The Atomic Woodworker

Craftsman Bookcases

2011-12-22T16:14:00.005-07:00

The house we bought in Boise in great in so many ways, from the location to the garage. One of the few downsides is lack of available wall space for bookshelves as compared to the NY house, so we've had to be a bit more creative. One solution was to build smaller bookcases that could sit on the hearth in the family room. One full wall of our house is dedicated to the fireplace and hearth and is covered in stone veneer with built in glass curio shelves. We really like the wall, but it has limited functionality in terms of decorating.

So my charge was to find a design that the wife would like and would work in this space. I found one in issue 179 of Fine Woodworking magazine that fit both bills. The design had to be tweaked a bit to better match out needs, but the changes were modest. I stretched it out to 48" wide and shortened it to 32" high. And oh yeah...the wife wanted two. Here's what the finished products look like:

They're made of white ash, using traditional frame and panel design. All of the frames are assembled using mortise and tenon joinery and the panels (sides and back) were resawn to 1/4" from 4/4 stock. The back was also changed from the plan to accommodate the wider stance. I was worried about shelf sag over a 48" run of heavy books, so I split the back in half and added a center rail with holes for a fifth shelf pin for added support. The back consists of 1/4" thick slats that have ship-lap rabbets milled into them so they slide into the top and bottom grooves and make a nice paneled back surface.

The finish is golden oak stain followed by 3 coats of a satin wipe-on polyurethane. Here they are on the hearth wall. I'm very happy with how they turned out, and more importantly, so is the wife even though they took many more months to complete than originally planned. Now it's up to Beth to unpack book boxes!

Partigyle Experiment

2011-12-09T10:14:00.003-07:00

A few of us in the Snake River Brewers crew wanted to do an experimental brew to celebrate Nov. 11, 2011 (11/11/11). So what us geniuses decided to do was a recipe that had an OG at least 1.111 with 111 IBUs. We'll all age the beers a year and taste/judge them on 12/12/12. Cool concept, huh? I thought so too, but was somewhat horrified at the potential of brewing up 5-10 gallons of a pretty expensive beer that might end up tasting only slightly better than river sludge... So what to do?

To limit the potential damage, I decided to try my hand at partigyle brewing. It involves doing a single mash, but collecting the multiple "runnings" from the mash tun to make multiple beers of different strengths. This was a standard practice back in colonial times, where brewers would make a "strong beer" from the first runnings, a "table beer" from the second, and a "small (or children's) beer" from the third. I'm an all-grain brewer that uses fly sparging so hard could it be, right?

The recipe I used was based on Terrapin's Wake 'n Bake Oatmeal Coffee Stout, which is a strong american stout. I ramped up the recipe to make sure I could get ~2 gals of a 1.111 beer out of the first runnings and 6 gallons of a ~1.080 stout out of the second. Anything left over after that would be a bonus. I ended up hitting my targets on the first 2 batches with 4 gal of a 1.032 mild left over. Looking back, I could have made 10 gallons of a 1.060 stout but really wanted the "middle" beer to resemble the Wake 'n Bake. The brew day went very well but was long, since I ended doing 3 separate 1-hour boils.

At this point, all three are either kegged or bottled. The 1.111 will be cold-conditioned in a keg for a long time. The middle beer was racked to a secondary and had 4 oz of roughly ground, dark roasted Ethiopian coffee from High Desert Coffee Company in Mountain Home, ID (thanks, Jim!) added for 4 days. It tastes absolutely delicious! The Mild was bottled shortly after the primary. It ended up at 1.008 so it should be an easy drinking light brown ale at about 3.2% ABV. Samples I tasted so far have been promising, with a nice roasty nose, light body, and dry finish.

Prost!!

The Definition of Insanity (from Wall St Journal)

2011-10-04T08:18:00.001-06:00

This was published in the Review & Outlook section of the Wall St Journal this morning. Reading something like this makes me furious about the current state of American politics. ARRGGHHHH!!

"The Obama health-care plan passed 18 months ago, and its cynicism still manages to astonish. Witness the spectacle surrounding one of its flagship new entitlements, which is eliciting some remarkable concessions from its drafters.The Health and Human Services Department recently shut down a government insurance program for long-term care, known by the acronym Class. HHS also released a statement claiming that reports that HHS is shutting down Class are "not accurate." All HHS did was suspend Class policy planning, told Senate Democrats to zero out Class funding for 2012, reassigned Class's career staffers to other projects and pink-slipped the program's chief actuary. Other than that, it's full-speed ahead.HHS is denying what everyone knows to be true because everyone also knows that the Class entitlement was not merely created to crowd out private insurance for home health aides and the like. Class was added to the bill because it was among the budget gimmicks that Democrats needed to create the illusion that trillions of dollars of new spending would somehow reduce the deficit.Benefits in the Class program, which was supposed to start up next year, are rigged by an unusual five-year vesting period. So the people who sign up begin paying premiums immediately—money that Democrats planned to spend immediately on other things, as if the back-loaded payments to Class beneficiaries would never come due. The $86 billion or so that would have built up between 2012 and 2021 with the five-year lead is supposed to help finance the rest of ObamaCare. The Class program would go broke sometime in the next decade, but that would be somebody else's problem.

CorbisOpponents warned about this during the reform debate, and people on HHS's lower rungs were telling their political superiors the same thing as early as mid-2009, according to emails that a joint House-Senate Republican investigation uncovered.In one 2009 note, chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster—a martyr to fiscal honesty in the health-care debate—wrote that "Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant Federal subsidies to continue." He suggested that Class would end in an "insurance death spiral" because the coverage would only be attractive to sicker people who will need costly services. It could only be solvent if 230 million Americans enrolled, which is more than the current U.S. workforce.An HHS Office of Health Reform official, Meena Seshamani, rejected Mr. Foster's critique because "per CBO it is actuarially sound." But of course CBO only scores what is presented to it, no matter how unrealistic. Despite this false reassurance, later even one HHS political appointee took up Mr. Foster's alarms, writing that Class "seems like a recipe for disaster to me."In February of this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally admitted the obvious, testifying at a Congressional hearing that, gee whiz, Class is "totally unsustainable" as written. By then Class had become a political target of vulnerable Senate Democrats looking to shore up their fiscal bona fides, despite voting for it when they voted for ObamaCare.Bowing to this political need, Mrs. Sebelius has repeatedly promised to use her administrative discretion to massage Class's finances until it is solvent. But given that the office doing that work has now been disbanded, this evidently proved impossible, as the critics claimed all along.

All of this would seem to make repealing Class an easy vote for Congress, but, this being Washington, it isn't. Since the CBO says Class's front-loaded collections cut the deficit to the tune of that $86 billion, HHS has to pretend that the program is still alive to preserve these phantom savings.Some Republicans are also nervous about repealing Class because, under CBO's perverse scoring, they'll be adding $86 billion to the deficit. Others would prefer not to repeal any of ObamaCare until they repeal all of it, on grounds that some of it might survive if the worst parts go first.So an unaffordable entitlement that will be a perpetual drain on taxpayers may continue to exist because of a make-believe budget gimmick that everyone now admits is bogus. Congress can't reduce real future liabilities because it would mean reducing fake current savings.This is literally insane. It's rare to get a political opening to dismantle any entitlement, much less one as large as Class. House Republicans ought to vote to repeal it as soon as possible as an act of fiscal hygiene, forcing Senate Democrats to vote on it and President Obama to confront (even if he won't acknowledge) the fraud he signed into law."

