Waiting for gras to grow...

after we finished tilling, leveling and seeding our right side of the lawn, we are now literally waiting for grass to grow. It should be all nice in green in 6-8 weeks from now.

So now we are focussing on the left side and improving the look of our planters.

slowly adding red mulch to the planters, to improve their look

We are also making progress with our little vegetable garden and hope to harvest some more things soon.

bell peppers are finally showing up

so do the cayennetta peppers

as our tomatoes. Well frankly we going to have hundreds of tomatoes in 3-4 weeks.

And start planning our winter garten and organizing some things, to make space for more veggies boxes...

next step done...

now that everything is tilled, it was time to put a little temporary fencing into place. So that the pups don't mess up the grass we plan to put down sometimes next week.

temporary fence is build and up. Cheapest wood construction possible and I just hope it lasts 6-8 weeks

the dogs are getting older, maybe calmer?

now that the dogs are getting a bit older and start to listen, sometimes even successfully we decided it's time to replace the sad excuse for 'grass' with a new coat of grass.

Little did I know how much work this is going to entail. And so this is the first step in my thirteen step program, at least it feels like it.

tilling the right side of the yard (next year we do the left, yay...)

step 1 - tilling the yard

it was only 102F/38C this day, so not to bad for living around the central valley.

next step would be to till it all over again and again and than flatten it...

our little house - it's starting to come together

Well over the last weeks we are finally starting to making progress with our backyard improvement project and creating a little suburban live-style vegetable garden.

newly installed fence next to our wild roses and heirloom tomatoes

the worlds smallest orange tree. Hopefully in 3-5 years it's going to bear some fruits.

bell pepper, zucchini and half dead sun gold tomatoes. Still have to build 3 more boxes for artichokes and arugula in the winter time

basil, chives, mint, oregano, stevia. Need another barrel for rosemary, tarragon and sage.

finished restoring a Stanley #6c hand plane from the late 1940s. Need to find some 3x3x3 maple to redo the knob to make it match my carved tote a bit better.

rasberries a week ago, sadly they did not survive the 120F days we had and we might have to replace the canes

don't pay attention for a minute and the puppies are taking over the bed... I guess this is another lost cause.

talking for a good cause...

recently my friend Kristen joined the organisation, 'Girls who code' and started teaching these kids the basic about programming, robotics and microchip programming.

To my surprise she invited me as a speaker to 'share my wisdom' of developing for close to 20 years to tell these girls what they have to be aware off with software development and where the use usual challenges and problems are.

Needless to say I hate a lot of fun talking to these extremely bright and smart kids, who obviously have a huge potential and wouldn't mind working with some of them some day in the future.

I might even apply to become a teacher for a summer there next years, since I had way to much fun and they even play with arduinos (can't wait till the next 5 I ordered arrived to automate my veggie garden...) !!!

camping

Since we all work a bit much, we needed to get a way a bit and drove up north to fort bragg to camp a little bit.

Surrounded by several 600-800lb's elks. Needless to say the pups were upset

basil bee is watching over our tent

Sadly after 2 days, we got rained out and had to turn around and drive home, before the roads got to bad we get stuck. The jeep is a great car, but sadly a bit limited in off-roading capabilities in comparison to the Pathfinder.

progress on the restauration...

finally managed to remove all the rust from the hand planes and starting to paint them now, before flattening and polishing them.

masking the sides

first step done - priming it

restoring antique tools

The little plane was feeling lonely..

so during a visit to an antique store I picked up some bigger plans. A No.3, 2xNo.5 and No.6 handplane, which need a lot of work to shine again, since they are about 50-100 years old

using electrolysis to remove the rust from the first cap iron and polishing it a bit. 

since all the handles are broken/ugly it is time to use a couple of rasps and carve/file new ones from mahogany.

first handle is done, now we need to do 4 more and also 4 knobs.

Building a vise...

Since I still don't have a woodworking vise, I put it into my mind to just build one, from some wood I had laying around.

My tiny plane is a bit small to smooth about 36" inches wide jaws, after prepping them with my 15$ Jackplane 

Slowly getting better with using a handsaw. Still long ways to gogo to get it perfect

But sadly the stupid oak split after assembly, so it' yet again back to the drawing board

Thats were I roughly want to end up with.

Thats what we got so far after the latest frustration were off

bah... let's go back to the drawing board...

so after glueing everything up for the last 48 hours, it turned out that there is some oddity and my joints are not tight enough. Which cause the shelf to break appart :(

Time for the 2nd try, to see if we can get it working this time and use this one as a model how not todo it...

starting with the glue-up of the stereo rack

Over the last couple of weeks I got so carried away with all these projects, which are going on that I slightly neglected my stereo shelf project and now finally found some time to work on it again.

It's basically the moment of truth now, were everything needs to be glued up and prepared for finishing it.

