads to the topic of resolutions: Giving up conversing wirh eccentric ladies.

[tango]

Was told by two eccentric ladies today that so many people pack into Times Square to watch the ball drop that peeing one's pants is not uncommon. 


One cannot move, nowhere to go, too many drinks!


Which leads to the topic of resolutions: Giving up conversing wirh eccentric ladies.

I've heard much the same from other sources. So many people packed in, if you do try to find a bathroom you'll never get back to your group, assuming you can even find a bathroom in the first place.

It's hard to see squashing in with so many people, when you can't even take time out for a bathroom break, to be any fun. But people do it. Perhaps they have a different idea of fun, I struggle to see how peeing in my pants in the freezing cold unable to move in any direction counts as fun.

[Cloudwalker]

As to resolutions,.I made the same ones I always make.  Not to make any resolutions.  Funny thing, I always keep it.

[tango]

Back to the house project, it's been a while. Today's job was filling a gap between an electrical back box and the drywall with some cement, the gap is just a little too big to cover with a regular face plate. Once that has dried I'll paint it and put the face plate on it. I also assembled the wheeled platforms I've had on hand for a few weeks, ready to move the radiators. These things are rated at 1500lb and are designed to move a car, so hopefully they are up to the job of moving my radiators.

Next up is to cut a piece off a tree. One fell down in my neighbor's yard and he said I could cut some of it to keep. I'm thinking I might dry it out in my dehydrator and make bandsaw boxes out of it. If that doesn't work I can burn whatever I don't need.

Once the radiators are out of the way I can get busy scraping and sanding the floor in that room. Oh what fun. At least then I can prepare the window trim, which is somewhat more enjoyable.

I also have some insulation panels in a downstairs room, and once I've got the walls there patched up I can put them against the wall and think about getting the material to restud the wall. I couldn't get the 3/4" panels any more and bizarrely the 1.5" were slightly cheaper than the 1" panels, so I figured I might as well shift from R6 to R9 and save a couple of bucks in the process. It just means I'll lose an extra 3/4" of space compared to what I planned, and my walls will shift from 3/4" feather strips to 3 3/4" by the time I've studded everything out. Although maybe I can go for slightly thinner studs - if 1.75" studs rather than 2.25" studs like I used elsewhere will give me the space to fit a backbox, maybe I can stick with a double layer of R9 rather than R5 paired with R13.

[tango]

The house project is gaining traction once again. Today I finally got two radiators moved - I lifted one end and got my wife to slide my wheeled platform underneath, then did the same for the other end. The platforms are rated to move a car, so they coped quite well with radiators. They barely marked the floor too, which was nice.

So now I have a room with a mostly clear floor - there are still a few things I need to take away - but I've made a good start on the floor with coarse sanding belts. I've probably got about 30-40% of it done with the coarse grade belt. I stopped work because I had lost suction, and it turned out my separator jammed, filled the filter bag in my shop vac causing the bag to split, and so my filter clogged up. So tomorrow's job is to replace the bag, clean the filter, move the last few things out of the room, and resume sanding. Hopefully I can get the first pass of sanding done tomorrow and maybe a second pass. I'm not looking forward to applying the lacquer, in this weather I don't really want windows open and without windows open the fumes can get a bit heady.

[IMINXTC]

Whelp! It's been a lot of fun but back out to the wilderness for me.


Be well friends and have a great new year

[tango]

I got to test my chainsaw for the first time since I bought it a few months ago. I bought it in a tool sale, figuring it could be handy for long drives in the woods - a while back we encountered a fallen tree across the road and all I had was a sabre saw. So I bought a chainsaw, tested it on the box it came in, and then left it. But I got to play with it cutting some real wood. The neighbor's fallen tree was thicker than it looked from my window so I took a couple of lengths of thinner wood, and let his tree guy cut a chunk of the thick end for me. What had fallen was awkwardly propped and I didn't feel comfortable cutting it over my head, with no experience of how cut trees might fall.

It's good to know my new toy is fully functional, so the next time we take a long drive in the woods I know I have something a little meatier than my sabre saw in case of finding anything down across the road.

Maybe I can also try chainsaw art, if I can find lumps of wood big enough.

[Cloudwalker]

We had rehearsal for our Kings Processional for tomorrow.  Unfortunately, tomorrow is going to start real early.  I have to be at church and in costume ready to go by 6:45. 

[tango]

I came to realise that the problem with my shop vac was totally different to what I thought. The hose from the separator to the vac had the wrong fitting on the end, so the dust was bypassing the filter bag entirely, and clogging the main filter. So I needn't have replaced the filter bag after all. Oh well.

Today I had to clean out my belt sander for the first time ever. I noticed it seemed to be throwing a lot of material across the floor and remarkably little into the shop vac, or into the dust collection bag. So that turned into a job for my air compressor, to blow everything out. It had been clogged with bits from earlier sanding. To clean it I had to run it (with no belt on it) while blowing the air compressor into the area behind where the belt goes. After a while there was a huge cloud of dust blown out of the outlet, and now my sander works again.

So far I've got most of the floor sanded at first pass level. Then I can go over it again to catch any odd bits that I missed, and then I'll need to go around the edges again. I hate doing the edges and corners, but it needs to be done. I'll want to get some sheets of really coarse sandpaper so I can put it on my 1/4 sheet sander, and get right into the corners.

In unrelated news I found a guy who wants to get rid of a woodturning lathe and doesn't want anything for it, he just wants it out of the way. It will probably need some work to get it fully functional but maybe I can make it happen. If so, I have a lathe that I can learn on. If not the local thrift shop can have it for scrap metal.

[tango]

So now I'm the proud owner of a lathe that's too heavy to lift unaided. It's currently in the basement and I'm not sure what to do with it next. The guy had a set of cheap turning tools that he said were given to him so he gave them to me. Chances are they won't hold a sharp edge very well but that means I can learn tool sharpening on a cheap set, so it's not an expensive mistake if I do a bad job.

My basement is going to need some reorganising to make room for a big lathe and a heavy stand. The stand is currently in my garage while I figure out what my next move needs to be.

I had hoped to do some more work on the floor today but didn't want to pass up the chance to score a free lathe.