Highway Cleanup & Hop Farm Tour

2011-09-15T10:31:00.001-06:00

I went along with the Snake River Brewers on the annual Fall highway cleanup and tour of Mike Gooding's Hop Farm in Wilder, ID. The brew club sponsors a 2 mile section of Hwy 95 that not so coincidentally runs through a sea of hop trellises. Very good planning for our civic duties if you ask me.

Picked up about 10 garbage bags full of assorted trash from the roadway including everything from beer cans to strange DVDs titled "Private Collection." I'm still waiting to hear what was on those disks...

After the cleanup, we headed over to Mike Gooding's hop farm, where fall harvest is in full swing. Mike is a great guy, and is very generous in offering tours of his facilities and letting us hang out and have a cookout.
I took a bunch of photos of the process since I was impressed at how efficient it all was. Plus seeing it all on this scale was amazing.

A standard hop field. The bines grow up on hop twine that's tied to the overhead wires. The bines grow to about 16' tall. They harvest by cutting bines and twine together and loading them on trucks.

Here the trucks back in and attach the bines to a conveyor that takes them into the processing plant. The hop cones are sheared or shaken from the bines and collected on more conveyors for drying.

Here's what a standard drying bed looks like. About 100' long and 3' deep OF HOPS! They run ~140 degree air through the beds to remove moisture prior to bailing. I learned on this tour that some varieties (CTZ especially) are so oily that they can actually spontaneously combust if they get too hot. I had no idea hop farming could be so dangerous.

This is a view of the drying bed from the other side. The lady is working to fill the second bed with a new batch of hops. This view shows just how thick the bed actually is. Her job is to remove stems, leaves, and other debris from the beds so the finished hops are as clean as possible before baling.

After drying, the hops are brought to a warehouse where they are staged before going to the baling station. That pile is ~38,000 lbs of CTZ! We "borrowed" about 5 pounds from this pile and split them up. can't wait to use them!

And finally, here is the baling station. The hops are compressed into 200 lb bales and sewn up manually with a reinforced fabric prior to shipping.

We finished our day by drinking some homebrew and collecting hop samples that Mike and his daughter Diane set aside for us. This is a huge plus for us homebrewers. I ended up with about two pounds total of Centennial, Chinook, Calypso, and CTZ . A great take for making IPAs and Imperial IPAs. I can't wait to make another Pliny clone with all of these fresh hops!

Trip to the New Brickskeller

2011-08-22T17:23:00.001-06:00

I got so lucky today and discovered that RFD, the bar that essentially took Brickskeller's place as best beer bar in Washington, DC, was within walking distance of my hotel. Luck? Good fortune? Kharma? I would vote yes to all 3. Needless to say, this discovery put the finishing touch on a great day in the DC area. Here's what I had at this fine establishment:

1. Flying Dog Raging Bitch - both keg and on cask. The latter was dry hopped with simcoe so naturally it was my favorite.
2. Heavy Seas Loose Cannon on cask. Smooth, hoppy and delicious.
3. New Glarus Vintage Belgian Red - last taste of this beauty from their last bottle. It was flat, but still tasted like a slightly tart slice of awesome cherry pie. Well worth the effort to get a taste of what this highly touted brewery puts out.
4. Finished up with a Bells Two Hearted Ale. Not much needs to be said about this beer. It is consistently voted #2 or #3 best beer in the country in Zymurgy's annual poll. Perfectly balanced and absolutely delicious.

What more can I can say than I am a blessed man. If only all of my road trips can be this satisfying... Cheers everyone.

Travellin' Blues

2011-08-21T18:06:00.001-06:00

Let me just start by saying my travel day wasn't all that bad. I just stuck on a plane in Minneapolis for 2 hours due to bad weather in Washington DC. That's not exactly pleasant, but compared to some other experiences I've had and one particular John Hughes Movie, my day was rather pleasant.

I took this photo from the window of my hotel room. Kinda sums up DC pretty well if you ask me. A lot of chaos in the foreground with nice scenery if you look for it ;)

NY is finally behind us

2011-08-14T09:48:00.006-06:00

This week marks the official end to our relocation adventure to Boise. The sale of the house in Montgomery, NY finally closed on Thursday after a year of being on the market and 1 deal that fell through in the process. It also felt good that the lady buying it fell in love with the old bitch just like we had done 10 years ago. When selling an old house, you need someone who sees charm, history, and potential; not one who sees issues or problems. We were luck enough to find someone who saw the house just as we did.

It's strange since I'd actually gotten used to the feeling of the house not selling. When everything you hear from friends and the media is how crappy the housing market is and how nothing is selling, you tend to believe that your house may end being bound to you forever like the proverbial ball & chain. Now that that part is over, I kinda feel like there must be something else to do... I know this feeling will fade and we'll finally get to begin our Idaho adventure without fear of disaster or imminent doom.

I think I'll celebrate by having a brew day :-) Plus how can I be anything but happy when I see this view from my backyard?

Start of the weekend in Portland

2011-07-28T17:34:00.002-06:00

Just arrived in Portland after a 7.5hr drive from Boise. Settled into our room at the Marriott and about to have our first of many microbrews for the weekend. First stop, Deschutes Pub downtown. The photo is the view from the hotel room with the Columbia River and Mount Hood in the background. Very nice!

A Good Weekend Is On The Way

2011-07-22T15:57:00.003-06:00

Tomorrow I'm hosting a group brew for my local homebrew club, the Snake River Brewers. About 15 of us will pack my garage and backyard to make 70 gallons of a British ESB, eat some good food, and drink even better beer (mostly homebrew). Should be a great time for all. Getting together tonight too for setup and prep activities, including milling ~150 lbs of grain! Prost!

What Would Michael Moore Do?

2011-05-31T15:13:00.003-06:00

A buddy forwarded me this analysis of how we can "eat the rich" to help pay for the current budget shortfalls we're experiencing. Doesn't quite achieve what some would like it to, but it's still entertaining. Enjoy.

Being touristy in LA

2011-04-26T17:13:00.001-06:00

Only in Hollywood

2011-04-26T16:53:00.004-06:00

I saw this billboard on the side of a building in West Hollywood last week. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that this "religious beacon" looks alot like a marquee since many of the most well known proponents of it are movie stars. Regardless, the sight of it did make me throw up in my mouth a little bit...

New Motorized Grain Mill

2011-02-22T14:10:00.009-07:00

I have been crushing my grain the hard way ever since I bought a hand-crank 2-roller barley crusher from Northern Brewer a years back. Recently I'v ebeen using a portable drill to speed up the process but it's still a P-I-T-A. Luckily for me, that's all over now. I saw an article in December's Brew Your Own magazine for a homemade motorized mill and decided to start compiling the equipment needed to make it happen. Found a 1-hp motor on Craig's List for $40, bought the sheaves and belt from Grainger for another $40, and spent about $4 in other assorted hardware. All the wood is scrap or leftovers from the shop. Finished assembly and testing over last weekend. Here's a few photos:

The motor is controlled by the mounted switch and the sheaves cut the speed of the motor down about 8:1 to a speed closer to what is recommended by the manufacturer (200 rpm). Gave it a test run last night and it works great. No more 2-hour grain crushing sessions!

Cheers.

Can't We All Just Get Along :-)

2010-12-19T10:23:00.002-07:00

This is an overture to everyone on the subject of spirituality and faith. I ask anyone who looks at this blog to read the essay at the link below with an objective, open mind. You will have an enhanced understanding of why some people embrace atheism. It's all about logic, science, and the difference between faith and god.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/

Exploring Idaho

2010-08-03T12:47:00.007-06:00

I decided to take a drive out of Boise on Sunday to see a bit of the surounding country. I went east out of town on Route 21 past Lucky Peak reservoir and toward Idaho City. It was a great drive along winding roads with scenic views of tall ponderosa pines, river valleys, and the surrounding foothills. I took the following photos along the drive.

