Steve's News Book

Sign Board

2012-01-12T02:08:00.001-08:00

With the characters for the sign underway I started on the actual board. Approximately 8x3 feet in size (2400x910mm). There are still a few practical matters to settle with affixing the unit to the roof, so the front of the panel is not yet glued in place to allow for any additional hardware to be inserted. All the internal framing is glued, as are the laminated bits for the frame. This whole thing will be clad in copper sheet and the lettering will float in front held by pins and spacers.

Next job

2012-01-09T02:20:00.001-08:00

Working on a large lettering sign for a chemist shop. First job to glue up some sheets of plywood to saw out the letters from. A lot of clamps. The two curved battens are left over from a big arched door frame, clamps on either side apply pressure in the center of the work where the clamp jaws can't reach.

It took most of a day on the bandsaw to get the two board cut into the stacks of characters.

Then I routed the edges of the larger characters as an initial step toward final shaping.

Alcove

2012-01-09T02:11:00.001-08:00

One corner of the kitchen project. Working with the hot glue gun and a can of insect freezer. The mesh has 2mm squares and makes a good backing for plaster. The newspaper is stuffed in as a backing. Holes left at the bottom on both sides for sockets. The finished thing after plastering and painting below.

Long absence

2011-11-30T00:30:00.001-08:00

I've been busy working on the kitchen renovation and assorted sundries. My daughter spotted this site set up by a friend. Nice pictures of some corners of the recent cafe job. I like this one of the window and light set in one section of wall.

2011-07-08T16:53:00.001-07:00

There are still a few areas that need tidying and the inhabitants still don't seem to view the venue as a working cafe as yet, but I hope they soon will.

The stove area with it's copper rimed hood. It was a lot of work doing all the decorating, very thankful for the help from the offspring. Washing down all the Walls and ceiling applying sealer and two coats of paint.
The iPad is now my only avenue for posting as both chrome and firefox crash every time I try to attach a picture. IT is becoming increasingly frustrating for me, the real world less and less so.

Another memorial

2011-07-08T16:39:00.001-07:00

A cloudy day on the veranda with its new addition. Gradually getting the place tidied up after all the work. I must remember to take a nightie shot of the same scene. Inside there are just a few more bits and bobs to insert, but the major work is all done.

Prep school

2011-06-04T01:42:00.001-07:00

The far corner of the work area will receive a decorative ironwork construction and I needed to keep a record of the placement of wood in the wall for placing anchor screws later on. So, rather out of character I have a series of photos that show the work progress. Starting with the wooden skeleton above.

Then we move on to a covering of asphalt roofing paper and a layer of wire lath mesh stapled over the top.

Today the first layer of mortar went on, this will be followed by another coat of a different type and finally the White stuff to finish off.

Sketchbook pro

2011-05-23T05:18:00.001-07:00

I still have issues with image resolution in the blog posting, but I have settled on sketchbook pro as the app to learn, just scribbled on a photo to experiment. Artrage is noticeably slow in comparison, and also has fewer features. I don't think either offers sensitivity of brushstroke, but SBpro makes a very nice mark that simulates sensitivity to pressure. There is a free version, so try that for yourself, but the app was only ¥600. I do think there should be a palm protector feature, perhaps I just haven't found it yet.

2011-05-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

Another birthday marked with a creative development. Sammy and I put in the stained glass windows this Friday.

On the way out the door

2011-05-18T02:58:00.001-07:00

A quick snap of the ambience on the way out the door this evening. I put bulbs in the new addition to make sure all the fittings were connected properly.

Light well interior

2011-05-17T02:49:00.000-07:00

The ellipse drawing technique came in handy again for this structure. I took a snap of the interior workings of the ceiling panel before hoiking it into place with the help of a chap who was just visiting for a chat.

Putty

2011-05-15T02:46:00.001-07:00

This really is a lot more like it for posting. I still miss having access to files on my own machine, but I suppose I will find work around moves for most things in the end. This unit looked like being a pain to do in situ up on the ceiling, so I opted to build it in two parts down below and then join them together in the correct orientation up top. The size is one sheet of plaster board 910x1820mm with one corner cut off, that can be stuck back on to fill most of the gap at the bottom right of the frame. After getting the best fit between the frame and the kind of pond liner shaped unit with them held up in position by some temporary struts they were moved back down to the floor and I added more struts to fuse them together and mesh to support putty, then to end the day I put on a first layer of GL bond putty to harden and dry out overnight.

Wonderful

2011-05-14T15:25:00.001-07:00

That worked lovely. The cameras on the iPad are terrible, so I needed to get a picture from my camera onto the pad. I used the free app HP iphoto to do that. Sending a file from my windows 7 pc to the pad. I inserted the photo into another free app neu notes and wrote the comments by the side. Saved the note to the camera roll on the pad and then wrote the post on blogpress. I will try venturing into the world of YouTube next.

Blogpress

2011-05-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have accepted that blogging conveniently from the iPad is not possible without glitches unless one applies the Chaplin rule and spends a little money. I have splashed out ¥350 on blogpress in the hope that it will open the portal.

iPad

2011-05-03T17:29:00.001-07:00

I am impressed with the iPad, but I am struggling to adapt all my usual methodologies to this new portal. There is very little available for posting with. This app is for the iPhone, so I am on a little patch of screen and a tiny key pad. Work on site is coming along as each section takes shape inside. Currently working as an amateur bricky making a wall around the area where the wood stove will go.

Down a flight

2011-04-04T03:43:00.000-07:00

This is a similar perspective to the shot from the other week. Not too much change in the main plan, but having the waterproofing job out of the way is a pretty big step in the right direction. I have planks and step ladders laid out along under the eaves of my rounded roof where I am fitting lots of little pieces of copper around the rim. Perhaps you can just make out the change in color and contour at the far end. Again I just took a set of photos and dumped them into windows ICE and it rotated and stitched them all on its own. Nifty.

Top side

2011-04-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

Borrowing the stairs next door to my job site to get a bit of perspective on the roof work. Something of a side track making a roof for the veranda above my extension project. The flashing work on the veranda was terrible, so I was going to just paint the floor after inserting a lead and cement sill, but in the end decided that the roof was a more permanent solution. I don't think the tile floor will need painting after all.
I chopped out a section of tile and concrete from the whole of the frontage and laid a series of lead flashing pieces in that with their rear ends raised to form a water stop. I made some stainless steel fittings to house the feet of the pillars for corrugated plastic roof and fixed them into the trench with the lead. Then I also laid in some mesh and lengths of rebar. After making a little shallow shuttering along the front I poured in some concrete and am now giving that time to cure. Water run off from the veranda now comes down over the lead flashing and will then pass on to my shingle roof once the shingles are on.

Terracing

2011-03-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

The current project up to the beginning of the week. I have had to stop work on the main section of my extension and focus on the area where my roof joins the main building. This junction was not well handled by past artists so I am having my own go at creating a weatherproof joint. At top right you can see a steel fence arrangement with a cross shape. The bulk of that has now gone and I have made a cut into the entire frontage of the concrete and tile veranda into which I will pour a new sill with a lead flashing embedded into it. This will spill any rain onto my roof and thence harmlessly onward. I am also constructing a roof over the small veranda to keep most of the rain from getting to the surface. If you look in past the curved bones of my new frontage you can see the existing set of glass doors, which will eventually be ripped out to give way to a new aluminum sash that will run most of the width of my new bit. I was standing on the terrace when the recent big earthquake hit, and as I said I thought at first that it was the force of the wind on my cover tarp hoisting the whole deck skyward.
I found that I had some really unreliable panorama software from canon and after searching for a substitute found ICE from microsoft, which proved to be very easy to get going. I reduced the image to 20% for the blog, but perhaps once the work has progressed I might put up some more detailed pans. The frontage of my new roof section is about 8.6 meters and the height to the fish bones of the new roof about 2.6 meters. In Forefox click on the picture to zoom in and then click again to zoom more.

Minor ranting

2011-03-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

Off to work as usual in a moment. Just wanted to share this link. It is a Japanese page run by a guy with his own Geiger counter in Hino. There is a recent reading chart and a reference from last year. So far some spikes and waves, but nothing to panic over.
http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html
I don't want to be a pacifier, the situation is dire in certain areas here, but neither do I want to be spreading panic. My subconscious led me to a 10% investment in solar power I think that was an accurate representation of my lack of faith in the government run system actually continuing to function. Glad of the power during power cuts now. I am down to 50% faith and will act accordingly.
I suspect those with grid tied solar panels on their roofs are seriously regretting not learning how to disconnect and use the power at home. Why it was not government policy to make these homes a store house for energy in the case of an emergency is beyond me, but they did not and all the power generated is now being dumped in to a dead grid during power cuts for the provinces to keep Tokyo fed with power, |I bet there are some panels lying idle where the devastation is at its worst.

