The Shinto temple, er, table.

The time has come,  the Walrus said, to make a table to support my grinders. I have two of them. I have far too much space in my hallway for a computer. It is currently held up by a door on sawhorses. Far too wide. So I decided to shorten it up and stick in a table wide enough to hold my wet and dry grinders. I had originally decided to use power tools on it. And of course I am using other people's offcuts, i.e. scrap. This means so-called "2x4 lumber." A few moments with a ruler will convice you that modern 2x4 are nowhere near that dimension. This is a way the lumber companies can get a little more lumber out of a log, at your expense. The modern 2x4 is something like 39mm x 88 mm give or take a whole millimeter. Convert it yourself if you want; I don't use RGU. But its not even a 2:1 aspect ratio.

Now my bandsaw will not take the 88mm width -- it is 3" or about  77mm. In retrospect there is a way around this; I could have "housed"  the joints -- but at that point I decided to build this thing by hand tools only. I am glad I did. I learned a great deal. Not the least, how to operate a Japanese ripsaw correctly. I am grateful to Roy Underhill on pbs.org for some very useful tips. But I can now rip to within a half-millimiter over a 90 mm length. I could not do that when I started this project. Unfortunately I did not document it. I thought it was going to be a one-morning knockout project. I will have to do a future post on how to do these joints, this is really timber framing and a useful art to acquire. This is a lot like building a Shinto Temple. This is an art which requires master carpenters. No master, I, but at least I  learned something. I cut whole thing together piece by piece. When all was done I put it together. And it fit together.

Layout is 90% of the problem in timber framing. For this you need a very acccurate pencil. The Japanese use a bamboo brush, or sumisashi. I found out that a "Sharpie" thin marker works very well indeed, as long as you hold it properly against the square.The tip of the Sharpie is less than 1 mm wide.

I am really glad I did this the hard way, and I hope to do a post on how to cut these particular joints in the future -- since I did not document this project. Today I pegged these joints; hopefully I'll cover that in the future.

The Garden, 2014, part 1 of ?

This post is long overdue. We started the garden early this year. Unlike last year, it was not wet. Last frost in late may, maybe around May 15th. Very favorable. First job is to fork up the soil. Some people use a tiller for this. This is essential for new rows, but for old rows I think  it is too violent. I use the old-fashioned spading fork. Then I spread manure, bought at Lowe's because I cannot generate enough compost. The  Alaska climate is, as we all know, very harsh. The   growing season is short -- and so is the composting season. My compost grows very slowly!  Anyway, the manure is mixed in. By hand. The result is nice, neat rows. No weeds, yet.

Then we put in the transplants. These have been sitting in the windowsills since early March.

I always cloche my transplants.Now cloche is a French word; it means "bell". The French, and later all European countries, used glass mini-greenhouses to get an early start on their veggies. These resembled bells; hence their name. Nobody makes them anymore; but on the other hand  there is an unlimited supply of transparent plastic, in my case old fruit juice containers. I run them through a bandsaw and slice off tops and bottoms. This protects the plants. I have seen frost on June 6! These pix were taken late May. If there had been a frost, my transplants probably would survive. They seem to like the cloches. It is almost time to remove their trainer wheels :). I always think I have far too many cloches, but I either break even or have too few. Drink more apple juice, JRC!

The rest of my stuff I start from seeds. I use my trusty Earthways seeder. I will have to do a post on this marvellous device. I was concentrating on what I was doing and did not get any pictures. Shame on me. The seeder saves days of handwork.

As I write some of the seeds are coming up. And I have been weeding already; dockweed is your deadly enemy. If you want to learn more about these techniques go read Eliot Coleman's books. He gardens in Maine, and that is almost as bad as Alaska.

Hephaestus -- a mini-furnace

I really should be posting on the garden, which is my main preoccupation at this time. But I'll do that later. Meanwhile, I would like to tell you about my mini-furnace. I did not invent this thing; I got it straight out of the internet. (Google on "soup can furnace".)

One of the problems with doing mini-blacksmithing as I do is that it takes quite a long time to heat up the work. Maybe five minutes to red-hot. After that it goes faster. Still, it is time and gas wasted. You are heating the atmosphere as well as your work. So I built Hephaestus, the tin can furnace.

 It could not be simpler. A tin can. In my case a roast beef hash can. Drill three holes. Mount it on some L-brackets. Fill the tin can with equal parts of sand and plaster of paris. Use a former (I used a broomstick and neglected to spray it with Pam) for the hole in the middle. But do oil your former. Any oil will do. The filler sets up in five minutes. I had to drill it out and then burn off the remaining broomstick remnants.Silly me.

You note the propane torch at the left. This fits in a hole you drill in the can. A spreader tip works better than a pencil tip. Fire up the torch and stick it in. It is amazing. It goes from zero to orange in under a minute! That is, you stick your steel piece into the furnace and light off. One minute later start forging. Amazing! Do use vise-grips on your piece -- it gets very hot indeed.

This thing really will save time and propane. But now it's time to garden, and I have no spare time. Next post I'll get into that.

Spring Fling with the Trebuchet

In the middle ages, in spite of all the nonsense in the romantic novels, most warfare revolved around sieges. Offense and defense evolved in parallel. The castles got thicker walls; and to knock them down the trebuchet was invented. There is a lot of material on the net about trebuchets.

So I got tired of  working on my picture frames and built a model of a trebuchet out of scrap wood.

