Thursday Evening in the shop

This Thursday has been a fairly quiet day, I spent some time wandering about the neighbourhood and made a trip to the library.That was really the high adventure of the day.  The balance of the day was spend reading, enjoying the fantastic summer like afternoon and puttering around in my shop.  

This afternoon I spent some time breaking down some more of the found wood.   

            
           



I cut the drawers up and sawed some more of the tree branches to length and sealed their ends.

At supper time decided to have a beer with my meat and cheese, and so....no more machines in the shop.(other than vacuum cleaners that is)  There was enough saw dust and bark about that it was high time I got going on a serious clean up. Do you turn up the tunes when you are cleaning in your shop?  I certainly do. This evening it was the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Fred Fennell. In the 1980's took a course in band conducting from Fred Fennell at the University of Calgary.  It is inspiring to learn from a world class individual. As a small bragging point he thought I had good control when conducting Morton Gould's Ballade for Band; for a young conductor in the presence of a musical legend control does not come easily, panic is your natural state of mind.

As I worked away in my shop I listened to band music, thought of the great teachers with whom I studied and thought of how different my life's direction had gone. 

My shop is great, I have tonnes of tools and enough wood to keep going for years. As long as I take it easy on my back and work safely I should be wood working for a long time to come.

  I did do a bit of wood working before turning to cleaning up. It was painting and gluing type tasks, not sharp tool and whirring blade tasks.

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Recently I was playing with my lathe and made this "egg".  It made for a good 'handie' (like shelfie, in your hand) and then sat around with no purpose.  As a wood junkie, I did not throw it away and today it found a purpose.

Believe it or not I found this umbrella beside the road while riding my bike around the neighbourhood.  It turned out that the canopy was fine but the handle had broken off.  So,because I hate to see things thrown away that can be fixed I brought this lame umbrella home intending to put a handle on it.(been there done that)

Drilling a hole in the centre of the egg/handle is easy when you have the tools.  I used my drill press and a wood hand screw clamp to get a straight square hole.

                                        I hold the piece between the screws to get a solid, none slip grip on it and sometimes then clamp the carpenter's hand screw to the table of the drill press.

Once I got the handle drilled I needed to glue the umbrella into the handle and that is where two part epoxy is the only tool for the job. Two part epoxy has good gap filling characteristics and is water proof once dry.

  I also painted a little toy for Clara. Not a bad day's fiddling in the work shop.

Don't ignore those little wooden kits from the $ Store, some of them are just plain fun. ( I of course kept a pattern)

cheers ianw