If you are in contact with people in the disaster area, here are a few things I think I would be doing if I were there.
Gathering anything dry as insulation for sleeping in school gyms, drying wet stuff for later use. Also hanging that around the walls of the refuge and on the floor to keep warm, usually these buildings have no insulation. Don't be dumb, consider the fire hazard, but keep warm.
If you are without power, look for some insulatory gloves and a spanner or pliers and go out hunting for intact car batteries. Ask the local forces on the ground for help to do this, if they don't give permission find somewhere to do it anyway, but suggest that they make areas from which property can be removed for use and keep a log of what is moved if necessary. You might want to check for cars with inverters too. Small inverters are more common these days, they will power normal AC 110v equipment. Phone chargers are very common. Dry out all electrical equipment before attempting to use it. If you have no phone charger etc, look for wrecked bicycles with dynamos for lights and get pedaling. You can put pins through the wires of the positive and negative leads on the dynamo and then through their buddies on the battery you want to charge or figure out some way of holding the wire ends on to the battery terminals, clothes pegs etc. Lithium ion batteries all have protection circuits in. If you are worried for the owner, leave a written message with contact details.
If you have no drinking water make a wood burning brazier by whacking holes in a steel can or bath tub, boil snow or collect rainwater in the cleanest thing you can find, steam out the stuff you are going to drink from first. If you are not blessed with precipitation, look for steel or aluminium sheet and errect that where steam from sea water or urine at the worst being boiled will condense on it and collect drips for drinking. As long as it is cold enough plastic pipe will work too.
There are a lot of resources around and the forces on the ground with authority should be liberating these for the use of civilians when the government is not performing. This is not looting it is survival.
Tsujimoto Kiyomi, one of our treasured government ministers complained that American forces should have asked before performing an air drop of food and emergency supplies in the midst of the devastation. The term baka onna (idiot woman) is not normally used in polite circles, but she deserves it. She should have been asking for air drops not complaining about not being asked for permission to drop. Apparently air drops are against the law here. Seriously. She will be complaining about the people eating food in the school gym next. They are refugees misses this is not a back to normal next week situation.
Here is that link again for direct information on radiation in the Tokyo area.
http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html
By the way, I think France should be ashamed of their attitude of flying out their citizens while others are flying in assistance, perhaps this didn't happen, but it was reported on the news. Afghanistan sent 4 million yen in aid to the worlds third biggest economy, how human is that? I am back from a day working on building what I hope will be something beautiful, I am doing what I can. Please do what you can to help where you are even if it is not at all related to what is happening here.
I believe it is time for an end to the battle for power over which taxable infrastructure will be next and a new start where we all have a piece of the whole to take care of so that when it all goes pear shaped we can help each other out with what we have left.
I hope that Japan will see that this is a huge opportunity for this country to lead the world into a better considered way of being, at present it is a slagging match of blame between those in power who are just as much in the dark as we are a week after the earthquake struck. Much of which they have probably spent without sleep. Their job is to keep calm and consider what is to come next, not panic about who gives permission to whom.
News agencies are also in my black book, they could be doing a lot to help out by broadcasting solutions to the problems that exist on the ground, not just gawping at them. What do you do if you find a body, how can you best prevent or intervene in hypothermia, let's review our CPR technique, all valid topics. Instead the most frequent question for the refugee"What do you not have that you need most". Some kind of ironic humor there for the chaps in the warm studio.
Ah well, more ranting tomorrow I guess.
PS, to Mr Hogg on the BBC, people in Tokyo are wearing face masks to keep out the cedar pollen, not the radiation. They are eating seaweed for the iodine to keep the radiation out of their thyroids, but apparently they should stop that as it can be bad for you to eat too much, and as shown in the link, radiation is not yet at harmful levels. Please broadcast something useful.

Turmoil

2011-03-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting on here. My mind is being compartmentalized by the events around me. Thankfully my family is currently intact. The area where we live suffered severe quakes, they were of a different kind than I have experienced before. Like the experience of being in a big quake while in a tall building. Large slow movements. These caused a minor tidal wave in the reservoir nearby and I guess all bodies of water will have been affected as severely, from the sloshing I witnessed in our garden pond to the wide pacific.
There has been no mention of damage to hydroelectric facilities as the nuclear situation is taking all our minds for a walk into hell, but I surmise that there are men in helmets with probing fingers creeping through tunnels to check the nooks and crannies under dams across the country.
Meanwhile in other mental compartments we are buying yeast to make our own bread as shortages in those kind of easily consumable food stuffs emerge here. Hopefully this is because these resources are being channeled up to where people are in need. I may have to abandon traveling to my job site in the 600cc petrol driven truck and commute on the electric bike instead as petrol shortages are becoming more severe and I want to keep a little in reserve for emergencies. The fuel oil we use for heating water is growing short also, so I may have to bring my workshop boiler that runs on firewood online for home use.
I have been getting on with the building project I have on hand at present and there too the logistics of obtaining what I need are playing through the mind while I watch the events unfold in Fukushima.
One of the lesser problems is the lack of decision making power among those with their fingers on the switches. So far we have only lost power after the initial quake, when we were blacked out for 12 hours. We have been promised rolling power cuts, but so far the scheduled time has come around and the power has remained on. So planning work around them is proving to be frustrating. For me this is not a big issue as the work will get done in the end, but if you are turning yellow waiting for your next trip to the dialysis machine it must be a cause for finger tapping at the least when you are told to stay home only to find that the power was on after all.
The last major quake to the south of us back in 1995 was very badly handled and at that time I was working on the renovation of an old house a hundred kilometers or so away from the epicenter. We saw the damage on TV and the way that people were failing to make any headway in getting to those trapped in rubble and seriously considered driving down to help out with crowbars and whatnot, but we would have had to stock up on food for ourselves and may even have been a burden. In the current emergency there is little hope of survivors as the major damage was from water and the subsequent fire. A more complete devastation it is hard to imagine, but perhaps nuclear fallout is our next fate.
The way the wind blows may give some relief and hopefully the design of the reactors will help to limit damage, indeed it may prove to be the west coast of America that suffers most in the long term , but there can be little doubt that we are in the shit when the prime minister is assuring Tokyo Electric that he will make it his mission to see them bankrupt if they withdraw their technicians from the site, which appeared to be their intention at one point. I think he was miffed that TEPCO had released information to the press before him, we are teetering on the edge of impoliteness, which is saying a lot in the land of the inscrutable.
I sincerely hope that the events here will not be labeled as only applicable to earthquake regions and the nuclear option will be crossed off the list forever. Whatever spurred the uprising in North Africa should spur all to oppose the magic cure worked by the genie in the bottle that must never be let out.
Geopolitical turmoil is as nothing to the threat from this invisible enemy. How meaningless is the exchange of national debt when one is in danger of soiling ones planet unto ashes.
The first frogs began to chirp yesterday and I can't help wondering if they had delayed their actions with some sense of premonition. They are usually out singing in February. The pestering of the pretty plum blossom by Mejiro and other small birds in search of nectar is also a source of some balm. The regular Great tit nesters are going away with empty beaks in their search for dog hair to decorate with this year after the demise of our homely hound but they are moving about in pairs in a most admirable sense of fervent optimism that we must strive to emulate.
P.S. another trial passed by the roof structure, still standing intact.

Snowbound

2011-02-14T02:37:00.000-08:00

More snow finally giving the roof a good weather trial. Now suffering paranoia that this construction will be knocked down peremptorily. I don't think it is under the same threat from bureaucracy, but I didn't imagine anyone could be as stupid as some of the people I have spoken to over the past couple of days, so I must get a little more proactive and try to ensure that I do retain some rights over it just in case.

Rescue of sorts

2011-02-13T02:30:00.000-08:00

We borrowed the crane and rescued the wreckage of the board from the junk pile. I'm not sure where it will end up, but at least it might get reused somehow. The guys really chopped up the base trying to find out how it was attached. If we had known, all it needed was four cuts around bolts and the thing could have come off whole.
I have found this a very educational experience. Never trust the bureaucrats and get your rights in writing. I will never be doing any work for the city again without written agreements.

Toppled

2011-02-12T02:12:00.000-08:00

Recently my fascination with panoramas has rather faded, but I used to like fiddling with them. If you are interested, this one can be viewed with PTviewer a very old free viewer that still seems to work. This photo composite was taken back when I made the poster board in the picture some years ago in collaboration with a friend.
Today when dropping my daughter off at the station I noticed activity in the area and found that the thing had disappeared. I went back home and called some people in the know, they knew nothing about it, so I returned and asked the chaps in helmets on site what was going on. To cut a long story short, the usual idiocy of a bureaucrat with no brain had meant the death sentence for the work had been signed a month before and nobody even thought about trying to continue the use of the thing. I did some following up and did my best to express my disbelief, but to be honest I feel that I should have been handing out the caps with the " too stupid to insult" logo. They would have been worn with pride.

Scorch

2011-02-11T03:47:00.000-08:00

After the shaping, scorching with the torch and then wire brushing and polishing.

Kyokumen kanna

2011-02-10T03:36:00.000-08:00

One of my most used electrical tools is the plane with a curved sole. It is useful for shaping after roughly removing bulk. In this case shaping the bracket or pillar head piece I was lifting to offer up to a joint in a drawing the other day. According to my improvised knowledge of Japanese, kyoku means curve, men means plane or surface, kanna is a plane so this is a kyokumen kanna. Spokeshaves have a Chinese heritage here, so they are called Nanking kanna after the southern city in China, even though they do a similar job.

Laying down on the job

2011-02-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

The fatter of the two logs had to slide down next to a kind of store house, so I used the block on the descent also to control its movements, but the other 6 meter long number had a clearer drop so I was able to convince it to heed the urge to fall, in some spots it meant laying down on the job and punching it through vegetationand fallen branches or over stumps with both legs as prodders.

Tackle

2011-02-06T03:25:00.000-08:00

I got the chain block and a few wire rope sections up the slope and pulled the two logs I want to positions where they could be pushed or pulled down to within reach of the crane truck. Lots of stumps about to act as barriers to stop rogue movements down the slope and a few of the local flora were thrown into service as posts to hook the chain block on to. I got warm enough to take off the jacket.

More Logs

2011-02-05T03:25:00.000-08:00

Out on the mountain last thing today looking for more timber to scavenge. The same site as where I got the longer cypress timbers for the roof project, no more cypress of the size I need, but some logs of cedar should fit the bill. I think I will need to lighten them down with the chainsaw before I can haul them out. One is only a little over 4m, but the other I need will be over 5m and about 6x8 inches in section once it is cut back. The slopes are clear of leaves, but the shrubs down in where the logs had fallen were pretty wippy and grabby, I shall take some instruments to clear them back a bit next time I go. Today I only went to measure after striping the logs of their bark

Vanessa Whitburn Bombing Destroys Ambridge

2011-02-04T02:28:00.000-08:00

A little news headline about the Borsetshire crater from earlier in my 2011.

Archers fan? Hmm, perhaps not a die hard, but I had it in my list of regular podcast listens and since the advent of the Internet and listen again on the BBC I had very much enjoyed catching up with characters I had not heard from for nearly 20 years. Mostly familiar from when I had listened in on the wireless when younger and living on the isle of blight. I had noticed over the past few years how some kind of plot pooh was thrust through the bars at me every Christmas in a nasty but obvious twist, so I was slightly on my guard this year.

Living in Japan had isolated me from the world of Ambridge and now it has been taken away forever. The disgusting episode they came up with for their 60th anniversary was a complete turn off and in my universe there is now just a large crater where the mythical village used to stand. After I listened I did a little searching on the web to see if there was any opinion on the subject and it seemed that many long term listeners were also left inwardly staring at a crater. The woman editor of the series is obviously some kind of skilled psychologist, I no longer even think about listening in, I presume she must be the master pooh flinger I had perceived in the wings over the past few years.

