Watcha doing?

[Fenris]

Do amenities include water, or mainly electricity? Sometimes I wonder if some sheds are just a bit of insulation away from being inhabitable.

Not inhabitable, but with electric and very nicely constructed.

[tango]

A fun day wrangling two little girls. It's handy that we have a park half a mile away where they can play on all the assorted things set up for kids to play on, let their imaginations run wild, and then head to the library and play with a bunch of stuff set up there for kids.

All in all a good day. I also ordered a bigger lathe, I've hit the size limits of my current one a couple of times now, and figure I've been doing this for several months now and don't see myself losing interest any time soon. Now I've got a proper grinding jig to sharpen my tools and I'm getting better at sharpening Harbor Freight quality tools the next step is to get some better quality tools. Then I can start turning out bowls up to 22" across. I'm still considering the outboard attachment that would increase the limit to 34", I'll see how long it takes me to max out the new toy.

I'm getting it delivered to a nearby store that can take a box that size. When it arrives I need to figure out how to get a 500+lb box back home.

[IMINXTC]

Been listening to, researching the "left," recently, mostly for nuance and balance.


Yep. We're screwed.

Pretty much being actively screwed by the "right" at the moment.

Indeed! I am speaking in terms of opposition, where the Left fails to step up in strength.

[tango]

Do amenities include water, or mainly electricity? Sometimes I wonder if some sheds are just a bit of insulation away from being inhabitable.

Not inhabitable, but with electric and very nicely constructed.

I could do with one of those. I'd like to have more space for my woodworking tools, but it would need to be insulated so I can work in the winter time.

It would be nice to be able to work without hauling heavy tools downstairs, and without moving wood up and down stairs. I'd love to have space to simply open a garage door, haul wood into the workspace, cut it up and glue it back together again, and then move a finished piece out. No stairs would be a huge blessing. Some headroom would be nice too. My basement was designed 120 years ago, long before modern power tools even existed.

[RabbiKnife]

…. And when the average person was the size of Napoleon

[tango]

…. And when the average person was the size of Napoleon

... and in the days when the average adult would have a handful of shirts, maybe two pairs of pants, and a Sunday best suit. With the modern tendency for one person to have as many clothes as an army would have had 100 years ago, there's usually a storage crunch somewhere along the way. When our house was built I imagine the gentleman of the house would have a suit for Sundays which would be hung up, and everything else would be folded and put on a shelf. The lady of the house would probably have a Sunday best dress, maybe two dresses, and everything else would be folded and put on a shelf. So two or three hangers and a couple of shelves would be enough to store all their clothes.

In some new build houses they have walk in closets bigger than the kids' bedroom in an older house.

[tango]

Lots of fun today taking my lawnmower apart so I could fix the self-propelling parts. Not what I really wanted to be doing with the day but I got the mower working again.

And another 15 gallons of wood turned into shavings, as two more bowls rolled out of my woodshop.

[tango]

Annoyed today.

My new lathe was supposed to arrive today but they called this morning to make an appointment to deliver it. Why they did that I have no idea, because it's being delivered to a local business that can handle a big box more easily, but it means that having planned everything around it coming today it's not coming until tomorrow.

Then I got notification that the drier I ordered that's not supposed to arrive until tomorrow is ready today, with the associated pestering to go and get it. Which I can't do, because my man with the trailer isn't expecting to be driving me there today.

But I got to my daughter's house and rewired her drier outlet. For some reason what was there before was a 50A three pin outlet, connected to a 30A breaker and a 10/3 cable. The cable had a ground but someone cut it off, so I trimmed the wire back to expose the ground and connected a 30A four pin outlet. Then I realized I connected it upside down and had to start over.

Now I'm drinking coffee and just finished eating a donut. At least nothing can go wrong with that.

[RabbiKnife]

You had me at donut…

[tango]

You had me at donut…

It was an OK donut. Not as good as the donut shop in town, but that isn't open on Tuesdays.

Tomorrow is the local sale, and there's usually an Amish lady we know who sells the best whoopie pies I've ever tasted, and they are stupidly cheap too. And on top of that it looks like my new toy is arriving tomorrow.

I wanted to while away a little time this evening so turned another bowl out of a spalted maple log. It's now sitting in a bucket of shavings to dry out without shape shifting too much so I can sand it tomorrow. Then I can lacquer it. I'm really liking the way these spalted maple bowls are looking. I made four small ones and distributed them to family members, I made a big one I'm keeping for myself, and I haven't decided what's happening with the next one.

