For as long as I can remember I’ve been wearing carpenter pants with a side pocket (for a while my favorite jeans from Bailey’s had them on both sides!), into which fit perfectly the best little flashlights I ever used. These were machined aluminum case Ozark Trails flashlights, one of the proprietary brands from WalMart. The first crack in this edifice was when WM discontinued this particular line of flashlights in favor of lesser but presumably more profitable models. (I can only imagine Sam Walton spinning in his grave at the thought of what a malevolent entity his empire has become) The old ones were robust almost to the point of indestructability, a determination at which I arrived when I drove over one in my truck and it emerged functionally unscathed, although a little scratched. It took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.
But then came the inexorable tyranny of, to quote the inestimable David Bowie, “F-f-f-fashion.” With the emergent ubiquity of “smart” phones (I think they have uses but on balance make the populace stoopider) the narrow confines of side pockets, originally configured for a folding carpenter’s rule, grew in size to accommodate these surveillance devices most American now carry. What, you thought their purpose was communication? Now, that’s funny!
Anyway, the newer larger side pockets were ill suited for my small flashlight as the flashlight just sorta wallowed around inside the bigger pockets, falling out whenever the opportunity arose. Like whenever I sat down in my recliner or in a car. I cannot recount the number of times I had to retrieve my flashlight from one of these locations.
This frustration led me to search for a new flashlight that fit the larger side pocket a little more better. There are lots of options on-line but I generally like to purchase items after I can examine them in person. Durning a recent trip to the hardware store I found a DieHard brand flashlight whose configuration fit the requirements perfectly. It was a bit more expensive than its predecessor, maybe, ($35 2023 dollars vs. $15 2005 dollars) but fit the new side pocket size perfectly and was touted as a better, brighter tool. I plunked down my money and started carrying it a couple months ago.
The real bolt-of-lightning occurred shortly thereafter, when I remembered just before bedtime that I maybe left the glue cooking on the coffee cup warmer and rather than fuss about it all night long I walked up to the barn to check it out (I had turned it off but had no clear memory of the event, a phenomenon that rears its ugly head periodically as I approach 70). As I headed up, then back down, I turned on the new flashlight and WOW I was accompanied by a wall of light in the rural darkness. My old flashlight was 150 lumens and the new one is 1000. Just wow.
The new flashlight also appears to be a solid aluminum case, but I’ll only be able to confirm its robustness when/if I drive over it and it keeps on tickin’.
My Every Day Carry inventory has now been upgraded.
In addition to the first lawn mowing of the year, signifying (we hope) the end of winter (although our frost-free planting date is still six weeks off), our little cabin underwent a transformative few days as the new windows we ordered last summer were finally installed. We can generally work in one big project per year, and this is the one for 2023. Since the weather was sunny we were both working in the yard and did not get to watch/photograph every detail, plus the fellows worked so fast, but here are a few images.
The old windows were inexpensive double hung units with a triple track storm window grafted on to the outside, probably from the early 80s. They were looking pretty shabby but even worse their performance could best be described as providing excellent ventilation, open or closed, year round. Since we moved here I have had to tape plastic sheeting over the windows every winter. Hint – if you have to do this THE BEST material to use is the transparent shower curtains from Dollar General.
Like I hinted, the fellows hit the ground running Monday morning. They have done a lot of this so knew exactly what to do. Actually, the window units were held in place only by the trim molding directly against them so once that was pried off the units just popped out. I was amazed at the pace of work.
Sorry about the image quality, it was binding bright outside and our usual grotto inside.
The new Anderson units popped in place lickety split, and the trimming out was actually the slowest part of the process. The living room windows went in first, and on Tuesday we were glad for that as the wind howled all day and into the evening, probably 30-40 mph. Working out in the yard was like getting sandblasted. But that evening as we were watching our nightly episode of The Chosen, there was not even a breath of air coming off the windows onto our necks. Superb.
The most spectacular transformation is in the bedrooms upstairs. It seems like the light coming in is twice as much as before. That cannot be literally true but the new visual atmosphere is pretty wonderful. BTW the trunk underneath the window is my suspenders repository, and it is almost full. I rotate them out regularly.
The last part of the project is to replace the double windows in the dining room with a custom-made bay window which will both brighten the space and provide a shelf for some of Mrs. Barn’s plants.