Perhaps she might find her calling working on some kind of drug addiction or anti smoking campaign, she clearly has a talent for putting people off things. Her own comments seemed to indicate she was happy that so many people were so upset with her efforts as it meant publicity for her show. Sad that these kind of dictators are allowed to rule even in the opiate world of soap opera. Smug flingers are by far the worst. Some people even commented that they had enjoyed the program, I think reading that was when I realized I was no longer in the same universe of listenerdom.

I hate it when a bad bit of writing appears on the horizon and you can see it coming down on you from miles away while you are strapped to the tracks. At first one hopes one is wrong, but then the horrific unstoppable sadism of the person wielding the typewriter slams into you and if you are lucky you wake up with a start before the train hits, I am afraid I just lay there while it ran over me. Clearly some people enjoy just that very same thing.

I suppose the crater is my way of avoiding the intolerable reality that all except Nigel and those others who escaped through earlier deaths are now doomed to live out their fictional lives under the tyranny of Ms. Whitburn. As for the real world actors, wow, what terrible suffering.

I feel very sorry for the rest of the village who were all killed in the disaster. I think I will miss Jill most. When I get a little older perhaps I will take up bee keeping as a tribute.

Joints

2011-02-03T03:37:00.000-08:00

Not so much the single toss of the caber, but the repeated activity of lifting this piece stayed in the mind as a potential drawing theme. Each trial to mate up the joint in the standing piece with its corresponding new mate on a piece on the stalls outside the home requires a bit of effort, but luckily nothing like the effort involved in mating up each one of the joints on the roof project, this time working on a much more manageable scale, probably a bit bigger than it appears here though. I spend much of the time fondling bits of wood, but still call on the stuff for luck when things seem in doubtful mood.

Allsorts

2011-02-02T03:25:00.000-08:00

Most of the time I don't notice the sculpture messenger in the home, but sometimes the light catches it in a new way and I am tempted to snap it. Today in amongst the washing hovering above the stove it just seemed like an altogether strange object to be in the home anyway, but it takes all sorts doesn't it.
I popped up to the sculpture by the road the other day to see if it was all OK, surprised to find that someone had stolen the 2 100 yen coins from among the donations placed on a rock in front of it. Pretty sure of the culprits, hope they are either in true need or twist their ankles on a regular basis. Judging by the digital camera one of the pair was sporting I would not walk too close to them as the onset of ankle twisting could be imminent.

More logs

2011-02-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

Starting the new month with the first moves on the new project. I borrowed the crane to fetch some logs that will form the framework on the extension I will build. We didn't need the crane to load up, we just rolled the logs on to the truck, but unloading them on to a rack in front of the house would have been difficult without the crane or a serious set of winged helpers. I did the steering while my daughter twiddled the crane levers.

Wobbly

2011-01-29T03:26:00.000-08:00

On the ride up the mountain the other day I spotted an old abandoned cooler and heater air conditioner unit, so I made another trip up today and brought it back to investigate. Over stressing the rack on the bike and charging the battery with the regenerative braking all the way back down the hill.

Counter

2011-01-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

We made a trip to the dam yard for firewood and scrabbled to get to the post office for closing time. I didn't have any business there myself, but didn't want to miss the opportunity for a little rest up in the warm. I took a back seat in the waiting area and tried out the complimentary reading glasses while my daughter took a turn at the counter. Sad to find that I am beginning to need visual assistance for close up work. Amazed at the state of the hands in their winter mode. Not sure if they are more or less human, but certainly primitive.

After sticking the drawing into the cyber pass I wondered whether it would make any visual sense to a noncombatant, not to worry.

The chaps behind the counter at our local branch always seem to get something wrong when we go, they don't appear to have much of a sense of numbers, or indeed a solid grasp of writing, but they have their pensions to look forward to. I can imagine my daughter giving them doubtful glances when they make booboos. I don't spot the writing problems as I too am a little wanting when it comes to literacy. I stayed out of the way in case they got the impression that I was coercing the young lady into making her transactions, but I stay above water and monitor the goings on, so when they announce the wrong numbers I too raise an eyebrow.

For those not up on the Nippon cuture, the vague red symbol at top left denotes a post office, there is a sign on the building and maps bear the same mark at the relevant points.

Pass

2011-01-25T05:32:00.000-08:00

Looking back on the week I remember thinking at the start that it would be one of those that fly by. Sunday was a drinking doo with the local community, Monday a day in the workshop with the two ladies who like to make stuff. Today I was sat in the car for a lot of the time driving to a meeting and then on the way back popping in to discuss the lettering on the post box and measure up for some other items. When I got back home the sun was gone from the valley, but still lighting the slopes, so I stuck the tripod and telescope in the basket on the bike and rode up to the pass (Toge) at the top to see if I could catch a bit of brightness while observing distant objects. Thanks to the electric power it is a pleasant ride for exercise rather than the slog it would be without. I just keep pedaling and I think I share the load about 50:50 with the motor. I got worried for the tripod a couple of times going over bumps and had to turn around to check it wasn't allowing any of its limbs to leave the vehicle.

Punk

2011-01-22T05:22:00.000-08:00

Finally left the vicinity of the workshop on a minor shopping expedition and also had the foresight to make a list. One of the items was the puncture repair kit. It contained a little awl type item that one drives in through the puncture to widen it after coating the thing in rubber cement, the awl is then withdrawn leaving a tube in the hole. Then one stuffs a little pellet of rubber down the tube again coated in the gloop and on pulling the tube out the pellet is left in the hole with about 15mm of it poking out. After leaving for 30mins the excess is trimmed off and the tire pumped up to pressure. It seems to be holding pressure properly and I shall change the wheels over in due course.

Fishtank mailbox

2011-01-21T04:15:00.000-08:00

The fish tank conversion is drawing toward completion, as usual the initial cut and thrust of construction makes it seem like the task will be over quickly, but the details and finishing take more time to do than all the structural elements. The box will be mounted on the wall, so the lid can not protrude backward when opened. That meant making a couple of small angled scissor hinges, even mounting the wood panel on top took a bit of jiggery pokery welding nuts on the steel and bolting the panel up in there from the underside. I am beginning to like the stainless steel and wood combination more than I thought I would. It reminds me of some of the German Art Nouveau items I have seen in pictures. Nevertheless, the door ironwork is black so I will go ahead with the initial more Japanese color plan to blend in with that. I must consult the client as to their choice of signage on the thing, I suppose they might want a flap on it too, but I am happy without that. I do have one of the little flowers I made for the door windows left over, so I may attach that to the center of the lid as a little decoration. We'll see.

Extended

2011-01-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

My other preoccupation at present is putting down some lines to represent walls and whatnot in the project to make a little window extension for a local cafe/bar/restaurant. Basically adding a small room that will eat into the wood decked terrace they have there now. One large window and several smaller fixed windows to consider as well as roofs, floors and whatnot.

Great

2011-01-19T04:03:00.000-08:00

Maybe I have been spending a little too much time thinking how great the grate is, but I am really pleased with the difference it has made to the stove. It does take a full load of wood to get a nice bunch of coals left in the grate for the morning seven or eight hours later. Nevertheless, I end up burning a lot less wood and there is a lot less ash, which I suppose means the wood is burning more completely. One more advantage is that the window stays cleaner, the air vent I put in just before I started this blog a few years ago has made a big difference, but the extra heat has helped too. I still need to find a source for the glass to get a replacement for when the current window eventually breaks. For some reason the American company I used has stopped exporting, busy revitalizing the economy I suppose.

Grate in

2011-01-17T03:28:00.000-08:00

I was happy to find there were hardly any coals left in the stove this morning, that meant the wood had burnt a lot more efficiently. In this picture you can see the grate, the charcoal burns so hot there is very little smoke once the moisture from the green timber has steamed off the wood dropped in from the top. There are a similar set of fingers up the back that hold the timber away from the walls of the stove and allow oxygen to circulate up from under the basket. I will try stuffing the stove before I go to bed and shutting it right down to see what I get left with tomorrow morning. It took a lot less timber to get through the day, so as long as it stays together for a while we should have less wood to collect.

Grate

2011-01-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

The wood stove has been underperforming of late and I observed how poorly air was circulating, so I decided to devote Sunday to making a grate for it. It took me a while casting around in my mind among those I had seen and the materials I have on hand. I remembered seeing one made from a thick sheet of steel with long slits cut into it so that it could be bent to form a basket shape by spreading out the splits. I toyed with duplicating, but instead the materials lent the thing a different shape, I had some old rebar that I latched on to one day long ago when walking the dog, a local bridge was being rebuilt and there were lots of scraps of bar that fell into the river during the work, some of these accompanied us home. I used an old grinding disk as a template for size and made a series of shrinking arcs from the rebar bending them in the flypress. Then I bent a couple of little supports and welded the bars into that. I couldn't resist letting the fire burn down and hoiking out the coals into the scuttle so that I could try out the grate in the evening. It seemed OK, but I tried it in the stove sideways first. Even so it worked very well to get air to the back of the stack.

Stainframe

2011-01-15T02:40:00.000-08:00

Back to metal work for the next few days, I found an old fish storage tank on a trip to the dam stock yard for firewood. It should have sunk being just a stainless steel frame and a galvanized iron tank, but there were a few bits of polystyrene in it and they held it up to be salvaged.
I wasn't sure what I would use it for, but I am always attracted to stainless steel for its permanence. In the end the finishing of the zelkova wood for the small frame and the idea of using the frame of the tank combined in the subconscious and I had the idea of using it for a mail box that I had been worrying about. The frame will form a blackened framework for wood panels with the lacquer finish of the picture frame a bit like traditional Japanese Tansu.
The first job was cutting up the frame into suitably sized sections.

Octogenation

2011-01-14T02:35:00.000-08:00

Another octogenarian in the family, scanning about for something to make quickly as a modest celebratory gift I hit on the small picture frame as a quickie project. My daughter made a little print to go in it and the whole was delivered to Granny a few days late but very welcome apparently.