This is Lucky Peak reservoir, which was made by the US Army Corps of Enginners by damming up the upstream flows of what becomes the Boise River. There are two generating dams east of Boise that regulate the flow oif the river through town. The second photo is looking west from Lucky Peak at the beginnings of the Boise River.

I went on to Idaho City from here. I didn't do any research first or perhaps I wouldn't have bothered... So after about a 30 minute drive on beuatifully scenic mountain roads, I come into a town with a population of 498 (at least that's what the sign said...) Turns out idaho City is an old prospecting town that I'm guessing doesn't look too much different than it did in 1850. As drove down the main street in town, I could picture horse carriages going up & down the street and pulling up to old general stores and saloons.

This place defies description. I saw this building at the end of the main street. It's the equivalent of a one of those theme restaurants you see where the owners give customers crayons and tell them to write anything they want on the walls. Except this is on the outside. I did see a sign for Trailways Bus Lines but I'm not sure it that was real or not.

I'm going to head north next time on Route 55 toward McCall. Can't wait to see what that trip has in store...

Go West Young Man

2010-07-28T14:49:00.001-06:00

This is a photo Beth took of the moving truck at the end of a grueling day yesterday. The fact that they drove the Toyota right onto the truck was a bit of a surprise but I guess it makes perfect sense. All of Beth's hard work in packing up the house will soon be my problem out in Idaho. The truck is scheduled to arrive at the Boise house on Monday for the off-load. Then I get the joy of unpacking all of those damn boxes ;-)

This whole relocation adventure didn't really sink in until I saw this photo. The reality of seeing all of your possessions on a truck definitely drives the point home! However, before long, I'll be firing up tools in my new and very much improved shop. These thoughts alone are enough to make me giggle with excitement like a little kid...I'll post photos of the house and shop when things begin to get settled.

Posted from a wireless device

In the home stretch

2010-07-23T07:20:00.001-06:00

Headed back to NY for the weekend to help Beth finish packing up the house before the big move to Idaho. Movers are scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday to load and drive all of our shit cross country. Thank god for my new company's generosity in picking up our re-lo costs or Beth and I would be faced with some SERIOUS downsizing. It's amazing how much crap you can accumulate over 15+ years. It also doesn't hurt to have more square footage than 2 people really need...We both hope this is the last big move we do for the rest of our lives. This whole packing, purging, and stressing thing is exhausting. However, there is that big carrot hanging out there and it's a new & exciting lifestyle in Boise!

Now...if anybody wants a great old house in the historic Hudson Valley in NY, please let me know!

2010-07-08T08:26:00.001-06:00

My favorite beer bar in NYC. Make sure to visit Patrick and the gang whenever you're town. You won't be disappointed.

Why it's so much fun doing work at DOE sites

2010-03-01T11:28:00.002-07:00

I took this photo last week at the Savannah River Site. It's not a joke. It's no wonder that places like this have a reputation for being "no work safety zones." ;-)

Jordan"s Jewelry Box

2009-07-12T16:30:00.008-06:00

I started a family tradition a few years ago by making each niece a jewelry box for their 13th birthday. I made the first one for Megan a few years back, and had a few years off before the next niece (Jordan) turned 13. I started he latest one last year (Feb 08, I think), with the intent of delivering it by June. Jordan turned 13 in May 08. Unfortunately, all of this coincided with heavier travel for work and getting occupied with other interests. Before I knew it, I completely missed her birthday and was looking for other milestone dates I could shoot for delivery. Well, I finally finished and delivered it in June when the whole family was together for vacation in Georgia. And it was ONLY 13 months late! Yay me! All beating myself up aside, I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out. Here's a few photos I took of it at Miss Emily's house after I gave it to Jordan.
The box itself is made of a single board of quartersawn white oak with half-blind dovetail construction. The top panel and lift are mahogany and the inner divider is finger-jointed sections of maple, mahogany, and black walnut. The finish is a gloss varnish. I even had a plate engraved to put on the inside. It turned out really great.

The next delivery will be a double set since Jessica and Victoria both turn 13 the same year (about a month apart actually at the end of 2010). Based on this schedule fiasco, I should start on them now. I may need every bit of hat time to get them done. :)

Fly Fishing in Vermont

2009-05-29T18:30:00.019-06:00

I spent the Memorial Day weekend at an Orvis fly fishing school in Manchester, Vermont. My buddy Regan from Atlanta invited me up to join him since he was up near Burlington on a business trip and couldn't resist the opportunity to get some lessons and advice from some of the best fly fishermen on the planet. You see, Regan is really good and has a ton of experience fishing. Me? I'm a hack and basically just enjoy being on a river and enjoying nature. I love catching fish, but the thing about trout fishing is that it's all about technique and skill. That's where the school comes in :-)

Orvis puts on fishing schools throughout the country, but what makes this one special is that 1) it's at their flagship store, and 2) the Battenkill river is nearby. Regan told me that the Battenkill is legendary since it's one of a few rivers in the country that are truly wild (no stocking of fish), which makes the trout even tougher to catch. This fact has some irony to it that I'll explain more later :)

The school is a 2-day fly fishing extravaganza, with classroom instruction and plenty of casting and fishing exercises. I finally learned how to cast, although I still need tons of practice. We learned about proper casting, fly selection and what the actual mayflies and caddis flies look like that we're trying to imitate. We were in class from roughly 9-4 each day with the rest of the time to ourselves. Luckily for us, the instructors are also local fishing guides, so we took the opportunity to hire a few of them (one for Saturday afternoon and another for Sunday).

Saturday afternoon we went out with Antoine Bissieux, a relative newcomer to the Orvis schools from France. He took us to 4 beautiful areas on the Battenkill and we fished until there was hardly enough light to see. I was the lucky one on this night, landing a gorgeous 17" wild brown trout from a hole near the Rec Area. Antoine happened to have an underwater digital camera that took video, so he was able to capture it in wonderful detail for me. I was tickled beyound belief with how it came out (This is where the irony comes in... I was so lucky in landing this fish since I basically did just about everything wrong that you can do. Luckily for me, our skillful guide talked me through it and I ended up with this amazing keepsake video!). I was the talk of the class on Sunday, which I must admit was pretty cool :-)

Day 2 of the course was cool since they gave us the opportunity to fish in their trout ponds for some MONSTER pet trout. They keep the ponds climate controlled and allow visitors to feed them, so the rainbows, browns, and brookies get HUGE! It was like fishing in a Koi pond, except you're allowed to cath them! I landed a 20" brown that took me about 10 minutes to land, and Regan landed a ginormous rainbow that was easily 30" long and weighed about 8 lbs. Granted, it's not exactly river fishing, but the thrill of the fight and bringing them to land was just as exciting .

On Sunday after class, we hired Peter Kutzer to take us up to the Mettawee River, another amazing wild river that runs along the eastern Vermont / New York border. This river is absolutely beautiful and we had a ball fishing it for a few hours. Regan and I both caught a few small rainbow trout (we're talking really small...~3-4"), but had a lot of fun fishing dry flies for the first time all weekend.

I highly recommend these classes and these guides for anyone who loves the outdoors, even if fly fishing isn't necessarily your thing. Just having the opportunity to wade in these beautiful rivers was worth the trip.

