Fun in the sun-dials

I never know where my reading will take me. I am re-reading Lybian Sands, a book by Brigadier R.A. Bagnold, OBE who was also a Fellow of the Royal Society and author of just about the only book on sand dunes that there is: The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes, reprinted (fortunately) by Dover and easily available. Also be warned that it is very technical. Bagnold was a sapper, as the British say; a military engineer. He was bitten by the bug of desert exploration by automobile in the 1920s-1930s. In the process he invented (or reinvented) the sun compass, a device that substitutes for a magnetic compass, which is of little use in a steel automobile. There are all kinds of branches to this story, but my first thought was "oooh, I gotta build one!" It is, after all, a 360 degree protractor with a big needle in the middle. Yes, but the sun's azimuth changes during the day. so you have to adjust for that. And so I came to sundials (pushed, I may add, by an article in my favorite magazine, Model Engineer, which you may Google).

Sundials are fascinating beasts. For a long time, they were the poor (and middle class) man's only way of telling time. I have found a lot of information on the web. Not all (if any) of it is correct and complete. A lot of it is "buy our sundial" or "download our unchecked software and print out a sundial" type stuff. There are two sites which are commendable: one in the UK, the British Sundial Society,
and the other a NASA link. Now a sundial is just a disk or square with marks on it to tell you what time the sun thinks it is, so where do you put the marks?

Unfortunately, there is complete disagreement by these authorities on how you mark up a simple horizontal sundial. I have now made several sundials; they are not exactly difficult:
You could make them out of plastic, cardboard, or almost anything. Almost needless to say, I made them out of wood. The one on the left is called an equatorial sundial. when properly oriented, its axis should be parallel to the polar axis. This was inspired by the British Sundial (BSS) people. The way their project is stated, it won't work unless the rectangle is transparent. Very hard to find transparent wood, so I had to reverse it a lot. The net of it is that when the pointer is exactly facing true south, it will show solar time. There is no question about the marks: one hour is 15 degrees protractor-wise.

The other dials are all horizontal. They differ in the markings, which correspond to the various authorities. I think the authorities all all wrong. I happen to have a copy of Astronomical Algorithms, by Jan Meeus, unfortunately out of print but available used. Tomorrow's project is to make a sundial per Meeus. By the way, the little triangular piece, called a stylus by Meeus and a style by others, needs to be in proportion to the sundial. The equatorial sundial is about 14 cm across; the others are pieces of a branch and about 6 cm across.

I have found out a great deal about sundials in this week. All this will come in very handy when I build a real sun compass!

Placemat's progress

When we last saw the Navajo placemat, it looked something like this:
This was some time ago. I could consult my own posts, but I won't. So many windows on the screen, so much chance for confusion! In this image, I have done tapestry ovals, stripes, triangles, and more stripes. If we skip ahead a whole lot of weeks -- about three, I would say, we come to a more advanced stage:
As you can see, I have added a rhomboidal (double triangle) design in the center, more triangles, and some more stripes symmetrical with the bottom. If you look at color they are antisymetrical, but shapewise they are symmetrical. I am more or less making this up as I go; I made a sketch of what I wanted and then followed it -- up to a point. My objective was to master (1) dovetails, where horizontal colors overlap; and (2) lazy lines, where colors overlap at an angle. In the picture above, I am putting in a little tapestry oval in green in the unwoven warpage. This brings us to right now:

All the tapestry ovals are done, and I am doing the black fill above. The black will continue to the top. There are about 10cm left to go. Notice how the fill makes waves above the ovals. It will all have to be leveled out. We are now in what I call the end game phase of the weaving. The threads are converging to a point at the top, and it is very hard to make the heddle shed. In fact, it is impossible. So I have removed the heddle stick, and make the heddle shed with a batten (or baton). Time-consuming, but no alternative. The "stick shed" can still be made, by aid of a chinese chopstick which replaces the normal "stick." Soon the chopstick will go, and it will be blunt needle all the rest of the way. In and out. This is the Navajo way, and it is why their rugs cost so much. It is Labor Intensive (with capital letters).

I am very pleased with this placemat. It has lots of mistakes, but not so many as my first; I now know how to make dovetails and lazy lines. More when the mat is complete.