So this weekend I'm starting to glue the pieces together, after dry fitting everything again and to check that everything is somewhat square. Surprisingly enough, nearly everything seems to fit and is pretty square. Not perfect 90 degrees, but about 88-90 degrees mostly.

first side in clamps and wooden supports.

Now the main challenge is, to make 2 with only 2 parallelle clamps and to pray that the glue doesn't split the wood or that I get the glue all over the wood, since I still have to stain it and finish it somehow.

Speaking of finish?

The current idea is to have a couple of orange shellac coats over and than stain the sections dark mahogany and the boards for the components a light cherry.

Now I mentioned other projects. 

1.

We basically finally bought a hedge-trimmer and so I'm busy trimming all our hedges and trees. Sadly it can only cut 5/8th of an Inch, so I'm still stuck with using my 15$ crosscut handsaw to cut branches.

2.

we started taking out all the tiny and medium sized palm tree, which means Robin is digging a lot and I'm practicing with Axed and Machete quite a bit. It works, but it's slow going. Still refusing to buy a chainsaw.

3.

My neighbor cut down an old peach tree, so I rescued a couple of logs of peach. To cut them into boards on the bandsaw. Well free wood is never really free wood. Since so far I'm at -30$ for a broken bandsaw blade and the wood is to tough to be cut with my 1 1/2 hp bandsaw. Guess I have to build another plywood sled

4.

My little company is picking up right now a bit and so I have quite a lot of work todo in my spare time.

5.

we need to get started with replacing some Fence section, hence the additional income is right now really really helpful. Since fencing get pricey quite fast. But hey I get my first door to build and arbor. Since we hope to have some tomatos or so growing on it.

Something like this

without the flames obviously...

2 years are up time to upgrade the pc at home

Recently I noticed that my system is getting rather old and is becoming a touch slow for my software development needs and so it was time to upgrade a couple of components. Mostly the harddrives were exchanged for a couple of SSD's and my pair of 6950 graphic cards for a pair of 7970 graphic cards. After all the LCD displays like to be driven at full resolution and I do have the vise of playing to much skyrim and sim city. And my old cards did get a bit slow for my liking at 2500x1600.

Which I was not really prepared for was that I needed...

• a new case for more harddrives, since my VMWare images are now in the Terra-byt region
• a ridiculous 1200 Watt power supply, since my 750W is highly overloaded with running all the hardrives and graphic cards. I don't think it's good, if It keeps running at 820W. So for now disabled some harddrives again und drop the CPU to 3.2 GHz instead of 4.5GHz.
• how big 2x7970 graphic cards are, running each at 1GHz and having each 3GB Ram. This is combined more Ram than Robins and My laptop have together...

It does look nice and tidy in there. Now we just have to wait for my Power supply research to finish, pick one and install it.

Rough finish of the legs

so I'm finally at the point, were all the leg's for the stereo rack are glued together and cut to size.

all the leg's ready

pairing the mortises and tenons for the main shelf

 Sadly I'm not making as much progress as I wanted to, since I was also researching how to make some very very thin 'Abendbrot Bretter' for my friend Martin and this took a lot longer than expected. Since they kept splitting on the seems.

they are about 1cm or 1/2" thick and the main cutting board is 1"

But after a lot of different tests and playing around I finally got them to work and holdup.

I really want to make some for myself right now

a dangerous addiction...

last christmas my parents and robin gave me 3 tools, which are made by a small little company in Maine. Called Lee-Nielsen Toolworks.

These were 3 chisels in 1/4, 5/8 and 1/2 size. Which do more or less everything I will ever need from a chisel. But they are so beautifully made and lightweight. I haven't touched my Crown or Fuller Chisels than and terrible neglected them. There is just no point in using anything else anymore. Which brings me to my current dilemma.

The more I work with power-tools  The more they annoy me, because of all the noise and dust they generate. So I try to use hand-tools, whenever possible.

Don't get me wrong. I love my bandsaw, table-saw  mortiser, drill press, planner and drum-sander and don't want to miss them. Especially the table/band-saw. Since I can't cut or draw a straight line, even if my life depends on it. But something is just really justifying in using a plane or chisel to fine-tune and optimize joints. And I really dislike my 'el-cheapo' router-table, since every-time I use it, I worry about my fingers. It's just such a flimsy tool...

And since I got spoiled by using Lee-Nielsens terrible overpriced tools, I can't help myself, but wanting more and more. I don't need a full chisel set, since I barley ever have the need for anything bigger than 1/2" Chisel. But there handplanes are just so beautiful and well made...

Needless to say, I splurged yet again and order a Small shoulder plane and a Dovetail Saw. (Which I will most likely return, since as I mentioned I can't draw or saw a straight line....) But I hope to learn how to cut a dovetail in 30 days with a handsaw or just have to face the truth and stick to tenons.

