Resuming service

Trying to resume service on drawing, but the eyelids in need of proping up as midnight draws near. Sammy on the piano most evenings, and as those evenings draw in perhaps it will get easier to settle down in front of a piece of paper. More salvaging today, and then we did some throwing out of our own taking a load of stuff to a recycling shop, better than the rubbish tip as it did turn into a little money. At first I thought they might not pay anything, but the junk was apparently worth something to them. With the economy slacking I can imagine there are quite a few folk fishing around for stuff to drop in, they were certainly keen on personal identification, so they must have an eye on over agressive junk depositors in their records.

Tear down

Today I had a call from a friend who does ironwork. He has been having trouble with the old chemical balance and has finally decided to fold up his tents and call it a day for a while. It is a shame because he has a good eye for the work. He called to say that he has asked a scrap merchant to come next week and take a look at the shop he had been renting to take all the content away for sale. So he wanted to know if I would be interested in coming along and claiming anything. I dropped tools and popped round this afternoon. I brought back quite a few bits and bobs, and I will try to get round there soonish to buy some of his materials off of him. It was sad to see all the stuff going, but he seemed somehow happier in the decision to cut back all his chattles to a minimum, and no doubt it will make it a lot easier for him to keep his balance. I have the challenge of finding a home for all the stuff I brought back, so tomorrow being the rubbish collection day for metal and glass should be a help as I can lose some of my own chattles to make way for the new. I will make some kind of effort at drawing on the morrow, it is difficult to get the brains moving today.

Window in situ

Nothing better to show for the day, so here is that window as seen on entering the house from a side door. If you then turn right immediately, you see the view from yesterday. Simple stuff like the similar arrangement of panels runs right through all the pieces in this house. The glass arrangement is also the same as that for the front door, which would be on your left as you were looking at this from outside the building. The door you enter to get to this is just an Emtek product I think, but that has a small window and the blue from this glass is visible through that too and gives a nice ambience.
The central portion in close up below has the plum blossom engraving similar to the plum branch ironwork on the front door. It is a little understated and I think some people might not notice it in bright light. But, when they did see it later there might be some sense of magic.
The rendering on the walls is actually rather a warm pinkish color more like that seen through the glass in the close up. It is almost exactly the same color as the type of plaster used in blighty on walls that are to be painted.
Clicking on the pictures should zoom them in a bit.

Next site

Unfortuately, the job site is still very much in work mode and the plasterers haven't got to the room with the shelves in yet. Nevertheless, here are the little doors in their new home. Thank goodness I had opted for those cup style hinges that are adjustable in almost every direction. They are a little miracle, and they even allow you to unclip the whole door and just pop it back on again with all the adjustments unchanged. They do all that and hide behind the door taking no public credit at all. I don't know whether I shall get to the site again as all my bits and bobs are now in, but I should get to see some pictures of the finished item. The scaffolding had come off, which made a big difference to the overall impression.
The window also went in very smoothly as I had already fitted it to the frame, I'll stick a picture of that in tomorrow if I have nothing better. On to the next project now before that starts to press me for time. I just popped out to check the lunar eclipse, but I could see no lune to be eclipsed, maybe that was what I was supposed to see, tricky things eclipses.

Semi Season

I am just about on track for an early start tomorrow on another trip to the job site to fit more homegrown products. Distracted by preparations and hammer throwing in the Athletics going on in Osaka. The season has just started to change here as we see a lot of these cicada remnants about. The larger black and green numbers (like the one in the drawing under these) are still flapping about, but there are plenty of ant ravaged examples of the other two and the central item shows what the little chaps look like while they are living underground having been shed when the final metamorphosis took place. The other insect change is with crickets calling very late into the evening as a voice of autumn and cooler weather. It used to be popular for boys to collect these little gems at this time of year, but I don't here of them doing it much now. It doesn't do any harm as long as the kids stick to collecting dead ones, but it can give you a bit of a start if you happen to pick one up that is just tired rather than dead, they are very loud when they chirrup in protest and their whole bodies shake with sound.

