One year ago today: September 20, 2024, 866,000 times a month.
Five years ago today: September 20, 2020 my new Aussie hat.
Nine years ago today: September 20, 2016, it’s just big kudzoo.
Random years ago today: September 20, xxxx, WIP
How about a sensational, arousing day in the yard and shed? Tell me where that is and I’ll drive there. All I’ve got today is the original intent of this blog, a record of my daily goings-about. I was up with the birds, that extra couple dollars for the gourmet feed makes their day around here. Here goes. I filled unboxed the last of my coffee K-cups and glanced at the calendar. It’s not going to last the month. I fired off the blog early and took a glance at semaphore messages, doing some receiving for twenty minutes, it is easier than Morse code. I even found a site that shows how to use the flags for Morse, which I suppose makes sense.
And I have some truly obscure trivia for you. In the early days and most of the Boy Scout movement, originating in S. Africa, most members learned some sort of code to send messages. One was to use a disguise to courier a dispatch between two locations. The trivia is that the runner was allowed to use any disguise—except that of a woman.
I learned the navy does not use the semaphore number system, rather they spell out numbers, as in “ONE”, “TWO”. All semaphore is capital letters. Being an unusually cool morning, I unloaded the pickets from y’day and propped them in place. I also got these scrap ends of MDF board that are finished with veneer. Must be for cabinet-makers. I know that disguising the end of such boards is a craft in itself. I had some pet caskets made of this material years ago, and found them far too heavy for the mission. I grabbed eight pieces like this to see if I can join them with bevels, and what that entails with MDF. The priority today is the thickness planer.
This turned into “The Morning of the Planer”, as I trapped myself into getting this done before the oncoming heat wave. You get the whole story, since I’m weary enough to spend ah hour keying this in. It evolved like so. The fence panels had to go up first, as that is the one spot in the yard that has no shade unless you grow a 30-foot tree. And guess where none of the random other trees took root. I strung out the compressor and hoses, so it is almost complete, that is the remaining step is to take the level to the pickets.
Now on to the planer, and don’t let these pretty pictures fool you. I had to lift other gear out of the way and fasten a solid baseplate for the planer, which was far heavier than I remember. I did have to unbox it, knowing it had carry handles. I had to chuckle as the carton said this unit was portable. More like transportable. I promptly got myself in a jam. To shut the sheds down completely means seven locks and thirteen switches. I did all that last evening in case I went downtown, which didn’t happen.
Getting it in working order took twenty minutes, as the instructions were for a slightly different model. This one has only one handle for setting both the thickness and the planer. You lower the cutters to just touch the wood, then a smaller turn to see the gauge. Instead it has a recessed dial to set the cut depth, which I left at 1/32nd, as the lowest setting of 1/64th leaves strips of unplanned wood where it is uneven in the lightest. (I'm probably doing it wrong.) The second picture shows what is likely very much the final installation. There are several smaller adjustment settings. By now, I was pretty whooped out.
Voortrekker monument.
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This cowboy has earned a day off. I tested the planer and I like it, though I do not know the costs or limitations. How long to the blades last, type of thing. It does an impressive job, here is the first test piece I fed through. This is fence lumber and I knew it would look nice. It comes out smoother than the Reb’s latest soundtrack. A collection system for the shavings is a must; I was surprised by the volume produced. I worked a few more pieces and all that did was convince me I really do need the day off. Some of the pieces are inside with me for examination.
Certainly, I’d like to run my microscope box lumber through. I already see potential for errors, such as these pickets being uneven thickness. The lumber trade is
What’s more, it brings another thing into focus. Long ago, I bought a lock miter bit that has not been used. It did not correctly cut into the wood because the best router I had was not quite powerful enough unless you wanted to make five or more passes. That would be something if I learn to combine these tools to make something fancy, something I never even knew could be done when I began.
I mustered the oomph to get in another hour in the shed, mostly working with or on the planer. Here is a sample of the picket wood after staining. It is the same piece shown feeding through the planer just now. One side is American Oak, the other is Provencial, it is hard to tell the diff. That’s a nice finish if you ask me, and I’m going to buy some of that spray poly finish used a lot by the Bearded Viking, the “addadabbaglue” guy.
I also learned that some sort of vacuum collector is needed. It is not an option with this planer, which does not produce dust, but an immense volume of shavings. Here is around half the amount generated by a couple of small boards like the ones just pictured. It’s light, fluffy, and looks like shredded cheese. I recall piles of this from my teen days working the lumber mills in Montana. It does not say nice once it gets the least wet or oxidized, which rules out the Rexair. I rigged up an old Bissell upright that only proved I need something with around ten times that volume.
The place across the way is still boarded up, but they have a man in the yard mowing and sometime I can hear him doing some light work inside. It’s nothing to me but one of the first things I see every time I set foot in my driveway. In the news,jeets in the USA are stating they would rather commit suicide than return to India. Few westerners can imagine how deep the rot is over there, as in 5,000 years deep—jeets are taught from birth they are perfect. Few people know how badly they are hated over here, one group went on-line and reserved all the airline seats so the jeets cannot use them to get here before the deadline. Some seats Bombay to Frisco are being scalped on-line for $15,000.
I read another chapter of the steam locomotive book, that has destroyed any concept I ever had that being an engineer was a soft job. Operating the machine was a two man job and constantly busy. The coal man had to make sure he shoveled and raked the coals flat on the bed so they would not burn unevenly while the engineer kept a constant eye on the dials and levers.
How has your day gone so far? At 10:00PM I went over to the old club just to see. Still a crowd of strangers and stll too much rap & disco, but on the path to recovery. Eight good looking babes in the place, all taken. Plus two skanks, but that comes with the territory. Too late to sign up, I found a quiet corner to scribble. Ah, but I’ve been too many years at the place. A dozen people came to chat, and more introduced themselves. Sigh, no single women included.
That professional singer was there, the one who cannot play any instruments. Again, he delivered the wow, somewhere along the way he has learned the supreme importance of stage presentation. We chatted for twenty minutes, turns out he is a handyman who charges just $15 per hour. Alas, the kind of work I have around here is not “lined up” and involves significant time standing around figuring out what needs doing next.
He’s also made the same mistake I did, thinking central Florida was a band-creation goldmine. Then you find out it is all talk and no action. I’ve reduced my monitoring of the music scene to following one or two of the bulletin boards since those reflect the majority of what goes on. Except new people signing on (you can tell by their wishful wordings), 100% of the ads have not changed in 10 months, and 85% have not changed in two years, the farthest I go back. Indeed, my failed duos may constitute the only new bands in Polk County that made it to stage.
ADDENDUM
Did you know crops of GenX-millie idiots grow in rotation? Yep, every five years or so, along comes the next bunch that have never learned that the first thing you do is look to see if someone successfully dealt with the problem before. Not that bunch, they want to code, not research or think, just code like blazes, sit down and immediately code. The telltale sign of the latest batch is a repeat of an ancient mistake, the focus tag. This is the feature that lands on a default text box or button when you open a web page.
I just got off line looking for a datasheet, and the entire first three search pages have been taken over by sponsored sites. So I looked at some, all have the same GenX brain-fart. You open a page with one text box. Other than close the page, there is only one thing you can do with it, but do you think the code gives that box the focus? No, they are America’s very next greatest generation. You have to stop, reach for the mouse, move it to the box, and click on it. Can the average coder possibly be that stupid? The answer is yes and in spades. Most don’t even recognize it as a problem when shown. Their DNA says that is your job. GenXers love to create problems and tell other people how to fix them, and no, I’m not picking on them because pointed this out in 1994. saying only idiots would go that route.