A chinook, and a trip on snowshoes

This morning we had a chinook. This is a warm wind from the south. When I woke up (at 4AM) the temperature was -7C, but by 8 it was +2.7. The snow was blown off the trees; I suspected skiing would be bad, and so it was. I managed my warmups, but when I turned on to a trail the dreaded snowball ski phenomenon took over. When it is wet, the snow forms a ball under your instep, making it impossible to go anywhere, so I gave up. One can cure this problem with fancy waxes -- klister, for instance -- but (a) I haven't any and (b) klister is very difficult to remove, and very messy. Aptly, klyster is the swedish word for glue.

However, in the afternoon I decided to see how difficult it might be to cut firewood in the dead of winter. So I loaded the sled with my beautiful japanese log saw -- a present from my offspring -- and strapped on my snowshoes (same provenance), and off I went. I had my victim marked, a downed tree obstructing my skiing. It paid for its impertinence.
Snowshoes are a very different kettle of fish from skis, far greater effort, especially in deep snow. The great advantage is that you can stamp out a platform under your tree, and be stable when you saw. Above, you can see the sled, the saw, the logs, the snowshoes, and a ski pole I use as a stabilizer. Dragging this lot back home -- a matter of 300 meters -- was a workout and a half. The sled snags in the brush, your footing is not certain, going around curves is a production. But I did it. The log saw is a marvel. I could have taken a chain saw but I wanted to see how the hand saw performed.

Notes to self: next time, make a case for the saw, and take along a japanese sawbuck. It is hard enough moving around on snowshoes; having to hold logs by hand is an ordeal.

The return of the Navajo loom

Most of my troubles with the Navajo loom -- several posts ago -- were due to improper warping. The warp frame kept collapsing, turning from a square into a rhomboid. So it was time to do something about it, and as Darth Spader would say, behold warp frame 1.0:
Nothing very complicated. Some scrap 2x4 and four sticks. Two sticks go through holes drilled into the frame and are held by wedges; the other two sticks are screwed in. They will eventually get unscrewed. This frame is solid. I put marks at 5mm intervals so I can get the spacing correctly. Right now I am using a 5mm interval; eventually I will experiment with other spacings. So let's warp it up.
I am using thrift store yarn -- perhaps the waving gods know of its composition but I have no idea. The warp on a Navajo loom takes a lot of strain; but I couldn't break this yarn, try as I might. The warp, as I might of remarked before, is wound in a figure 8 around the horizontals. The two sticks "preserve the lease" -- keep your figure 8 in the middle of the frame. It is now time to do the warp spacers. This is a distinctive feature of Navajo weaving, and keeps the warp spacing constant. There are four twisted yarns, retwisted about the warp threads.
Now we sew the tension bars onto the warp frame bars with a big needle and some strong cord, going through the warp spacers We add double cords on each side, which are the traditional Navaho side selvedges (long edges, in plainspeak) and transfer the whole works over to the loom frame.
I have also tied the heddle stick, the crooked white stick that pulls out alternate threads to make a shed. There is no reason for it to be crooked, it's what I had on hand. We are ready to weave.
There are red and green blobs in a black background. These are supposed to be tapestry ovals, but hey, I'm learning. Unlike R.M. Meluch, who I cited elsewhere, I have no Navajo spirit weaver as a guide. I call them turtles. The sword-like object in the lower foreground is a batten (I prefer R.M.'s term baton, but as a matter of fact, "batten" is indeed derived from baton, so that's OK). You can also see a shuttle in the foreground. And a bottle of Chilean wine in the background. A great temptation when weaving, which is a constant battle with topology, gets difficult. So far I have resisted it. You can also see how the warp spacers are sewed to the tension bars.

More to come as this project evolves.

A ski through the woods

A couple of days ago, I went out for my morning ski. It is wonderful excercise and gets you out in the open; an essential ingredient in fighting off "cabin fever," or the malaise caused by staying indoors. This time I took my camera with me. So we're off. Our objective is to extend the Westbound trail through the woods west of the house. First, however, we warm up.
This is my warmup piste, or track. It goes around my "backyard." Temperature is about -15C. There are 40-something cm of snow on the ground, under the usual for this time of year. The snow is nice at -15C, we get a good glide. I think -10 is ideal, but you takes what you gets. Four laps, and all gear secure, my boots are not coming unlaced, don't need the hand-warmer today. OK, onwards.

