MOISTUREDAY –

Cannot call it ‘rain’ even though I’d like to refer to that slight tintinnabulation on the forge hood as rain.  Deployed the catch basins, slept as if all my blood was to be extracted in the morning, instead of two vials.

Early at the barber surgeon’s office for the blood draw.  It was a good day to call in sick, stay home, listen to the pathetic excuse for heavy fog.  Except for the five of us waiting for needles.  I would have done so, and so did the phlebotomist.  Turns out that the weekly visit is a courtesy, one can have the same leeches applied over on Cass Street at The Lab, to which I repaired.

Good looking blood, at least in color, taken out, for a change from the cephalic instead of the basilic.  Results next week.

This day, nip back to The Castle, rue the tiny amount of heavy fog collected, instruct the boys in the shop to begin work in the windmill powered reverse osmosis desalination plant.

And they’s a new Muse here at JohnsonArts: Dwayne Ellis.  Now don’t be tellin’ me he ain’t yor fav-o-RAT relation, even though Granpap never did reconcile hissef to Eufolia marryin’ that fellah, him comin up from down Hudspeth County way…..

Dwayne introduced me into how I could make wood hinges, in the process also introduced me to the $40,000 worth of tools in his shop, and some positioning ephemera heretofore unknown, this location.  As if that was news.  And he exhibits 40 can-do vids which I am currently savoring.

And writing of savory vids, I will take the risk or advocating this:  Tales of Hoffmann.  1951.

An opera (stay with me) by Jacques Offenbach (steady, laddie, steady) originally deployed in 1881 (don’t turn me off just yet).

The film isn’t just a depiction of a stage production.  It’s actually a silent film, in color with the music (okay, okay no snappy, take-away tunes) dubbed in later – only two of the cast sing their own parts.

It is entrancing.

The dancing alone is enough to make me question my life-long indifference to and confusion by ballet.  What’s all this prancing and leaping and mincing and primping?  But Tales of Hoffman makes me think I might take the thing up myself, probably there’s a class over to the Hartnell Community College of Welding, Pipefitting, Tractor Repair and Prancing.

But there’s much, much more.  Not counting the handsome filly’s togged out in doll clothes.

Until I saw this … this contrafabullisticfantasy, I thought Mozart’s Magic Flute was the finest opera for kids (me).  Tales of Hoffmann, at least this cinematic over-the-top phantasm, makes The Magic Flute look (but not sound – Mozart’s idle whistling while frying eggs overtops Offenbach’s most famous barcarolle – opening of the Second Tale, that of Guilietta – even though he knew the opera was his last and croaked before ever it premiered) like a 1964 Reader’s Digest ad (1/4 page) for shoe lifts.  The colors, the set design, the choreography, the beyond comic book rendering leave me stunned, in a good way.

Don’t just take my word for it.  Take it in.  It’s a vid I’d own and watch a thousand times.  Watch it and tell me you wouldn’t.

INFRASTRUCTUREDAY –

The kind of happy day you only look back on as happy.

Not that it wasn’t.

Wildman – Attorney-At-Law, discusses a vicious case of sexual predatry, extortion, and gawd-awful stupidity.

Collect Wildman at his digs at 10.  Our Mission: Harbor Flotsam Freight.  Don’t know what he wants there, but all I need are some disc sander discs and a pair of bandsaw blades.  Thirty bucks, tops with my 25% Off Any Single Item.

The day is ugly with sun, repellant with cloudless blue skies – your lettuce, almonds, onions, celery, carrots and worse, cattle food will double if not triple in price 3 months hence as the growers will be forced to pay triple or quadruple for their water, if they can get it.

We get to Harbor Freight and Wildman is all over the place and gets out the door before I can properly glom the store for targets of opportunity.  Nail the discs and blades, of Course I need another cheap flashlight, box of nitrile gloves that dissolve 29 seconds on exposure to the solvents and wood finishes I use, ‘natch.  Carton of wing nuts?  Sure.  Bite the bullet – lump into the shopping bag my Very First Two Pipe Clamps (pipe not shown here).  Multi-bivvie storage containers?  Better get two.

What $90 from Harbor Freight looks like here.

In Sum: that $30 smoothed into $90.  And well spent.  Maybe Capstone will come up that much today (it did, in spite of the Market).

Dump off The Wildman at his slice of paradise to make mine.

The Shop – Infrastructure Improvement the mantra.  Specifically, make two sleds for the bandsaw.

Saw sleds have been around for thousands of years, the Chaldean’s used Akkadian slave-powered, ziggurat-sized ones greased with the blood of Baal-disbelievers.  I’ve known about them since the Tony Cardoso days at the PG High Shop.

