Author: The Lord of The Manor

End of February Update.

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It is definitely still winter here at the farm. We have good chances of snow for most of the coming week. Looks from the weather radar that whatever does come will likely have to form, as nothing closer to the west coast seems to be heading our way. It was warm today, though! We got up to 38F according to our weather station.

The SDR Radio I got the other day worked as expected. I got it running that day and played around with it, then delivered the second one to the desktop computer upstairs but did not yet set that one up. It’s fascinating how it can read or see the whole spectrum, and portions of it visible at once to tell where different signals are and have a hint to what kind they are. FM Radio signals are amazing, especially where they have digital encoding on both sides of the frequency. Even stations without that digital encoding are amazingly powerful compared to the rest of the spectrum. I will have to work on reception and an improved arial.

The tractor reached 200 hours yesterday. That’s just shy of five months! I cannot believe we are coming up to five months of ownership already! It still seems new to me. Most of its work here has bene snow clearing, but as soon as the weather breaks to spring, I think it will see a total shift! I may move big snow piles into the orchard just to get the trees started for the year. I may have to move a lot of hay off the garden and start it for tilling. I want that space tilled four or more times prior to planting in May and June. There will be post holes to dig, too. I am going to have to reset some fencing and clear some old areas out. Then there is the firewood. I don’t expect to muck about with that this year, since I want to be two years stored by autumn, and since I want to have a load of wood to work with. I hope to see this whole area of my chores severely altered to what it has been in previous years.

I got the second GoPro camera that I have been thinking about. If I am going to do a YouTube channel, then this setup I have is good enough to do it with. I would benefit from a lavalier mic, but I have a separate sound recorder that can also do the trick for now. I’ll have to give it a try. I am having a card reader delivered so I can put one on my laptop and one on my desktop to unload videos and edit. I have tried out the GoPro cloud, and I am not terribly thrilled with any of it, apart from the discount they offer to users while shopping. I’d rather keep the filed local, I think. Then I’ll only upload final cuts to the Internet. I have yet to see any real advantage apart from having apparently all the space I need to keep every crap video file I make. That may turn out to be the seeds of a problem. But who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks I’ll get a video created and uploaded to the channel again.

Mondy is anticipated to be the day we have our deli slicer delivered. I have been wanting a proper one for many years now, and we have what appears to be a decent one on the way. It is a Berkel 300 Redline. I am a little worried about it after seeing the shipping details. For whatever reason, it is listed with a shipping weight of 122 pounds. I am having trouble believing that, but I worry that I believe wrong. I guess we’ll see what it is like when it gets here. But honesty, how can a home line slicer weight so much? Maybe they packed it in a wooden crate?

I have very few hand tools left in my wish list now. A shipment arrives also on Monday. It is just a few things, and while there are a couple more planes to be desired, I think I have enough to get a real start in my workshop. Spring will give us access to the barn for cleanup, and to rearrange our storage. I have a permanent wall to fix into the old garage door of my shop. That wall wants a window built into it for some heat and light. Missus has a kiln on order that also wants a home in the shop.

So, a lot is going on this year. I think we will be able to reach closer than ever to self-sufficiency. I have always said that it is a very expensive state to reach. On the upside, I am where I can start building some of the remaining tools I need. I am even considering building my own travishers. I’ll still have to buy the blades, but the handles and bodies will save me around $100 each. That’s not small potatoes. Small potatoes come from my garden.

There you have it! An end of February summary. That’s what’s going on, and where we are at, and where we are going for the moment. I am excited to be at the point in life where I feel like I finally have a life, and all the things that that entails. Having moved country twice and other events that have left me with next to nothing, it is a hard thing to recover from. But I feel quite like I have arrived. Everything else is just improving things up and building equity. For me, that’s a good place to be. Oh, and I am about two weeks short of my 52nd birthday.

SDR Radio & Storm

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

This afternoon a pair of SDR’s arrived at the farm. SDR is Software Defined Radio. It is a broad range radio receiver that uses software on the computer to operate it. It allows a graphical display of the frequencies on the radio spectrum. This gives the user a better idea of where to look in order to get a signal, and it allows far more than just broadcast radio reception. It is interesting and seems fun.