A short bit through the woods next to my driveway and we are at the Power Line Right-of-way, or PLRW for short. I spent most of my life in the computer business; acronyms are a way of life. We are facing north at this point, we will go right up the PLRW. I have beaten out a track there. Swish, swish and...
...we are at the northern end of the PLRW, facing west, about 150 meters from the last photo. Off to our left, the Reutov II house, beyond it, the Polushkin house. That's where we're headed, Still power line, but badly hacked by the hateful snow machines, or Satan Sleds as I call them. However, their unskiable tracks were dusted over by our last snowfall. So we head toward maison Polushkin.
About 40 meters behind Polushkin, we arrive at the West Expressway junction. The West Expressway is a semi-cleared track through the woods, going north-south, wide enough for a small car, a snow machine, or me. You can see my snowshoe tracks, going west like Horace Greeley. We will be back here, but for now we turn right, going N to pick up a trail I am hacking through the west woods. This is all track I have broken before, so it is quite fast.
We turn on to my Westbound trail, and as you can see, we are really in the deep dark Boreal woods. Deadfall all over the place. My track is zigzag to say the least; you can't go 20 meters without zigging (or zagging, as the case may be). There is usually a tree, a deadfall or brush in your way.

Eventually we reach the end of the broken trail, and it is time to break some more. I try for a few hundred meters a day. It is a big effort to break trail through snow. Your skis go down deep:
I have a pair of skis that were designed for Telemarking. I love them, not because I Telemark well (no hills for kilometers around!), but because they will float you in deep snow like this. They are really wide. Not bad for a $10 yard sale buy. Those narrow things they sell you as "cross-country skis" at high prices are good only on prepared tracks. Here at Chalupy, the only tracks available are those I make myself.

Eventually I run out of steam. Time to return. It is much easier going back because you are following broken trail. Eventually we arrive back at the Expressway Junction:
We are now facing due south. In the middle of the picture there is a small bright dot. That's the sunlight on the meadows at the end of the Expressway. We are going there, and we have about a Kilometer to go. It is easy skiing; we have a track and the snow machines have left it alone. This luck cannot last, but we enjoy it while we can.This is Moose Meadows, as I call it, at the end of the Expressway. There are often moose there, hence the name but today (because I have the camera) there is nary a moose. My tracks can be seen off to the left. Moose Meadows is a rough ski unless there is a meter or so of snow to fill in the bumps. In summer, it is a swamp.

So off we go to the left (previous photo faces south) and go some 400 meters, and we arrive at the desolate Ghost House:
The former owners of this place were killed in an automobile accident. There are a few vehicles, like the trailer at left, junked around the place; a hole in the ground. And no doubt ghosts. We ski on by. We come to the Ghost House driveway:
This leads right to my own driveway, maybe 400 meters, we're almost done. I like the Ghost house driveay, it's fast unless the moose have torn holes in my tracks.
And we're home. We have been out an hour and a half, but some of that was spent taking pictures. Taking a picture at -15C is not at simple as it sounds. If you let the camera hang around your neck, the batteries give up in the cold. So you have to stuff the camera down your warm clothes, So before you take a picture you unzip any number of zippers (and you have great big mitts and ski poles to deal with, too) and pull the camera out and check the mode and take the picture, and then reverse the process to put the camera away.

Alaska is wonderful. The dreaded winter is not so dread, if only you get out in it for a bit.

A small Navajo loom

As you have probably figured out, I am fascinated by weaving. I must have picked this up from my father, who made looms and wove at a like age. Anyhow, I owe this one to a Science Fiction novel! I picked up a book by R. M. Meluch and loved it. Space Opera, true, but sometimes that's just the ticket. One of the items on RM's home page is titled "Navajo loom." Munch. Got the bug. And so I set out to find out about Navajo (sometimes spelled Navaho, and that's the way I would spell it, but modernity triumphs) is a primitive loom. It is used to weave gigantic rugs, worth a great many dollars, pounds, or euros. A rug is beyond my capabilites, I reasoned, but not a place mat. So I set out to build a Navajo place mat loom. The first requirement is a very sturdy frame:
Since I am not doing rugs, the thing is about waist-high. I had a scrap 2x4 which I sawed in half, that set the maximum height of the loom. Besides that, you need a whole bunch of sticks -- easy to come by -- and a warping frame. The warp, on any loom, is the set of long threads that will be crossed by the weft threads. At this point I was following directions from a book by Rachel Brown, which you can also Google. An excellent book, highly recommended if you want to do this kind of weaving. I didn't have the whole book, but a photocopied excerpt (thanks to my daughter and her contacts) so really I didn't know what I was doing. But this is the way we learn. My waping frame looked like this:
I will call this warping frame 0.0. There is a a warp on it, it is strung up as a figure 8 around the horizontal bars. There are two sticks in the middle tied together which keep the figure 8 from disappearing. This is called preserving the lease in weaverspeak. At the bottom of the figure I am sewing the bottom stick to the bottom selvedge, The bottom selvedge (probably a corruption of self-edge) is a twisted bunch of strings around the warp edges. Rachel Brown tells you how to do it. Among the many things I did not know was that this selvedge is critical. It acts a warp spacing device. For those of us not used to primitive looms, where you have some gadget to do the spacing (like a reed on a modern loom) you will be in trouble if you don't get it right.

