I called today to ask about the progress of shipment of the lathe. The place I called turned out to be the same place that they count the lathe as having shipped from. So, here are the lessons learned.
Woodcraft is actually headquartered at Parkersburg, West Virginia. They have a store there, which I found originally. They also have their headquarters, and a warehouse there. The lathe shipped from the warehouse. The lady I spoke to called the carrier and got back with me to tell me they will get it moving tonight, and that it will eventually change carriers to Diamond Lines, which operates out of the West.
Sadly, she spoke to the same lady at R+L Carriers that I had spoke to last week, who had promised me that it would get moving by that night. Apparently, the depot in Chicago is understaffed, and swamped. Is it? Given the state of the world, right now, probably. That’s fine, but I would love it if they would communicate that to me, rather than say they will move it along when in reality, she probably has no control over it at all.
So, it is supposedly getting moving tonight. I doubt it. But let’s see, shall we? I am eager for it to get here. With supply chains buggered, and with fuel prices going up, I am eager for this one thing to happen, and to help us to maybe make a bit on the side, and make us a little more independent. If nothing else, we can make more of our own things and save a boatload right there. Well, maybe.
I am sat here, the girls off school this week, and thinking about what to do with my order from Woodcraft. I called customer support at the carrier, and they promised it would be out of Chicago this weekend. I called again, for good measure, and they promised it would be at my house by Tuesday, via a trip to Salt Lake City on Monday. It’s Monday, and according to tracking, it has still not left Chicago.
I miss the good old days when things took weeks to arrive, and it would be months before a fellow might question it. But nowadays with the Internet, and scanning and the like, I get to see too clearly into the operations of a carrier, and I get to have anxiety that someone may be about to call me from the Teamster’s Union and tell me that for a fee, my freight might get moving again. The modern age really seems to contribute more, rather than diminish anxiety.
Woodcraft may be a wonderful company on just about every level, but their logistical decision making has a lot to be desired. I don’t see myself ordering from them again. I have ordered parts for the lathe from another supplier and they have already arrived. I now have a fully expanded empty space in my shop.
Whatever!
A week on the dock in Chicago for something they could have shipped from a store two hours from my house? And what if it arrives and doesn’t work? Anxiety inducing!
The Billy goat in the pen next to the dog is calling. I think he has given up on the weeds in that pen, and wants hay, instead. I’ll have to feed him in a bit when I go out.
We have sold the female pigs this year, and Big Pig died. We also sold a goat. We need to sell the one calling from the pen right now, too. I have an old mare, if anyone is interested. Two old llamas could not likely make the trip if we were to move any reasonable distance. They could do with going on the auction block, as well.
Our chickens are laying well. I get upwards of nine eggs a day from the flock. One habitually lays double yoked eggs! They are huge! Her genetic anomaly suites me just fine!
It is cold enough here now to put a morning fire in most mornings and take the chill off the house. Or, it has been the past few days, anyway. I need to finish cutting up the firewood and stacking it. I have a dry mountain of it that needs this work. I need to cover it, too. The rain that finally fell on it soaked up the seasoned wood pretty good. That has not been too helpful these cold mornings.
The woodstove is almost fully serviced now, with a cleaning and a new gasket. I have a new set of vermiculite on order for the inside, top. I also have a heat activated fan on order, as well as the piping to get down to three inches in diameter, and bring in air from outside, rather than inside the house. That would stop it breathing through the draughts in the house, and allow the stove to instead push a heat envelope outwards against them.
I have a couple of things to finish up in the shop today, if there is time, or tomorrow. Missus wants a heddle jig for her looms. No problem there! That looks easy, and I know how to make it a part of the cart she had me make her recently. The only question is, do I make a new cross board, or use one of the two I already put on the cart to give her a table top surface on the top of the cart? More workspace is always good! I also have to put on a couple of dowels to give her the spots to hold bobbins on the cart. Seems easy enough, too! That, I can do in the house!
I better go out and feed the animals now. There are things to do today!