Goodbye, Las Vegas????

2009-05-19T15:44:00.006-06:00

The end of my being nomad in the desert may finally be upon me. The project I've been chained to in Nevada for the last 9 months is finally coming to an end. FINALLY....Now those who know me are undoubtedly going to say, "yeah, I've heard that one before," but this time it may actually have some teeth.

Now for the record, let me say that despite all of it's downfalls, Las Vegas isn't as bad as I was expecting. Granted, that's not exactly a glowing endorsement of the place, but it does have its charms and attractions for me. Most notably:

1. Five brewpubs and quite possibly the best draft beer bar in the country. I didn't have to go far to have quality craft beers in this city. This cushioned the blow of having to spend a majority of my last year here.

2. Excellent barbeque. Who would have predicted this? Between Buzz BBQ, Shane's, Famous Dave's and several others I've heard about but haven't tried, this city will satisfy the BBQ lover.

3. Golf. More nice courses at reasonable prices than any place I've ever been. Even cheaper in the summer if you can stand to be out in close to 100-degree heat. Thanks to friends I made out here, I rekindled my love of golf over the last 9 months. Hope I can keep it up back in NY.

Now for the downsides:

1. This entire city seems like one continuous strip-mall, housing development, or office park. Every neighborhood looks the same, regardless of where you are. This is even more depressing considering how hard Vegas has been hit by the foreclosure mess. Seems like 1 out of 3 houses and storefronts are empty.

2. Everything is brown. The ground, the houses, the office buildings, the mountains. It's damned boring for an east-coast lad like myself who loves trees, grass, and seasons.

3. The wife never got a chance to come visit me out here. It would've been nice to take a weekend and party on the strip with Beth. Maybe one day we'll come back out. I definitely won't feel like a tourist since I know the place so well now.

Did you notice something missing between these two lists? I'm completely ambivalent about gambling and casinos. Didn't sit at a single table while I was here and played a grand total of $40 in video poker. I don't view this as a positive or negative. It just doesn't matter to me. Oh...there is one part of the gambling thing that pisses me off. It's truly difficult to find a bar that doesn't have video poker machines built into it! I hate having to put my beer (and/or dinner) on the side because of these awful wastes of space. But I digress...

Here's to more blogging and less traveling! Cheers.

To all of my beer lovin' brothers & sisters out there...

2009-05-01T10:42:00.002-06:00

I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T10:53:00.004-07:00

I managed to take the last 2 weeks of the year off as vacation, which was more than deserved after the marathon work weeks I'd put in out in Vegas. These 2 weeks have been fantastic. I've spent only a few hours actually working, with the remainder spent relaxing, with friends, or doing things I enjoy. Here's an update:

I've gotten back to working on J's jewelry box, applying some tung oil finish. Once the oil catalyzes, I'll apply a few coats of wax (or maybe poly) and finish up installing felt on the inside. It should be ready for shipping by Valentine's day (I unfortunately have a two week return trip to Vegas coming up this weekend...arrghhh).
I finally cleaned up the surround sound speaker wiring in the living room. For years, bare wire was showing in the corners with the unslightly blue spots from the sticky gum-like adhesive that is supposed to work wonders. Well, it doesn't. I replaced this failed folly with thin, paint-able wire conduit that actually hides the wires. It looks 100% better already and will look even better when painted the new wall color. What actually inspired me to do this was the HD satellite upgrade I had installed. The system is now kickin' with over 60 HD channels having Dolby 5.1 surround sound. I'm really enjoying it.
I also made a trip to Party Creations to pick up supplies to make my first all-grain brew. I'm doing a Pale Ale similar to Sierra Nevada from the Brewing Classic Styles book. I built a cooler-style mash tun to do single infusion mash recipes. From what I've read and seen, it should work just fine. Here's the You Tube video set that inspired me to do it (there's 8 in all, each ~3 minutes).

I hope to get it into the fermeneter on Saturday so It can do it's thing while I'm away. By the time I get back from Vegas, it should be ready to keg. I sure hope so! Happy New Year all.

Tryin' to Stay Productive

2008-10-26T05:39:00.011-06:00

I had a great week home from Nevada. Came back to a house full of guests up to enjoy the NYS Sheep & Wool festival. I know it sounds hokey, but I've really grown to love these weekends. It's even more enjoyable if you're married to a woman who knits. It's Beth's equivalent to Tap NY or a woodworking show for me. Kudos to Kelly, Ginger, and LuLu for making the weekend an enjoyable one. We missed you Lorena, Sharon, Jacquie, and Sophia. Hopefully next year you'll be back for a reunion tour!

So...while I was back in town, I managed to take a few days off from work to focus on some projects I've been neglecting. The first of which is the casework around the new sliding glass door in the living room. Well over a year ago, I installed a new Andersen slider out to the porch. The door turned out great, but I've been putting off the trim work on the inside because as always, it required custom piecework to make it look good. You see, nothing is easy in my house. Studs aren't where they're supposed to be, walls, floors, etc all all out of square, yada yada yada... I finally worked up the courage to give it a go this week.

The photo below is how the door looked just after install. Not the best photo of the door, but it does have our friends Tim, Cambria, and Baby Calder in it, so it will do :-). Ugly drywall spots, sprayfoam, and unsightly gaps do have a way of drawing attention from the nice door, huh?

I was pleasantly surprised with how it all went. The hardest part was making a custom custom jamb extender to fill the gap between the inside and outside wall. Three pieces, all different dimensions! Once that was in, the rest was pretty straightforward, notwithstanding the adjustments for out of plumb walls. The trim replicated from some of the original colonial door casing in the house. It's made of 3-pieces; flat casing with a bead that I made on the router table, an outer square build-up moulding, and a bed moulding on top. Here's the finished product, sans paint.

One other work-in-progress to report on...My many-months-late jewelry box gift is also nearing completion. I made a small upper divider tray for it last week to complete the woodworking. All that's left is sanding and applying the finish. Here's a few shots as a teaser. I'll post the finished photos and more descriptions of its construction before I send it off, which looks to be mid-december at the rate I'm going.

Happy Halloween all!

Catching Up

2008-10-12T21:33:00.002-06:00

I've been back out in Vegas for the last 2 weeks, doing the same job I've been working on for the last 2 months or so. Not much has changed since my last post, with the exception of my 401k going in the toilet thanks to the bums on Wall Street and in Washington.

One good thing that has happened since then is a change in work schedule that now gives me both weekend days off instead of just Sunday. This was such a welcome change, since it gives you an opportunity to go out and do something fun on weekends instead of just doing laundry and catching up on sleep. Well, this weekend my buddy Shawn and I decided to trek up to Zion National Park in Utah to hike around a bit and do some sightseeing. It's only 2.5 hours from Vegas, so we drove up on Saturday to see as much of it as we could. From everything I had heard, Zion is unbelievable and shouldn't be missed. This was so true.

We took hundreds of photos throughout the day, as we hiked up Angel's Landing and walked along the Riverside Trail. We packed in as much as we could in just a few hours since we knew it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. Actually, it started snowing about noon! Luckily, we got through the toughest part of the hike before it started. Otherwise, we would have been in for a very rough day. Here's a link to the photos.

We had a great time, and have the sore muscles to show for it. I hope to get an opportunity to go back again and see more of the park. There's so much to see, plus it's really close to Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon NPs. Hopefully, I'll get back here soon.

Ahhhhhhhhhh......

2008-09-21T12:59:00.002-06:00

That's the sound of...

hugging and kissing your wife
taking a shower in your own bathroom
sleeping in your own bed
playing with your cats again, and
sitting on the porch with a cold beer and a cigar.