With knobs on

I spent the morning fitting the center panels and trimming bits of glue squeeze out, then painting on finish. In the afternoon I got on with the knobs, making four little widgets like these. When I had finished making the two door handles I ended up with two little cubes of that 30mm bar stuck on some rod to act as a handle, so I drew each of those down a bit thinner and then made two knobs from each lump. The chap I know here who works with iron isn't fond of tongs, so he welds rod onto smaller work pieces to handle them when they need a few sessions of heating in a similar way to what happens in glass blowing. I suppose when I get some free time I must make up a few sets of tongs to try the more traditional approach. At the moment every blacksmithing excursion is a bit of a mystery tour and I often get to a point where I feel like the little object is a write off, but with a bit of concentration they somehow pull through and make it out into the world.
I couldn't find a 6mm tap to thread holes in the knobs to take some countersunk bolts from the back of the door, so I opened up a larger hole and TIG welded some nuts in there flush with the surface, which probably went quicker than taping threads, but it did produce a rampage of insect life as it was dark by then and they love that UV light.

Never enough

Mainly morning duties today. Final fitting and working on the glue-up for the doors ready to sit in their clamps like this over night. I think it took at least thirty minutes just fiddling with a little spatula and PVA gloop for each door. I will fit the central panels tomorrow and then cut the two pairs to their final width for their openings, scorch the edges, apply finish and fit the adjustable hinges. I was hoping to get on and make some knobs today, but it didn't happen that way. I am glad I decided on the complex little lap joints for the four central joints it meant I had a lot less pieces to juggle and that makes things less of a panic when applying the doings.
Always say yes when asking yourself about extra clamps, you never know when they will come in handy.

Nearly there

Doors 1,2 and 3 got themselves sorted out, but number 4 is still waiting to have its panels trimmed. I ran out of steam at around 7pm and the workshop is frozen in this position until tomorrow. I suddenly lost confidence in my height measurement today and had to call the site to confirm that I hadn't made everything too short, but it was OK. We often use the oxypropane burner, but these doors are a bit small for that, so they were all scorched with the little gas burner standing on the bench at the back. The frames were put up together to be scorched so that the joints don't get shrunk too much. Then they were taken apart one by one and had the little white patches round the joint area gently scorched to change the color, then they were all wire brushed while in pieces so that it is easier to follow the grain with the brush. Then reassembled with their panels for a final fitting. It was when I realized I hadn't done any size adjusting for the last set of panels that I ran out of oompf for the evening and left it for the nonce. Anyway, we are well on track for completion in short shrift.

Chocolates in their boxes

Here we are again at the bench. Bottom left is a door just about up together with the little chocolate bar panels in place, next to that is another that is in final adjustment mode I guess you can zoom in to see the jointy parts. Very mix and match, lap joints at the cross joints, mortice and tenon around the central part and then spline joints for the rest. The lap joints mean that the cross bars are a lot more stable, but I have to make a bit of a special arrangement for the central panel.
The inset at top left is the rude mechanical morticer I spoke about yesterday fitted up to the old drill press I pulled from the rubbish tip a few years ago. I shouldn't think Okamoto is a tool making company anymore, but who knows. It didn't have a motor, handles or a switch, but it works fine now. The doughnut on the side is a speaker magnet that is remarkably barren at the moment, it usually holds quite a few bits and bobs.
Another solid day at the bench tomorrow should see the doors ready to be scorched and finished before glue up. The shopping basket at the back has all the panels in.

Sun in the water

Another day of mixed activities. Mainly on the computer again, but also a little adventure in jig building. I made up a little device to hold wood that will allow me to make better use of a morticing attachment I had bought for the drill press. I thought it would come in handy and it is doing so now making little holes for the joints in the cabinet doors up next. The tool makes square hole at one punch, but it likes to stay in the wood once it is in there, so I needed something to hold the wood down while I pull the lever to snatch the tool back out of its burrow.
Lunch time we had a particularly nice patch of sun in the river where we swim. I am hopelessly ill equipped with painting ability, but I didn't have a camera so this is something like what my boy looked like dangling himself in the other media watching the play of light, fish and rocks. The only bit above water was the well carpeted island of the back of his head and the breathing tube.

Job done

The day at the site went well and this is the view out of the newly fitted door's window. I forgot all about taking pictures of the shelves, but they will look better once the walls around them are plastered up properly and I can take a picture of that when I go to fit the cabinet doors.
One more picture of the door properly filling the hole it was meant to and ready for service.