I do have a complaint. It is about Woodcraft, and about RL Carriers. I placed an order for a new lathe, and stand, with Woodcraft on September 30th. They are a woodworking supply chain with stores throughout the United States. I figured it would be a simple matter of them shipping a lathe up to me from one of their local stores, such as the one about two hours from here in Salt Lake City, or even the shop in Boise, Idaho, which is further, but at least in the same state as me. If not, they have the same lathe also in stock in Loveland, Colorado. It is further, but it is the third closest shop their website listed it in stock. No problem. Then I got confirmation that they shipped it.
It is coming from a store, for sure, but in Parkersburg, West Virginia! WHY? Why is is being shipped from West Virginia?
So the shipping company moved it quickly through a couple of towns in West Virginia, and Ohio, before dumping it off at a depot in Chicago, where it has now sat idle for five days. I have spoken to their customer service line once to ask of the status, then again to reply to a message on the webpage apparently telling me to call them. Both times I spoke to a pleasant agent who seemed quite helpful. The first time she noted the documents to say it needs to get on a truck that day, as it is already late. The second agent said it would be on the truck this weekend, and at my door on Tuesday. There is still time for this to be accomplished, as it is Sunday morning that I am writing this.
But what the hell is the purpose in a world of high carbon emissions and modern logistics of sending me something from West Virginia to Idaho, when it could be had at any of three shops within ten hours of me? I am frustrated with the sipping company, to be sure, but I am more frustrated with Woodcraft for originating the order from a standard storefront location several hundred more miles than necessary from me!
I know that to some this may come off as petty. To me, it is the first step in defeating why I ordered the tool in the first place, which is to make things at home, in a homespun lifestyle, to reduce carbon emissions, and to increase our family’s independence. Next it has to get here, and work properly, and do what I want it to do, without having to return it to Woodcraft. This is my first time buying online from them, but it may well be my last.
I have been messing about making a couple of simple items in the shop. I made a small cabinet to hold the TP in the main bathroom, and put on a door that resembles a picket fence. I also made a little wheeled cart for Missus to use at her looms, to hold rolls of fiber and her shuttles and such; oh, AND her coffee! There has always got to be a place for coffee near!
I also have doe a thing. I finally ordered a lathe. I went for one that was mid-sized, and would allow an extension to allow me to do the larger items I foresee me turning, and yet it is small enough to work the tiny things that mill likely consume most of its work. It can also turn bowls on the outside of the bed, so it is very versatile. I am hoping it will do for everyone in the family who could come by and learn on it, and for everything we could possibly want to own a lathe for! I have cleaned up a space in the sop for it, and ordered all the tools I need to get started, and all the accessories it needs to do all of that expanding I just talked about.
Now the only problem is getting the damned thing. I ordered it from Woodcraft, who has a store conveniently located just down in Salt Lake City, so they shipped it from a store in West Virginia! Okay, what do I know about their inventories? The carrier picked it up soon after, and carried it all the way to Chicago, where it is now sat for the third day in the back of the wagon while they look for a new horse to replace the one that apparently died on the last leg of the journey. I guess nobody has horses for sale in Chicago. They will probably have to have one shipped fresh from West Virginia. A call to customer service resulted in only a pleasant conversation with a vibrant young ladies voice, and what sounded like an angry memo attached to the parcel.
When it DOES get here, I will have every accessory already here, except for the way over-priced lightning, and the assortment of chucks and safety equipment that will make their needs apparent soon after I start using the lathe. I’ll try to get that stuff sorted out as soon as I understand what I actually need, and in the latter case, before I need to order teeth from West Virginia, too, or from a dead horse in Chicago, which ever is convenient and expedient.
In the mean time, I also am eyeing up some devices that will allow me to add threads to a dowel and hopefully eventually make my own work bench and vise. I have noticed in the woodworking book I have been reading, from 1887, that the first things students made were components to use on a bench, such as bench hooks, and mallets and the like. One of the first things I plan to turn on the lathe will be a mallet! Buy one tool, make several more! That is the way of it! There are a few more hand tools to get, but I have got a good start! I still really love the quiet of working with them. I have a few power tools to accommodate my needs in areas such as routing, straight sawing, and rounding edges and the like. I can even make box joints and dovetails, but it is turning out to be less confusing and just as easy to make them by hand as it could be to figure out the jig, and the router bits and setting, and how to properly position the wood in the jig, and hope that it all goes right when the power goes on! I am preferring the small router for freehand writing on the surface of the wood, over using it with the cursed jig!