I got it set up pretty easily and started tuning it to find some familiar stations. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I found the local National Weather Service frequencies, and got bombed with the first I had heard of a coming storm. The regular Internet sites I use for weather said there was a chance of snow for tomorrow, and that it would probably snow on Wednesday. The National Weather Service alerted me to a storm positioned north of us and heading our way.

The Winter Storm Warning in effect calls for about seven inches where we are, though that could be higher or lower. There is wind called for up to 65 miles an hour, though I am not sure it will come here, or go East of us to Wyoming. It is not promising. The mountains will get clobbered. Of course, we have a kid on the road right now, trying to get to his house before the storm overcomes him. He will be home at his current rate before there is much accumulation, though he is already getting hit with some wind and snow where he is at.

All of the NWS stations are playing the same warnings in our area. It is currently 35F on our farm, which no doubt means snow. One more degree drop, and any precipitation can convert to the white stuff. I have to get up at 3:00AM tomorrow. I’ll see then what it looks like. It may be a tough day of work for the tractor. One thing for certain, we are better prepared than ever for this.

Weather Underground map of the storm. We are north of Ogden, Utah at the border of Idaho.

We have the hay covered and the wood in for the night. Let’s hope it is enough! Time to hunker down.

Scorp & Adze

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I have searched high and low, the world over via the Internet to find two tools necessary to try out making a Windsor chair. They could be found few and far between, but the other day I was watching a video of Curtis Buchanan talking about chairmaking, and he mentioned a name I could not quite make out for where he had gotten his scorp, one of the two tools. Luckily, he had mentioned the location of the tool maker, too. So with a little help from the behind-the-scenes trolls over there at Google, I searched and found the maker’s website, and ordered both the scorp, and an adze. The adze is for quick, rough removal of material in a valley, such as a seat bottom. The scorp is for closer, more refined work. A travisher is required for finishing, and I have yet found where I would like to get one of those for sure, though I do have my eye on a site in England that sells them.

There are different types of adzes to be had. Some are short handled and useful for benchtop work. Generally, they are used to scoop wood out of a surface, and the user would hold the tool facing towards himself and swing like a hatchet. Others are long handled, and the user will stand on the work surface, and swing the adze towards his feet. I got the long handled one, figuring I could choke up on it and do benchtop work, or stand and do the ground level stuff. When Jon Townsend built his dugout canoe on his YouTube channel, he used a long handled one, so I don’t want that kind of opportunity to pass by for having the wrong tool. If necessary, I figure I can cut the handle.

The scorp is basically a curved drawknife. It is a blade around a foot long, with handles on each end. It is pulled downwards, again towards the user, and takes shavings of wood, rather than scoops like the adze. The cut is wider and shallower than the adze, and so is more refined. If the adze is scissors, the scorp is more to the effect of the electric hair trimmer. The travisher is more like a razor. Each had its finish, and the scorp will bring the work much closer to the final finish than could possibly be achieved with the adze.

Both tools were readily available on the website of Barr Specialty Tools. The maker is Barr Quarton. Nutty enough to me, he is out in McCall, Idaho! In the end, after all the searching, I ordered a tool from a guy in the same state as I live. Barr has trained on tool making, and with Japanese sword makers, so he talks about folding in carbon in his blades, giving them the edge on cutting. Buchanan recommended them as a superior tool. Since I was happy to take the word of a craftsman in the trade, and to shop locally, Barr Tools was my port of call for these tools. I Was surprised, as my searching had revealed few makers, especially in the US, and nothing of quality craftsmanship. Here, I got both, and with far fewer miles between me and the place of origin than any other.

Woodcraft has not confirmed shipping yet on the bandsaw I ordered, but the money has been taken from the appropriate account. I’ve paid them. My shop is small, and I do not see needing more than the Laguna 14bx. I have really enjoyed my Laguna lathe, so far, and decided to go with them, though I sometimes have doubts and think I might have liked a Harvey a bit better. But then, the only reason I can really find to regret is the blade guides, and those can be replaced if the ceramic guided of the Laguna turn out to be that bad. Carter makes some bearing guides for it. While I will be quite happy for the saw to arrive, it has been so cold in the shop that I would not be able to use it now anyway. So, it gets here when it gets here. As long as it is by spring, or whenever the weather becomes suitable to try it out. I have some blades for it arriving on Saturday, giving me a bit of flexibility with the tool. The bandsaw will provide curved cuts, resawing, and lathe stock prep. In fact, I am eyeing a spot for it right across from the lathe.

