Dispatches From The Farm

Today I Turned Two Shop Mallets

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Yesterday’s turn from the maple went great, but hollowing it out was terrible. It was such a hard piece of wood! So I decided that if I was going to keep working from that wood, I needed to do something solid today. I did two somethings! I have been envying the carver’s mallets I see people using on YouTube. Drooling, really! I have wanted one for a long time, and the other night I watched a fellow shape one to fit the hand of whomever ordered it from him. Reviews where he sold them said the buyers were shocked at how easy to hold they were, and how effortless it was to use them. Well, I could not get everything from his video, but I did stop often and check the fit to my hand, rather than blindly turning a standard handle. I am happy I did, too!

I did the smaller mallet first. I will use it for light tapping or leatherwork. I have a mallet I bought for leatherwork, so maybe that one can come out of the hand tool drawer in the woodshop and go back in with the leather tools.

After the little one, I figured I was done for the night, but then I realized how I could get a larger piece of wood out of the tree, and probably leave scraps that could be made to something like bobbins for Missus’s loom shuttles. So I went back out and got to work on the larger mallet.

I have not weighted them at this point, but they are both very comfortable. Especially the second one. I really put in the extra effort to see to it that one fit to my hand. Either way, there is two new shop tools with no real cost to get them! Now we are cooking on gas!

I doubt it would have been nearly as satisfying to buy one of these as it was to make two! I can bugger them up, and it is no worry. I know just where I can get more maple. And next year, if we are still hanging out here, I am sure I will go and get a lot!

Today’s Turn

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

We did some cleaning chores in the house this morning, and I did not get started in the shop till after lunch. Turn a bit of maple, I thought. It will be easy and fun, I thought. It was. It was the work I did after that that hurt. But first, the choice of wood. After a look through the firewood pile, I finally settled on turning a piece from that old tree that had split in half in grandma’s front yard several years ago.

What I decided to make today comes from my memories, as an antique I saw when I was maybe ten or eleven, if that. It was a coffee scoop. I tried to find one online, but nothing came up nearly what I remember, so I turned what I remembered, rather than what I found.

The turn was quite easy!, and it came out just how I thought I wanted it! I only worked from a design in my head; a combination of my desires for it, and what I remember seeing many years ago. The one from years gone by was much darker. I kept this light so it would develop a natural patina.

I thought it would be fairly easy to hollow out with a Forstner bit on the drill press or something. Well, that turned out to be a laugh. My press has not got near enough power to get into it. I ended up drilling with smaller bits over and over, then chiseling and finally carving with a carving knife. Not as neat on the inside as I would have liked, but then, it is a brand new antique. So it’ll do. I finished it with a coat of olive oil, and tried it out! Small, but works well!

Next Turnings

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I did some more turnings today. I wanted to try tops out, and a finial, and that’s what I did. The tops are not great. I can get the short fat one to spin sometimes. The other always spins on its head. It’s a start! I will work on it. At the moment I am trying cuts and letting the bad workmanship lead me. I need to get deliberate with my work, and make cuts without making mistakes. Then I can lead the results. That is where the finial comes in, a bit. It is about making deliberate cuts so that the piece does not fail while working on it. And it did not.

Two tops. Both work fair, but they need improvement.

I know we are throwing the tops right. I looked it up in the University of YouTube. I had a good demonstration complete with slow-mo, by a nine year old kid. We are doing what he showed in his video!

A Finial

You know, I don’t know why the pictures uploaded the way they did. I took photos of the complete objects. I guess this is a new fault in the web-works to work my head around. Never mind the campaign propaganda on the table under the finial. I will probably vote for the other guy, whoever he is.

I think there are definitely a couple of things to get still. Sharpening wheels for the grinder, a good light for the turning station, especially if I am going to carry on with any fine work, and finally, a set of proper stones for all the rest of the workshop, with one for the turning station thrown in for good measure. I am pretty sure at that point I am pretty well covered on the turning station tools. At least for now. I can worry about finer tools to turn with later. I have a good enough set to get started on, and to learn to take care of, and to learn to adjust my grind if need be. Though, I don’t know if it need be, as everyone talks about 40 degree grinds down at YouTube University.