Punctured

2011-01-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

I changed the tires over on the wagon today. We use studless tires in the winter and a flurry of snow on Tuesday made it feel like time for the moult. I was going to change over the ones on the truck too, but one of them was very low in pressure, so I checked it for witchcraft by dunking it in the pond. I used a long piece of timber to hook under a branch in the tree the frogs lay their eggs in and I was able to crouch down and observe the tire and eventually found a tiny bubbler right by the S in studless. Closer examination on dry land revealed a blunt piece of wire stuck in it. I pulled that out and the tire gave a depressing hiss. I shall have to check if there are any miracle cures for punctures, but perhaps I had better buy two new ones to match them front or back.

Bath bits

2011-01-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

I used the evening pottering to try and make a fitting for connecting the water boiler in the shop to the bath upstairs. This is a long term project with several parts involved. Japanese bathtubs often have two large holes in the end, these carry water directly to a small boiler which is either directly outside or by the bath in the room. Families bathe in the same water, so a quick blast on the boiler between bathers can bring the water up to a happy temperature. The pipes are made of thin stainless steel less than o.5mm and I wanted to weld a fitting onto the end of one of these to feed water into the bath. It took several attempts as it is very easy to mistakenly blast a hole even with the TIG welder. But in the end I did experience that phase where the pain in the ass struggle becomes an enjoyable task in which the parameters for success are well within reach. At first it is very much a case of either success or buggered. The range of movement involved is probably very small, but in that area one has to keep the tiny pools of metal on the two pieces moving and merging without them burning back or blobbing up and spoiling everything.

Progress

2011-01-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

The stove tool hook rack. The upsetting I mentioned yesterday is where the base of the hook buts up against the ribbon of metal that forms the rack to make a sort of flange. The neck of each hook is roughly the dimension of the original bar stock, they were drawn down to a taper and then bent to shape. I drilled holes in the strip and welded the hooks on through those holes from the back so no welding is visible from the front. For the past 15 years or so we have made do with nails stuck into the timber, but I pulled them to attach the rack.
Ideally one should be able to bulk up the metal as easily as one can draw it out, but the difficulty is that one must strike the end of the metal to bulk it up or 'upset' it and even a minor deviation in the hammer blows quickly causes the metal to deform off to one side or another and getting an even fattening is a challenge. Drawing down is a lot easier as the side of the bar is the target and small errors can be corrected because many blows are required to produce a gradual taper.
The drifted hole in the rebar isn't visible here, but the bar is on its hook 2nd from the back.

Upsetting the drifters

2011-01-09T03:37:00.000-08:00

Blacksmithing today. First with a little rack to hold extra hammers and some bending fixtures, then a hook rack for the items I use everyday next to the stove. Drawing down is pretty much under the belt, but upsetting and drifting are still areas where I lack tools. I wanted to upset the bases of the hooks I made and used an air hammer to blast them while held in the vice like they were rivets having their heads flattened. I have one poker made of a length of concrete rebar, and I wanted to drift a hole in that so that it could be hooked up with the other tools, I got there with an old cold chisel, but it made me realize I need to get a few more jigs and fixtures made if I want to make any serious holes in steel.

Sifting

2011-01-08T03:26:00.000-08:00

Listening to Wilbur Smith on the new speakers, although there is the high adventure element in these stories I was more inspired by the period DIY features of the short series that starts with "Birds of Prey" and determined to take my ash sieving to a slightly more advanced level. I sift out the charcoal left in the ash and burn it in the shop stove, but Wilbur was describing the usefulness of ash for soap making and having seen a load of bottles of old cooking oil in the kitchen I thought I would sieve down to a fine ash and make some lye water to combine with that in an attempt at soap making some time.

Circuitry

2011-01-07T03:20:00.000-08:00

At the other end of the day I settle down to pure pottering. I wanted to connect some extra speakers to the little ones that came with a computer. I didn't want to ruin the speakers for use elsewhere, so I scavenged some jack sockets from an old sound board and added a little jack socket in the side of each speaker connected up to the speaker wires inside the box. The 7mm hole required to poke the sockets through was a perfect fit and the things seemed to almost snap into place, but I daubed a glob of hot glue on them inside just to make sure. Then I cut the jack plugs off of a couple of old headphone sets and connected them up to the larger speakers. Seems to work OK.

Morning

2011-01-06T03:14:00.000-08:00

No sooner decided to keep up with posting than I get distracted. I do spend most of my time in the shop doing something, even if it is only pottering, but there are moments when the only activity is behind the eyes.
Those don't happen when it is cold, but sadly there is no increase in productivity, the brain box does need to participate at some level and in past winters when I have had no heat in the workspace I have noticed how hard it is to get started on things. These days I have a first job every day in getting the stove lit and that gets me going.

Quickstep

2011-01-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

More shifting in the shop today, I wanted to free up one of the bench tops to make room for materials for the next job. The biggest obstacle was to move the drill press, I had not moved it for a while, so had to jig with it for a bit to see how much of a strain it was going to be to dance with it over to a little table area I had made for it.

Branded

2011-01-04T05:34:00.000-08:00

Lunchtime picture. Handmade Christmas presents this year. I made a polystyrene shape that represents my daughter's signature and then buried that in sand to cast it in copper. It needed some tidying up, but it turned out OK and today I attached a proper handle onto it so that it could perform its function as a little brand that can be used to mark certain substances. My daughters first use of it was on the hashed potatoes for lunch, I hope it will serve for other things too.

Moving

2011-01-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

One of the episodes during the day involved moving a sculpture that has been outside the house for a while to a new position inside. My daughter gave me a hand, but the thing seemed to have gotten lighter while sheltered from the rain and whatnot, I could almost have managed on my own with a good hand hold. It was interesting to see it in a new space, but still only temporarily waiting for some kind of real home. I think I might hang it outside the window on the veranda where I can see it. It would be like it was swimming past the window.A search for swimmer on the blog should show photos of it.

Sky watching

2011-01-02T03:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the heating in the shop I manage to stay down there quite late these days, but it does leave one a little lacking in vim for the evening scribbling. Following my own advice today and simply making marks until something emerged. Part of my day goes on firewood chopping and these days we keep getting promised snow, so I end up examining the sky when the wonder of the destructive force imposed by the inclined plane begins to pall. So far there have been no big changes in the bird population, a big blob of Brambling usually signals some kind of fall, but the air is heavy with something and the temperature is about right so it won't be long now I suppose.

Digging

2011-01-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

We are all still a little bit squiffy with the dog absent from our daily lives. It was our custom to go for a family walk on new year's day, but without the pup it would have been strange.
Digging has featured on the menu recently, not only to prepare a space for rest, but also in a new bid to complete the workshop area. There is just one corner that has not been dug down to the same level as the rest and I am making some explorations to devise a plan for how it will be.
A happy new year to all.

Mystery

2010-12-28T03:07:00.000-08:00

I have been preoccupied with tidying and an illness in the home.
As you will no doubt have gathered from the text so far I am not of the female persuasion and as such can have no real grasp of whether the moment of conception is perceivable.
Is there a sense of a little burst of energy when the singularity of life lights up within?
I have the same first hand experience as you of course and hold my own life most dear, and yet I retain no sense of a sudden beginning to it. Even if it is as simple as two things coming together and one beginning, there must be a moment when that happens mustn't there?
This morning I was a hands on witness to the opposite. The implosion of energy as the life went out of our beloved pup. I have experienced my fair share of family bereavements and at those times stuff like pondering the nature of life doesn't happen on a conscious level, you get smashed sideways and as the parts join back together you are able to make sense of things in different ways, but it may take you several years to get there, and there is definitely not much mind available at the time for pondering as the grief takes hold and shakes the foundations.
It was tremendously sad to see the healthy animal decline into something akin to the puppy he started out as, helpless in all ways. But there is not the same hammer blow to the system and the organism of self remained whole and able to hold the grief of parting and ponder the nature of life as the loved one departed.
Having had time to consider events I feel very honored by our Bobby's choice to let go of his most treasured possession while I was holding him and his head was on my foot. There is of course an issue of pride and trust involved, the pooh comes out when the body lets go, I imagine the instinct of the leaper is to walk off and take the leap alone. And yet the pup chose a companion at this time of parting. Such a companion must be a benevolent being like that which surrounds us when we begin, a comfortable presence so familiar that it is there and yet not. |In essence what one might call a family or tribe.
My daughter asked that I might make sure that she is there when I make the leap, I hope I am as generous with my moment of parting as the puppy was with his, like all parents I suppose my greatest dread is the grief I must inevitably cause by my irresponsible leaping. When my own mother departed I felt it as I was drinking tea on the other side of the planet, it is my belief that whether together or apart my offspring and I will find ourselves to be so deeply entangled that propinquity will not be an issue when I fall backwards into weightlessness.
Throughout this day of vigil it has been noticeable that the eye sees and the mind takes liberties.
I utilize this mental frolicking when I make sculpture, my mind sees all kinds of shapes in the material and I follow its suggestions.
Once the puppy had left the material world I wanted him to have his privacy, so after we had washed him we wrapped him in a blanket curled up in his normal sleeping pose. He stayed like that throughout the day and each time I glanced in his direction the blanket gave movement to his form as though he were snuffling in there as he had as a puppy after his bath.
He is missed by us all and I hope that we may never forget the joy of having him share our home. "In sickness and in health until death do us part" was never a spoken vow between us, but as surely as my son calls him "brother", the memory of our Bob is bound into our family beyond even that vow's ending.

Buffing

2010-11-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

The work on the roof is pretty much done. I think it needs some kind of plaque with the name of the place and a few other fripperies. I have spent a few hours sprucing up the sculpture. It was in some ways heartening to see how a few of the visitors concentrated their attention on the sculpture rather than the roof over it. With my own attention so much on the structural element the sculpture has taken a back seat for the past few months other than my efforts to get it secured to its newly made foundation. Now that it is sheltered from the elements it should gradually accumulate a more favorable patina as long as I keep paying it a little attention every now and then. It has now been given a stern buffing with some mild sanding and couple of grades of fine scouring pads. Then a liberal couple of coats of preservative with just a hint of reddish colour. Then more buffing with leather gloves and then just the bare hands.
A higher definition image than usual, so perhaps worth clicking on to zoom in.

Scaffold free

2010-11-24T00:38:00.000-08:00

A friend came yesterday afternoon to help remove the scaffolding. I spent the morning today fitting the last two bits of copper and then started setting stones for the steps. Thanks to some digging work by my daughter while I was tapping nails we got quite a long way with the steps before darkness fell.