It's been a long month away from home. It's good to be back. :-)

New Addiction...

2008-09-16T22:00:00.000-06:00

I have a new addiction, my friends, and it is called a Blackberry...I've been angling at work to get one for some time and have finally gotten my clutches on one. I now completely understand why they're called 'crackberries.' The coolest part is that the new ones also work as a broadband modem for your laptop, which means I'm no longer at the mercy of wi-fi connections in airports, restaurants, or any other places anymore while I'm on the road. Can I get a hallelujah???

Great Day at Hoover Dam

2008-09-14T21:45:00.007-06:00

My buddy Shawn & I decided to go to Hoover Dam today on our day off. I've been wanting to see it for the longest time, so the fact that it's only 40 minutes from Vegas made it a perfect short day trip.

We took the tour to take a look inside some of the tunnels and see the power plant. It was definitely worth it. The scale of the place is breathtaking. I found out that the concrete that makes up the base of the dam is 660 feet thick! Dam(n)... :-)

I took these photos with my phone. They didn't turn out too bad.

View from the parking deck looking at the face of the dam.

Looking south down the Colorado River

8 of the 17 generators that make up the 2080 MW generating capacity of the power plant. These are on the Nevada side of the river.

Lake Mead. The white line on the banks is where the water was in 1983. It hasn't been that high since.

These are the intake structures to the power plant. The water that goes to the turbines enters through the grates on the sides of these towers. There's 4 in all.

Another perk of life on the road - big bundles!

2008-09-14T10:49:00.002-06:00

What would you do?

2008-09-12T05:17:00.002-06:00

OK...I get 1 day off a week out here in Vegas (Sunday). For the last few, I've basically slept in, done laundry, and watched TV. I felt pretty good about it too. Well, this is the first week I have a co-worker out here with me and he wants to do something Sunday. With all of this in mind, I'm taking a poll.

What would you do this Sunday?

1. Stay local, sleep, and recharge the neurons.
2. Go gambling on the strip, lose money, and look at all of the goofy mid-westerners
3. Drive ~1 hour each way to Hoover Dam / Lake Mead
4. Drive a long way to the Grand Canyon (don't know exactly how far but guessing it's at least 3 hours).

Happy weekend to all of you who will get 2 days off starting tomorrow. Have a drink for me :-)

Greetings from Mercury, NV

2008-09-08T19:28:00.002-06:00

I'm working in the Nevada desert not that far from Yucca Mountain and Area 51, but I'm staying in North Vegas because there's not much else around besides Joshua trees, coyotes, and tumbleweeds. As long as I have a quad-latte from Starbucks at 4:30 AM, the drive isn't too bad...

Here's a sample view of what I see for 60 miles each day to & from NTS to Las Vegas.

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device

Finally Doing the Facebook Thing...

2008-09-07T22:36:00.003-06:00

I finally decided to take the plunge and start a Facebook profile. Beth ahs been on it for a while and was extolling the benefits of reconnecting with old friends. Well, under a stint of inspiration fueled by my upcoming 20-year HS reunion (no old guy jokes, please!), I decided to give it a try to see how many Lemon Bay HS grads were on it.

Based on what I've heard from others, I should have seen this coming. In one week, I've gotten reconnected with over 30 classmates, old friends, and colleagues that I hadn't spoken with in many years. It's really very easy to find people and get to know them again.

From the viewpoiont of a reformed skeptic, give it a try. I bet you'll be as surprised as I've been in he very first week of trying it.

p.s. glad to be back...:-)

road warrior

2008-06-18T17:30:00.001-06:00

hey all. i'd apologize for being lazy with my postings lately, but i actually have a valid excuse. work has had me on the road 4 of the last 5 weeks, including right now (blogging from kc).
despite my travel woes, i will try to stay in better touch. cheers, all.
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Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

This Sucks...

2008-05-30T05:27:00.004-06:00

I have tried to not let the whole rising gas prices get to me. However, I'm to the point now where it's getting ridiculous. This is what I see on my drive to work...

Beth actually told me this weekend that I could get a motorcycle. I've always wanted one for fun, but I can see my motivation changing to necessity more every day...

Las Vegas and Kegging Homebrew

2008-05-26T06:28:00.004-06:00

Hello All. Sorry for the delay in posting lately, but spent the last 2 weeks in the Nevada desert doing a project for work. I was out at Nevada Test Site, the place where the govt decided it would be a good idea to test a bunch of nuclear weapons back in the 40's & 50's. Trust me, if you're a rad geek like me, there's no shortage of things to work on out there. Don't feel too sorry for me, as I did get in some Vegas party time. No gambling (not really my style), but saw some sights, drank some beers, and had some really great food. It's looking like I'll have to spend more time out there this summer, so perhaps I'll do some gambling then. Here's the view from my hotel the first week. Not bad for a camera phone...

The latest batch of homebrew was started before I left for Vegas, but didn't get done until I returned. The batch is an extract kit from Northern Brewer based on a Fat Tire clone recipe. It's not all that close to the original, but it's still really good. This is my second time brewing it, but the first time kegging. More on that later... The Yellow Jacket Amber name came about when I noticed that a yellow hjacket landed in the brew kettle during the boil. Poor sucker didn't know what hit him, but since he didn't drink much and I've got the Ga Tech connection, the name just stuck.

Since my last brewing post, I've got some upgrades. Mainly, I'm doing full wort boils now (thanks to a honkin' turkey fryer burner). This allows Russ & I to do most of it outside, which makes Beth happy since I no longer occupy the kitchen while brewing. :-)

The shop now doubles as a brewhouse, as seen by the workbench being occupied by a fermenting carboy. The blue thing is my temperature controller, which I have in line with a heater that's wrapped around the carboy to make sure I keep a nice & even fermentation temperature throughout. I'm learning that temperature control is one of the keys elements in going from making so-so beer to really good beer. That, and making yeast starters, which I'm doing now too :-)

And after about two weeks, we racked the beer into one of my newly purchased 5-gal Corny kegs. These are actually used Pepsi soda kegs that are cleaned, filled and pressurized with CO2. These things are cheap and readily available these days since soda distributors don't really use them anymore. And let me tell ya...I've seen the light! I may never bottle a batch ever again. Having to clean only 1 container instead of 40 is a blessing I can hardlt describe. Plus, it's just too damned cool to be able to pour DRAFT beer at home! DRAFT BEER! All it took was removing a shelf from the beer fridge to fit the keg and CO2 bottle. I've got room for 2 kegs in there at a time and have already begun the thought process of installing faucets in the front door. Yeah, Baby!

The next batch is going to be a hopped-up version of the same recipe to make it more of an American Style Amber. I hope to have it in the fermenter by mid-June.

Lunch Time Fun

2008-05-02T11:32:00.001-06:00

Benefits of working across the street from a bowling alley! Even better, when I went in, I saw Mikey from OCC shooting scenes for an upcoming American Chopper episode! I took a camera phone shot, but must have forgotten to hit the save button :( Anyway, If you see a bowling alley scene on American Chopper, I was there. WooHoo!

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Happy Birthday Auntie Dee Dee!

2008-05-01T06:08:00.005-06:00

Last weekend I traveled back to the homeland, Chicago, to celebrate my Auntie Dee Dee's 75th birthday. This was a surprise party organized by my cousins Theresa, Rosie, and Rita. I come from a very large extended family on my Mom's side. My Mom is from a family of 11, so even if all of my aunts & uncles had small families of their own, it would be a rather large family. Well, Auntie Dee decided to have 9 kids! I stopped doing the math years ago, but figure I have close to 50 1st & 2nd cousins just on my Mom's side! Here's a photo of me with the birthday girl. It was funny as she didn't recognize me at first. Guess losing all that hair made me incognito...

