Playing With Power Tools: Sandy's Box

More then a decade ago, I stopped by one of the roadside firewood venders on a cold Florida night. I'd been thinking for a while that getting one log, complete with bark, would make a great scratcher for the cats. Thomas and Sandy both seemed to like scratching on something rough, and I'd seen other neighborhood cats scratch on the trees outside.

I asked him how much for one log. I have cats and one log would make a great cat scratcher. He looked at me kind of funny, but smiled and said take any one you like, no charge. Thanks. I picked out a log that had some good bark, and looked pretty solid. Perfect.

I brought it home and put it out on the porch. Unfortunately, none of the cats thought much of it. They sniffed it a few times, then walked away. Oh well, it was worth the shot.

Over the next few years it sat out on the porch. After a while we set it up against the milk crates, thinking the more elderly of the cats might like it as a ramp up to the top. Not really, but after Edward drilled a few holes in one end and used some string to tie it to the crates, Sandy did actually start using to climb up on the crates. As her eyesight got worse, she started walking up it with her front paws, and when she reached the top, hopped up with her back paws.

The log remained out on the porch for a few more years after Sandy died, but eventually, we took it down and put it in the garage where it stayed for a number more years, until Jan 2010, when we almost took it with us to the Cabins in Myakka and burned it. At the last minute, I changed my mind. I get overly sentimental sometimes, but I wasn't ready to let that log go, so we put it back in the garage where it stayed for another 12 months, while I waited for the inspiration to hit. What could I do with that log?

This past December it hit me, but too late to do anything for X-mas. In January, I snuck the log to work. I had a plan.

It still took another 2 weeks to get started. I almost waited too long. I was afraid of screwing it up, ruining the wood and my idea. Edward's Birthday is the end of Feb, and if I messed it up, I wasn't sure what I would do. I just had to be careful.

I took the log down to the shop and talked to the guys down there. They gave me some advice on what to do, some do's and don't with power tools, which intimidate the hell out of me, and sent me on my way. This wasn't the first time I'd built something in the shop, just my most ambitious project yet, in spite of it being the smallest. We set up the band saw made the first cut. This one was to give me a flat surface to use as a base to cut the log into boards. Pretty ho-hum grain on this cut, but it wasn't the grain I was looking for, it was the fact that this log we had kept all this time was going to turn into something special. At least that was my hope.

I turned the log 90° and made the second cut. That's when things got interesting. I didn't get the normal wood grain pattern you might have expected. It was dappled and spotted with pale heartwood and gray outer wood for about an inch near the bark. That's when the guys that work in the shop started a debate as to exactly what kind of wood this was. Oak? Maple? Birds Eye or Curly Maple? Buttonwood? There wasn't any agreement. All I knew was that it looked really, really cool.

Now that I had the log sliced up, I needed a more concrete plan. I knew how much wood I had now. "I want to make a box," wasn't going to be enough. I decided on a size to make it and ended up treating it like a stained glass project. I made a mock up of the box from a manila folder, then cut all the pieces out of paper and laid them on the wood. I had enough for the box and still had one extra board. I think Jordan thought I was being a little ambitious, but he was game, he was going to be my main sounding board and advice giver.

The most nerve wracking part was the first cuts. Measure, mark, measure again. Think it out, don't rush it.

Because of the coloring in the wood I wanted to make it so that the gray wood was all at the junction of the top and bottom. There weren't pieces big enough for the flat top or bottom to be done in one or even two pieces. What if I don't get the box square, or the top is, but the bottom isn't? What if they aren't flush? What if...? It kept me awake one night worrying about it.

I got the side pieces for the bottom and top cut, sanded and dadoed. A "dado" is a joint where some of one board is cut away and the other board is fit into the gap. It's a common joint for book cases. In this case the dado was on the long boards and the short boards fit into the cuts. Then I glued them together and clamped them tight.

Next was the top. I took two long boards of the pale wood and sandwiched between them four short boards with the gray wood in them, with the gray wood toward the center in each half. That gave me an interesting pattern for the top. The bottom was just four pieces of pale wood. They all had to be joined, sanded and measured out, Then the top and bottom had to be dadoed themselves to inset into the top and bottom boxes. Neither the top nor the bottom boxes came out exactly square. But I was hoping that I could overcome that in the finishing.