We saved all the old window units and they will be repurposed into hot beds and cold frames for the garden. That is in keeping with the motto of folks in the hinterlands: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
The folks over at Townsend’s posted this a few days ago. You just might enjoy it a much as i did (I am a slappy for their videos). Definitely not necessarily the way I do things, but a lot of fun nonetheless.
My heart aches and my rage consumes me. I find myself rereading Psalm 69, especially verses 22-28.
Remember the names and faces of these victims, killed a week ago by a psychopath who chose to murder them.
William Kinney, 9; Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9; Hallie Scruggs, 9
Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; Mike Hill, 61
Remember her name or forget her name, whatever is your disposition.
She chose to murder innocents.
She is not a victim nor a mascot, she was a fiend.
She chose to murder innocents.
I offer two thoughts for the day.
A useful description for insanity is the inability to recognize or comply with reality. — Thomas Szasz
My spiritual gift is that I don’t care what you think about anything. — Mollie Hemingway.
If these sentiments offend you, sit down and shut up. Go somewhere else. You are part of the problem. I have no interest in what you have to say.
She is neither a victim nor a mascot.
She chose to murder innocents.
Remember them and pray for their families to find comfort. And pray that my burning anger towards evil remains a consuming fire, and that I never become complacent.
The Samuel Gragg Windsor rocking chair I bought several weeks ago has begun its winding road to Shangri-la. My friend JB, who clued me into the sale in the first place, was finally able to make the connection and pick up the chair this week. The logistics of getting an on-line auction trophy from northern Fascichussetts to the hinterlands of Virginia has been a challenge, but the plan is coming to fruition. I expect it to arrive as early as this coming week.
He assures me that the chair is very comfortable, not the least bit surprising because if Samuel Gragg knew anything it was how to make a comfortable chair.
I’m thinking it will live either on the front porch of the cabin or near my writing space in the barn. But one thing is for sure — it is getting enticingly nearer, and its arrival is much anticipated.
When not traveling for family/grandparenting activities I have settled into a not-very-interesting-for-blogging round robin routine in the barn. Depending on my mood as much as anything else I rotate between the tasks of cleaning and rearranging the barn spaces to reduce my footprint, tinkering with my formulation for Tordonshell, editing sections of the next Roubo volume (Michele is 2-1/2 manuscripts ahead of me, she can translate faster than I can edit and revise), working on the finishing book, editing Gragg video, and working at the bench, mostly on the parquetry and fittings for my tool cabinet. It is all in the “grind it out” category and is not particularly inspiring. There are many weeks I will get to the end and realize that nothing happened in the shop all week that anyone would be interested in.
I’ll work on one thing for an hour or two or three, then move on to a dissimilar activity to keep the juices flowing. If I am sitting down, I make sure the next activity involves standing up and/or moving. One recent adventure involved moving three 300-pound+ workbenches from the fourth floor down to the main floor for my upcoming Woodfinishing workshop (given the ongoing correspondence with my insurance agency this is almost certainly my final workshop hosting event; I will be transitioning the barn from being a business location to being a hobby shop. The in$urance premium implication$ are $taggering for having people here for workshop$. $taggering.)
Like I said, not particularly interesting for the blog but it certainly gobbles up my days.
After nine years of blogging and 1,700+ posts I cannot recall anything that surprised me more than the response to my recent post about mice in my truck(s). I got several Comments (I average about one comment per two or three posts, or about one-and-a-half per week). Plus, I got several direct emails with advice and commiseration.
Let it be said that the Mouse War has begun in earnest. There has to be a Peter Sellers joke in there somewhere.
The strategic approach includes three separate campaigns: discouraging mouse entrance, eradicating mouse presence, and expunging the olfactory aftermath.
As for the first point, that is discouraging mouse entry, two distinct tactics are involved. The first is to create an odor inside the cab that mice find repulsive. Problem is, the smells mice find repulsive, I do too. I am not hypersensate but there are precious few odors I want to be bombarded with continually. Good barbecue might be on that list, but I presume that would attract mice, not repel them. Yes, dryer swatches, room fresheners, and a host of other odors might work but I would soon tire of the fragrance.
The second tactic involves installing a strobe/sonic rebuff, which I ordered and will install when I get a free minute. My pal MikeM is a vintage car guy and stores a treasured vehicle in an out-building and swears by these devices. We will know soon enough whether it works for me, too.
