Further February Updates

We spent the  weekend before last with friends from Glen Rock visiting us here in Ashfield. We spent last Sunday evening visiting with cousins, some of whom I had not seen for thirty years. Its nice to keep in touch with folks who matter to you and get back in touch with family.


As for projects the two projects mentioned in a prior post: About three weeks ago I went with Jean when she picked out fabric for thermal shades for our 90" inch wide, cold as the dickens, north facing, kitchen window. While there, I was struck by a very pretty fabric combining flowers and wading birds. I bought a yard and built a stretcher for it and mounted about half a yard's worth. Here is an incomplete picture of it.

 I have been trying to make a frame for it, but no project goes smoothly. I decided on a pattern for the frame and had to buy new wood for it since I did not have the right thickness in the right wood. Then I found I would have to double up on the wood any way. Then I found I didn't have right router bit for the shapes I was interested in so I made the molding on one edge using a manual plane. This exerted enough pressure on a tendon sheath in my finger to cause a temporary halt to further planing. Fine, I'll use my shaper. So now I find I need to replace the shaper motor (1/3 HP 1725 rpm and  has a dead capacitor and not enough horsepower any way). Fine, I have a spare that has 1/2 HP. Fine, rewire this replacement motor so it turns the right way and can reverse if needed and then discover it cannot be made to fit the mounting. That's okay, I have another 1/2 motor that will fit. Fine, rewire this motor to get it to turn the right way and just forget about putting a reversing switch on it. Mount it. Fits very well. Oops pulley from old motor won't come off and now I see it won't fit new motor any way. Oops new pulley I bought is 1" too small. Further thought and research says I really need a 3450 rpm, 1HP not 1725 rpm motor anyway.  Good news, just got one on Ebay 5 minutes ago. Now I just have to drive out and pick it up, wire it and install it.  In the mean time I used a plane and some carving tools to make a mockup of a section of my frame design and decided I didn't like it. Back to the drawing board.


The next project is a pair of night stands. This requires using my lathe, whose motor I recently got to work by fiddling with its capacitor cut out switch, but still will need some more attention soon. I have only just begun practicing turning spindles on the lathe which is unfortunate since my design will require me to make eight spindle legs. Here are two leg patterns I sketched. I have decided to use the one on the right. Wish me luck.

End of February

While we only received about two inches of snow this past week, the end of the week were cold and windy enough to remind us that we are in New England in February.

We got to watch my youngest grandson ( he'll be seven in June - if I let him survive 'til then) from Thursday evening through Saturday night, and except for locking me out of the kitchen and having a meltdown during one dog walking episode, he was an ideal guest. Well maybe not ideal. He did beat the socks of of me in a game of Othello.

Speaking of the dog, not ours, theirs: his name is Ernie and he is a mix of Beagle and Australian Shepherd we are told, although  I am sure that a box of rocks or a small pile of gravel is somewhere in his ancestry. Ernie is the dumbest canine in the northern hemisphere. It is only my lack of travel that limits my claim of his championship of ineptitude to only one half of the earth. Call him and he runs away, sit means leap up as far as he is concerned. Anything that has any smell, preferably associated with putrefaction or at least morbidity, is infinitely attractive. For two years he has been trying to play with the three cats who share his home.
For two years this home has been a constant display of fur bearing projectiles launching themselves to high shelves and the top of the refrigerator in usually successful attempts to avoid Ernie's affections.

Come in the door, he needs to rush out, only to come barreling back in the next instant, or show up three hours later end the end of an exasperated neighbor's leash. Ernie just knows that a leash is something to be tangled in and that everyone's greatest interest in life is to wear his paw prints and rub his belly.

For two middays, I got to take this four legged intellectual disaster for  exercise and other business. He got plenty of exercise, but he saved his other functions for the house. This despite being walked three times a day. Cleanup was not pleasant.

His one outstanding virtue is that he is incredibly good natured and friendly and this has probably saved his life.

Got a little bit of work done on building interior buttresses ( short stub walls) in the loft, but I decided I need to sheath them as they are too ugly otherwise. Hope to finish it by midweek.

This weekend the Village of Deerfield commemorated a devastating attack by French and Indian raiders that nearly wiped out the village on February 29, 1704. I went to some events yesterday and a concert of music for organ and soprano at the Brick Church in Deerfield with my wife today. We then went to the Northampton Brewery for dinner only because they have Irish folk music on Sundays. The beer is something we just have to suffer through. After all this music we still listened to some operatic music on the way home. One piece among the many beautiful melodies that really captured our thoughts was the intermezzo from Mascagni's "Cavalliera Rusticana". I strongly recommend that next time you are feeling quiet and thoughtful and want something to enhance your mood, listen to this piece. Here is one link to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSL4pPVf9rE&feature=related
I suggest you skip the visuals and just listen.


I have started two woodworking/ decorative projects and I'll discuss those in a separate post.

Early February

More like mid February, the time does fly. We spent last weekend in the White Mountains and did some modest snowshoeing and hiking. I actually needed my crampons to make the last 300 yards to the top of Black Cap Mountain ( more like a hill). The trip provided a much needed reminder of how impressive the White Mountains are, especially when the upper reaches are snow capped. We are planning a return trip in about three weeks.


Last Thursday we went to a concert of the Hartford Symphony and heard what I think was the best performance of the oft played Beethoven's Fifth I have ever heard, live or recorded. Tempi, phrasing ,volumes, etc. were well nigh perfect. The conductor was the relatively young and little known Alexander Mickelthwate. I'll look for his name in the future.


Been doing a bit of walking, snowshoeing around here, but not enough to lose an weight.  




I have fallen behind in my physics reading but will reform soon. I did help, I hope, one student now taking an electricity and magnetism course.

My computers have been dodgy lately. Two weeks ago the monitor on my desktop died. I called Samsung. They took a week to send me the shipping labels so I could return it for repair. On the other hand I sent it to Carlstadt,NJ on Friday evening and it came back repaired yesterday. That is remarkably fast service. In the meantime I relied on my old Mac laptop for email etc. While I was out, our upstairs cat decided to sleep on the keyboard and ended up hitting keys which accepted an upgrade of my old Firefox to a version that does not work on the G4 laptop. Thus for a couple of days I had to rely on my wife's Window infested laptop for communication, the horror of it still haunts me. Now I'll try to load Linux on my laptop and be done with Apple who no longer support their older products. [It seems that Steve Job was just as ruthless as Gates.]

Things have been a little slow on the home front, partly because I now suffer from trigger finger a condition where too much pressure on tendon sheaths on the fingers of my right hand make it difficult to hold and apply large forces to tools. I sketched out plans for a pair of night stands. The legs are to be round so I started practicing wood turning on a great old lathe I bought a few years ago but did not use. After a few minutes I noticed the motor was overheating, and when I shut it  down it would not restart. The obvious cause on not starting was a dead capacitor, but I am old enough to know that replacing the capacitor would only set things up for another failure. A little investigation showed the, centripetal switch, which takes the capacitor out of the winding circuit was not working. Keeping the capacitor in the circuit will overheat the motor and then burn out the capacitor. After a lot of lubrication and changing to weaker springs in the  switch and replacing the start capacitor it will new start and run coolly most, but not all the time. Why the switch needed attention at all is beyond me. It is very simple and nothing important seemed to different from what it must have looked like when new. Now its time to make the same repair on the motor of my shaper.

Last week also saw me replace the passenger side ball joint on Ingemar ( the red Volvo wagon). Ingemar passed the 300,000 mile mark on Friday and we are planning a party to celebrate soon.

I hope to give an update in less than 3 weeks next time.