Once that was all glued together it came time to put on the hinges. I measured those carefully, cut and then sanded insets for the hinges, then carefully drilled the pilot holes for the screws. I had a box made by a professional to model it on, so I knew I had to remove some of the wood to get the hinges to work right. The first time I closed the box, it popped open like a jack in the box. Looking inside the screws were bumping up against one another. Sanding more wood only helped a little. Then I tried sloping the hinge slot towards the inside of the box. Bingo. The box closed tight. A little more sanding to get the back to sit close and that was done.

The last hard part was getting the top and bottom flush. I only had so much wood I could remove without bottoming out the dados on the front and back. Part of setting the hinges was to be sure that I wouldn't sand away the whole dado while the back edge was flush. I should be OK. I used two clamps to hold the box while I sanded. First I sanded the over-sized, or proud, wood from the top and bottom, then sanded the sides and front faces so that the top and bottom were flush. Lance wondered by as I was finishing. He ran his hand along the front face and just smiled. The last thing to do now was a final sanding, and varnish it.

The varnish brought out the incredible grain from this piece of old firewood. The first coat of varnish gave it a rich honey-gold color and brought out the depth in the grain. No stain was needed on this baby. The next two coats finished that process. I varnished it disassembled, so that I could set each piece down after it was done. Both the top and bottom rested on 3 nails set through scraps of plywood, so that there were only 3 tiny points of contact as they dried, since I varnished inside and outside at the same time. It worked perfectly. After the third coat dried, the hinges when on for the last time.

When I was young I used to play in my fathers shop, sometimes building things out of scraps of wood with nails, saws and hand powered drills. My grandfather had numerous power tools in his basement, but I wasn't the one he used to show how they worked. I used to watch anyway. When I was in junior high school girls took sewing and home economics. Being able to take shop was before my time. That didn't stop me from wanting to learn some basic wood working. I love to watch Norm Abrams on New Yankee Workshop. I just never had the access to the tools or the knowledge to build anything.

The nice thing about working at an office that fabricates a lot of it's own equipment is they have lots of really cool (i.e. really dangerous) tools. We have a shop that's to-die-for, and guys who know what to do. We're allowed to use the tools at work on a limited basis, as long as we don't get in the way of real work and we don't use up resources. There are wood working tools there that would make Norm proud. Besides, working on something there means it's hidden from Edward as well, and it can be a surprise.

I love to make things and I'm really happy with the way the box turned out. As luck would have it, the box will exactly fit Edward's drawing pencils, or the Market Deck from one of our board games. That wasn't planned, but it works.

So I add this box to the things I've made Edward in the wood shop at work over the years. It started with the DVD cabinet, then the bookshelf, the file cabinet top and now Sandy's box. If you'd asked me a few years ago if I thought I could have made the box from a simple piece of fire wood I would have thought you were crazy. But I did it. And now we have a box, a really cool box. And a beautiful reminder of our friend.

Seeing Ghosts

St Petersburg had a big day today. They officially opened the new Salvador Dali Museum on the waterfront, and I do mean on the waterfront. There was much speaking and celebrating and parading. The parade, which went from the old Dali Museum to the new Dali Museum went right past my office window. And while I couldn't see it, I could hear the drum corps at the front of the line, so about a half dozen of us went out and watched it go by. It lasted about 10 minutes.

At 11:11 on Jan 11, 2011 (Dali had a thing for numbers) they cut the ribbon, well, they didn't actually cut it until about an hour later, but the ceremony was well under way when the clock struck 11:11:11.

The building is pretty incredible. It has an amorphous glass window that seems to bubble out of the front. It overlooks Tampa Bay. The building is right across the street from the Bay. I mean it's right on the water. Something that baffles those of us that work in hurricane research. They say the collection is on the 3rd floor, where it will be protected even if we get a Category 5 Hurricane. That is as long as the building itself doesn't get flattened.

There were a number of dignitaries there. St Pete's Mayor, the Museum director, the son of the man whose collection makes up more then 95% of the permanent display. Even S.A.R. la Infanta Cristina of Spain, Duchess of Palma de Mallorca was there. She's actually the one that cut the ribbon. It was all very formal.

They said several well known stars were there including Susan Sarandon. But I didn't see anyone else of note, except one. It would seem that Dali himself attended the ceremony. I bet he liked the new building.

