Rain gauge project

I installed my 6" x 6" hemlock post 6' long into a 2'+  deep hole today and filled the hole with rock. The hemlock has 2 coats of Land Ark Wood Finish.  This is the orange scented "Jesus Juice" that Envinity used on the house.

The plastic rain gauge is held on with 3 screws in the base plate.  The rain collection cylinder can be lifted up out of the base plate for measurements and to empty the gauge.  Now I can tell how much rain we actually get up here on our little mountain.  All it needs to finish it is a beautiful copper top.

The Love of My Life suggested that for my next wood turning project I should try to assemble a set of stacked bowls in the Japanese style of bento stacked lunch boxes or jubako tiered lacquered boxes.
I had cut several square blocks of hemlock so those were good candidates for the stacking lunch boxes/bowls.  I traced diagonal lines from the 4 corners on each block to find the exact center of the block.
With the drill press I used a 2 1/8 Forsner bit to drill a .25 inch deep hole in the center of each
block.  I used a compass to draw a circle on the face with the drilled hole. Using the powered miter saw I cut off the 4 corners from each block and trimmed off any sides of the blocks that extended out beyond the radius of the drawn circle.  This resulted changing the shape of the block face from
square to octagonal, and that makes the block much easier to turn into a cylinder.  The holes in the face of the blocks are for mounting the block on the lathe with an expansion chuck.  After turning the block into a cylinder I then cut a tenon on the tail stock end of the block for reverse mounting the block with a compression chuck.
For the two bowls that were to be stacked on top of the base bowl I also cut an indent into the rim of the base of those bowls and that indent would allow that bowl to sit inside the bowl below it.  Once I had reversed the block into the compression chuck I hollowed out the insides of the bowls and sanded the inside and outside of the bowls.  I then had to reverse chuck the bowls once more using a jam chuck to turn off the remaining tenon from the bottom of the bowls.  For the most part, the jam chuck will only permit removing some of the tenon before the chuck begins to slip, so to remove the rest of the tenon I used a flexible handsaw.  When I turned the block for the top bowl, which is smaller in height than the other bowls, I parted off that section of the block that was excess and left a tenon on it so I could mount the parted section and turn a lid for the stacked bowl set.  That lid has an indent on the underside of the lid to allow the lid to sit securely inside the top bowl.
The top bowl presented a couple of other problems while I was turning it.  First, a knot located in the corner of the bowl popped out while I was turning the inside corner of the bowl.  This left a 3/8 to 1/2 inch hole in  the bowl.  Luckily the knot was intact, so I put some glue on it and reinserted it into the hole.  After the glue dried I had to turn the bowl again to smooth out the knot edges in both the inside and outside of the bowl.  As I smoothed out the outside of the bowl with a scraper, I noticed a 1/8 inch hole in the side of the bowl where the grain had torn out.  The hole did not crack or degrade the rest of the side of the bowl, so I repaired that hole with a mixture of sawdust and glue.
The finished stack of bowls shows some nice grain patterns and even some interesting knots on the sides of the bowls and lid.  I used an elastic strap and a small wedge of wood to hold the stack together.
Two things did not pan out as I had planned.  The diameters of the 3 bowls varies from the
bottom to the top bowl in a pyramid fashion, while I had planned to make the bowls all the same diameter.  To avoid that in the future, I think I will turn all the blocks into cylinders, one after the other, and insure that the final diameters are all the same after finishing and sanding.  Also, the fit
between the indents in the bottom of the stacked bowls and the bowls below them is loose.
The same can be said for the lid in that its indent has a loose fit inside the third bowl.  The solution maybe to limit the depth of the indent.  However, if the wood moves, the indent had to be deep enough to keep the bowls and lid from binding.  Next time I try this stacked bowl project I will use something other than hemlock to minimize the potential wood movement.  So, let's consider this set of stacked lunch bowls as a prototype for a future project.

Hemlock bowl

I started out trying to turn a bowl with 4 legs, but as I was forming the legs I got a little bit too aggressive and suddenly the 4 legs became 2 legs, so that plan had to be modified.  This bowl has a wide band around the outside of the rim, but below the rim the bowl is .25 inches thick.  The bowl is 3 inches tall and 7 inches in diameter.
I spent more time sanding this bowl to minimize the tear out with end grain, so it has a fairly smooth finish.  For the final finish I sued Walnut Oil and Wax.  That combination darkens the Hemlock wood color to a honey brown.