Ready to go

Another busy day in the shop with the semi final plan for the shelves put into action. The little squiggly white ladders may end up being little bits of bamboo, but I don't have a stock of that, so it will have to be cut and dried a little before I can pop it in. We'll see how the shelf looks tomorrow. The four blocks are all done now and waiting to find their places on the truck or in the wagon for a trip to the job site tomorrow. Sammy and I carried the door up to the truck this evening as well as a few other odds and ends. We will decide which vehicle to ride in tomorrow and carry up the rest of the tools and whatnot that I have just sorted out for a departure as near to 5 am as we can make it. That should give us a good long day to get things done.

Brain drain

Having an image free day. My brains are all tied up with wood engineering methodology for door production. There was another local community drinking doo today as well, which seemed to take a lot of the chill out of the water when I went for a swim with sammy on returning home suitably intoxicated. I had got in an early start , so I was able to measure out the rails and stiles, cut those up and start cutting grooves to house the little panels before the drinkin started. We mainly sit about and chat at these events, covering a good deal of conversational territory.
A local chap who does gardening for a living brought by three engine powered weed whackers he had given up on and we were able to get one of them working by scavenging parts off the others. He always buys the same model for this precise reason. Anyway, having got that running, it meant sammy could get down to some serious jungle abuse and knock back some of the more threatening plant life in front of the house. All three machines had different things wrong with them, but the one with the leaky gas tank seemed like the quickest to resolve so we simply took the tank off and swapped it out for another. Funnily enough a busted plastic tank was what killed our machine. I suppose the material just gets fragile after a few years, a familiar concept.

Chocolate bars

Or it could be ice cubes, the same kind of principal. I had to make up 36 little panels for the doors coming up next. The smallest are only 8x8cm so I decided to get them all shaped up on the plank and then slit them up for a final shaping by hand. The three lengths on the right were one plank that has been slit on the bandsaw. Rip cuts cause very little tear out, so you do the cross grain cuts first as visible in the plank on the left that has just had the first rip down the middle through all the cross cuts. The "mizokiri" tool sitting on the bench has a fence that works fine for rip cuts, but I had to make up a 'T' square type fence to do the cross cuts. The cross bar of the 'T' was about the same thickness as the work piece, so the cut made in that the first time you use it allows you to line up the fence to lines laid out on the plank for the different sized panels. The little inset at the bottom shows the stacks of different sized panels having been cut from the strips with the chop saw, now waiting for a bit of sanding and roasting tomorrow. These will be cabinet doors, so only one side is raised as the inside is hardly ever seen. There is also a big pile of shavings ready to burn tomorrow if the weather doesn't turn hot again.

Standing room only

A view from the other end of jumbly land. The Door as we affectionately call it is just visible down the far end. The shelves to be are scattered about all over the shop in a semi organised manner in various stages of completion. The unit roughly in the foreground will stand on end and be screwed to a wall to give a sort of semi circle shape filled with the pidgeon hole shelf structure. That has been scorched once and is waiting to have a bit more cutting and shaping done on its ends. Then those bits will be scorched and it all gets taken to bits to be wire brushed and finished, then back together and off to its new home some time next week. The stack of timber just behind it and to the right is a mirror of this unit awaiting reassembly and has gone a couple of steps further down that same road. Right down the end in front of the door is another different unit, which is also one of a pair. Sammy has put in quite a few hours on these and that has been a big help. Tomorrow I think I will clear them all aside and prepare the timber for the cabinet doors I have to make next while Sammy has a well deserved day at the seaside. If I can get a solid day in on that it should clear my mind a bit now that I have the design measured out. My days are becoming 5 to 9 instead of the office routine version, so the photo diary may have to continue for a bit.

Lock fitting

I spent most of the first half of the day getting the locks morticed and fitting the handles, then part two after swim lunch and nap was other odds and ends like the latch guards and more work on the shelves. We had thunder yesterday lunch time, but today we had rain too. We haven't had any for a while, so the plants were burbling happily about that. I did manage to get an early start today, so I caught the morning brain waves before the heat addled the gubbins and harnessed them to draw out the design for the cupboard doors I have to make next at full scale on a bit of plywood. I am nearly ready for a trip to the job site to get rid of some of the stuff I have been making. I really need to do that and make some space for more production. It must seem odd that everything takes so long to get done, but that is just the way it is. I like the fact that there is a little history to all the bits and bobs that make up the thing.
For example, the flowers in the window were stamped out of slices taken from the rebar that was thrown out when a bridge was demolished up the road.