Copper

2010-11-14T00:23:00.000-08:00

The majority of the surrounding arboreal culture is of cedar, but there is a sprinkling of the deciduous and the tree on the opposite side of the valley is being echoed in the newly attached copper edging of the roof. I still have a few days of work on that and then the shingles to nail on. Within spitting distance of being able to tear down the scaffolding.
Perhaps the maple that lies on this side of the roof will also turn color and I will be in time for some more seasonal imagery with my little creation in a state of moderate completion.

Cap and mitten fund

2010-11-06T01:23:00.000-07:00

I have been busy on the roof project and on gathering in firewood for the coming cold. The double planking is on and a single layer of thick asphalt roofing is in place. I painted the undersides of the first layer of cedar planks with a dilute mix of charcoal ink that makes the rafters and other timber work stand out nicely looking up when under the shelter of the roof.
I needed to see these end planks in place to check that they would do as a design. The two round ended beams seemed like they needed some kind of echo in the main roof so I made a negative circular element there, which looks OK with a little bit of subtle emphasis lent by some edge carving that fades quickly away, these planks around the edges will be scorched and stained to give them a little different flavor to the main structure. I wanted my daughter to see them up as well to have a second opinion and had her bring along the camera in case we were in any doubt and needed to draw onto some photos, so, a rare personal appearance in the usual work garb.
Having these planks back down and in the shop once they are finished up I will be able to add a little more overhang and coving and whatnot to the units and make the covering copper pieces that will form the top edge. The heads of the purlins that poke out down below the planks will also have little copper mittens fitted over them. The circular ends to the beams will just get tidied up a little and maybe a coat of something to stop them checking too much, I prefer them showing without caps or mittens.
The other day I placed the spare foundation stone at the foot of the sculpture where it will support a little fixed vase of some sort for floral offerings. Someone had place a 100yen coin on the rock, so the suggestions that I should put a collection box somewhere seem to have been well founded and the place already has sufficient shrine like presence to inspire the devotee.

Days of commemoration

2010-10-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

So, this is it, so far.
My extended leave of absence has been fairly well spent. First of all scrabbling around in the mud to dig a foundation trench for the sculpture that will be sheltered under the roof. Then on Sunday the 17th spending a day with bags of ready mixed cement and gravel to mix and pour concrete into a T shaped shuttering filled with a network of reinforcing bars. While the concrete was curing I made some metal brackets to hold the sculpture on the old mine drill shafts that were driven into the ground to hold it up. On the 23rd my daughter manned the crane controls while I chipped off bits of wood and concrete to mate the sculpture with its base. This was a timely day for ceremony as it marked the 25th anniversary of my marriage to Mrs P.
After more final woodworking and going over all the timbers with the spokeshave to clean them up and remove machine marks I painted on a pale stain/preservative and was ready for the big day on Monday. Rain was forecast, so I left it a day and used that day to do a bit more staining and lift all the timber onto the truck for the big day on Tuesday. I had asked two friends to come along and help out. Sadly the almost volunteer nature of this project meant the best I could do was to offer them a day of work in exchange, but that is the nature of the friend ship. I don't think it would have been possible for the erection to have gone much better. All the measuring and surveying worked out right and the pillars and beams all went up nicely one by one. The helpers seemed genuinely satisfied to be part of the task, which was most appropriate as days like this when parts crafted over several months come together are some of the sweetest.
Even now with all the hobbling of scaffolding there is a very tranquil sense of power about the structure when one is in its vicinity. I hope that will only be gently refined as I work on completing it and then the essential scaffolding can be drawn away. I suppose I could put on the architect hat as I stand back to admire the work and pretend that I fitted in to the category, but certain qualifications are requisite and I don't feel that I was ever suited to sitting exams.
I feel rather vindicated in a belief that architecture without architects does have a place in the world as long as the health and safety men keep clear. It has been a long haul since I started gathering timber back at the beginning of July, but I think I have earned my fodder.
I believe this 26th day of October marks the end of my brother's 50th year on the planet and I can not think of a better tribute on such a day than threading a structure like this into the fabric of the universe.

Arcs

2010-10-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

Falling behind. I have been busy at the job site down the road for the past couple of weeks. A simple set of tasks cladding walls with cedar planks and building a few sets of shelves as well as organizing a little storage area with a weird shape. At the end of last week we had some torrential rain that drew attention to some problems with the roof of the area I was working on, so another job was added to the itinerary. Since then the weather has been poor, so I have redirected back to the larger roof project as I can pop in and out of the house to work under my flysheet as the weather clears or worsens. Feeling a little bit like Noah working among these large timbers. The three timbers spanning the roof are now jointed in giving the catamaran shape here. I have cut the series of 44 curved rafter parts for the roof. The ridge pole was another area completed. I suppose the curvy shapes are part of the reason for the feeling of kinship with the biblical boat builder, the structure of a boat hull would be similar, but inverted of course. The fairly incessant rain is the other major factor.
In the center there is a set of four timbers that will support the purlins and the ridge along with two similar sets at either end. I wanted to see that in place to decide whether to add any decorative features to the end parts. I sense that this need to see things in place is amateurish, but I am always ready to respond to what I have made and playing with ones food can be a source of inspiration. I did find it too much of a waste to classify some of the arc shaped offcuts from the rafters as firewood, but so far in playing with them I can not tell what it is my subconscious wants to use them for.
I found a source for the asphalt shingles I wanted for the roof. That ended up being in Hokkaido. It was cheaper to buy from there than to order from a separate source a couple of prefectures away. The shingles themselves were unfortunately shipped in all the way from America. A far cry from Sammy's experiences on the farm with food leaving a short trail of tiny carbon footprints.

Rafter plan

2010-09-11T02:05:00.000-07:00

This is my set up at the work bench to determine the curve for the roof rafters. I don't have a substitute for the ridge of the roof but the center line should give a 10:10 angle of slope just at the apex. There are two little stubs to represent the purlins with their 4:10 rebates to house the rafters. Obviously the other side is just a mirror of this, so all parts are the same. Lots of bandsawing. I wanted to design the curve to ensure that I could cut the rafters from lengths of 2x4 without too much wastage. Each rafter will also have a little birds mouth type cut at the end to house an edging board, the whole lot will be clad in either two layers of boards or equivalent thickness of material. There is a simple scarf joint where the two sections cross the upper purlin.
There are two more beam constructions like this, but the upper short beams on the other two will be a lot simpler. I didn't have a square piece for the center, so I made a wider item into the curvy shape here. I will carve into that with the sander and whatnot, so it will be an item of interest for those who look up as they pass under the gateway roof.
I used the green masking tape on the rafter to give a clean line for my eye as there were a lot of pen scribbles from unsatisfactory lines. The tape now marks these as the originals that I can copy on to all the others. 22 of each should be in the bag before the last week of the month..

Pin pillow

2010-09-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

I could see that the explanation might need a little more detail. This is the highest rock at the north east corner of my site. The level boards are not oriented to form a square, but the batten running left to right is square with the front two stones with its nearest edge positioned directly above the pin in the corresponding corner stone. I made a little circle of clay on the top of each stone and then tipped some molten lead in to give the little pillow slab with the anchor bolt popping up on the middle like a big drawing pin. The bolt will not act as such, it will just stop the pillar sliding off of its rock and center it on the pillow slab. The lead is molten for only a few moments, but long enough to find its level and solidify into a clean level slab.

Week on site

2010-09-10T03:43:00.000-07:00

So, if I think back I have spent the week doing something, but when I look at the photo it doesn't seem like much. I started out back on Saturday borrowing the crane to fetch the rocks, that took most of the morning and I didn't have the energy to operate on anything else in the afternoon. On Sunday I drilled holes in the rocks to accept anchor bolts. I was going to just slot pins into them, but I realized that if I used anchors I could attach an eye nut to the threaded anchor and use that to lift the rocks into position. That worked well, but I had to weld a 16mm nut onto the 12mm eye bolt I had. The rock tilted over on the left is a spare that I will use for something else. Some people were in the habit of leaving little flower offerings by the sculpture, so perhaps a stand for some kind of vase.
After doing some rough positioning of the four pillar base rocks I discovered that one of the cedar trees would have to go, so I got permission from the land owner and chopped that down. I had to attach a chain block to it and apply some strain to pull it up the slope toward the tree with the ladder stood against it on the left. Chain blocks are not the best tool for a horizontal pull, but it worked OK. Tidying up the tree was a task I never got on to as my chainsaw decided to cease operations as soon as the tree hit the ground. I asked a neighbor to give me a hand with it the following day and he did his bit. I also had help the next day removing the bulk of the stump to position the final rock up at the top right.
The whole space frame construction here is to help me find the centers of the pillar bases. On the left and right are two sets of level boards. The extreme difference in height due to the slope meant having two levels marked out. The level on the right is a meter above the left. You can just see one tiny section of board on the right to correspond to the level on the left, which has a yellow line strung across. This line passes through the centers (or near enough) of the pins in the two front pillar rocks. Today I did my last measurement up to level to calculate the lengths of the pillars. I poured a thin slab of lead on each of the rocks to give the pillars a nice level cushion to sit on. This will also raise the outer edges of the pillar off of the rock and hopefully give them a little longer life along with the addition of copper bootees.
I took the sculpture off the site for a few days while doing all that and then popped it back to sit on some old stone drills about my shoulder height that I drove into the ground. It is still a bit wobbly, so I must devise a plan to reinforce these and provide a nice firm stand for the piece. Next week I am on to a different project nearby as a break from this. Then I will go back to working on the actual roof timber for about a week and should be on schedule to erect something on the site before the end of the month.