I’ll probably give myself some time on the lathe tomorrow. Monday is a day for some chores. I have to go get some corn from a neighbor who offered it on the stalks. It is a hand loading job. It may rain on Monday, according to the forecast, though that is seldom correct. But tomorrow is meant to be nice.

And So It begins…

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Here is the first actual project I turned on the lathe. It is a yarn bowl. I will do another and put the squiggly gap in it when I have turned a couple of more items.

My first project on the new lathe.

I will not be turning again till I can solve a couple of things I discovered while doing this. I need to get the sharpening wheels for the grinder, and I need to learn to properly plunge cut a bowl. Well, maybe I will work on a top next, or an Amish Henry. I do want to get some welding wire to blacken the little gaps at the top and bottom with. I also would like to sort out a bit more safety, and I would finally like to use dry wood for the next project, and see how it differs from this wet project that will likely crack and warp.

Still, it was quite fun!

The New Odyssey

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I turned 50 this year. What a year! It’s been a great half century! One does look at that, and think, “goodness, have I been alive for so long? I don’t feel like it!” But, one has. And one is thinking that either that means I am ‘over the hill,’ edging closer to death, or I am like one of my ancestors who lived to 103, and this is only the half way mark, roughly. That ancestor incidentally was born in 1799, and lived during three centuries. Not a possibility here, but there is time for a new manifestation of self. And I think it is the revelation of what I want to be when I grow up. Finally!

Yesterday a new shop tool arrived. Also, finally! It is a Lathe. It is a midi, or small-ish lathe, and instead of dealing with horrible limits, I decked it out to extend the bed and put a side workstation on it for bowl turning, and give it the form that allows it to do most everything I would need of it for a long, long time… hopefully. If not, then I guess I would be in the market for a larger one later. But I think that this one will do for now, and for a while, as I am a bit scared of these things anyhow. I have got a lot of safety to learn and common sense to establish.

That said, I set it up with the help of my eight year old daughter, and mounted a block of wood and got to turning. I only put in a small block, and started learning the feel of the skew. I also paused and watched videos on how to. We are lucky these days that such skills are passed along in video format at least, through the magic of YouTube!

There are some table legs in the shop I want to replicate. They are pretty easy looking, and could probably be done with a roughing gouge, skew, and a spindle gouge, with most of the work going to the skew. I think that learning to replicate them, then duplicate the replication three more times would put me on course for learning the work, and it would also put me on course for making the replication of the whole table, which I would like very much to do. I have a name all picked out for this project, as the table belonged to great-great-grandma Willa. So, Will’s Table it is!

With any luck, I will make me one, and then I will do it again a few times and sell those. And that! That is the goal! Take a good piece of old time furniture, replicate it with mostly hand tools, or with reasonably few power tools, and sell the replicas. I have the time to fit it into the current llama farm we already have going. I want to carry on with leatherworking, too. And these are the traditional crafts and skills I want to bring to the table, pardon me. There are lots of people in the homesteading movement doing similar things. I don’t want to look at them and think, ‘well, there they go! Why do it, when others are?’ I want to be a part of the movement. I want to make my unique contribution. Today is Friday. Today is the day I get started. Never mind the weekend. This is my homespun, self sustaining business model.

I expect that at some point, whenever I get my skills in place for a sale, I will have a section on this site called “The Woodshop,” or something like that. That is where I will show what I have done.

There. That’s a commitment.

The Snow Is Nearly Gone

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

The farm is nearly clear of any snow, apart from the shadows and the like. The valley is still white, especially the mountain fronts. It is cold out there, with the wind still blowing, the temperature is 39, but with the wind-chill, it is 34 by feel. The sun is shining, but in that wintery, it doesn’t matter, kind of way.

I woke up feeling kind of rough this morning. I think it was the result of knocking the thermostat up a tiny bit last night. It felt a little chilly, which was probably perfect for sleeping. But I was just not quite sure the furnace was on at all. Maybe it was that middle of the night disorientation one gets. I wanted to be sure, as I am not the only one who sleeps up stairs! I nudged it, and it kicked on, and I went to bed.

It took a while to get back to sleep. I have a certain anxiety about money I have spent and the gap between seeing it leave my account, and seeing whatever I ordered arrive at my front door! I am still waiting on the lathe, and it still showed as arrived at Chicago, the start of day eight there.