Plane

Sammy is proving useful in the shop. I had him plane the corners off the edges of the shelves we are making today. I just gave a quick demo as to posture in different situations and how to get a bit more control. So he had a chance to catch his breath in this terrible heat we are into. Up to 34 degrees in the house today even out in the woods where we are. We were glad of the lunch time swim again.

Sunny Jim

I couldn't resist popping this one from today in. I don't think Sammy will object too much.
Just up the road from our house there is a deep pool in the river bed where we go to swim before lunch in the summer. I have a waterproof housing for a little camera and that took this through the mist that overcomes it as soon as it leaves the chill of the water. The greeny light from the deep water is great and sometimes there are red winged damsel flies that pass through the patches of sun to flash against those dark colors. Under the water the sunlight dapples color onto the rocks in an ever changing pattern that we watch until we run out of oxygen and have to pop back up to the surface.
I had to take a break from shop work to tackle some rewriting, so not much progress on manual work.

Process

We had a bit of a trip out this evening, so I am very late in adding anything. I thought rather than try any sketching I would quickly jot down what I learnt from this handle making. The top of the list was not to make the back plate first as the handle part is much harder to make, so it is easier to make up two handles and then cut back plates to an appropriate size.
I made eyerything except the last few hammer adjustments by drawing down and as noted before that is a lot easier than jumping things up. I deliberately made the ends as in the third unit. this gave them a natural tendency to curve that way, but I knew I would want that tail to bend right over and bend back on itself. It was really useful having an assistant on hand for the twisting as I needed to keep the heat really local to one spot and we had to use a water spray to cool down certain parts while still heating others. I should have put the heavy center section in the vice and twisted each end, but I put one end in and tried to twist the middle, which worked, but it would have been easier the other way. So twisted one way in pic 4, then put the center section in the vice and twisted each end back the other way to give a counter twist at each end in pic 5. It would have been better to keep a proper count of twists, as it is easy to lose track in the heat of the moment.
Then it was easier to work with the handle of rebar taken off, so I sawed off the lump of excess steel and worked each end in turn holding the end of the piece itself. The last stage was bending the ends round after doing some more shaping with the hammer, which gave the handles their final length. You can jump up the ends a little when they are bent over by heating the flat of the end really yellow and whacking it down on the anvil like it was a hammer. This gives just a little more flare to the end and can flatten it out for you a little, but until I become an expert there is always going to be a bit of grinding to mate up the back plate and the handle. I drill a wide hole where the handle meets the plate and then weld the edge of the hole to the handle from the back. All jibberish I imagine, as I am ready for bed.

Done

The obsession with iron continued to its temporary conclusion today. Welding the twisty bits on properly, then drilling and tweaking the little thumb latches to fit while trying them out in the little jig I mentioned before. Yesterday I realized I had forgotten to make the latch bolt covers to go on the edge of the door, so I got Sammy to apply some texture to a strip of metal and then we cut the shapes out with the torch and ground them to size. All the iron parts for the door are now done and finished with the tea and tool steel mix as a patina, then reheated to have a mix of wax and fine graphite powder applied. Sammy worked on applying those finishing touches today while I did all the other things. Cutting, grinding, drilling, bending and welding.
Back to wood work tomorrow after a bit of a tidy up to change the mode of the main part of the shop for that, taking the metal vice off the bench and tucking away all the other things that are out for metal work.
With the hot weather and work, we could finally stand it no longer and went to the river for a swim before lunch yesterday, and did the same today. I hope the weather will stick tomorrow, it is very refreshing to take a dip, eat and nap. The heat and drudge of work gets sucked right out of one and although the strain from work is still present, the fatigue is somehow lightened by all those minus ions to something that can be easily lifted with a little sleep. The day that had been hot and muggy becomes pleasantly warm, with a sensation akin to the cool comforting touch of cotton sheets.

Tweaked

The tweaking is done, but the welding was becoming sad as the light began to attract more and more of the evening insect hoard to succumb to the light and heat of the electron plasma. Mainly little green flying things that have a habit of nipping at ones skin for no apparent reason and one horsefly, so no great loss to the world of beauty. Anyway, it was only a matter of time before something more dramatic got caught up in the trauma, so I left it for tomorrow when they will all be sleeping off their night of fun and games and the sun will shine bright enough to make my little spark insignificant for their daytime counterparts..
The side resting on the vice has holes drilled and countersunk to accept bolts with allen wrench heads. The side in the foreground has 20mm long nuts welded onto the back in position to accept the ends of the bolts passed through appropriately sized holes drilled in the door. Other gubbins on the bench, the auto darkening helmet, WD40 for almost everything, blue pen case with bits and bobs for the TIG torch and sharpened electrodes waiting to be used in turn. I have the little pivot pin mechanism for the thumb latches welded on, but I have to drill the latch levers and cut them to length tomorrow. I have a little box jig to test the fit of the plates with the lock body inside, that allows me to trim the latch parts so that they don't interfere with each other inside the door when they are fitted. I had to make that up for the first door I made with a thumb latch to figure out how all the parts would work together and it still comes in handy to remind me of how to do the mortices for the lock bodies.