Having sewn both top and bottom selvedges to the corresponding sticks, you can now string up your loom:
I omitted to tell you that you must string up the heddle stick for your loom. This is the bottom stick in the middle of the loom. A series of string loops winds about every other thread. This allows you to make a shed, i.e, pull every other string ahead of the others; in weaving you alternate sheds. You can see the heddle stick better here:
You can also see the tensioning arrangement, simply a piece of cord (parachute cord, in fact) wound around the top of the frame! The thing is crying out for modifications, but they will have to wait. I want to see how it works!
I have made every mistake in the book, plus some brand-new ones I invented myself, but there is weaving and there is a design. Bad, cockeyed, whatever, but iy's a design, by gum. One of the beauties of the Navajo loom is that you don't have to weave a row at a time . You can work on an area and then fill in the remainder. It's a lot like painting. I'm approaching the top and the threads are crowding together. Getting harder to weave. Rachel Brown warned me, so I am not surprised. At the end, I was using a darning needle and a lot of sweat.
And she is finished. A real Navaho weaver would be in hysterics by thi point, but you won't learn anything until you try, and if you don't make mistakes you won't learn anything either.

Most of my problems can be traced back to improper warping. Obviously warp frame 0.0 was inadequate. It kept coming apart, twisting, and misbehaving. Time for a major upgrade. Behold warp frame 1.0 (new release):
I finshed this shortly after noon. Much sturdier. Couldn't resist, cast on a warp.
Note the two sticks preserving the lease. Will it bomb? Will it be a rave? No idea. Stay tuned.

Spoons grow on trees

Spoon carving is a fascinating art. I was introduced to it by Drew Langsner's book "Country Crafts;" it is also covered in some of his later books. Basically, you start with a tree and make the piece of tree into a spoon. It is, or can be, a totally indoor craft, and therefore possible when the temperature is (as today) -24C. This picture illustrates the process:
At left, a piece of a (largish) birch branch that I rescued from the all-consuming firewood heap. The next step is to split this in half, and chop out the outline of the spoon with a hatchet. It is also possible to saw the thing out. For scoop-type spoons (third from the left) I prefer the hatchet. For really curvy things we use the turning saw:
This is a homemade frame with a 6mm bandsaw blade. I buy bandsaw blades at yard sales for just such purposes. The blade can be set to any angle. In fact it is a hand-powered bandsaw. One way or another you rough out the spoon, and then proceed to carve. Partially carved spoons are next in the picture. The tools of the trade are shown on the right of the top picture. At the far right, the invaluable and indispensable Swedish Sloyd Knife. "Sloyd" (written, as I understand it, slojd in Swedish) means "craft" in that language. The one shown is a Erik Frost 6cm model. Then there is a gouge and another Frost tool, a hook knife. These are used for hollowing out the bowls. Sometimes the gouge works better, most of the time I use the hook knife. On the upper right corner of the red cloth, there is a scraper made out of a piece of old sawblade. This is used to smooth out the finished spoon. In the spoon-carving fraternity, "sandpaper" is a dirty word. Yes, it does smooth things. But it obscures the grain, and makes things look machine-made. The spoons are carved green; the final smoothing and details are added when the wood is dry. You must dry out the wood very slowly. Old-timers used sawdust; modern technology -- a zip-lock bag -- is much easier. Turn the bag out daily and let it dry. If it dries too fast it will crack, and your work is wasted.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of pages on the 'net on spoon carving. One could do worse than start here. Or google something like "wooden spoon carving."

Drew Langser's website (linked above) has a section on bowl carving
which is spoon carving on a much larger scale. If you're interested, all of his books are relevant. Except the chairmaking books, of course; but they are most interesting.