At this point, the next things I would get if money were no object is a band saw, a better table saw, and a mill. The mill could be one of those small Wood-Mizer jobs, that only run around $3K. That is what will really up my potential wood supply, and from thence, wood working ability. Put that in my grubby little fingers, and the limit to what I could do is my imagination, and how much I can lift onto that saw!
But I could make do with the table saw I have got for a while!
When I reached 50, I could not believe I was there! Half a century old! I never really expected in my youth to make it! That’s old, I thought! Now I am here, I am thinking that I better hope this is only the half way mark! I have got a lot to do still! I have slowed down a little, but I think if I keep working at it, I can maintain the pace for a while to come. I have got to. There is a lot to do still!
Day before yesterday I was up on the roof cleaning the chimney. I got the top 13 feet brushed out, and the spark arrestor cleaned up. I stopped there as my grandson was over, and I did not want to spend all the time up on the roof, nor down in the house dealing with the mess made by the bottom nine feet of pipe from the wall to the stove. Looks like next week we will be burning the stove though! It is a little early this year, but the jest stream will drop south of us very soon, and the weather we have got right now, rainy, is because of the leading edge of that dip bringing moisture up from the Pacific.
Look closely and see the little green circle in the purple band on the US, to see where we are at. The image depicts upper level winds, which have just about the greatest effect on our weather of anything else I have found, apart from the actual seasons. The weather goes as the wind blows. When the jest stream is south of us, it is cold here. When it comes up from southern California, it brings rain. When it is north, it is warm, and almost always sunny. It moves southward during the winters, when the season is cold. In the summer, it is chased back up to the Arctic. Forecasters are far more nuanced than I am, but I can pretty much guess what’s coming based on the website.
It is morning. The kids are up now/ I best get going and start my day! Grandson spends the night tonight. I should probably get that stove pipe cleaned up before he gets here, to avoid the time crunch of getting it done after he leaves, and before the cold sets in. I have got enough time this morning to get it done at a relaxing pace. No stress!
Posted inJournal Entry, Woodshop|Comments Off on Quite Happy With Hand Tools So Far!
Today brings the first day of Autumn, for those who are counting, or for those for whom this kind of thing counts. A change of seasons, and a change of doing is in order around here. It looks like I need to worry about the watering setup on the hose, and get it taken down and the water on the frost free shut off before it freezes and breaks! Yes, it has been freezing the last few nights, even though it is still summer! Well, that’s Idaho for you!
I have been ordering and adding a few hand tools to my workshop, so I can do some woodworking. Specifically, I am able to make some of the simpler things Missus uses for her fiber spinning and weaving. That’s good to be a sort of part of that! I also am tooling up so I can build some furniture. I have a few things in mind, including a pie safe, although I am considering replicating one but making it a replacement for the Convenience cabinet I put in the kitchen, which holds things like rolled paper and foil and sandwich bags and the like. I’d like to get my start on this furniture making odyssey by replicating a few of the older pieces; a pie safe being one of them, and possibly a Coolgardie safe. Then there are chairs and tables and the like! Right now I am working on building a drawer that will probably be incorporated into the space where the oven occupies the wall of the kitchen. It is in a slot that has also got the microwave, but as we are replacing the oven, the metal trim will no longer work in there, so I will be rebuilding, and want to use the excess space that will be created as a drawer or cabinet or something to store the hot mitts for use with the oven and microwave. I made the drawer out of fence pickets, and will put a front on that matches the frame of the oven when I am ready.
When I started this blog back in 2006, I was cycling a bit in England. Now I am changing the focus, I think, to woodworking in Idaho, for as long as we are in Idaho, anyway! We’d like to move, but to do that, we have to sell the land we have across the street to pay for the repairs that need doing on this house, and then the actual move, and a down at the destination. There is a lot to moving a farm! Especially when you want to take several large animals with you! Anyway, the land has not drawn any offers, and the realtor who suggested the listing price to begin with has suggested we lower it. I did not realize this was just a fishing expedition. Either it sells, or we have to finance some major repairs ourselves, and we don’t move till our equity returns to a better state. I’d like to get out of here, though. It is time for a change.