Handled

Having resolved to work on the shelves, I immediately changed my mind this morning and did the handles instead.
I managed to get a fairly early start on things today and it was a mistake to have left the blacksmithing book in the smallest reading room, it pushed the brain box in the metalwork direction. I spent the morning at the press and then moved downstairs for a bit of refining with the hammer and twisting about in the vice after that. There is still some final tweaking to do and the handles must be welded to the plates, but getting them in some kind of shape was the last challenge for the door. I should be able to get all the fiddly jobs done on them, fitting the thumb latches and the above mentioned tweaking tomorrow all being well, then I can clear the bench again to cut the mortices for the locks and drill all the holes in all the right places for all the bits and bobs. Then no doubt I will have to take them all off again when I transport the door as it will be too heavy for me to manage alone.

Mystery object

Today's mystery object.
I had sammy helping out in the shop again this afternoon. He did the drilling and countersinking on the three steel hinges for the door and then cleaned off the squeeze out of caulking on the glass for the door. We popped the glass in and put a light behind just before we left for the day. I like the way the light is reflected on the metal textures and it should look OK when it is fitted. I can get sammy to finish that up tomorrow with patina and wax.
I got the basic structure for one set of shelves knocked together today and started on another. The little jig on the chop saw worked fine and I made an additional spacer for it to cut a different depth of joint. I think I had better stick with the shelves again tomorrow and then move back to forging handles when there is some finishing work for the helpers to do on the parts for the shelves before they are stuck together.

Chopsaw

After a fairly juddery start to the day arranging jobs for the offspring to undertake I got settled on the shelving again. I realized I would not be able to cut any but the end most joints on the bandsaw, so set about modifying my sliding chop saw so that it would stop at a given height above its base and slide through the cut to help me speed up making lap joints. I welded up a little stop like a tiny g clamp that I can stick on under the height stop when I want the saw to perform its new joint cutter function. It took me a while tinkering about on the floor with the thing to figure out the best method of approaching the thing. The Oxygen arrived, so I celebrated that by gas welding the little gadget up together, mainly choosing this method because the kids were in the shop and I don't like electric welding when others are about, and it would have meant putting on more clothes to keep the welding tan at bay on an already warmish day.
Having done the prep I got through a few joints and the kids also worked OK, so we ended up rather productive in the end. I had to leave the glass from yesterday under its weights as the caulking had not yet set.

Tanoshimi

Another state of the nation photo I am afraid. The last job of the day was working with sammy to carry the dead oxygen cylinders up to the road ready for pick up tomorrow. Just prior to shutting up shop I had put the stained glass into position between its sandwich of metal, which is the item on the paper.
A little "tanoshimi" for tomorrow. The word basically means something to look forward to here in the Japans. It will be fun to see how well or badly things turn out. Lots of caulking squeeze out to clean up I expect.
I spread caulking on one frame and then placed the little bits of glass with their edges centered on each of the frame divisions, then applied more caulk and dropped the other frame on top. Then put on a piece of plate glass to keep things even on top and added some lead weights. The frames were thin TIG welded steel arrangements painted instead of oil finished as any application of heat would buckle them all up.
When I go to pick up stained glass fragments for use on all sorts of projects I usually take the bags of old framing bits and bobs as well and melt them down in an old pan or something. I popped an old pipe joint in the middle of the round ones here while the metal was still liquid in an old frying pan. Then knocked it out when the metal was cool to pop the lumps on some pipe for use as barbells, the prism shapes were just poured in some angle iron. I don't use lead much, but I tend to stick to it if I see it lying about. I was thinking about making a device to produce the stained glass lead work extrusions, but I didn't have time for that on this project , perhaps one day. I wasn't at all happy with the look of the foil edged stained glass piece even with black patina applied, so I ended up taking it all to bits and doing it this way instead.
You can also make out the stack of timber for planed up today for shelf parts at the back. Also a bit of layout cogitation evident on the temporary bench back there with the plans from the photo the other day.