I finally did get back to sleep, and not long after I did, I checked the tracking site again, and the status finally changed! It left Salt Lake City in route to the destination terminal! Or, in the parlance, to the local delivery company that will carry it from Salt Lake to my front door, hopefully by tomorrow! Yes, maybe tomorrow, it will be safely home. Then I can start learning how to make things on it for real rather than by watching YouTube videos, and wondering how the technique actually feels in the wood!

Me and my shop are ready for this little upgrade. I have been wanting to add a lathe for a long time now, but money and other things always got in the way. I finally just did it. I hope that it will be big enough for everything I want to make, while still being small enough that Missus will be able and willing to explore the art. She loves working on her tiny little lathe that turns a million miles an hour and loved to throw little blocks of wood at her. I hope that this will alleviate her of that danger by first being robust enough to hold the block in safely! I have an upgraded chuck on the way right now, too. I am not messing around!

I’d like to get some things cleaned up in the yard today, and drop them off at the salvage yard. With the first snow having already hit the ground, it is no good waiting any longer to clean up the messes in the yard from summer activities. I don’t want them frozen to the ground the way Christmas lights get frozen to the house sometimes, and un-removable till Spring! We put them down the walk one year early after we moved here, and used pigtails for electric fencing to string them along, above the ground. Those pigtails got stuck till April. I don’t love that.

I’ll finish warming up from morning chores, and get on the metal yard trip. It seems so early to be feeling tis cold! I will be working on firewood no doubt as the delivery truck arrives tomorrow or the next day.

First Snow, Autumn 2021

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Last night the wind started, and eventually during the night the snow started to fall. By morning it was stuck to everything, and the wind was still going. The house was chilly, and wanting to be warmed up. So I went down to light the fire in the woodstove.

Did I mention that the wind was blowing, and the house was cold? I said, cool, didn’t I? Maybe it was cooler than that. Either way, the flu on the chimney was too cold to take a draught, and the wind was blowing down it. The wood was still a bit wet from the recent rains, too. Also, those wood shavings I am picking up off the shop floor are damp, or something, and a bit resistant to burning. I tried them anyhow, then paper from the butcher’s roll. Finally I went to get some of my kindling sticks and lit them. Now, that all sounds good and well, and maybe it seems understandable that so far some twenty minutes have gone by.

What was not reasonable was the amount of smoke that came out every direction from the stove! I could not get the least amount of it to vent up the chimney. It was as though the chimney was blocked completely! I could hear the wind still blowing outside, and according to the anemometer on the weather station it was running around 12 miles an hour with gusts of 17 or so. So it was going, but it was not too bad. But air just came down the chimney, and would not go out. I would get the fire going, and close the door, and it would go right out and start smoking out the stove’s intake. The house filled right up with it!

At last, I was about thirty minutes into this when the thermometer on the flue finally budged upwards a little, and as soon as it did, the smoke began to go up the chimney instead! So we aired out the house, which was not warm. We have had a good fire going since!

I have got a notification that the final stove parts will arrive on Thursday. I wonder how much of the smoke that came pouring into the house today would vent out through the intake if I got it hooked up properly? Or would it just leak and vent air into the attic or walls where the vent pipe travels?

The wind has continued, but the snow stopped early on in the day. It is 35 out right now, but with the wind gusting up just shy of 20, the chill factor is at 28. Nest week at this time it is meant to be in the mid 50’s again. Good time to get caught up on that firewood once and for all!

I am awaiting a call from Woodcraft to tell me the status of my delivery that is still stuck in Chicago. I worry that this very thing is a harbinger of why we live rural to begin with? Global trade is in danger, fuel prices are set to go up, and so are other fuels that are required for heating. This winter could be crazier than last! I just want to get my order here, and probably not order online like this again, at least for a while.

I don’t feel ready for this winter. I don’t think we are ready for such things as I suggested above, at all. I have put off the firewood for long enough. I don’t have hay yet, and I have not confirmed yet with my normal supplier that we will even get any from him, and at what price. I won’t bother him about it today as it is his birthday. I have never felt so close to a crash that is going to result in serious casualties and problems, as I feel now. And I don’t at all feel ready. This could be a tough winter. Hopefully the news and the analysts that inform the media are wrong. But hope isn’t enough to survive on if they are not wrong.