I am getting to the things we need doing around here. Today I ordered an oven to replace the one that broke on us a few months ago. We have not wanted to spend on it, feeling that there is a constant hex upon this house, though not really. But since deciding that we should at last stop teasing, and actually move elsewhere, we are not arguing about style, and just getting to getting things done. The oven is ordered, and it will be an easy installation, though I will have some building to do in order to fit it, and the place to keep the microwave, too. The old facia is crap.
There are many things that can be done to improve the look of this place. There are also the normal things that must be done to prepare it for a winter over, just incase we are here for the whole of it. I ordered a refill on the propane tank today, and will when it is full, call for a service technician to come look at the downstairs furnace, and to check over the upstairs one. There is a window that needs a pane replaced in the kitchen. Some flooring would go a little ways towards making the place more bearable. I also found that I can put a top on the island in the kitchen for $1200, but if I take out one of the cabinets, and shorten it, I can get the top for around $300. Sounds worth it to me!
Meanwhile, there are animals in the farmyard that could do with re-homing. Least of them is the chickens. I don’t really want to give up the flock if I don’t have to. They are starting to lay now, and we are getting as many as half a dozen eggs a day. It’d be a shame to have to start over and wait another six months to get chicks started again.
Where are we going to move to? We still have not decided. There are several places in the offering. I think realistically we should go where the property taxes are cheap, the land and homes, too. I think we should have both forest and field on our place. Water should be close at hand, too. Nothing has done as much harm to our dreams of our farm as not having the water access we were originally meant to have with this place. Unforgivable. But if we can sort out water, then we can do all the grazing and farming we dream of, and if we can sort out wood, then I can work it, and use it for heat. These are the things that are golden to us.
The weather was hot yesterday. It was hot again today. It will be hot once more tomorrow. Then we will get back to temps in the 70’s and 80’s, which is bearable work weather for me. I have got a few things to sort out in the front yard to clean up our drive, then I think we will be ready to take a load of stuff off to the charity shop. This has taken longer than I wish it to, but there have been weather and other things getting in the way. Well those are my excuses, and I am sticking to them.
I have a scrub plane in the UPS system right now. It has sat about 20 miles from here for two days. UPS has even offered to let me come to pick it up, if you can believe that? All they need to do is stick it in the mail as it is set of USPS last mile delivery. This is stupid. I have paid for shipping to my house, not for me to have to meet it somewhere. First World Problems, I know. It is now scheduled to arrive a day late, so far. Let’s see how this comes out, shall we?
Tonight I made Missus a menu to order off of in the morning. She is often on calls when I come down, and I wonder if she wants food, but cannot get her a minute to tell me. Best if she can circle what she wants, and set me off to work on it. I love making her breakfasts. It is my little daily “thank you” to her for all that she is doing for us. I put some fun into the menu, like the option to order Malibu, though we both know that is just for a funny. She can also write any honey-do’s on the back. Saves me hanging about waiting to know what she has on her mind for the day. She can even request Advil if she needs it. I just need to add in a place for her to indicate the urgency of breakfast, so I know how to prioritize it for my other morning routines.
Some of the men around me growing up would jest that I would one day make a wonderful housewife. To them, I say… (Insert not niceties here, and a comment about how she makes a good living, likely more than you ever did.) My role is in raising the kids. My kids get to endure my crazy as they come up, but it is not like the crazy that the rest of the world would like to give them. Forget that.
There are many things still on my mind, and many more that come up as I type this that I don’t want to type about. I have had enough coffee and am ready to get to bed. It would have been a shame to let that 3/4 pot of Joe just go to waste with only one cup taken from it. Now I can sleep well knowing I did my part.
I was having a good talk with one of the boys yesterday, discussing education, and life, and things one can spend one’s time doing. Philosophy as a study came up. I am thinking about what I told him I thought of the subject, and came to the conclusion that I have a real animosity for the subject. There is a lot of room for clarification here, philosophically speaking.
First off, why do I have animosity for the subject. Well, when folks go down long paths trying to come up with the possibilities for what could be, there is a total waste of time and time is what life is made of. I think I also link it to a couple of other things in my mind, such as a circle of friends passing a joint around, or that other all time high, religion, which is just a bunch of human made answers for what people do not understand, or at least did not before science began covering the gaps God got stuffed into by humans. As I got older, I have found that such circles are not the right place for me to be in.
