One of the pleasant tasks I undertake, one I am sure I share with many of you, is restoring vintage tools to both infuse new life into them and then impart them to loved ones who will appreciate and use them. Given the addition of a son-in-law to the family almost four years ago (we had two daughters who are now interested in skilled trades but were too busy being dancers and valedictorians and eventually summa cum lauds to join me in the basement shop when we lived in the same house those many years ago) I almost always have a project of three in mind for him as he continues building the tool inventory of his own. He is pretty well set for metalworking tools, he was trained as an engineer after all, but I can be most helpful in the woodworking department.
As has been my custom for a couple decades I buy block and bench planes inexpensively at flea markets and auctions, then restore them to sublime condition. My guidance for this often comes from RalphB over at The Accidental Woodworker, whose blog is truly a tutorial on the subject of plane restoration.
My usual starting point is to browse my collection of aged beauties to see if there are any compete and intact candidates.
Then I dismantle the candidates to confirm their completeness and intact-ness. If there is a damaged element and I can plug in a replacement part from another damaged tool I am now ready to proceed.
A third preliminary step is to examine and even flatten the sole because if the sole is damaged beyond repair there is no point in going any further. Planes with unsalvageable soles become parts donors.
This past fall I picked out a few candidates for the Lt. Cdr. as Christmas gifts and set to work on them.
When I had the adventure last summer of overturning a lawn tractor on top of myself and laying in the icy stream until the rescue crew could arrive, when it was over and done I thought it was over and done. Recently I’ve had confirmation that the incident was not “over and done” once the rescuers tipped the tractor enough to extract me from underneath it, retrieved the tractor from the creek, and my psychedelic bruising finally migrated to my toes and then faded after a few weeks. True enough, the bone bruise to my shin was swollen and discolored for the better part of a year since but that has subsided. Nevertheless the incident was probably the final straw for the cartilage in my knee which now requires some surgical housekeeping next week. Everyone who has been scoped and vacuumed assures me it is a piece of cake. That would please me if it is true for the experience to be a piece of cake rather than a $%^& sandwich.
As to the tractor itself, it started right up after sitting upright for a day and I was able to resume mowing once my leg felt better in a week. However, I could not get the 48″ mower to cut evenly and I spent a fair bit of time tinkering with the levelers on the deck. I got it better but never really was able to cut the lawn as smoothly as before.
This summer I got through one full mowing with the same problem of unevenness but on the second mowing the mower deck kept throwing off the 10-foot serpentine drive belt (the mower deck has three cutters, which I cannot recommend as it adds considerable complexity and fragility to the system). Despite all my additional efforts to get things aligned I could not get it to work. I wound up detaching and removing the mower deck from underneath the tractor and the problem was immediately apparent; the center drive hub had become completely broken and was no longer aligned with the other two cutters/hubs, so of course it was going to throw off the serpentine belt. In fact I think the hub was so broken that the only thing holding it in place was all the grass mulch packed up against it. two of the four flange ears were broken completely off, the other two were hanging by a thread. No wonder I had been unable to get the mower to cut smoothly by simply tinkering with the levelers.
This systemic failure must be a weak point in the mower deck design because when I called our local shop the center hub was one of the parts he always keeps in stock. I got a new one, swapped it out for the old one, and once I re-installed the deck and adjusted the levelers the mower cut like a champ. I still have to adjust one or the other of the levelers about 1/8″ to get the cut perfect, but I was very pleased at troubleshooting the problem ad resolving it. Not as pleased as if I had derived the answer last year and several hours of work earlier, but now it is good to go.
On top of al that I figured out how to email myself pictures from my phone. I am walking tall today!
Between travels and other disruptions I have not had much time in the shop lately, a trend that will continue for another fortnight as I get my knee worked on next week.
This post is about a discovery of happenstance. I would like to claim this as a brilliant strategic plan from the inception of this bench but the fact is I only noticed it ex post facto. The discovery?
Well, it turns out that the upright carving vise I acquired a decade ago on Craigslist and which has been residing most recently on my gunsmithing bench is almost exactly the correct size to fit into my side notch! Now all I have to do is fabricate a custom wedge to hold it in place and I can use it with impunity. (I also have the Benchcrafted kit parts underneath another bench, so making a similar vise dedicated to the Romastonian Low Bench in is the future.)
Roughly thirty five years ago when I was hiring a new assistant for the Furniture Conservation Lab the interview process was pretty anti-climatic, as Mel Wachowiak was head and shoulders above all the other candidates. Nevertheless the process moved forward, and when Mel’s interview with me occurred there was really only one item on my agenda; were his musical tastes compatible with mine? (Had he been hardcore C&W there would have been a problem) I liked music in the workspace and had the very best stereo system in the building, along with scores of CDs. Happily Mel’s music preferences were similar enough to my own that we managed to coexist in the same workspace for two decades. Other than the character flaw of disliking the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a preference he shared with Mrs. Barn, we coexisted amicably at work for more than two decades until I departed at the end of 2012.