As you can see, it is a lever pivoted on a stand. A heavy weight is attached to the short end. A sling is attached to the long arm. In the picture the weight is propped up by a stick. A projectile, in my case a vaguely ball-shaped piece of modeling clay, is put in the sling.  When the stick is knocked out, the weight falls, of course, this impels the projectile. So far I can sling the ball a couple meters, but I have been reading up on this and I think I can improve it.

Lots of variables here. Quite a complicated simple-looking device. Medieval trebuchets could throw 100 Kg a distance of 100 meters -- at least, the modern reproductions can do this. One monster I saw on YouTube (made out of steel) can actually fling a  compact car!

Spring is here and I have the garden to do; I think trebuchet tuning will have to wait.

Napoleon, again

Napoleon returned shortly after I did the post on him. He decided that the spot right beside my bedroom was the ideal spot for his moosely nap. He parked himself right next to my bedroom window.

Fortunately I walked in time to get a picture. He was literally a meter away. Quite unperturbed by the pesky humans. Unfortunately the camera recorded the screen on the window, hence the weird effect.

Moose are nocturnal animals. During the day they nap. I'm glad Napoleon did not feel threatened at Chalupy.

Framed!

Asy ou know I have been struggling with the picture frame. The carving was the easy part. The hard part is doing the miters. My shooting jig is now very accurate. But it has a real problem. The plane follows the miter. If this is not exactly 45 deg then the plane tends to follow the (erroneous) angle. And one degree is far too much error. I tried a commercial miter box and it had far too much slop. Well, desperate situations demand desperate measures. I resorted to Cecil B. de Mille.

 I packed up the frame pieces on home-made parallels. This is so that you don't try to mill your priceless mill table along with the wood. I stuck my faithful 3 mm carbide end mill in the chuck. I then set the wood at 45 deg with the X-axis of the mill; that goes right to left in the picture. I tried the Y axis (90 deg from interfere X) but I did not have enough travel. Setting this thing up was a bear.  The clamps interfere with measurement. And my protractors keep slipping their settings.  In fact the clamps can slip too.  I finally overcame these difficulties. A whole day's work to do all the pieces. They were badly off; a degree is far too much.  Only problem is that the end mill is ever so slightly too short. Had to make several passes, varying the depth of cut (Z-axis). The part nearest to the left-side clamp is a bit too thick for the end mill. In this business a tenth mm a gross error.

When I clamped it up (in the homemade jig) there were some errors. I went back and "shot" the corners. See previous posts. It now fits quite well. Not absolute perfection. But not bad for a first frame.

Now I am putting some bamboo skewers (at bottom left) through the corners. Commercial framers use corrugated knock-in steel pieces; but I don't have any and am not sure I'd use them if I did. A miter joint is a very weak joint (if indeed it is a joint) and it needs reinforcement. I made a drill jig to make sure the holes went where I wanted them. I couldn't do this on the drill press; the frame is too big for my little drill press. Must use a hand drill, a very imprecise tool. The drill jig is at lower right corner in the picture above.

When I finish this operation I will plane off the pegs and give it to John. He has far more paintings than frames! I have learned a lot from this experience. Unlike other woodwork things, a miter jont is unforgiving. Get it wrong, never get it straight again. Next time I will do the joints before carving anything at all.

I must make a miter box. But to do so I must find some aluminum channel. Easy, you say. Go to Home Depot/Lowes.  Not so in Alaska. Well, eventually something will turn up.

Napoleon invades Russia! Er, Chalupy.

Yesterday I went skiing, as I do every day the snow is decent. It has been a very bad winter for skiing and I take every opportunity I can to do so. I start out with my "warmup track" around the house. When I started on my second lap around the track, I heard this noise. It sounded something like "snap, crackle, pop" and it was coming from the tractor, or so I thought. A close examination of said machine revealed nothing. What's this? I skied a few more meters and behold! A large moose hiding behind the tractor, chowing down on alder or birch. Well, he wasn't bothering me, so I didn't bother him either. You are well advised not to intefere with moose. They may be (and are) placid creatures, but if they are feeling threatened they can trample you to death.

So later John and Fluffy returned from a Safari to Wasilla, and reported that the moose was napping behind the tractor. Nap? Nap? Napoleon, said I. That's his name. I think it's a he; if it were a lady it would probably have offspring. OK, put moose out of mind.

But this morning when I went out to do something or other there was something not quite right. There was something lurking around Brutus, the Ford Explorer that J&F drive.

 What is this? Looks like a moose to me. Awfully close to the house, too. After some effort we got closer and found a moose chewing its cud. Moose, in case you did not know, are ruminants.

At this point Napoleon started making distressed noises. Far be it from me to distress Napoleon. I backed off.

Furthermore the beast had been licking  Brutus. John accuses Napoleon. He says  he is having an illicit affair with Brutus. I think, however, that it is a salt infatuation. Moose love salt. Maybe I should put out a salt block. Can't put out hay. Moose cannot digest hay.

Anyway, I went to the bathroom window and got the following priceless shot:

When I went skiing today, Napoleon  was ensconced behind Lysander, my tractor. When I went by, he was sort of ruffled so I went elsewhere. When inspected at 6PM tonight, by John, he was at the extreme end of the driveway eating up the twigs. Amazing creatures. And Brutus definitely needs a bath. Not every Ford Exporer can boast that it has been licked by a moose.