An Accidental Sparkling Mead....

We've been making mead for 25 years now. But 2009 marks the first time we've ever made a champange mead, also known as a sparkling mead.... Unfortunately, that wasn't what we intended to do.

We were sitting in the front room the other night when we heard a "whump" in the kitchen. Edward got up to look, only to see a cork had popped on one of the bottles of mead that we had in the wine rack. It was foaming out all over the rug.

Back when we were living in Maryland, back when we knew others still making mead, we'd gotten a bottle from a friend. It was corked and labeled and set on it's side in our closet off the living room. We noticed one day that the cork was pushed out somewhat. We pushed it back in and thought "we should keep an eye on that..." Time passed, it pushed out a little again every once and a while and we pushed it back in. Then we went away for a weekend.

When we got back we noticed that there was a heady, sweet smell in the living room that got stronger the nearer you got to the closet. When we opened the door we knew why immediately. That bottle had popped it's cork and about half of the mead in it had spilled onto the carpet on the floor of the closet.

Back in those days we didn't have a carpet cleaner. Back in those days all we had were towels and warm water. We soaked and scrubbed and rinsed for a long time. It didn't really help. The mead had had enough time to soak well into the carpet. From that point forward, whenever we opened that closet door, you could smell, ever so faintly, the rich aroma of honey... It was forever dubbed the Mead Closet...

We've never had this happen before. At least not with one of our bottles. Which is why we were somewhat embarrassed when this bottle popped last night.

We like to share our mead. We gave away nine bottles this year. Several of which have turned out to be of the sparkling variety. At this point, all the bottles have been accounted for, and the current owners duly notified. So far, three bottles have turned out sparkling, another sparkled only barely. We poured some from the bottle that popped. It looked like champagne. All we can figure is that it must not have died completely and when bottled, it started a secondary fermentation. We do use champagne yeast, which may have had something to do with it, though as I said before, we've never had this happen. The last two bottles we filled were the two that we kept ourselves. One of those popped.

The good news was we heard it pop and Edward got to it before more then about a glass worth spilled. He quickly grabbed the bottle and used his thumb to stop the flow. I started grabbing towels and throwing them on the spill. There was mead on the carpet, on the wine rack, the kitchen floor and island and the bottom of the barstools (four feet away). We don't think it soaked too far into the carpet. We had to get out our big carpet cleaner and run it over the whole area. We can only hope that we got all of it up.

We opened the only other bottle we had left from that batch that night as well. As soon as Edward broke the seal, we could tell it was under pressure and it started to bubble. Who knows how long it would have been before it popped as well.

For years we've thought about trying to make a sparkling mead... the operative word being "trying", not having it happen accidentally. Thus, we have a small stock of champagne bottles, plastic champagne corks and few of the wires to tie them down. Why not try to bottle up the remaining sparkling mead in a bottle designed for it? So that's what we did. We cleaned and sterilized a bottle and cork, then carefully transferred the mead to the new bottle. It foamed just like champagne. Then, we carefully corked the bottle and tightened the wire over it. We even had a spare label. Hopefully, there will be enough carbonation (or additional fermentation) to keep it sparkling when we open it again.

We've kept a record of all the batches of mead that we've made since 1990. We've added a note that the most of the 2009 bottles have come out sparkling. There wasn't much indication that this would happen when we bottled back in November, but we should have known something was up when the first person to open their bottle reported a pop and "magical smoke" rising from the neck. Luckily, no other bottle has popped, especially during shipping. That could have caused more trouble then I care to think about.

Maybe we'll try to make a sparkling mead again. We have more champagne bottles and a few more corks, but we'll have to buy more wires. We've kept them in case we needed them. We just didn't realize we would need them this year.

How did the mead taste? Wonderful. Magical. Dry, but not harsh. I wonder if we can do that again if we tried. Maybe next time we'll try to do it on purpose, instead of accidentally...

On A Cold Winter's Night...

OK, technically Winter hadn't started yet... but it sure felt that way. Winter was less the 24 hours away. And for the first time in 372 years the Cold Moon occurred on the Winter Solstice, passing through the earth's shadow for a total lunar eclipse.