After these tools, I think a travisher is in order to complete the requirements, though I may still find a convex spokeshave necessary to complete the spindles. But with the, the shop is more or less complete to the requirements of chairmaking, and many other tasks.

The shop does not open just yet, however! It is coming up to 4:30 in the morning, and it is currently -4F outside. It does not bode well for a nice 70F degree day, suitable to a lovely time working. Looks more like another day hiding in the house! Well, everything has a season, as Jill Winger pointed out in her global email yesterday.

Record Cold

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Previously our record cold temperature was -9F. It was set on New Year’s in 2019, I think. Since the weather station keeps the all-time record readily available, I cannot look up the second coldest, and third, and so on. That got bumped recently to -11. That record was set a couple of weeks ago. I was kind of proud of it. But even more recently, during a cold snap that hit us this week, we hit a new all-time record of -21F just yesterday. The forecast called for it, then set us up to immediately get into a warming trend that would bring us back up to normal temperatures in just three days or so. I trust lawyers and weathermen just as much as I trust car salespeople. Especially as much as I do sat here now at around 2:00AM the next day, monitoring the temps and our water pipes. An hour ago, we hit -23. It went up since then to the old record of -21 when I got up feeling the briskness in the house. Typically, one can expect the coldest part of the day to happen around sunrise. That gives us about five hours or so to reset this record again.

Out of interest, Peter Sinks hit a low yesterday of -42.56F. Peter Sinks is 20.82 miles from our house at a heading of 70.22 degrees. It holds the record for second coldest place in the lower United States at -69.3F, recorded in 1985. The coldest on record is at Roger’s Pass in Montana which in 1954 recorded a comparatively bone chilling -69.7. Peter Sinks is a geographic feature in the northern Utah mountains near Bear Lake. One can think of it as a sort of dish shape that collects falling cold air in its bottom. Trapped there, the air cannot fall out and dissipate, so as more cold air falls in from the atmosphere, it just gets colder and colder.

2:35AM just passed by, and we hit -24F. That ancient record has been edged out.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I found the woodstove had a couple of logs in it that were putting up a decent fight against the cold. There was room for some more, so I went out to the stash on the front porch to bring in some more. I had nearly emptied the bunk in the house with the couple I added to the stove. I can only imagine for now that the logs I had found burning away in it were added by a chilly Missus who must have been up recently. The girls and I are sleeping in the living room again tonight, which is the room next to where the stove is. Despite all the stove’s effort, it is chilly in here. Of course, under the massive comforter I have wrapped around me, that chill is not so menacing. I hope the girls have enough blankets to prevent the assault. They both have their heads under, so I would guess they are a little chilly. The older one recently awoke and pulled another over her, then fell back to sleep. I may have to trek upstairs to get them each one or two more.

With the record set yesterday, and our all-time high on my weather station of 104F, that put our temperature spread to 125 degrees. Obviously, that is going to be a bit greater by morning. -25F has already slipped by us in the time I spent typing, and I think it is fair to expect -30 to go by before the sun rises. It is 2:50AM and I think I am going to get up and boil the kettle for Missus’ 3:00AM wake up, get those blankets for the girls and encourage the woodstove to flex its muscles.

I must have put too much wood in the woodstove because it has warmed up outside to -24. Missus is up and quickly on her second cup of tea. She says I used too small a cup for her first. I checked that water was running at a drizzle in both of the bathrooms. I brought some wood in from the stores on the front porch, too. The dining room made it up to 75 when I let the stove run up to the maximum safe operating temperature. Missus’ craft room and office is surprisingly warm for running one of those heat panels and the fan blowing air in from the dining room only to keep it warm. Meanwhile, I continue my temperature record watch party of one. It’s at -23. Maybe I ought to just go back to sleep if we already set the record. Nothing but boring now. What a laugh!