Bee hive bowl

I planned to make a bowl with 4 legs out of a blank of Hemlock.  The blank was not square, so as I turned it and formed the legs, I could only get 2 legs.  Next time I will make sure the blank is square.  The top was turned out of another blank of Hemlock.  I put a raised ridge on the top of the lip of the bowl and cut a notch around the inside of the top.  This notch sits over the raised ridge.  I made the notch about twice as wide as the raised ridge, but after only one day, the wood moved enough that the top does not now sit cleanly over the ridge.  Next time I use a raised ridge, I will make the notch even wider to account for the movement.  The process of turning a bowl with legs is complicated in that you have to reverse chuck the bowl twice and maintain tenons on both sided of the bowl to permit the hollowing for the legs and the inside of the bowl. 
The final chuck is a jam chuck so that you can remove the last tenon from the bottom of the bowl.  Sanding is a little dicey in that the legs are in the way and can do damage to fingers, so some of the leg sanding was done while the lathe was turned off. 
I used walnut oil and wax for a finish and this combination turns the white Hemlock to a honey brown color.  I think this bowl has the shape of an old style bees hive.  Either that or a mouse trap.

hemlock box with 2 legs

 

 

walnut oil finish

A parade of 3-legged stools

Update:  Christmas Day as Elise was enjoying the cedar stool by kneeling instead of sitting, she fell off and broke the tenon.  Paul drilled it out and replaced it with a locust peg from the house.  After more gluing, sanding, and polycrylic finishing, it was a good as new.  Note to all:  these stools are for sitting, especially the soft wood leg.

The four new stools for the grands lined up next to the original stool from my wood turning class last year.  The new stools have 7 or 8 coats of water-based polycrylic satin finish and I waxed the tops of the stools with Renaissance micro-crystalline wax polish.

Nov 23

Put a coat of sanding finish on the seats of all the stools and then sanded them with 400 grit sandpaper.  On the underside of the stool I put the first initial of the grandchild who will eventually own it--probably overkill as the boys' stools are 3 inches taller than the girls' and the legs of each stool are made out of different wood, but the initials can't hurt.

The water-based polyurethane satin finish I am using recommends 3 coats of finish, with a light sanding in between coats, so I will probably aim for that level of finish.

Nov 19

I have the major parts of the 3-leg stools all ready for assembly.  For the stools with the darker spindle legs (red cedar and walnut) I need to make some lighter colored hardwood wedges.  I have enough walnut wedges for the two stools with the lighter spindle legs (ash and hemlock).  I just finished trimming all those walnut wedges to size (1 inch wide) to fit the through tenons at the top of the seats.  Once I have the wedges and tenons glued and set in place, I will drive the wedges into the tenons to make a permanent fit.  For the half inch part of the tenons that extends over the seat, I will be saw them off with a flush cut saw.  Then sanding and a polyurethane finish will complete the project.

Hemlock bowls

We have several excess Hemlock timbers left over from the main house construction, some of which were surfaced on all 4 sides and stored in the basement for the past 3 years.  (Most of the rough surfaced Hemlock timbers have been stored in our shed.)  I cut two bowl blanks off with my miter saw, about 6 inches square and 4 inches thick.  I used a faceplate attached with screws to mount the blanks on the lathe.  

For the first bowl I turned, I had in mind a dog's bowl, rather rounded inside and out, and thick walled.  In the pictures this is the one on the left.  The walls of this bowl show a show a bead-like round shape in the middle of the outside wall with cove cuts on top and bottom and the lip extends out and is slightly rounded.  The walls are 0.5 to 0.75 inches thick and the bottom of this bowl gradually meets the sides of the bowl with a curve.  There were a couple of shallow cracks in the Hemlock up near the lip of this bowl, so on the second bowl I turned the blank around and mounted the faceplate on the opposite side from the cracks, putting them on the bottom side of the bowl and, as it turned out, these cracks were eliminated when I turned the bowl and fashioned the foot for the bowl.  

For the second bowl I was thinking of a more classic bowl shape. This bowl rises almost straight up from the bottom and then a cove cut extends the walls outward up to the lip where there are two shallow cove cuts next to each other with a slightly rounded bead between them.  The interior walls start straight downward and then bulge inward where the outside of the has the major cove, somewhat mimicking the shape on both the inside and outside.  Wall thickness on this bowl ranges from 0.25 to 0.5 inches, with the thickest area in the bottom of the bowl.  Because I mounted these bowls on different sides of the blanks, the growth rings on the first bowl mostly curve downward, while the rings on the second bowl mostly curve upward.   Both bowls were finished with a combination of mineral oil and food-safe wax. 

Because I started turning these blanks while they were square shaped, a lot of the initial turning was just to make the square round, which is slow and tedious work, so next time I will remember to at least cut off the corners of the square to make a hexagon or octagon, which are much easier to turn into a round shape.  Also, I am still pretty cautious about the thickness of the bowl sides.  Getting the thickness down to 0.25 inches all around is my goal now.  Another issue I ran into was wood tear-out which makes the surface of the bowl rough and requires a lot of sanding to hide.  Part of the cause of tear-out is the type of wood--soft wood is more susceptible to tear-out.  Dull tools will also cause tear-out, as will poor turning technique.  I think all of these were reasons why I had so much tear-out.