Normally, a December night in Florida would be clear and mild. This year, we had a cold front pass by just two days ago. After 3 days of overcast, an unusual event in Florida when not associated with a tropical system, Monday turned clear and cold... for us. Monday night was going to be even colder.



When I was in college I had an attachment for my old Pentax K1000 that let me mount it on my old refractor telescope. I can remember sitting in the doorway of the garage in Massachusetts trying to stay out of the wind so the telescope would stay steady. It was winter then, too. Back then I only had 36 odd chances to get it right, and I didn't know if I did until about a week later, when my film came back from the developer. I got one shot right that year. I still have it.


A few years ago I bought an attachment for my new telescope, so that I could shoot pictures through it with my new camera, a Pentax K10D. A new generation of Pentax. Much to my chagrin, the attachment did not work all that well. My first try went fairly unsuccessfully as I tried to focus the camera through the telescope. Mounting the camera where the lens goes results in too long a focus, and as a result I have to disassemble most of the eyepiece holder just to get a configuration that will let me focus the light on the camera's image plane. The mount it self is only a tube. With no aperture controls, so I only have the shutter speed to control the amount of light.

Earlier in the week, I got the telescope out and started playing with the configuration. I wanted to see if I had missed something in the dark the last time I tried to shoot through it. I set up the scope in the living room and shot down the street. Once I figured out what I was doing, I took it out into the front yard. I had it working well enough that I felt I could at least try, provided the weather cooperated. At the time I wasn't sure it would. But Monday dawned clear and cold. The weather was going to be perfect. The only problem now... the eclipse didn't start until 1:30 am. If I did this, it was going to be a long night.

At about 9:00 that night I decided this was an opportunity I shouldn't miss. I got the scope out and set about configuring it. Then took it out got a few test shoots. The moon was full and bright. The show hadn't started yet. My plan was to set the scope up and leave it in the garage. The space right outside the side garage door was going to be perfect. By the time the eclipse started, the moon would be right over head, in the gap between the trees. I just had to remember to stay quiet as that put me literally three feet off my neighbor's bedroom window. I moved everything into the garage, the camera, the camera charger, and computer. I wanted to check pictures and things progressed. Then I locked everything up, and went to bed.

When the alarm went off an hour and a half later, it was already cold in the house. Edward was still sleeping, so I got up and headed out. By the time I got outside, the show had started. The moon was just entering the umbral shadow. The dragon had taken it's first bite. We were on our way.

It's easy to focus on the moon when it's big and bright. So I took lots of pictures, bracketing the shot solely by the shutter speed, so that I got the right exposure. Then I took the camera inside to look at what I got.

"Inside" was a relative term. The computer was set up in the garage on the work bench, only minimally warmer then out by the telescope. I could bring the camera in, download the pictures and have a look. I couldn't do that 30+ years ago. I knew right away I was getting good shots. I was psyched. I'd take 10 or 12 pictures, take the camera in, look at them, pick the best and post it to Flickr. Then post the link to Facebook. Then back out to the waiting telescope for more pictures.

As the moon got closer and closer to totality, my shutter speed got slower and slower. With the promise of an orange moon, it was going to get pretty slow. The good news was, there was no wind that night to shake the telescope, or feel even colder to me.

My telescope has a polar mount. That means you set it up with one axis parallel to the north star and you can track objects in the field of view with just one knob. Unfortunately, that knob is relatively close to the focus knob and just as the moon reached it's dimmest, I grabbed the wrong knob, and lost focus. That meant I spent the next hour of totality trying to find the right focus. I got close, but I don't think I got one that was really crisp. Chalk it up to a learning experience. Next time, get it focused, then tape down the knob so you can't mess it up.

I got Edward up at 3:00 am, right before the peak of the eclipse. He came out to join me for about an hour. The moon didn't pass through the very heart of the earth shadow, so there was a brighter side that seemed to rotate around the limb of the moon. Slowly at about ten minutes to 4:00 the moon began to peak out from the umbral shadow. Totality was over. The good news was I had something to focus on again.











I watched the end of the eclipse posting pictures as it continued. That's when I discovered just how many other people I know were also up watching the eclipse. Some across town, some across the country, a few on the other side of the world. Some I knew were going to be watching, others I didn't. As it turns out, a friend in Seattle couldn't see the show due to cloudy skies. So instead, he watched through me, and the pictures I posted. Then he posted my Flickr link for others of his friends to see.