When my new lathe arrives I want to turn some of the big chunks of black cherry I scored over the weekend. I'm thinking one of them will make an awesome plate.

[tango]

Well my new toy arrived. It was something of an effort hauling it down the stairs to my basement, since it weighs somewhere north of 400lb all in. Thankfully it ships in pieces so I could use a heavy duty hand cart to get the larger pieces down the stairs. Lifting the bed (168lb) and aligning it onto two legs (68lb each) was something of a challenge. It's still not quite right, there are a couple of bolts that don't want to get into the threads where I need them to be.

Tomorrow I get to figure out how to lift one end onto blocks so I can put the feet on the legs so I can steady the whole thing, then clean the anti-rust oil off, and then lift the headstock into place. That will be a challenge in itself.

[tango]

The legs are secured to the lathe bed, and I've got most of the way through cleaning the rust protection off the lathe bed. I'm not sure what the instructions are trying to do - I need to clean off the rust protection and then.... apply rust protection. Whatever. Anyway, most of the rust protection is off now and i'm hoping one more dose of WD40 will finish the job. Then I can lift it up and put blocks under it to fit the feet. Maybe I'll get to use it tomorrow.

In unrelated news I was able to get to the hardware store to collect the washer and drier for my daughter and get them into her house. I couldn't get them into place because that meant going through my granddaughter's room, which looks like a tornado got there first. So she had to clear a path for me. She did that, so I was able to manhandle two large boxes down a flight of stairs and through her room. It took a lot of controlled force, a moderate amount of ingenuity and many episodes of wishing I hadn't attempted the process, but I got everything in place. That's when I found the drier vent is perished and needs to be replaced, but I got pretty much everything else in place ready to go.

She loves her new washer and drier. I hope everything about them works, I really don't want to have to haul them back up the stairs if they don't.

[tango]

The lathe is now operational. Aligning the bolt holes between the lathe bed and the legs was an exercise in creative thinking. It's intensely difficult to move a heavy metal leg a fraction of an inch with one hand while using the other hand to take the weight of the bed. But any job can be done if you have the right hammer, so an offcut of wood to protect the paint on the legs and a hammer allowed me to tap them gently into the right place, enough that I could get all the bolts through. Cleaning the rust suppressant was tedious but easy enough, it involved no heavy lifting. Putting the banjo and tailstock on was easy enough and then came the final step, manhandling the 150lb headstock into place. I wasn't sure if my wife would be strong enough to help me lift it into place but it turned out she was, and as soon as it was fairly close we could rest it on the lathe bed while we fine tuned the position of it.

And now the beast lives. So far all I've done with it is test the forward and reverse motions and sanded a bowl I made a few days previously. I've carried a chunk of black cherry downstairs, I think that will be the first piece I turn for real on the new lathe. The bowl I sanded will probably become a unique piece, in that I used two lathes to make it. One to turn it, a different one to sand it.

The new lathe is very smooth and very quiet. The old one rattles even at slower speeds when sanding. The new one runs so quietly about the only clue it's running at all is that the workpiece is rotating.

No prizes for guessing what's going to take up at least some of my time over the weekend.

[tango]

The first piece from my new toy is done. A bowl about 12" across, turned from a piece of black cherry I collected a few days ago. The cherry smell as I was turning it was really something special. I treated it with beeswax on the lathe and it looks really nice.

The new lathe allows me to rotate the spindle either way so I can sand forwards or backwards. Having wanted to be able to do this for months now it takes a little getting used to, as I have to hold everything the other way around. But since I can do that now I bought some extra-fine sandpaper - I used to sand to 220 but I got some 400 - and sanded it both ways up to 400, then put the beeswax on it.

Next up is a big chunk that I'm going to need to trim because it has a prominent corner that might push the limits of the new lathe. I'd need to turn that bit away anyway so I might as well cut it off with a chainsaw and save myself the time to slice it off a small slice at a time. My wife wants me to make a plate / shallow bowl out of it. I'm going to need to put 12 screws into it to hold it to the faceplate, I usually only use 6 screws but I haven't turned anything this size before.

[IMINXTC]

Following current political developments out of necessity with mid-terms closing in. Still not thrilled with the lack of cohesiveness on the left at least as a sane alternative. Sure do pray.