Harold

2010-09-03T01:59:00.000-07:00

Another of those joinery weeks. This is the second of six joints of this type that I must make to complete the framework of the gateway.. They will tie in three beams that run front to back across the span of the roof. One of these is visible down the end. I have this pair of beams tied to the stalls aligned with their level lines true. This allows me to use a spirit level to check the planes of the joint. I think this would be an 'Ari-otoshi' among the locals. Arry who, you may ask, but it is simply a kind of drop in dovetail. The bottom of the beam is curved so that final trimming adjustment to the recess will be cut when I have the thing dropped in to draw round the beam and mate it up.
It has been quite a solid week on the roofery with lots of fiddling about with offcuts of wood to make a mock up of the rafters as templates for the cutting out I need to do on them to make them curved. Lots to do on the bandsaw when the time comes.
Having decided on the curve I am now ready to change tasks and fetch the rocks that the pillars will sit on as a foundation. I felt like I had to keep the designer hat on until I had that decision made, then I switched back to the carpenter hat for the rest of the week and will shortly turn that inside out to form the stone mason chapeau and start work on the rocks. Somehow the carpenter hat and the stonemason hat are a lot easier to swap between than the designer beret.
It was actually a lucky coincidence that helped me make the decisions on the roof design, my daughter spotted a roof truss design while on a visit to an unrelated architectural beauty. She made a sketch of what had caught her eye and that made change my plans for the better I hope.
Unfortunately I forgot all about picture taking during the mock up procedure, so pictures of the roof truss will have to wait until that is back up together next week.
The project does feel like some kind of juggling act at the moment and I would rather not have to change hats while the balls are in the air, so I need to make decisions before I can move on to some other element. The decision making on the rafters has convinced me that I will have to ask to cut down one of the cedar trees that is enjoying a little too much propinquity. I am hoping this will be OK, but if not I will just have to make the overhang of the roof at the back very truncated to compensate.
I left sharpening the chisels a little too long, but I have certainly felt the difference working with them since I did, I must remember not to be so lax in the future.

Scarf

2010-08-27T01:13:00.000-07:00

The roof project requires a few timbers longer than I have on hand, so I have to make four scarf joints like this one.
These are about the most complex joints I get into. The end on the left shows how a little nose of timber grips into a recess in the corresponding part. The key to the joint is the diagonal edge to the two flats of the scarf surfaces. The joint starts off slack, but as you drive the two sides together the diagonal center forces the two noses into the mating part and makes for a very tight bond. Set squares in japan are commonly 15mm wide, so the width of the square can be used to draw the nose and recess as well as the two mating flats of the scarf.
The lower picture shows the joint when driven home as well as a full scale drawing I did to plan it out for this size of timber. These pieces will hold up the rafters and I will aim to get the joints between two rafters. The joint can be oriented either way I think, but if you want to assemble it on site orient it like this so that it can be driven in on top of any tenons the timber mates with. This is also a bit of a show off if the roof timbers are visible from below. In the upper picture the piece on the right would have to be laid first, then the left part driven home on top of it. I have three mortises to cut in this piece now, then I will cut off the excess timber and use that for struts in the roof.

Bob a Job

2010-08-22T01:46:00.000-07:00

Something of an invasion of territory. I took a week off from the roof project. On monday I went and fetched more cypress logs from the dam stockyard and spent the rest of the week up to Friday preparing these and other timbers for a project to remove an obstructive beam from my wife's work area. The cut off ends of the beam are visible at left and right here about half way up the new pillars. To enter the space one used to have to limbo under the beam, the urge to duck still overcomes us at the portal, but there is now no need to bow on entry. I timed the construction for a three day spell in which the office would be empty and just managed to get everything back in rough order ready for a reorganization of the chaos with the new layout. This is the area that featured back in October 2006. Actually the drawing from the 19th shows me sitting on the now defunct beam to measure up for the hole to fit the velux window in the roof here.

Center yourself

2010-08-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

Trying to explain things again. The sketch is of the item in the photo (resting on its front in the photo). Scale wise, once again the tenons are 15cm wide, so measure up from there.
As a younger chap most of my woodworking efforts were add ons to existing structures. Working in this way one becomes accustomed to measure from surfaces so that the things being made will fit with what is already there. This is a nightmare when working on a house, as all the timber is of different dimension, you need to switch your brain around to work out from planes that run through the center of all the timbers.
Making a structure of an irregular nature requires this centered approach. I have written a bit about the center lines on all the work pieces in my structure. The most difficult joints are those at the head of the pillars where they mate into the shape of the rounded underside of the top beam. Because I don't yet have a fixed height for all the pillars I can let that remain unknown and simply push the pillar into the beam as far as I need to, cutting it to the correct contour and leaving the tenon as true as possible. When I know the floor level at the center of the pillar I will measure from the level line on the beam to cut the pillar to length. Well actually I will measure from the center of the tenon that passes right through the pillar as that is 60cm from the level line on the beam. That marker means I don't have to have the beam on the pillar when I measure. If I had to make a similar joint at the other end I would have to make a measurement from the center to figure out how much to chop back and hope not to mess up the joint and cut off too much. A more difficult proposition.
This is why I opted for the other type of joint here, the actual Japanese gateway structures this is based on only have a plank that passes right through both beams, I wanted something more solid, but with the same through tenon. Here the beam has a square shoulder on the tenon that is housed in a recess in the pillar. This is a more feasible solution where the width between the two pillars is decided. I measure out from the center where it is marked A on the right hand sketchbook page, then I subtract that amount from the width so that I know where to cut the shoulder on the through tenon. This distance, something like 6cm in this case (which means the squared pillar I need to keep in mind while working is 12cm square in section) tells me how deep to cut the recess in the pillar to house the end of the beam. The photo and drawing are of the south west corner of my structure, so there is a recess cut in the pillar to house the corresponding beam that will connect to the north west corner pillar.
The truck tie down ratchet mechanism with red belt (resting on the through tenon beam) was very useful to tug on the beam and pull the tenon home as I planed off scraps of material here and there. Applying tension with that and then nudging with some taps from a maul I made ages ago (Just checked, that was made on September 22 2007, a more regular posterson back then).

Topsy

2010-08-03T03:59:00.000-07:00

Topsy turvy photo of my progress so far. The back frame for the roof structure is now all jointed up and this trial fit seemed OK to me. I did the back first more by chance than anything, but it is sometimes a good idea as ones technique improves, so by the time the front is ready to be done the results are more satisfactory. In terms of perspective, this view point would mean one would be sitting up in a tree or hovering 50 foot up in the air looking down on the back of the structure I have in mind. There will be one more timber in the mix where the red tie down strap is pulling the beams together, more of a short plank than a post, possibly with some carved characters on. The mortises are there ready for it, as are those on the underside of the pillars to accommodate the ends of those two timbers furthest away on the rack (with flattened surfaces upermost) that will form beams joining the back to the front.

On the rack

2010-07-31T02:01:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I found this machine abandoned by the roadside with a few other odds and ends. Originally it had a kind of clamp base on it which was designed to grip the timber with pressure applied by a foot as one pushed the thing down with both hands. It cuts a slot in timber using four short chainsaw blades that are bonded together and run around a short stubby bar.For this project I completely removed all the clamp parts and screwed the base plate of the machine onto a scrap of 1" plywood wide enough to pass some pony clamps through to a corresponding piece underneath while still allowing the machine to straddle the largest timber I had on the rack.
Down at the end of the timber that has the machine clamped on you can see a short brownish batten standing fairly upright. That is screwed to the end of the timber with one edge along the pencil line that forms the vertical arm of the center line cross. I sight down to that aligning it with the depth gauge bar on the machine (perpendicular to the base plate) to ensure that the machine is oriented correctly on the timber. The flat area on the timber is very small, so it is possible to tilt the machine a little left or right using the pony clamps to align it.
One could use a spirit level on the base of the machine to perform the alignment, but there is a risk of the timber rolling out of alignment between cuts, so the batten is a better option here.
I have also made two marks on either end of the base plate that mark the point where the center line on the timber should be when the teeth of the chain are cutting the outside edge of the mortise. The chain is not wide enough to cut the width of the mortise in one go, hence the need for two lines, one for the left side and one for the right. I need to cut six times for each mortise and then chisel out a wall of timber left between the slots to complete the hole.
I have also made marks that indicate where the machine needs to be to cut the ends of the slots correctly.

Explanatorium

2010-07-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

In the end I used a thin plywood sheet to check the joint for squareness at the final fit for the junction between these two timbers. The cross marks on the ends of some ot the timbers are visible and I have labeled two of the ink lines on this picture.
After marking the end of the pillar again I hammered this joint apart one more time and made a few more trimming cuts to adjust it and then put it back together one more time.

Offering

2010-07-25T02:57:00.000-07:00

I spent the morning out among the logs and just got to the point where I was able to offer up another tenon to its home mortise. Basically the bottom corner of the big log C shape from the viewpoint here standing up on the road above the yard area.
If you zoom in, you can get an idea of scale, there is a mortise hole in the beam lying under the back of the C, that hole is 150x45mm.
The whole procedure is a bit biblical, and I am working very close to the limits of what I can manhandle single handed without winches or anything. Need to keep the brains focused on the job at hand to avoid dropping something off of the rack.
So far it is proving doable within the space and I think I will be able to manage all the joint cutting in this way. Extending the rack to accommodate all the timber has meant that I get a good workout skipping up over it every time I need to go from one end of a piece to the other, like spending the day on the parallel bars.
The main point with big frames constructed with irregular timber is to provide oneself with reference lines on the timber, these lines represent the lines where planes through the timber push out through its surface. Usually planes through the centers or level planes. Each of the pillars has four longitudinal ink lines on it that correspond to planes crossing through the center. As long as the timber is stable on its rack you can use a spirit level and draw a cross of vertical and horizontal lines on each end that passes through the center, then snap an ink or chalk line between the tips of the crosses on the ends right along the timber. These lines allow me to make the marks to cut the vertical tenons and will later give me the centers for other mortises and tenons. The beams have lines along their "sides" that indicate a level plane through them, not usually on center and a vertical plane through the center. The level plane lines will allow me to use a big set square or three four five measurement to check the beams and pillars for squareness while they are lying on the rack and also cut the pillar bases to length when I have put in the four big rocks that they will stand on.

Ireisai

2010-07-24T06:49:00.001-07:00

The day came around again when I do my bamboo bending volunteer job. Oddly this is a memorial to the north Koreans, South Koreans, Chinese and Japanese people who died or were killed during the construction work on the local dam from 1938-1947. On returning home I found that the north Koreans have been busy threatening us with nuclear deterrents. All of that is rather thrown into shadow by the torrential rain and dramatic lightning strikes pummeling the mountains around us, we have had thunder every evening for the past three days, so we were due for something to snap.
The two people here are a friend and his son, they did the bit in the middle and I had a few other people helping me out with the bendy bit at the back, they give an idea of the scale, they are nearly done with their bit and ready to tidy up the stage for the lighting engineers to move in.