I’ll form two incarnations, a 90 cross-cut and a 45 degree angle cut.

The main – and vital – feature of both is a runner that fits in the groove of the table.  Once the runner is planed to fit but slide, make the main sled from ply.  Oversize so that once run through the saw, the blade makes the live edge to which either the 90 degree or 45 will register.

Here are the two sleds posing for their graduation photo – the 45’er on the top, the 90 degree job nearer.

The 90 degree sled is easier than the 45, so do that first.  Happily (there’s that word again ….) the back end of the sled is as close to 90 degree from the newly cut blade side as we can measure here without calling in Caltech, and so the only task is screw on a back to the rear edge that will align the desired piece to be cut.

The 45’er is a bit more tricky.

Screw in one end of a slat of ply, then scribe a line at 45 degrees on the top of the sled.  Your results may vary.  Knowing that simply screwing the slat to this line may be off by a degree or more, clamp to the sled a bolster against which the pivoting slat will register.

Two adjustments and dead-bang two 45’s – Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa….

Thus I can make test cuts and adjust the pivoting slat until the perfect (for here) 45 degree angle is made.

This takes only a few adjustments, then I screw the slat to the sled.  Hooray for Captain Spaulding.  Do not know why I hadn’t made them 3000 years ago….

At leisure to unpack the goodies from Harbor (Damaged) Freight and be joyful.

And then another reason for exultation.  Into The Shop dashes Gnuggies!  Can The Professor be far behind bearing a half-case of Guinness?

Can happiness be measure by the carpet of Gnuugggie hair cloaking the floor, or the intriguing ideas of which The Prof is replete?  Yes.

LAMDAY –

Not as in ‘on the’, but as in laminar.

The idea is to glue together strips of scrap, maybe make a box top.

But before I can properly excavate the gound from my cracks, the phone rings.  It’s the Prof, do I want to go to Costblow with him?  I’m out of the coffee I like.  Kalamata olive supplies are exhausted, parmesan nonextant.  Of course.

Cheese, coffee, olives: fifty bucks.  What?!!?

Later, on the cheap end of the day, case the scrap pile for likely candidates for lamming, and these are not found wanting: Brazilian rosewood, cherry and alder.  Colors from dark to light.

Slats in glue-up (read – No I Have No Plan)

Ripped out the slats, ripped them even more at the planer.  It is clearly time to replace the knives – always a task of happy sadness.  Sad that my reserves of knives are diminished, happy at the glass-smooth result when the wood comes through after the replacement.

Just as I’m gluing up the strips arrives The Prof for a day’s-end update.  His paltry lockblade no match for my expertly wielded icepick.  911.  As we bleed waiting for the ambulance, we have a few tasty brewskis which seem to bind up the wounds.  Good thing the EMT’s got the address wrong.  Or is it?

RAINDAY –

At last, the gods of the sky are merciful.  For once his long, dry winter, did not need cue up this.

Intermittent drizzle, sometimes running to almost rain starts in the early morning hours and lasts all day.  We need a month of it, no, two months.

I need to voyage to Homely Depot for a pipe: ¾”, ten feet long.

Happiness is mine, so too is the helpmate who manfully cuts the pipe in half.  Two five foot lengths cost $36.  One ten foot length cut in half for free cost $18.41.  Thus for $18 each, I have two pipe clamps with a capacity of near 60 inches.  Sometimes, length matters.

To The Shop and put the clamps with the pipes.  My first, but not my last pipe clamps.

Plan A – a nap, was cancelled for further dicking around.  Specifically, a home-brew repeat length set for the new band saw sled.

Figured to solder two brass, right-angle brackets together to form an upside-down U shape, then another thicker segment of brass to the top.  Then drill and tap through this for the set screw.  The adjustable rod on which this set would ride is merely a brass rod, threaded on one end that screws into a brass threaded insert to be lodged in the end of the sled backstop.

Just like the ancient Chaldeans would have forged….

The solder job was messy, but mechanically sound, the set screw was a length of brass rod, bent at one end and threaded on the other to match the threads tapped into the bracket.

A threaded insert is a nifty way to create a lash point, and in this case removably fasten a brass rod to the 90 degree sled.

The sled backstop wasn’t sized properly for the threaded insert, so had to form another from ¾” ply, but I started making simple, stupid mistakes (more than usual) so I just dropped the project.  I would have had to deploy the table saw to complete the thing, and the drizzle on the Slack Deck said NO.

I say Yes to rain, Yes to February, Yes to that high-paying, no responsibility, 100% telecommute job that hasn’t been offered me.

Yes.

Not the cited job for me, but a job well done on cutting the pipe.