Philosophy is okay in the training of the mind to determine what is real from what is not, but it is not okay to pave the path to the rabbit warren. My concern is, we are where we are, and we are what we are, and we are doing what we are doing. Making up ideas out of thin air is great for understanding possibilities, but to start believing in them with no scientific evidence is absurd. For example, and I get there are folks that entertain this possibility, the multi-verse model where every decision we make spawns both a universe where we chose A, and one where we chose B, is completely absurd to me. Like I am that important. Does a bird in flight that moves a little to the left, rather than a little to the right spawn a new universe, too? All of the animals and humans since the beginning of time would thus seem to account for trillions upon trillions of new universes, possibly every year. And that is just on this planet alone. With such a broad universe where consciousness mostly does not exist, why would conscious beings have this effect on the universe, to cause it to be replicated so many times? Absurd.
So, my exercise in philosophy is useful as far as a bullshit detector goes, but as far as a labyrinth of expanding possibilities of my own creation… I would rather spend my time with my children, raising decent people, and helping them prioritize the things that matter most in life so they can get the most out of it before they die, and leave the world in a better state than it could have been otherwise.
This simple explanation is brought to you by a one sided discussion. It is not intended as an answer to all things. It is the skeletal beginnings of my own philosophical treatise on philosophy. Live on, move forward, and do it with determination, and a good dose of humor.
I have a collection of cast iron pans that I have assembled since coming back to America eleven years ago. I had to learn all about cast iron pans and their care in the time since then, and doing so has been a scientific and culinary adventure. I also have delved into the religion of Cast Iron Pans, which is the myth of weather or not to use soap on the pans to clean them. My wife was not too excited about cast iron, especially when she found out I was following the no soap regimen for cleaning. But it was what everyone seemed to say, both in person, and online. There was only a small faction that would advocate the use of soap on the pans, but they could not possibly be right against the throngs of people who strongly advised not to. Could they?
The real revelation for me came when I looked at a skillet one day, and realized how dissatisfied I was with the build up of seasoning that had cracked and was becoming dislodged from the pan, exposing metal beneath. I took that pan out to the workshop in a desperate bid to make it right, and began every method I could think up to try to remove that thick coat of seasoning, and settled in on simply sanding it down to bare metal. What I ended up with was a shiny silver pan. By this time I had already experimented with washing the pans with soap a few times, and one thing for darn sure, I had never seen soap take the pan down to this! As it turns out, cast iron is actually a very shiny silver color on its own!
After I finished stripping the pan down to my satisfaction, I smoothed out the bottom and blew it off with the air hose, then took it to the sink and washed it thoroughly. Then I put it right onto a hot stove to evaporate any water and keep it from rusting. Then I coated it with olive oil, and put it in a hot oven, about 450 degrees, and left it for the better part of an hour. The pan was blackening up again! I repeated this step three times, and the pan had not only blackened but the bottom inside was as smooth as glass, and looked better than it ever had new.
One thing I can attest, soap washing most definitely does not strip off the seasoning from the pan. It does dull it, but since I always freshen up the seasoning a little after washing, that is no big deal at all. It is perfectly fine to wash it in soapy water! Revelation! And Missus is happier to see it being done. I am also the wiser for this knowledge, because I know how to not only repair, but improve my Lodge cast iron pans, to make them more like Finex pans, which are far more expensive, but have a more refined finish out of the box.
Mostly, I am happy to have a better understanding of he science of cast iron pans, and that oil, when heated to the surface, causes polymerization, which is when the oil turns into a plastic coating, protecting the pan, and giving it an excellent non-stick quality. Yup, those old pans are really more of a plastic pan on an iron base, or an iron pan with a plastic coating.
Now, having said all that, there are some folks who will never put soap on their pans. It was the way they were taught, and they will not bend on the rules they were raised with. Those rules work for them, and have always worked for them. Momma said it, and they believe it, and that is what they are sticking to, pardon the ironic pun(s). It stems from an evolutionary trait that when we find things that work and are safe, we tend to rely on those things to keep us safe.
It is another irony that the evolutionary trait I just described is also why some people have a cast iron resolve against the Covid vaccine.