Shelter

2010-07-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

A few days of heightened activity in the summer heat. I noticed some more logs on one of the slopes we drive by to get to the main road and after a bit of telephone chasing I got permission to cart them off. Friday I stripped the ones I wanted of their bark so that they would slide better and pushed them down the slope to where I could reach them with the crane. Saturday morning I went to fetch the crane and then got my daughter to operate the controls while I attached slings and guided the logs hither and thither. I had to extend the work rack to hold the new additions and also added a tarpaulin roof to keep the worst of the sun off while I work on them. I think I have all I need for the major timbers and if I need any more I should be able to make do with the little truck to pick some up from the yard by the dam.
This picture is taken from up on the roof looking northwest toward the road. The log at the back is about 4200mm, so 13 foot six or so.

Pigs

2010-07-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

A day of filling in as I sought permission to fetch more free timber from its mountain lair. I have been having trouble with the old weed whacker and decided to bite the bullet and buy a new one. The afternoon saw me making a mark in the jungle surrounding the home. As I sat finishing my tea in the early evening I heard the tell tale snorts of boar down in the river and went down the road to see if I could snap one. By the time I got in position one of the youngsters was heading back up toward our house in one of the areas I had stripped of taller undergrowth. I managed to get a snap of him as he traversed nomansland. Still has a hint of the stripes on his back from his younger days.

Deliverance

2010-07-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

The trip to the stockyard was something of an ordeal. We had torrential rain yesterday and that had softened up the ground, so despite my walking the course the truck got bogged down. We spent about an hour in the blazing sun trying to back out or go forwards, but lunch time found us only about six feet away from our original position. When we arrived a group of workmen were delivering equipment to cut down some trees down by the slipway from the dam. Seeing us stuck in the mud when they came up for lunch they offered to pull us out and we happily took them up on the offer. I in turn offered them a little tea money for their trouble, but they claimed it was all in the course of a day's work and were happy to help out fellow mountain folk.
We then went for lunch ourselves and came back with renewed vigor. The road way was about ten meters down a slope from the stack of logs, so I manhandled the logs over to the slope and we used the crane to lift them into the truck from there. The delivery at home was simple enough lowering each onto the temporary rack. There is one extra log stood up against the back wall, but these are the fruits of our labor the longer ones are just over 3 meters, so they should be fine for my pillars and whatnot once they have been stripped of their bark and trimmed up a bit for jointing. The one in front is on its way. The temporary rack is doing OK, but it could do with a few more diagonal braces next time the rain stops.

Plans

2010-07-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

My next project is to construct a roof for a wood carving made several years ago. This is showing signs of exposure, so a timely reprieve from the rigors of nature. My original plan was only to put a roof over the piece but now I have decided to make it more of a traditional gate that marks the path up to the "waterfalls" that are the foundation for the legend the sculpture loosely depicts. The sketch onto a printout gives an idea of where my thoughts are going. The structure below will support some cypress logs I hope to acquire tomorrow. They still have their bark on, so they will need a lot of work to get them in shape to form the pillars of the gate. I should be able to roll them over each other on this structure and joint them up here as well. I aim to keep them fairly natural, but I may shape the bases a little. They don't yet know what they are in for, happily sleeping out in the torrential rain at the dam yard for driftwood gradually decaying into the earth, little did they know that the casual visitor of yesterday would be back to pull them out of the carbon cycle for some years and put them to work. Hope all goes well with their retrieval tomorrow.

Shavers of spokes

2010-07-03T03:06:00.000-07:00

The new old spokester is on the left. The one I bought new several years ago is on the right. I thought the two would be similar and I could give away the recent acquisition, but on trying the thing out after a major honing session it proves to have such different characteristics that I must hold on to it. I am very tempted to try building a few of my own to get into the areas neither can reach. Today's project was the seat for the stool. I cannibalized a horrible office chair for the pneumatic riser and made the new wheeled legs ages ago as a diversion from those welded door windows. The stool is a useful height for working at the rather high counters and workbench.

Simple squiff

2010-07-02T03:01:00.000-07:00

Looking around for unfinished stuff the past couple of days, yesterday I came across a roughed out tray that was started as a retirement gift for one of the teachers who played a part in the primary school education of my kids. 35x61x5cm in size, I finished off hollowing out the shape and decorating the edges with squiffy bits. I found the spokeshave I bought in a second hand tool place in clifton very useful. More on him tomorrow.

Devons

2010-06-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

Beginning to run out of time on my trip, but my brother kindly took us on a daytrip down to devon to visit a friend of his who lives in a very old house down there near the transition town of Totnes. We took a tour of his home and then went on a walk up the river and over the tops back for a well deserved beer in a tea shop.
I took a very swift dip in the river but my fellow walkers showed more reserve.
Very beautiful river with water darkened by the peat up on top the moors.

Sunny cliffs

2010-06-11T02:06:00.000-07:00

Last day in Yorkshire and the sun came out. This is the view out along the headland. Zooming in with binoculars and telescopes the cliffs are swarming with seabirds perpetuating their own species. The day ended with a mammoth drive down the east of the country and into Norfolk to stay with a friend there. Another major thankyou to my brother and his partner for that.

Moors dash back

2010-06-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

The weather was so bad at the cliffs that we abandoned them and went off north to the moors. Windy, but no fog. There was a little stream train running through one of the bogs we visited, so that made a change of viewing for the binoculars. As the weather cleared we changed plan again and dashed back to the cliffs and the same camp site. The wind was fierce, but this made for great views of even the clumsiest little puffins fighting in the wind for a bit of evening exercise. I had a go on a better camera and snapped some of this puffin demonstrating his ability to fly with out wings, even a penguin could have had fun jumping off the cliffs here. This is a composite of two shots.

Bempton

2010-06-09T04:25:00.000-07:00

Our first day up at Flamborough head yesterday was mainly driving, we went to the Bempton cliffs RSPB center and pottered along to the cliffs, but it was very foggy, so difficult to see what the place was like. We spent quite a while searching for a camp site. OK for facilities, but there was some kind of machine noise booming away all night. Found a better site today called Wold Farm. A short walk to the cliffs and great views of Gannets etc, despite continued mist. This is a crop from a picture on my little compact digital camera. Birds only feet away hovering here and there atop the cliffs.

Up sticks

2010-06-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

The main reason for setting the dates of the trip was to attend the country on the paternal birthday. I had no present prepared for the event, but my wife has been using a set of Nordic walking sticks recently and I thought that something similar might encourage pops to take a constitutional once in a while. The girl in the shop was very helpful and we settled on a pair of the same make as the ones in Japan. Leki. I handed them over the day before the anniversary of the blessed event and Dad got on fine with them. I was impressed by the difference in his locomotion when accompanied by the items in question. He has said that he takes a morning walk about three times a week now. That should see him through a few more birthdays now that he has crossed the 80th parallel. If one were a quibbler one might say he is carrying a few more pounds than necessary, a lighter load might make the road onward easier to travel.

Long day

2010-05-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

Following the day back around the planet on the trip to "home". This is Sado island the last bit of Japan we flew over. |It was a beautiful day to fly clear almost all the way over siberia. The cloud took hold of the homeland. This was held in a protective swaddle of lambs wool full of delicate silky ripples. The day came to an end as I landed but as we crossed the country the cloud cleared with heat mist below the breaking surface making the clouds appear to be the melting snowy surface of a glacier holding the country frozen below. Through the ice the patterns of fields and little swirls of cityscape fresh from the planners computer aided pencil. It is a subtle culture shock when home is a foreign country.

Frogzen

2010-05-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

This is the season when the tree frogs come into the garden. Only one frothy blob of eggs in the tree so far. I quite like trying to spot the little chaps when they are all quiet in the afternoon. Even when they are giving hints by chirping it is sometimes difficult to see them. That moment when the peripheral vision detects something and steers the eye to it then the brain clicks it into being as a frog is most enjoyable. Not quite as much fun in a picture or photograph, but for the record here is todays problem scene. Guaranteed to contain one crunchy frog for your perusal. Click to zoom in and then click again to zoom in more, or whatever your browser allows. This frog was captured in a particularly zen mode with his limbs nicely ordered in contemplation, for my part I am afraid I was just strolling about wearing the usual overalls.

Take a number

2010-05-26T01:49:00.000-07:00

I am due to travel back to England next week and in order to get back into Japan without hindrance upon my return like all the other aliens I must have a re-entry permit in my passport. Acquiring this means traveling into the city and visiting one of those hives of bureaucracy with stained floors and ranks of forms and completion examples. The recent webby innovations meant that I was able to download and print out my form the day before, so with the completed paperwork in hand I headed straight for the number dispenser and grabbed one. Observing the general flow I then went and stood in line for advice at one of the manned stations along the border between us and the system.

On these occasions I aim to retain my sense of civil humanity despite the bland decor and overcooked lack of oxygenation. Outward appearances aside I hope I am exemplary in internal gentlemanliness. This seemed to be the attitude of the chaps behind the counter also, businesslike and polite despite an incredibly tedious job issuing paperwork to us lot. No doubt the well tended pension gleams like a prize marrow in the greenhouse of the mind.

Post advice, having handed over all my proofs of identity for perusal I joined the ranks of sea anemones awaiting results and settled in for a session of people watching. The level of the seats put me down among the bored preschoolers in attendance.

There was one little motif where a couple of young mothers possibly of Philippine origin were spending ages filling out a batch of forms standing at one of the utilitarian desks prepared for the purpose. Their youngest was bawling while the elder kid amused himself in a prone position examining the quality of stitching on the shoes of a fellow form filler. The youngest got picked up and the other went to hug his mothers leg. Then a complete stranger of a young kid came up behind him in a kind of comforting way as the shoe expert had begun to whine. The new chap divided his efforts, hugging the kid and patting his head to comfort and soothe while at the same time occasionally giving him a stiff little kick in the ankles. An odd metaphor for the postmodern world, something of the catholic persuasion perhaps. The mother put her hand down absentmindedly to comfort her little chap and did a swift double take when she found this little excrescence attached to her offspring. I suspect her subconscious "mother radar" had alerted her and she shooed the kid away despite the lack of evidential proof of his malfeasance. My number chitty turned out to be completely irrelevant as it was marked 64 and the machine was on 39 when I got the call to grace. Come to think of it the issuing machine was on 42, so I don't know how I ended up with 64. Perhaps some other little fellow had been amusing himself by neatly inserting discarded numbers from the day before. A very inventive way of confusing the clientèle.