After 4:00Am now, and it has warmed up to -22. Still colder than yesterday. It could go either way from here, but I am going to sleep through it, whatever it does. It is time to go reclaim the joy of being in dreamland. What fun it has been to see this shocking cold! Not from out in it, mind! I am quite happy to remain here in the house!

It is coming up to 10:30AM now. It bottomed out this morning at 6:10AM at -26F. That’s a record on my weather station. Right now, I have the block heater on the tractor so I can try to use the tractor to jump start the truck. That’s how it is today. I hope we will see the temperatures warm up as the forecast predicts it will over the next few days.

Here Comes a Tough One

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It sure was cold this morning. The temperature at 8:00AM was 15, but the wind chill had it at -2. The good news is, tomorrow morning will much colder. The forecast calls for a windchill of negative 30. We will see! But for today, preparations, preparations.

I got the firewood in, and we have extra in place within reach of the woodstove, in a barrel on the front porch. If it is too cold tonight, especially upstairs, the we may all sleep downstairs and keep the stove burning. There is space for everyone.

I had a look at the plane iron I was messing with the other day, and I have to say, I can see the dull bits on the blade. I do need to establish a good secondary bevel on it. I suspect that when I do, it will sure cut a lot better. But I was out in the shop in my heavy winter overalls and coat. It is no time to be messing about with things like that out there.

Things on the way for the shop at the moment: A bandsaw, two chair making books, several mats for keeping my back from hurting so much, a scorp, and an adze. In theory, I still may need a couple of spoke shaves, a V-gouge, and a travisher. I’ll also need some milk paint, and some cheap brushes, and a surface finish. At that point, I think I’ll have nearly everything I need to try my hand at making a Windsor Chair. I want to get started as soon as it is warm enough, and I can find some wood to do it with.

I have been watching some videos on YouTube on how to do it. There is a lot of work in one chair. But I think it could be better than fun, and reasonable to do. I also would very much like to make some for the house. After that, I think selling others would be just fine. The tools and the knowledge are on the way!

The evening is setting in. It is 20 minutes till 6:00PM. The temperature is currently 8 degrees, with the wind blowing at 13 miles an hour, gusting to 19. That leaves it feeling like -6F. The temperature is meant to drop all night long till it bottoms out around 7AM, Weather Underground says it should be about -10 by then, with the wind chill at -20. All we can do at this point is hope the best for the animals.

Two Points for Today

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Two items of note for today.

The first is that we are at the end of the firewood in the first half of the bunk. After I go out tonight and get more wood to bring in, I will be bringing it from the second half of the bunk. We started burning on 22nd of October 2022. That was three months, five days ago. If we can make the second half of the bunk las as long, which it may not though, due to it being one row of wood fewer than the first half had, we should run out about 2 May. That is only accounting for what is in the bunk. There is also wood in the scrap heap, and wood that is on the side next to the pen we currently have two goats in.

The other item of note is that I put a bandsaw on order tonight. I ordered it through Woodcraft, which was slow when I ordered the lathe through them. Incidentally, I ordered the 220-volt version, which is two and a half horsepower. I hope to be able to do some small-scale milling with it. It will be able to prepare blanks for the lathe, and that alone is a good enough reason to get it. But the other things, such as milling, resawing, and some scroll sawing are all just gravy. I think this is a good choice.

I have some cosmetic work do to on the shop. Maybe that will be an early project the band saw can help me out with. Maybe I dream too much!

It snowed this morning, and I got some time out to clear the front and the dog run with the tractor.

Those are all the points I wanted to cover for today.

A Working Bench

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I started the process of ordering a work bench for the shop at the end of December. Then I realized I had ordered the short one on accident, so I cancelled it and looked for the longer one. The shop I had originally ordered from did not have any, so I tried out another shop. That was the next day. I put the longer bench on order and have been waiting since. Today, it finally arrived.

The box was in perfect shape, so that restored my confidence after imagining that the bench was going to come in a manky box, looking utterly destroyed from its long journey. The driver came to the door and asked me where I wanted him to put the box, but I said if he would give me a minute, I could get a pallet fork on the tractor and get it out myself. He was quite excited! Especially as the yard did not look ready for him to run a pallet jack across it. Once I had it outside the door to the shop, I opened it and got the trestle put together with the help of my youngest daughter. Everything went together easily and well. Then came time to put the top on.