The second phase of the war is the eradication of the interlopers. I’ve had mixed luck with traditional mouse traps, but find them to be too insensitive in general. All too often I do not find a dead mouse, but I do find the trigger has been licked clean of the peanut butter bait, even after I modify them to have a hair-trigger. At Mrs. Barn’s suggestion I put one of her RatZappers in each truck with resounding success. In short order I had six electrocuted mice, and in the week since there has been no activity. I am so pleased with them that despite the price I will order several for myself, one for each truck and one for each end of the studio. I work in a barn, after all.
The final hurdle is the de-stinkification of the cab once a mouse has crawled somewhere inaccessible and died. Based on the responses I am not the only one with this problem.
I will for the most part follow a line of passive resistance — when the weather is accommodating, I will leave the windows cracked a bit to air out, and until the stench of dead mouse is gone I will pack the cab with some of my homemade charcoal to soak up the smell.
This third and final installment of “Near Miss” planes is an eccentric one revolving around the fact that I am not a chair maker. I am a Gragg Chair maker, a definite distinction. It might be a distinction without a difference, but it is a distinction. My only rationale for including this/these tools here is that indeed they are integral to that work but are probably not true panes. They are plane-ish. Yes, they have sharpened irons held inside a body but they are different enough to call their type into question. This/these tools are the micro spokeshave and its cousin, the drawspoon, sometimes called an inshave or scorp.
I was first introduce to the micro spokeshave in the foundry pattern shop when I started work there around 1978. At its core, when it came to the types of patterns we were often tasked with making, patternmaking was essentially no different than curvilinear sculpture. I was astounded the first time I watched the shop master John Kuzma lay waste to a glued-up stack-laminated helix that was to become the rib of a dredging cutterhead.
Almost hidden in his hand, this tiny tool soon had created a pile of shavings as the almost organic contour and surface took shape. While I had used “full sized” spokeshaves before, this little jewel was new to me and I have been a convert ever since. When I parted with the pattern shop in 1981 to marry Mrs. Barn and give college one final try — first college credits in 1972, tripe major degree finally in-hand in 1986 — John reluctantly bid me farewell (he could be an irascible sort but we got along famously; he came from the rough-and-tumble world of Cleveland factories and taught me obscenities and associated linguistic constructs that would make John McWhorter proud) he handed me as a farewell gift the micro spokeshave we had cast in the foundry. That tool remains one of my personal treasures.
The micro spokeshave we made in the foundry and John gave me as a farewell gift is the one in the upper right.
Flash forward to my first in-person encounter with a Gragg chair. Even underneath many coats of paint the processes and tools of Gragg were readily apparent, and a small spokeshave was integral to his work as well. Thus, when I started making replicas of his chair I was well equipped. Every curvilinear element of a Gragg chair is worked with this tool or one of its analogs (I own about two dozen micro spokeshaves and happily they are still being made)
The drawspoon on the left was made by AMT, and IIRC the one on the right by Ohio Tool. As far as I know neither is in production today. Perhaps the pinnacle of this form was made for a short while in Rhode Island by the Otner Bortner company. I am in the market for a set of those…
Another sorta cousin to the micro spokeshave to which I was introduced in the pattern shop was the drawspoon, used often in concert with the spokeshave. The spokeshave deals with the outer surface of a curvilinear shape, the drawspoon handled the inner curve. Unlike the shave, the spoon was restricted by its size and curvature so we had a set of them ranging from 1/4″ radius to 3″ radius. Try as I might I have never found another set like ours, perhaps not too surprising since we made them in the foundry ourselves. One of my great regrets ex poste is that I never copied the patterns for the shaves and spoons, and when I returned to visit the patternshop many years later all the tools and patterns of those tools were gone — rather than being a wood-based shop it was now a polymer-composite-based shop with body grinders replacing the woodworking tools.
Like the shave the spoon is plane-ish, but also like the micro shave it is integral to my working the seat deck of the Gragg chair. NB – I made a few modifications to Gragg’s original techniques and configuration, and introducing a modest swail to the seat deck with the spoon was one of them. That make the sitting ever more comfortable.
So, the micro-shave and the spoon are “near misses” in the Essential Planes menu only because they are plane-ish. If your work is different than mine these might not even appear on the radar, but in the context of my work they would be ranked #1A right behind the bench plane.
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