Here's one of me with my Uncle Joe. He's my Mom's younger brother and one of my namesakes. My grandfather was named James Joseph, so Mom just switched the names to get mine. As you can see, we have alot in common. I can easily see myself looking just like him in 30 years.

And here's a shot of Auntie's Dee Dee's clan (at least a portion of it, with in-laws). It was great fun hanging with all of them, catching up on old times, and getting drunk along the way. I hope we get many more chances to do this in the future.

Happy Birthday, Auntie Dee Dee. Hope you have many many more to come :-)

Southwest Rules

2008-04-22T16:40:00.001-06:00

All airlines should be this cool. comfy chairs with their own ac & usb power supplies. makes waiting for a plane enjoyable

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what he said...

2008-04-21T10:40:00.002-06:00

Figured out how to get photos from the phone to the blog...Couldn't resist this one as an inaugural photo (Not that I feel this way about my typical Blog readers). :-)

Happy Monday!

Refurbishing Old Tools

2008-04-20T18:34:00.003-06:00

I bought an old Stanley #80 cabinet scraper off E-Bay a few weeks back. These tools are really great for fine-tuning and preparing surfaces for finish. The one I bought wasn't in great shape, but it was cheap ($20) and with a little work can be back in fine working order. Here's a photo of the one I bought.

The photo isn't a really great one, but you can see the surface rust and lack of japanning (paint). Most of the rust was on the underside (out of view in photo). It will work as-is, provided it has a good burr on the blade, but thought it would be fun to try to bring it back as far as I can. This link shows one in mint condition (go to the middle of the page). I'm not planning to go crazy with the restoration, but it should look good when done.

Step 1 is rust removal. I've been reading about electrolysis for some time and finally had a project to try it out on. After picking up a few supplies at the hardware & grocery stores, it only took me ~30 minutes to get my rig up & running. Here's what it looked like.

The bucket had dissolved washing soda in it and the leads from the battery charger were hooked up like the instructions said. It only took ~30 seconds to see bubbles rising from the electrodes. Very cool indeed. The first photo below is what it looked like after 30 minutes. BTW, the scraper is hanging from a wire in the center of the bucket (attached to the negative (black) lead).

And overnight...
And here's the intermediate results after some brief cleanup with a wire brush on a dremel tool. All of the deep pitted rust is gone and the cast iron has a bit of a sheen again. It could use a bit more work before I attempt to apply paint, but it should be finished in no time. I'm looking forward to the Stormville Flea Market again on Memorial Day weekend. I'm no longer afraid of buying ugly, abused, rust covered tools.

Bloggin from the phone

2008-04-11T10:46:00.001-06:00

finally got mobile blogger set up
for on the phone. can't seem to post cameraphone photos yet, but will soon hopefully.

Beth & i have the day off, so we're out and about. here's to everyone else who doesn't have to work today. and to those who do!!

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

Makin' Baloney...

2008-04-01T16:52:00.011-06:00

Trust me, I reacted the same way to these words as you probably just did. I was invited up to Sullivan County (only a few miles from the location of the original Woodstock - actually Bethel, NY) to spend the weekend 'making baloney' with my friend Matt & his family. Seems that these friends refer to all smoked sausage as baloney, regardless of the type, in much the same way people refer to all cotton swabs as Q-tips, I guess. Once I got past the odd name for what was actually going on, the whole thing seemed a bit more normal.

This weekend festival has been a family tradition for these folks for many years now, and I now have first-hand experience to the festivities. Nearly all of these guys are hunters, and they use a lot of the venison from the previous year's take in the sausage. It also has some pork in the recipe, but that's about all I can say. I've been sworn to secrecy... We made 3 different varieties on Saturday; a normal smoked sausage, a summer sausage, and their version of a slim-jim. All of it was made from scratch and smoked in their little shack behind the garage.

This is what the first recipe looked like when it was placed in the smoker. They call this variety 'Ring Baloney'. Bet you can't guess why...

While the first batch was in the smoker, we worked on the other two batches. The photo below is just a sample of how much was made. In all, we ground and stuffed about 400 lbs of sausages. Seeing the assembly line in action was quite amazing. Let me tell ya, all of it tastes awesome. These guys have the whole process down to a science.

After a full day's worth of sausage-making, we sat around the garage and basically got drunk. That too is part of the tradition, or so I was told. Once everyone woke up the next day, we took a quick trip up the mountain to the place where Matt's Uncle owned a large farm. It's now where they all hunt, as it's ~300 acres of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. I set the camera on black & white as it seemed to fit the surroundings. Here's a few of the best shots I got.

We headed back to Montgomery about noon, totally exhausted and smelling like a couple of guys from a meat-packing plant. I was never more happy to take a shower and get a nap.

Sump Pump is Done!

2008-03-23T18:49:00.007-06:00

I took Friday off as a vacation day, so I had a nice 3-day weekend to work in the basement getting the sump pump plumbed in and wired. The system went together pretty well, although a few of the items were challenging since I was doing everything solo. The first thing I saw when getting back into the project was the 14" of water in the basin, resulting from the 1.5" of rain we had on Tues/Wed of last week. This means that the water table was only 12-16" below the basement floor. Seeing this only reinforced the need we have for this system. If we get drenching rains this Spring like we had in the past, this system will pay for itself the first day it kicks on.

The plumbing is all PVC, with the piping running through the ledger board and meeting up with the downspout drain we had installed when the footing drains were also done. Here's what the system looks like (inside & outside):

I was initially planning to run the piping straight out the wall, but that would have include digging a new ditch through the trees to the right, which didn't thrill me. Jason (the friend who helped dig the hole) suggested tying into the downspout drain since the PVC piping is already in place and runs to daylight out by the street. This solution took a bit more plumbing work, but it was well worth it. All it took was re-directing the downspout a bit around the other side of the wall (shown in third photo). I was also planning ahead a bit with this since the downspout would likely be in the way on the sunroom addition Beth has her eye on...(more on that later. Hopefully, much later).

Working Toward a Dry Basement (Forever)

2008-03-19T18:56:00.006-06:00

Hey All. My plans for Sunday changed on Saturday night, when after a company dinner with a bunch of people from Beth's office, two of our friends turned to me and said "Guess we'll see you at 9 AM tomorrow." Given my short attention span, I had no idea what they were talking about. Turns out that a few weeks back, I mentioned in jest that they should come over and help me dig a sump pump pit in my basement. Well, they didn't forget. And being the opportunist that I am, changed whatever plans I may have had on Sunday to make sure I took advantage of their generosity.

For those of you who haven't been reading Beth's blog for the last few years, our basement has been the bane of our NY existence. We've had serious flooding down there at least 3 times since we moved in. Some serious enough to toast our old furnace and water heater. The new foundation and footing drains took care of most of the problem, but there's still a need for the sump, if nothing more than insurance policy.

As planned they showed up at 9 with shovels in hand. It took us about 3 hours to dig the 30" deep by 20" wide hole. This was due to the fact that the clay in the basement was as hard as rock. Once we got past 12" or so, we had to use a steel rod to cut the clay in pieces small enough to scoop out. This process got us down about an inch at a time, and led to frequent exhaustion that comes from ramming a steel rod into the ground repeatedly.

That's Matt, Jason, and me (left to right) with said steel bar leaning against the basement wall.