I lifted the end of the top, and considered if I could use the dolly to get it into the shop and do a partial lift at one end of the top to the kneel saw table, then up to the trestle with the other end, then slide it up. I lifted it again and sent a message for help. With two grown men lifting the top off the forks and into the shop and right onto the trestle, it took a lot out of us! I think the trestle must have weighed forty pounds, and the top weighed the rest of the 290 pounds the paperwork said it weighed.

The next tasks were to try it out for a couple of simple things, then get to cleaning the workshop! The place has been a mess, and I have not wanted to deal with it till I got this sorted out to get an idea of the final layout. The shop, being an old garage, I want to close off the car door and turn it into a wall with a window and a door in it, then build a rustic bench under the window to take working pieces of wood while I build on the bench opposite it. Going to plan, it will also be a great place to take some photos on the rustic top and under the window light. Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

Now, about the projects on the plan so far. I want to make a couple of blanket chests for the girls, and I have a few projects in the house that need finishing up. I also want to make a couple of weaving tools for missus, such as inkle looms and eventually, if I can get my head around it, some more complex looms, as well as maybe a drum carder. She has also asked for things like shuttles for the looms she already has. Then comes the furniture. I want to make reproduction pieces of things such as pie safe, and perhaps a Coolgardie safe. I would like to look at butcher block counter tops for the kitchen, handmade, of course, especially as a power plane for such big pieces is challenging. We could use a cabinet for the kitchen that would also work as a good-sized bread bin, since that seems to be a family favorite. Then there is the big goal. Since seeing Anne of All Trades on YouTube working on Windsor chairs, I have had a real hankering to build me a couple of those. I have always loved the styles, and the proper joinery to hold them together. I think that would be a real accomplishment to be proud of. Well, if it comes out half-way decent! Time to learn how to use milk paint! My interests lie in 18th and 19th century designs. With the Sjoberg’s Elite 2000 now sat in the shop, I have my “…official Red Ryder Carbine action, 200 shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing that tells time.”

The next thing and perhaps final for the shop’s power tool collection should be a band saw. That’d be handy for resawing and preparing stock for the lathe. There are a few more planes and hand tools to get, too. I have the basic sharpening tools on the way to finally sort that out, and to keep the plane irons in top shape. Especially important now that I have a bench to do the work on, and I plan to keep the planes busy. I could use a mill for outside to reduce logs to lumber, seeing as I always seem to have access to logs thanks to the pursuit of firewood.

Am I excited for this? I think so. I am about to embark on a life’s ambition to really get into woodworking and to start building my own furniture, as I am so unhappy with what’s on offer down at the furniture store. I have held off because I was convinced to try hand planes by my Missus, and I did, and soon discovered that a proper plane is easier to use than the old ones I had used in the past, and that I really needed a bench that would hold the workpieces properly while I planed them. Believe you me, with this bench that excuse dies. On I go.

Wednesday Morning by the Fire.

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It is snowing again this morning. Nothing like yesterday though. Just a little flurry. I see California is having rain again, so give that 24 hours and it will be here. It was warm overnight, and this morning I did not started a fire early this morning and am only getting around to it right now as I write this. It is coming up to 10AM. It’s not cold in here, but it is cool, and I figure one good blaze ought to take that chill off for a while. Plus, having a fire going in the stove is good for drying off those cast iron pans from breakfast, or softening the bacon grease enough to pour into the bin. I am doing both now. It’s much better to bring the grease up to a temperature warm enough to pour and put it all into the rubbish bin than to pour any of it into the sink, and down into the septic system.

I got a chance to get out to the shop for a few minutes this morning, and just a little cleaning put it into a place where I know what to do for my next steps that will make a big difference in cleaning it up ready for the new workbench. I will get to those steps this afternoon when I get a chance to get some things to the barn. When that is done, a few things need to get sorted off the foosball table before I am ready to be able to push it aside for the workbench to come through and set up. I am excited, but the tracking info still shows it has not moved yet. Do they ship stuff once a week, or does the shipper not actually have any tracking system? Who knows? When it gets here, it gets here.