Now the good part is that there is a very low risk of me acquiring a lot of handplanes, since they are

a) way to expensive
b) I make my money with software development and woodwork is an attempt to get me away from the pc and make some money to keep us in nice furniture.
c) I don't have a workbench, which means I won't be able to use any bench-plane.

Speaking of workbench, I actually attempted a while back to build one, around 2-3am in the morning over several weeks, using left over pine and fir from the doghouse. And it was a gigantic disaster. It warped, was to light and lacked any form of vise. Which meant I kept using clamps to awkwardly hold pieces in place.

So I would love to build a nice workbench sometime around the end of this year, except that hardwood is ridicules expensive and you literally need several hundred board-feet of maple for the top. I run some quick calculation and came up with a number of ~1800$ to build a workbench, just in wood and an end vise.

Maybe I can keep left over parts from my cutting boards and patch a top together over time, which will look funny. But aslong as it's flat and heavy should work.

Speaking of nice furniture,

at this point in time I have enough projects on my 'honey do list' to keep me busy for the next 1-2 years. From building a small reading table, over building 2 nightstands, a bed and headboard, refinishing the kitchen table again, turning chair legs to fix the broken chair to building planting boxes for the backyard...

I guess I'm going to generate a lot of sawdust and maybe a piece or two of furniture...

making progress with the stereo rack...

at this point I spend close to 5 days just prepping wood, cutting it down to size, cutting and mortising tenons etc...

Tonight I finally managed to test fit the first shelf (roughly, way way togo before the tenons are all precisely squared)

dry fitting the shelf to get an estimate if my crazy idea will work...

gluing up the shorter legs...

24 hours togo, before these are dry

The sad part is, I have about 40 clamps at this point in time and keep running out of them. And have honestly no idea yet how to get my hands on 4 more 50" cabinet clamps, to glue up the legs to the tenons. I just refuse to pay 80$ for such large clamps, which I barley ever going to use. For my cutting boards I need 20" clamps max, which 'only' cost 40$ a piece....

But once the shelf is done, it should roughly look like this (from the architecture point of view, haven't decided on chamfers and so yet.)

rough design, no details added. Since it would take to long

The design itself is done, using google sketch-up. Which is a fantastic and easy to use software for 3D designs and basic modeling. The best part is, that it's completely extendable by using the programming language ruby and provides me with plugins to calculate how much wood I need and how it has to be cut.

too many projects

I guess I should start to hire some woodchucks for my little woodshop. Since I'm starting to get a little much on my hands to handle and my garage looks like a lumberyard.

First of all I'm now 13 days late to deliver a part of my valentines gift to my darling of wife. Since I can't figure out how to finish this project.

Basically I promised her a little guinea pig cage, so that Mojito can 'roam' the 'great outdoors', meaning our backyard and be save from Hawks and puppies.

The initial part of building the frame was rather simple and straight forward and I literally used every power tool in my shop for this. Which is exciting, that they are all playing together.

pairing the lab joints, with one of my christmas gifts

they are getting more and more precise

turning the tenons on the lathe, as an exercise to repair our chair-legs.

all parts are cut and ready to be glued up

frame is ready, now how to stop the guinea pig from escaping?

But I'm stuck at the point of adding some form of wire mesh, to make it look nice and safe. This has been the stand of the last 13 days and there is no end in sight. Which makes me feel rather bad.

The second project was to re-saw a part of a tree, for my friend martin and flatten the surface (so that he can polish it) This was done in about 6 hours and not to bad, and promptly maxed out the capacity of my bandsaw.

martins mystery wood, which smells strangely like cat urine...

building a small sled to keep all my fingers save and sound

cutting the first slice on the bandsaw. This piece of wood is about 14"/35cm heigh.

all cut into 1 1/2" slices and ready to be flattened

Last but not least, after 2 years of research and planning I decided to buy the first parts of the stereo system, I really want to have. Meaning speakers and amplifiers, but these need an audio rack. Apparently at a depth of 20", my amplifiers are now to deep and to heavy for normal audio furniture. Which means I need to build my own (or buy one for thousands of $$$, which I refuse).

So now I'm designing my first piece of furniture and hope it will work out ok, which will be a long process and let's me work with some new wood, called poplar. Which is rather cheap and affordable.

working with purple hearts for accents. The 'drill' is btw a mortiser, which drills square holes

first 30 mortises and 30 tenons cut and paired. Again using one of my beloved chisels

a first try at the legs, using a lock miter joint to simulate 3x2" wood. Since it's impossible to find in this size

glueing up the first leg

using a small block pane to cleanup the joints. Not to happy with the legs at this point in time and I really need some more lie-nielsen planes.

So at this point I invested about 200$ in poplar and generated quite a bit of saw-dust, but have no real results. Besides 5 legs, of which one is not really up to my standards and one cracked under clamp pressure. Which makes me rather nervous about trusting them with my amplifiers.