Here's the semi-finished product. I'm extremely glad the digging is done and the sump pit is in the hole. It will eventually have a lid with PVC piping coming out the top, all of which I hope to finish next weekend. I have grand plans to pour some concrete down there as well, but we'll see where that falls in the overall priority list.

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 6

2008-03-02T17:33:00.010-07:00

Hello All. Long time since I posted about the new bathroom. It's mostly because I'm lazy, but also because the bathroom itself is done (well, 98% so anyway :-)).

One peripheral task that's been sitting out there is the wall on the other side of the new shower stall. I tore the wall out to allow the plumber's to run the new pex supply tubing and PVC drains and vent. Ever since, we've been looking at an open wall with framing and pipes. Well, no more! I decided to close it all in by extending the hallway to the attic doors and building a soffit to enclose the new heat register that was recently installed. Here's some photos of the work in progress:

Shower wall with new framing and first piece of drywall

Bare Soffit around register

funky view of the rear of the soffit

New wall with drywall installed

Finished rough-in of the soffit with drywall and tape

Rear-view after taping

What I have left to do is about a week's worth of mudding and sanding, followed by new paint. By the time Snarktoberfest, the Sequel comes about, it should look all spiffy. Here's hoping that comes true!

Beer Fridge !!

2008-03-02T17:31:00.006-07:00

Wanna know how cool my wife is? She too thought that getting a beer fridge for the shop would be a good birthday present!! I must admit that there is a bit of back-story here, but the overall premise is still true.

The prospect of getting said fridge was borne out of our friends Russ & Roe, who have a similar fridge in their garage. The difference being that Russ has filled that fridge with beer and had 5 more cases sitting on the garage floor! You see, Russ is more of a beer collector than a beer drinker, so the rate with which he buys dwarfs the rate at which he consumes. It's rather said, actually, but he shares much of his bounty and I'm grateful for it.

When Roe threatened to take their fridge back, Russ was faced with a quandry... where to put all of the displaced beer? Well, like a good soldier who's willing to take one for the team, I stood up and said, "I'll Take It." :-) and Just like that, I had a full-size fridge delivered to the house to help my dear friend out. The photo below happens to show my two favorite additions to the shop: the fridge and my 16" Laguna bandsaw.

And this is what 5 cases of great micro- and foreign brews look like in the new fridge. It's OK, feel free to take a moment if you need to...

What I truly love about this one is there's no freezer and it's equipped with an internal heater so you can keep it outside in the winter without the contents freezing. This was key since I only heat my shop when I'm out there. The longer-term plan is to put a kegerator kit in the door so I can keg my homebrew. The bottom shelf should be just high enough to fit 5-gal corny kegs. Yeah, Baby!!

A Necessary Evil

2008-02-18T10:14:00.003-07:00

I guess evil is a strong word, but it gets my point across. What I'm referring to is tool sharpening. In reading as much woodworker stuff as I can get my hands on, one central tenet of all the masters is the same: you must work with sharp tools. Basically, if you try to do handwork with dull tools, you're going to get frustrated and tired. Frustrated when the pieces look awful or don't fit and tired by having to wail on a chisel to get it to cut.

I got a reminder of both this weekend when working on J's jewelry box. I'm hand-cutting through dovetails for the box joinery, which requires a fair amount of chisel work to get the pins & tails square and fitting nicely. Let's just say I didn't get off a great start. I stopped after being horrified by the amount of tear-out I was getting from my dull chisels. I must at least give myself a little credit for stopping before I would be forced to use the 4 pieces of mahogany as firewood.

Yesterday's activity was getting the chisels back to form. I've been using the Scary-Sharp method, which uses ordinary sandpaper to hone chisel & plane irons. I buy 400 - 2000 grit automotive paper and work my way up the grits until the metal looks almost like a mirror. The hardest part is flattening the backs of the chisels first so you can actually generate a nice edge. Unfortunately, chisel backs are anything but flat when you first buy them. Here's a nice step-by-step description of the process I generally use (sans waterstones for now). Once the backs are flat, honing the bevel is easy. After about 5 minutes or so, they're sharp enough to shave the hairs off my arm. Not their primary purpose, mind you, but it is a good test of sharpness. :-)

The sad part about yesterday is that I had to quit working in the shop before I had a chance to put them to work. Hopefully, I'll get out there tonight after work since it's a balmy 53 F today. Happy Monday, everyone.

I Finally Got My Shop Back

2008-02-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Hey all. Has it been over 2 months since I last blogged? Of course it has because this is me and I'm quite possibly the worst blogger ever (well, not in content, but definitely in frequency).

I got a bug to write again because I got a nice e-mail from a few windsor chairmakers out in Missouri who found this blog through my instructors' website. Turns out they studied together at the same place and are also professional chairmakers. It was nice to hear from them.

The good news is that the workshop has been busy again lately. I've made it a point to reclaim the shop from the storage area it had become during the bathroom remodel, so over the last 3 weeks I've been doing just that. I basically cleaned it all out (found out that several local mice had been feeding on a bag of birdseed - yuck), moved some stuff around, made a few upgrades, and got it back in working order. The upgrades are a few small cabinets for extra storage that I'v ebeen thinking about forever. They're nothing fancy, but they do manage to keep some tools and supplies from getting dusty, which is key in a shop with little or no winter ventilation. Here's what the weekend oasis looks like now. It looks more crowded than it actually is. There's alot of multi-tasking going on with the benches and equipment.

In fact, I have several projects in progress as we speak. I'm building a jewelry box for a soon to be 13-year old niece (shhh, don't tell her), and have been experimenting more with my lathe. I really want to do more turning, starting with spindles and working my way up to bowls. The first project will be legs and stretchers for a few windsor stools. These have been in the offing ever since I finished my sackback chair over a year ago. I'll let you know how they turn out.

I'm off to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a business trip, so wish me luck that I don't get stuck somewhere due to snow, wind, or both... Have a good week.

Furnace Replacement - Day 1

2007-12-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today was truly one of those best of times, worst of times kind of days. This morning, I had the misfortune of experiencing the death of a pet. Beth published a wonderful eulogy for our boy Milo on her blog. He was a good boy and will be missed.

Given the grief of this morning, it was a welcome diversion to have our HVAC guys start on the new heating system today as well. I delayed the install a week due to some business travel, which meant the house has been COLD for an extra week. To drive home the impact of that decision even more, we got out fist real snow & ice last night. yippee... The saving grace for us has been the pellet stove we installed in the kitchen/breakfast room and the space heaters we bought when the knittas came to town. With these things running 24-7, there's just enough heat to keep us from becoming popsicles in these beginnings of a frigid NY winter.

The new system is a complete overhaul, with a boiler and hydro-coil air handlers replacing the normal gas furnace. We decided to go this route so we could place a second air handler in the attic to handle the 2nd floor independently. The guys focused on the basement today, removing all of the old equipment and installing the first air handler (photo below) and new duct work. What may not translate in this simple photo is the joy that comes with the fact that this unit will NEVER come in contact with any water that could reside on the floor of our basement. That fact alone is huge in this old house...

They'll be back tomorrow to begin the install work in the attic. We're on track to have real heat again by the end of the week. Hallelujah...

Look What I Got!

2007-11-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

Yep. That's what they call in these parts 'One Kick-Ass Snowblower'. I was the major recipient of some good will last week when our Friend Todd let Beth know that he was getting a new one and wanted to give his "old" one away. Well, this isn't what I was expecting. For being 'old', this thing is awesome...8 HP, electric start, hand controls, you get the picture. For a guy who's never had one of these, I am feeling like a kid on Christmas morning. Many thanks to our Upstate Mom & Pop for this fine gift as we later found out that this belonged to them. THANK YOU!! I'm actually looking forward to our first major snowfall just so I can run this big bad boy around the driveway!!