Beautiful Foggy Morning

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

When I rolled out of bed this fine Sunday morning, it was pretty clear rom here to the mountains. But there was a low mist visible, and I remarked to Missus that it looks almost like we have our fog back. Within half an hour or so, we did! It is one of the things I have always loved about where we live!

The first time I came to Cache Valley for longer than a quick visit, I was taken by the fog, the “pea soup mornings;” as I called them then in a poem I wrote for my then girlfriend, now wife. The fog was thick, and the mornings mystical to me. Mountain fog is not the same as the coastal fog I experienced in my youth in California. It doesn’t seem to reliably roll in and roll back out again, the way the coastal fog would seem to do. Instead, it has to sort of burn off, or dissipate, when it feels the urge to. It also seems to often come with the sun, such as this morning when the wet ground seemed to have produced it in the first place as the sun came over the mountain.

It’s chilly, not cold, but after a vote, I put a fire in the stove, and can see it’s warm glow from where I am sat typing this. It is time to get to work on that firewood pile for winter, and finish up the cutting, splitting, and stacking. There is not enough prepared yet! It is time to consider going down to get more for our supplies, in case we do stay here next year, too. I also can start looking for wood to turn on the lathe! The weather is changing early this year, I think. I’ll check my weather station records to confirm it. If I am wrong, that usually puts my mind to rest. I think we are predisposed to think the current year is generally worse in some way to the previous ones.

Days like today remind me of what it is I love about living here in Cache Valley. They remind me of an old friend since gone, who would look overcome with love and warmth and joy when he would speak of the place. He grew up here, and told me long before I ever came here that it was the most beautiful place on Earth. It may not be, quite, but it is the most beautiful place that is not set aside as a preserve, and where someone could actually live. I wish so much that he was still here to enjoy it! I would love to have his company here, and a friend here.

I walked out to get the firewood, and was immediately struck by a phenomenon I have never before seen. There was a rainbow in the fog just distant, and the diffusion of light between me and it made it appear white. It was a white rainbow! I have seen circular ones, and I have seen moonbows, and I have seen one on an apparently sunless morning. I still never quite figured that one out. But to see one appear white, with only the slightest hints of any color at all, was amazing.

First Burn 2021

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

I have the wood stove lit. It is not the first burn of the season, as we did one the other day. But that one gave us headaches, and was a good sign things were not right! So, I have cleaned the chimney, and replaced the gasket, and not I have a little wood in the stove, and am burning it. The temperature is under control, and the flames go out quick when I shut down the draught. There is no sign or smell of smoke at all coming from it! I think things are in order!

Speaking of order, I ordered some new vermiculite for the inside of the stove, and I got a kit to allow air in from outside, though I will have to do more work on that to get it all the way from outside, as I don’t think the kit is made to go as far to the outer wall of the house as it is from our stove to our outer wall. The vermiculite was on sale, and they took off another fifteen percent at checkout, so I am happy to have added one of those fans that run off the heat of the stove, rather than electricity. Every little helps!

What makes me happy is that this is one of the reasons I bought the wood stove as a primary heat source for our house. I can service it myself. None of what I have done requires any particular technical skill. Mostly, it is following some basic directions and paying close attention to the state of things, such as the chimney. It is not changing out a certain part number based on the specific pattern of a blinking light indicating a fault.

I hope we are about ready for winter! I need to sort out that firewood pile, still. I need to cover it, too! Once that is done, and the parcel arrives from the stove manufacturer, we should be better off than we have been for a couple of years! One thing I can say about changing the stove gasket; it was cheap, and easy, and should be done as soon as there is any indication that it is failing!

Serviced The Rain Guage

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

The sky has opened up, beginning yesterday and into today, so far. I realized that the rain guage was not operating, probably because it has been so long since it has had a drop of water enter it that it forgot how to operate. The water tension did not seem to break to allow the water down into the tipping spoon. I opened it up, tipped the spoon twice, then blew on it and closed it back again. We’ll see if that works, but for now, I think I either stop at that, or oil the sirface of the rain catch with a bit of Pam or something. I’d rather not!