I finally wrapped things up at about 5:20 am. The moon had slipped out of the umbral shadow, and only the keenest eyes could tell that the eclipse itself wasn't over. All the friends I'd seen on Facebook had fallen silent, probably smarter then I, having already headed off to bed. As for me, the cold finally caught up. It was around 43F and I'd been standing outside for the last 4 hours in my sneakers. I probably should have put on warmer shoes. It took until about 11:00 the next morning for me to finally feel like I'd shaken off the cold.


Was it worth it? Oh yeah. Got some great pictures, enjoyed posting them for others, and got to see an event that won't happen again until 2094. Sure there will be other total eclipses, and plenty more winter solstices. But not at the same time, at least in my lifetime. I'd do it again, too. Because to tell the truth, I didn't feel cold until toward the very end. I was too excited about watching the eclipse on our special holiday, the Winter Solstice, when a cold, dark winter's night marks the start of world's slow march toward warmth and light again.

Composite image:

Maintenance...

Drove the Jeep to work yesterday. That's cause I dropped the Rav4 off at the mechanic on the way home the night before. There'd been a soft thump, thump, thump coming from one back tire for a little while and I figured I better stop ignoring it. Their first thought was that it was either the tires going bad, or the wheel bearings needed to be replaced. After the mechanic heard the noise, he thought it might be the bearings, but needed to get it up on the lift and inspect the bearings and the tire itself. Since there wasn't a lift free it would be the next morning before they get a chance to look at it. Diagnosis: Bad tires, but only the two back ones. So we had them put two new tires on the the Rav, up front, and move the older front tires to the back. It's a front wheel drive. The good news is it wasn't the bearings.

While they had it, I had them change the oil and the air filter, and they said the power steering fluid was dirty, so they changed that, too. Other then that, they didn't find any problems. For an 8.5 yr old car (and a Toyota, no less, considering all the recent recalls) that's pretty darn good.

There was one other thing. The Rav came equipped with two cigarette lighter plugs. One traditional "cigarette lighter" plug in the dash and one "12V/120W" plug in the center console. I don't use either one very much. Which explains why I never tried to use the second plug until about a month after the warrantee ran out. That's when I noticed that it didn't work.

Being that the car hasn't need much work, it wasn't until yesterday that Edward reminded me to ask the guys at the shop to take a look at the plug in the console while they had it, but if it was going to be expensive not to bother. They took a quick look and said that they could see the bottom of the plug and it wasn't connected to anything. Someone at the factory forgot to connect that plug, most likely. I told them it was only worth about $40 (an hour's labor) to see if they could fix it, which meant they were taking apart the center console. He thought they could do that, and I said go for it.

When I picked up the car I had two new tires, a new air filter, clean oil and clean power steering fluid... and for the first time since I bought the car... a second working cigarette lighter plug. Now I can plug in both the Ipod and the Iphone if I want to. Sad to think it only took 8.5 years to get it fixed.

Sanderlings

You've all seen them. The small gray and white shore birds that flit and skitter along the beach in front of you as you walk along the waves. They're cute, quick...

...and tough to photograph.

You either end up focused on the sand behind them...
or catching them as they leave....
But while we were in Englewood this week, I managed to get a few good ones.

As well as the single birds, and a few pairs, there were several flocks of them along the shore. They would dash back and forth with the waves, searching for whatever tasty morsel they could find in the swash.









If we got too close, they would dash past between us and the waves..
Then go back to searching for that elusive meal...
And if you hang around long enough, you might even catch them resting on the beach...
catching a little shut eye....


while one of them keeps watch for beach combers.

Survivor....

My survivor's pendant.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Edward and I have decided to publish his writing from the time when I was undergoing treatment "The Chronicles of Karen: You Are Always the Hero of Your Own Story" is a combination of updates to family and friends and Edward's exercise in creative writing about what we were going through. The "adventures" portion of the posting is all of the treatments and trails, re-imagined in a fantasy setting. They helped me get through treatment. All the messages, save the Introduction, were written in 2007.

To read the Chronicles please visit the Blog:
The Chronicles of Karen: Tales of a Breast Cancer Survivor
the-chronicles-of-karen.blogspot.com/