One of the things about a small-ish organizational unit was that according to Federal regulations there had to be someone in charge at all times. This became an issue as the staff rose in seniority such that there was almost universal absence for the primary Federal holidays so someone on Senior Staff had to be designated as Interim Director. The task fell to me with some frequency which I did not really mind too much as the joint was pretty much empty except for the newcomers who did not yet have enough annual leave accrued to take vacation days.
This situation was especially notable on Thanksgiving Friday, when the lab was “open for business” except that there was almost nobody there. One Thanksgiving Friday was particularly memorable as Mel and I were among the half-dozen folks on-site, and the only ones in our section between the fire doors. Essentially we were acoustically isolated from the rest of the world, and as a lark we decided to see how many times we could listen to Phil Collins’ tune In the Air Tonight without interruption, a song now up to 225 million (!) views. Mel was a big Genesis fan and I recognized the iconic signature of the song’s drum riff as an identifier of the era. So, we put the CD in the player, hit the “Repeat Song” button and let ‘er rip. Loud. Really, really loud. I think we made it to 42 or 43 repeats until lunch, by which time we were ready to move on to something else. I can tell you we had the windows pulsating with the beat, made possible by the sparse attendance that day.
And yet, this post is not about an iconic rockster song. It is instead about cicadas.
Mrs. Barn and I were in Mordor for the past many days as Mrs. Barn and the barndottirs were hosting a baby shower for a beloved friend, a young woman whom we all call our third daughter/sister. I did some preparing, and none of the hosting. I was in the basement workshop during the festivities.
Sound
As we approached barndottir’s house we were almost overwhelmed with the deafening drone of the 17-year cicadas, partying hard after 17 years of underground isolation. They had six weeks to party and find a mate, desperately looking for the boy or girl cicada who had left the graffiti, “For a good time call Cicada 867 5309” on the wall of the cicada bar. If you have not gone though this cacophony it is almost indescribable, the closest thing being the space ship special effect from the original Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast, only cranked up to 11. Or, the racket from vuvuzelas at a soccer game.
This racket is not the only sound effect to bombard your ears during a cicada invasion. There is also the almost ever-present crunch of cicada carcasses underfoot with every step in the yard or across the deck.
Sight
One of the things I never really noticed before in my previous two experiences with the cicadas was the shimmer in the sunlight as they swarm in the heat of the day. The air really does glisten as the sunlight refracts off their wings. Almost captivatingly beautiful, actually. Not only are there approximately eleventy bazillion of them, they are large (almost the size of my thumb).
Touch
Encountering the live cicadas is a real experience. I encountered this while mowing the lawn as the insects actually fall on me like hail. And it’s not just the light impact of contact, I’ve had that from the state bird of Minnesota, the mosquito (you can actually hear mosquitos thumping against your tent while camping), but rather the prickly barbs of the cicada legs. The barbs dig into your skin on contact, and though the bug does not sting it can be unpleasant to remove them from your skin or from underneath clothing. Extracting a big barbed crawling thing poking you underneath your shirt is a real thing.
Scent
The last of the direct sensory experience comes from the fact that each of the party insects dies in short order, and the smell of death and decay is pervasive. Enough so that it precludes any outside gathering until they are all gone and the Circle of Life returns them to the humus. Think of doggy-doo and rotten milk combined as a room freshener and you get the idea.
I did not eat any of the cicadas so I cannot comment on the taste, notwithstanding the urging of some of our mid-wit “elites” encouraging us to ingest insect protein to reduce the current global crisis, whatever that is today. To them I say, “You first.” I’ll stick to dead cow, dead pig, dead chicken, dead fish, dead lamb, etc. They wanna eat dead bugs? Have at it.
On top of everything else it was 10-15 degrees hotter in Mordor than Shangri-la, so while we loved seeing the barndottirs we were glad to get back home. En route we had a doc appointment as Mrs. Barn is dealing with the consequences of extensive basking in the southern Kalifornyuh beach sunshine fifty years ago.
Since before I was an architecture student in the mid-70s (never finished, they changed the curriculum to something I did not like nor want) I have been fascinated with the problems of design for human consumption and beyond in the realm of architecture, space, and accessories therein. Even my later managerial training aptitude testing identified me as an INTP in the Myers-Briggs vernacular, or as one of our instructors phrased it, “The architect of ideas.” And things, be they furniture or houses or rockets, are the manifestation of ideas.
The video here was an eye-opener for me. I hope you find it as fascinating as I did. When the time comes for Mrs. Barn and me to eventually design and obtain our geezer house I wonder if this will be part of the discussion
Like Howard Roarke being consumed with the problem of efficient mass housing – he cared only for the technical problem and was indifferent to the residents or the patrons – I am fascinated by the integration of tomorrow’s technology with ongoing universal needs. Despite being mostly concerned with historicity and historic artifacts I have no quarrel with modern technology other than its increasing encroachment to the detriment of “quality of life,” for example the telecom revolution enabling the creation of the suffocating Surveillance State. (It might be worth noting that “quality of life” is primarily a psychological term; “standard of living” refers to the practical choices available to a person depending on their circumstantial and material assets). Technology is morally neutral, and the only reason it is problematic is that we are fallen creatures living in an amoral, immoral, or even anti-moral culture.
That said, the idea of a robust origami house is way cool.
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