Done

2010-05-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

After another full three days on the finishing work the door was just about done yesterday evening, but a last minute incident broke one of the small panes at the foot. Just a result of compound fatigue and thankfully not a big problem. I went back again this afternoon to do some final finishing and replace that. I also took away the old door and all the other associated gubbins in the vicinity. I borrowed Sammy's old camera for its extra pixels, but I couldn't get a wide enough angle to give a better idea of the interior ambiance. I think I must invest in a better camera at some point.

These kind of doors need to go through the annual cycle before they can be left to their own devices. There will probably be some adjusting to do in the coming year. For now all the locks and latches work OK, so I am done. In the past I have used iron hinges, but the stainless steel ones I used this time made it possible to bend the hinges in a vice to give some level of adjustment while not having to worry about cracking off the finish and exposing the metal to the elements.

New Doors

2010-05-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

A very long day ripping out the old door and inserting my own effort in its place. All went fairly easily thanks to the help from the client with general odds and ends. We managed to get this far as it got round to nine pm. Flash is horrible, but even so it gives an idea of progress. The first time for me to see the thing all up together. More finish work tomorrow attaching fascia and laying tiles as a sill in under the doors. The clients seemed really happy, and looking forward to a more finished exterior tomorrow. Another full day I think with lots of fiddly edges to handle.

Fitting

2010-05-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

A busy day fiddling with various door parts in the morning as well as applying some clear finish to the sign. I loaded up all the wooden door parts and delivered them to the site on the way to fit the nameplate. It looked OK.

Back on the ceiling

2010-05-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Today applying finish to the pieces scorched yesterday and carving into the centers of those corner blocks. The window with the blue glass is standing up looking like a ladder at bottom right. My toes visible again in the artisan sandals. The seven square spaces at the top of the frame now have stainless steel insect mesh fitted in them and I have devised a methodology for applying the fascia on the inside face where it would be necessary to remove it to allow access to the screws in the window hinges if that needed to be removed. One sticky area that was causing me vexation.

Meanwhile the numbers of disenfranchised has extended beyond myself to those who got shut out of the polling booths. I have no vote, but I do have an opinion. The conservative candidate has no sense of self. I think he has modeled himself on Mr Blair and is also trying to please any person standing within six feet of him. Having been in that mode for so many months I think he may be stuck there. It is a shame as it seems that we will be seeing a lot more of him being tortured in this way. I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time becoming prime minister. An interesting election that has done more than the American rating agencies to devalue the country and looks like it will continue to do so for a while longer.

I am disappointed that the swing to something different never happened, even a few minutes on YouTube was sufficient to convince me that if I had a vote it would have been orange given the alternatives. Too late now, but a clip entitled Cameron exposed, was particularly poignant.

The election of at least one Green party member and the lack of any sizeable BNP incursion were pleasing. Also interesting to see all the clips of 1974, and the last precariously balanced parliament. I look forward to seeing how these events will have changed the country when I visit in June.

Tiny steps

2010-05-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

The catchup on the end of last week will have to wait. I am hitting a wall of many little jobs that need to be done before I can fill this space of 2300mm by 1700mm. The progress continues and this is the view from the ceiling yesterday. Needing to make a decision about the little corner blocks and hoping this view will help. Actually, scorching all the timber that is lighter in color today and then wire brushing. Also engaged in some serious skype activity trying to get Sammy renewed access to his credit card, which had been shut down by visa. All kinds of stages involved, but one of the most useful features of skype was getting Sammy to log on as me so that he could use Skype credits to call Tokyo and get the details of what he needed to do. We then did all that and mailed him to get him to call them again and ask for them to kindly allow him the privilege of using his own money. We also had a little session of talking on the video phone style communication.

Wet and Dry

2010-04-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

I washed the thing with vinegar and applied a sparse coating of salt. I left it overnight in a covered plastic box with some of my liquid byproduct in the bottom. The color is not really adhering to the surface, so I cannot guarantee permanence. I suspect a solid wiping after rain would remove most of it, but if left untouched it should gradually develop its own more natural patina.

The snotty side for reference below. The brass is about 3mm thick I think. Cut out at center to allow for the backset area with lettering. The nuts are brazed on and will be bolted from the inside of three small C shaped brackets with holes on the front and back arms of the C. The opposite arm of the C will be screwed into the block wall. I think I had better have a practice session at this operation, but no need to do it in the NASA water tank or anything. I shall try to use gravity to my advantage. I will end the week tomorrow with a photo of the tools used and the brackets.

Twiddly

2010-04-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

Another session of taping and annealing along with assorted other activities got me here. The copper is now beaten on to a brass backing so I hope this will do. Next I must try and get some color onto it.

Bing

2010-04-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

A little warekomi job. Something up with my chemical balance after doing this, so the best I can do is give the literal image of something splitting and forcing its way in. A small job, not so painful in this case, that is undertaken while another is still ongoing. The copper plate is 0.5mm thick and 360mm wide. Another name plate for a new home, hopefully for the family named or I have a lot of reworking to do. Lots of people locally with this family name, so I guess I could flog the thing if not. A very nice couple actually, who I had the pleasure of meeting back on the 10th.

The thing with beating is to ensure plenty of annealing. Also don't get the idea of making wooden forms and beating the shape into them. It is a waste of time I tried it years ago and it is easier to just work away with little mandrels (also a type of primate, but I think it is the word I want) of various shapes driven with a little hammer. What does work is a nice block of lead and on occasion lead melted into the copper shape to back it up for flattening off and whatnot.

A new and useful trick for me was to have the letters marked on the front and back of the sheet for the first shaping. I made a center line vertically on both sides, then transposed a horizontal base line for the letters, too. I drew over the letters on a piece of normal copy paper with a felt pen that transfered right through the sheet. This scrap of paper about the size of the name had a corresponding set of lines on it so that I could register it properly front and back. The felt pen having passed through the paper it was easy to get the mirror version for the tracing on the back. Simple carbon paper tracing gives sufficient detail. This allowed me to strike in the letters from the back and then turn over and refine their outlines from the front as well as knock in the negative space for the Os and As etc. The first annealing removes all the pen and carbon marks, so you want to get a good sense of the characters before you heat and dip.

Still a way to go, but under the principal (if that is the one I want, not the chap with the cane and skeletal facial features) that the first step is the hardest we are more than halfway up the hill I am sure.

I took the precaution of experimenting with TIG welding this thickness of copper and the results were tolerable, so I may be able to save a booboo (like a big hole knocked through a letter) if I make one.

I didn't think I would like the thin sheet on its own, but now it has letters in I quite like the honest thinitude, just rounding over the edge might be sufficient rather than making it into a solid looking plaque. We'll see.

The only slight drawback to the project has been the necessity to collect certain bodily fluids in order to obtain the green patina so popular with copper objects. Raised eyebrows among the womenfolk as they pass by one of those drink bottles half filled with a clear apple juice type substance standing at the door to remind me of my duty when the urge to leave the shop springs on me.

"Ah the humanity", to quote the writers of Chandler Bing.

Comparisons

2010-04-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

I am getting more use out of my monkey boots as the rain continues. The above represents most of my progress for the week. Some parts are not visible lying underneath, I thought it might be interesting to see the original sketch (below) again next to the work so far. I put the sketch on its side so that the two correlate better. I have had another rethink on the glass retention as I want to make it easier to replace something if it happens to get smashed. I will rip the back off of the top rail at the front edge of the groove for the glass, glue on an extra strip to bring the ripped off section back up to thickness and then have that fit back in with screws to retain it. Then the glass can be slipped out from the top if that strip is removed. More work, but without it the whole window would have to come to pieces to get the glass out.

The parts on the right are being prepared for some kind of decorative carving, probably very simple as anything too complex will be out of place. Having the blocks at corners makes it very easy to mate horizontals and verticals. There will be corresponding fascia on the outside of the frame, too. I suspect I may put glass in the blocks again, like a couple of the other doors have had. We'll see, it might be nice with just some different material inlaid.

Strange inheritance

2010-04-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

Making and fitting some little scissor hinges and other hardware for the window. I thought I could use a couple of small piano hinge type things, but realized they would become inaccessible for attachment with the design I have made. Aside from that little change the scribbled sketch notes at the start of the week have now materialized into a unit that looks like it will work.

A one time client who was himself a carpenter died recently and I have had several excursions round to his residence which is crammed with all sorts of odds and ends. Mainly there to tidy up taking away some of the hoard of timber offcuts to burn. The window is actually made from one of them, but most are the kind of composite material I don't use much. The other week I went on a more extensive tour of the ruins with his widow and we came across a great load of little oddment boxes full of all kinds of hardware in the form of screws and whatnot. I am keeping some of them under the sink for now until I learn what they live on. I needed some tiny stainless steel screws to attach the hardware and what with the frame filling the room on the bench making it hard to get in and out of that corner of the forest I just crawled about down among them in search of something suitable. One of them coughed up a nice little box of blackened things just the right size.

Roddy boots

2010-04-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

Not a visit from Roddy McDowell in his planet of the apes gear. These are a recent purchase to replace a terrible pair of wellies I had. The toes being separate does actually give some kind of improved sense of balance. These are rubber and waterproof, which is useful as we are getting all day April showers and the walk down to the shop involves encounters with mud..

Another day or two and I will have to switch to Mary Poppins mode and tidy up some of the incredible clutter that coats most of the horizontal surfaces in the burrow.

2010-04-19T04:49:00.000-07:00

Trying to figure out my task for tomorrow with some sketch drawing, making the hinged window for the top of the door frame and cutting a groove in the existing parts to retain some insect mesh to prevent entry of unwelcome aliens when the window is open.

Inevitably looking for any developments in the Americas. The DSLR camera Sammy has makes it well worth zooming in on pictures. I spent quite a while examining the feet and plumage of his gull. Those ankle joints at the knees are fascinating too.

A day of distractions with the men from the ministry coming to suck out the cess tank and the dog needing his hydrophobia injection. Civilisation at its best.