Upsetting

Upsetting metal is a lot harder than drawing it out. I needed to make the little spoon shaped levers for the thumb latch. The first step is to fatten up the end of the bar by heating it and either dumping it onto a solid surface like it was a pogo stick or hitting it with a hammer while it is in the vice or backed up against something. The oxy propane torch is great for this job as it allows you to heat up just the end of the bar, the greater the area of heat the easier it is for the upset part to start to wander about or for the strikes to lose their force in simply bending the bar into a swan neck behind the part you are trying to fatten up. Anyway, as with many of these procedures there are some things that have to be done before you can get to others. If you just go straight to flattening the bar at the end there is not enough volume of metal to make a nice spoon shape, so your efforts are doomed from the outset. Take a step back to move forward.

Puzzle patch

These were some of the sketches I was puzzling over yesterday. There is no end to variations for the shelf divisions, so I got my daughter involved as a second opinion. I have to make four little cupboard doors and that is what the other measured sketch is for. I want to make little raised panels for them with the tool I used on the door, so I need to know their measurements so that I can make them up in rows on a plank and then cut them off in series. Once cut from the plank they will be a lot harder to work with.
I ended up going shoping today and then welding up some thin iron frames to take the place of the leaded structure of the stained glass pieces in the door window. That seems like it will work, which is a relief. We had a nasty thunderstorm in the evening while I was welding, which gave me a couple of jumpy moments when the lightening took me by surprise.

Thinking time

After the sun had set and some of the heat had dispersed I put in a bit of a thinking session at the plans and papers. I had had a fiddle with some bits of wood earlier in the shop and along with the sketches I hope I have a plan for the shelf work on paper. Still got the towel on me head from work.
I shall get the materials sorted tomorrow. Lots of head scratching, but until I get my oxygen I am better off spending time on the work I can persue to a conclusion. I'll use the last of what I have tomorrow. Then there are still lots of little fiddly jobs to do on the door, so I must try and think of as many of those as I can and get them out of the way too. I have a deadline for fitting now, so that makes decision making easier.

Handle starters

I picked the perfect day for working at the firebricks. Very hot out.
I managed to put in a good effort up till around 2ish, but the mad dogs went in for a drink, so I thought I should follow suit. Anyway, I feel better having made a start at forging the door handles, still a way to go, but the arrangement of bricks and the propane torch seem to work OK. I have to get in some more Oxygen and then I will be ready to do the last fiddly bits of bending and twisting. I have two lumps of 30mm or so square bar welded on to a couple of lengths of concrete rebar as handles to save having to use tongs. As the drawn out parts get thinner the work starts to go faster, but I don't want to get stuck having to jump things back up thicker again. I have some other small parts to make, so I am working on them while the lumps are heating. The press handles have started to give my right hand a new set of callouses. I must make a start on the shelves as well, so that both items can be brewing along together.

I opted for a bit of both today, clearing the junk off of the stack of timber I need for some of the woodwork and making ready for the iron work too.
I suddenly remembered those frogs eggs in the tree over the roof in the afternoon as I spotted that the ball of foam had disappeared. I got the bowl down dreading the results, but luckily a whole bunch of the little tree frog divels were safely caught. Here they all are, too many to give names to, but I was happy to see they had landed safely as they would have just washed down on to the ground and died without the old plastic bowl we stuck under them.

Plum done

The day outside was pretty warmish, but most of my work was by the sink. Not nursing a hangover, but having the water on hand to wash off the powdered glass from engraving. I am still not sure about the stained glass for the door window, but I think this one is done for now.
If the weather is still OK tomorrow I will spend some time on the door handles. If not, back to wood work making up materials for four sets of shelves. We are being promised another typhoon.
The engraving went OK, but it means wearing all the safety gear to keep out noise and dust. Listening to audio books on the headphones while working. I have a little flexible shaft that fits on a mini router tool with diamond grinding bits. When I came up from the shop at lunch time I had a most peculiar sensation in the fingers like they were made of metal springs, I could feel all the nerve impulses jingling from every movement. I think it was just from gripping the tool so tight to avoid letting it slip and make a mess as well as concentrating hard on hand to eye without paying any attention to the stuff in between, which shouted out for attention as soon as the work related action came to a halt.