The fire is not burning hot this morning. It really could be doing better. I just put a couple more logs on to see if that will help. I am thinking that closing up space in the stove will concentrate the heat better, and maybe those new logs will burn better. I think the wood got wet in the recent weather, even under the tarp, and not I am paying for that. I would really like to build some woodsheds out there to keep the wood in without messing about with the tarps that blow off in the wind. A good hard roof and sides would do a lot for keeping the wood ready to burn. Add that to the summer chores list. Add that to the current cost of doing anything! A fella wouldn’t complain about having a sawmill right now.

The extra logs helped the fire catch. I helped one of our daughters with her Social Studies. Missus has walked back and forth a few times with her computer in hand, and her headphones on while she works. I am back to a moment of peace now and can worry about that fire and some cleaning up around the house. Best way will be to put down the blog for the time being and get at it.

The Morning

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

This morning it sure was coming down, and was it ever wet! I got out soon and started up my tractor and put it to work clearing the dog run. It’s good to be able to walk the dogs without having to fight the snow as well as the dogs. I went out a little later and cleared the front end for the mail carrier to deliver to us. I did not do the drive at the Hay Gate, but I did do Witch Gate. I helped neighbor pile up some snow that was too close to his drive and cleared a path through a pile of it so he will be able to drain water into the borrow pit. I also helped someone get their child to school on time by giving the father and child a ride. It has been a good day so far. The weather is meant to relax, and the snow that fell this morning is already melting.

Snow Handling with a Tractor

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

It’s two degrees above freezing outside right now, gone after 5:30 PM. This winter has been pretty warm. The snow on the ground seems wet, and we keep getting puddles then ice skating rinks all around. I plow the dog walking path, and the top has a new finish on it by morning when the flat snow has melted during the day, then iced over during the night. It’s not the safest environment to walk in. Then again, we have had worse. But as winter seasons go, this is not a cold one, for sure.

So far this year we keep getting little bits of snow. We put in the footprints, then within a few days they are gone. It snowed maybe an inch and a half last night! It was just enough to want to clear it, but not enough to change the world or end the drought. But who knows what the cumulative effect of all this snow will be? We just need it to keep coming!

I am not entirely sure that the tractor would handle a single heavy snowfall. If I had a proper snow pusher or plow blade, then yeah, I think it would do amazing things. But with a loader bucket and a box blade, it has limits to what it can move in each pass.

All the snow clearing burns fuel. The cost of fuel is not very low this year, as you know. And as it keeps falling in these little bits at a time, I get to burn plenty of fuel to keep the place clear.

Between all this, I am trying to establish a snow strategy. Where are the best places to pile it up? How much should hit the ground before I clear it up? What areas should I clear off, and what should I leave? It’s great to have a cab and be able to work any time of day or night and stay warm.

One of the things that has really paid off with the tractor though is the ability to walk around outside without being forced into little foot-made paths that weave around almost randomly. I have full walkways and plenty of room to drive vehicles around without getting stuck.

Feeding has been so much easier this year! I put a bale in the bucket and take it around to where the llamas and horse is and deliver a couple of flakes per animal. By the time I am done with the paddocks with one or two animals in each, I have a final one with three that I can just dump the rest of the hay into. It is dead easy. It means I only end up out of the tractor three times after I have loaded the hay into the bucket. And those three times are very short, and don’t really require a coat. Makes a lovely winter chore list! There are other times I am out of the tractor for longer, but for feeding the goats, and for loading firewood into the bucket to take to the house. The bucket can carry a full load for a 24-hour burn. That never takes too long, so I have hardly been cold this winter compared to previous years!

There is a lot to get doing soon. When my workbench shows up in the next week or two, and I get it set up, I expect it to increase my opportunities to work in the shop. All I need to depend on is being able to warm it in there and being able to find some wood to work with! I can sure imagine a few things to build on it! I can also image being able to clear up and do some more candles.

That’s what is on my mind right now. All that and a bag of popcorn. I think I’ll go get that popping!