I'll have to work on them.

Jeff worked on the all three bathrooms today, the shower in the master bath, the vanity sink in the powder room, and the claw foot tub in the loft bath.

Dwayne and crew got the emergency electrical generator fired up and running today for the first time.  It is fairly quiet and will not present a noise problem for sleeping in the rooms on the west side of the house.  Dwayne installed a hook for the pendant light in the loft bath, closet lights in the two bedroom closets, lights in all the knee wall (foxhole) closets, and ran another electrical wire to correct the short under the loft catwalk.  All the outside lights are now installed and functional, including the lanterns at the basement door, the two bumpout doors, and the rear entry door which has a hanging lantern similar to the front entry.  The breezeway rear entry has two small but strong spot lights.
The paint crew was active today and now the door to the kitchen and the door to the garage are the same color as the breezeway walls.  The window seat and the knee wall closet doors were given a nice finish coat.  They also applied touchup to minor dings around the house.

Doug and Chris were hard at work finishing up the insulation and aluminum panels on the basement walls.  With the panels in place they also applied interior trim to the basement door and one of the two basement windows.  The door trim was complicated by an intrusion sensor from our security system, but Doug called the security company and got them to ignore the warnings from our sensor until it was reinstalled on the new trim board.  This was Chris' last day on the job as he heads off on vacation tomorrow, so that's a sign that work is quickly coming to an end.

Doug installed the main entry brass oak leaf door knocker from the 2009 State College Arts Festival, how appropriate that this is the week of the 2010 Artsfest.

We told Doug we were going to the Peoples Art Fest in Boalsburg. He suggested we look for Dave Ferree, a Centre Hall wood crafter whose house he worked on.  We talked to Dave for quite a while.about how much respect we have for Doug and the team at Envinity.

More Stairs

 Jonas worked on the hemlock newel posts for the staircase and the southern yellow pine flooring on the landing.  The newel posts are just temporarily anchored and will need some more substantial hardware to finish off the installation as well as some decorative top. He did a lot of trimming to get the landing flooring just right.  He also chamfered the edges of the newel posts to match the chamfered edges of the main house timbers.  The treads will get 1 inch maple boards to finish them.

Hemlock bough

Paul trimmed a branch from the hemlock below the house down to something he could nail on the peak of the house.  The Crew lifted him up with their forklift and he managed to get the branch affixed to the roof without any problems.  It is now official: the frame is up, we have appeased the tree spirits . Jerry suggested a hemlock bough as a nod to the hemlock of our frame.
We are waiting to see if the Midwest blizzard headed into Canada over the next 48 hours will dump snow, ice, or rain on us.  The Crew put several tarps over the main floor deck to make it easy to clean up when the weather clears.

It was fun to walk through the house, see the cut outs for the lights, and imagine where the fire stove and bed will go. We received a surprise package from sunny Florida today: a box of very interesting wine corks which we will use as cabinet pulls. Thank you, Empress.

Critters of all sizes

Happy 5th anniversary to Lady Terra and her consort. You have made lots of wonderful things happen in the last 5 years and we are very proud of you. (Always have been; always will be.)
We woke to the loud crash of the feeder falling 30 feet. Little birds were in a frenzy and the squirrels were vacuuming up spilled seed. The cord frayed inside the PVC pipes that we'd used to deter squirrels; we don't think the fraying was caused by squirrel teeth. So the Baron hauled up the extension ladder and rehung the feeder, this time without the pipes. At least this way we should be able to see any fraying. The cord is a cotton wrapped nylon; I wonder if it will stretch. It has a new larger pulley which makes raising 5 lbs of feeder and seed much nicer. We looped hand holds and wrapped it around the same tree. The feeder had only a slightly bent tray which I was able to step on and flatten.
Then we noticed the daffodils; they are out in color now, even the Conshohocken 'dills that were so tightly packed down south have drawn juice from the excellent composted planting. Crocuses have been in color of a week. Muscari are just budding. It's 60 degrees and sunny today on its way to 30s and snow tomorrow.
And, as I was burning trash and last week's gypsy moth eggs I noticed a palm sized bear print. I guess that's who demolished the 2 thistle seed bags and the bottle of goose-greased sunflower seeds.
We also poured insecticide around 2 hemlocks. It's a $40 treatment for the large tree east of the house. We only have a small infestations, but would hate to lose any of the 7 hemlocks that we have.
We overturned a log to look for amphibians and found one: a 3" dark brown salamander. He's not moving very fast in the cool weather so I picked him up and let hime slither around my hand.
Even though snow is predicted for tomorrow we decided it won't be plowable,(and even if it is, we won't plow) so we prepared the RTV for summer work. One of the rear hydrolic cable nipples is stuck and won't plug in. Isn't there always something?!?!
And for the final trick of the day we weeded and tubed with small tubes the locusts planted last summer. Most are still there and none are leafing out yet.