I can journal, and I can chronical, but to write creatively, I have lost all function. I think I can still do the time keeping because I do still practice it here sometimes. But I never was much of a creative writer to begin with, though I did once have an imagination to speak of. All of that seems to be gone right now.
Maybe that is part of the draw to Maine, or to the East somewhere were it is possible to have a piece of land with a forest on it. I don’t mean a pine forest. I am thinking of other species of deciduous trees. There are practical reasons, such as that they don’t tend to burn the pay the conifers do, and because they grow and fill in where one is chopped down, and I would like these such trees as a source for wood working material. But there is also the want to be in the forest, to get lost in the light and shadows, and to look and see only trees in every direction. That is a place where maybe I can get my mind back to where it was on the Gorse Hill in England, when I was learning about Lay Lines, Fairies such as Brownies, and House Elves. It was a place where Fairy Tales are born, and I got close to where I think I would have needed to be to let one out, but then we moved, and the Cathedrals, and the ancient cemeteries and overgrown forests were all gone, traded for a desert, where only goblins would take up residence and live out of sight of anyone else, yet still complain about the neighbors.
I see practical and farming reasons to want to go to Pennsylvania, but the part of me that looks to Maine sees creative reasons for going there. I know I would like to live in the original 13 Colonies, where the history of our country is still the newest part of the history of this land. The real question is, what do I want the next stage of life to really be? There is more to it than just Llama farming. There is growing the tale that wants to come out. It feels like that is going to be drawn out among the trees.
When I was four years old my mom put me on a plane from Sacramento to Los Angeles, where I was picked up by my grandparents, then the next fay we took a flight from there to visit his family in the region of Morgantown, West Virginia. I went again with them when I was about six; this time by car. It was fun to run back and forth between the speakers in the back window as Dueling Banjos played, but it was especially fun to belt out “Almost Heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing with the breeze. Take me home country roads to the place I belong…”
I have been on a lot of roads in my life, from Pacific Coast Highway along Big Sur, across Montana, down Florida way, and all the way in the UK. We have put down roots, but the breeze is blowing, and it is catching us again. In the coming months we may find ourselves in parts as of yet unknown.
I came to my room tonight to write this, and as I did, I could smell the smoke blowing through the window, presumably from the fires in my beloved California, where I was born all those years ago. I have been smelling that almost every night at bedtime for some weeks now, and it is heartbreaking.
The roads of the past are obscured by smoke and the roads of the future are invisible to see. For years now, we have both looked at properties every July as the summer gets too hot and the days are long, and we both seemed to long for someplace where we can consolidate our dreams into a single piece of land, and move our feet along our own road of life. This year I finally agreed to just give it a go. I have been here long enough, and have tried and tried on our hobby farm and I just need a space that is more suited to what we are trying to do. We could try to transform the space we are in, but it is a lot cheaper to move to a place that is already set up for what we want. Further, this house has got ahead of us and needs so much work. It alone would cost a fortune. We need a reset, and the house does too. It needs someone who can come in and work on it with fresh eyes and fresh hands and fresh thoughts. We need a clean slate and more room to stretch out our arms and not worry about running into someone. Not that we do now, but it is getting tight here with every new foundation poured and every nail driven home.
Well, we are going to give it a try, anyway. Don’t yet know where we will land next.
I have a few dreams to work out, and they are not working here. There is so much baggage and so many ghosts for us. They are inescapable. They are and I am tired. I am tired, yet I still feel alive and like I have a lot left to do in life. I am wildly in love with the woman that lives here with me and I want to see her smile the same kind of smile about her whole life as she does when she smiles at me.
I am tired of smoky skies and the smell of California burning. I am tired of the same old weeds growing in the flower beds, making me pull them again and again. I am tired of busting by back doing what I should have a machine doing, and helping me to do a lot more of. Changes need to be made while I still feel as young as I do, and before the tiredness and the ghosts push me over.
So, I am going to assume there is another fifty years for me to go. I want to see a lot of changes for myself during that time. I am not done living and growing. I have not read the classics yet. An audio book reader will have to be put in the hand tooling part of my workshop in the near future. There is no point in letting the time go by without getting two important things done at once. I want to get back the optimism I used to have when I was younger. I need to put the spring back in my step, at least a little. Life is to be lived.