As you may expect, it's been rather quiet on the master bath front. I've been traveling quite a bit lately and we've also decided to take the plunge on the furnace replacement. I did manage to make a little progress this morning while Beth was making Mac & Cheese for Thanksgiving dinner...

These are the new mirrors and flyover lights. They have the same finish as the vanity and storage cabinet that will eventually grace this room, in case you're wondering how this whole experiment may look when it's done. Hopefully within my lifetime it will be.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you all have a fun-filled day with your families and get plenty to eat in the process.

A Weekend of 'Plan B's'

2007-10-31T18:23:00.000-06:00

For all of you that have been reading cigars and other 'yarny' blogs, you've likely got a belly full of the sheep & wool weekend by now. But alas, there was even more that went on that weekend. How can that be, you may ask? Well, the boys got a bit bored with sheep & wool so we went off and did some fun stuff on our own.

Saturday afternoon, Paul & I wandered our way back from Rhinebeck and hit a few of my favorite places (beer store, the Newburgh waterfront, and a beer bar)! We bought a few choice selections at Half-Time and had fun kicking back with a few pints with Brian and the gang over at the Rail. In between was spent taking some photos of the Hudson River and surrounding mountains. The first shot of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge is below (more on that in a bit).

Plan B #1 came when trying to find dinner on Saturday. We both wanted barbecue, but the only place in Newburgh had a 30-minute wait. This wasn't going to work, so we ended up getting a pizza and going back to the house to watch Game 6 of the ALCS, which the Red Sox won 12-2. All was well...

Sunday, we decided to hang back locally and do some hiking and picture-taking. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we both wanted to do something a bit more active than the eating & drinking routine we had basically perfectly the rest of the weekend. We tried to hike at Mohonk, but were denied at the gate by an ornery parking attendant and a sign that unceremoniously said "No Day Hiking Today." It would've been nice if they posted this on their website, but NOOOOOOO...please drive 30 minutes out of your way before we totally ruin your plans for the day. bastards... However, not all was lost as 'Plan B' #2 was hatched.

I have been wanting to hike up Breakneck Ridge again for a long time and today served as a perfect opportunity to do it. I remembered that it was a tough hike, but Paul was game so we decided to give it a whirl. Here's Paul at the trailhead.

Breakneck is a rocky scramble up about 1200' of vertical terrain in about a half-mile. It did not disappoint. I found a pretty good summary of it written by someone else here. We tagged along with a few groups who helped us navigate the various trails without getting lost. It was an excellent way to spend 3.5 hours on a beautiful fall day.

This is the view from the first lookout point. Storm King Mountain is in the background. They've recently added the US and POW flags. I don't remember them from the last time I was up here, circa 2000 or so.

That's the same Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in the distance. The only detriment to the whole day was that it was a bit hazy, but otherwise a perfect day. The boys part of the weekend ended by grilling up a chicken & shrimp feast for the knitta's that turned out to be a perfect way to wrap up the weekend.

Pics (as promised)...

2007-10-19T09:34:00.000-06:00

Hello again. Here's a few updated shots of the bathroom. All of the wainscoting is installed and we're using the shower. Can I get a hallelujah? All that's to do on this side of the room is paint the lower portion of the walls and install a few more fixtures.

Now that door I was telling you about. Here's a shot to go with the description in my previous post. As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words...

I just couldn't bring myself to changing this doorway. I went with what the house was giving me and am glad I did. It's strange little quirks like this one that make our house unique and interesting. Eventually, the door and trim will be painted the same color as the wainscoting, but that's pretty low on the priority list right now. Must get vanity, countertop, and sinks installed first.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 5

2007-10-17T08:29:00.000-06:00

Hello all. Sorry for the delay since the last post, but I spent last week on the road for work and this week has been a mad dash to get the house ready for Snarktoberfest 2007 :-) However, with all the hub-bub going on around us, we basically met our goal of having a 'functional' master bath before the kinttas arrive. We did have to make some sacrifices in the name of 'functional,' like no sinks and an unfinished floor (more on that later), but the new shower is pretty darned cool. In fact, Beth and I have been taking our morning showers in it all week :)

The latest finished tasks are completed wainscoting and re-hanging the door. We're keeping all of the the original doors that were left in the house when we bought it. They're in great shape and just need some scraping and re-painting to make them look perfect again. The master bath door is quite funny since at some point in the past, the house settled about 2 inches near this doorway (as shown by the sloping floor and slanted door framing! So, what did they do? They trimmed the top of the door to be shorter on one side! It looks rather odd on its own , but inside the door frame, it fits perfectly. I had to trim it down a bit more on all sides to accommodate the new casings, but it's good to go now.

I had the best intentions of re-finishing the floor too, but we just ran out of time. What it boiled down to was I didn't want to run the risk of having tacky polyurethane on the floor when a house full of people needed to take showers. It can wait until the October rush is past and it's just me, Beth , and the kitties again. No pictures to post right now but I'll get a few up soon.

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 4

2007-10-04T12:08:00.000-06:00

This week has been going great. The Red Sox shut out the Angels 4-0 in Game 1 of the ALDS last night, AND I've been working in the bathroom all week. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't spend 8 hours a day at work! As of my last post, the bags of pellets were doing their thing and I was prepping things for the plumbers to come back. The floor sanding adventure went well, although it did take two trips to the rental center to get the right kind of sander. I originally rented a vibrating pad sander since I was terrified that a belt-type in my hands would gouge the floor. The problem with the pad type is that even with 20-grit paper, I would've been sanding the floor for about a week. It was the equivalent of trying to dig a ditch with a teaspoon. Given our limited time-frame, I broke down and rented the belt-sander. I was relieved to see that my fears were very much overblown. Don't get me wrong, you can gouge the floor if you're not careful, but they're easier to control than I thought. I had the entire floor sanded smooth in ~4 hours. Here's what the unfinished floor looks like now. You can see the before & after at the doorway transition.

The plumbers returned today to get the toilet and shower stuff installed. Well, I'm happy to report that this latest round of plumbing work went off without a hitch and we're now the proud owners of a working master shower and toilet! thank you...thank you very much... I even got the shower seat and trim pieces installed (see lovely blue painters tape in the photos, which is needed until the silicone sets up).

The plumbers will have to come back one last time to install valves on the hot & cold supply lines to the vanity. Unfortunately, the vanity we picked out has an enclosed back, which means that valves shouldn't be installed ahead of time unless you want to cut out huge holes in the back of the cabinet to let them through. Oh well, I'm not too troubled by that. After all, we have a toilet and shower again >;-D

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 3

2007-10-01T16:34:00.000-06:00

We just came off of another fabulous weekend. Beth's Mom, JoAnn, and Nancy left today to head back to GA. We had so much fun, no matter what we were doing. After entertaining a house full of people all weekend, it's rather quiet now.

I took this week off of work to focus on the bathroom. It's the last push to get it functional before Sheep & Wool. I've managed to make a little progress over the weekend and today. Sunday was spent getting the new shower panels installed. The install went as expected, but as always, a few hiccups here and there getting them trimmed and notched. Thankfully, no catastrophes to report.

There is a funny story associated with the installation, however. The swanstone panels get attached to the wall using double-stick tape and construction adhesive. You put gobs of adhesive on the backside and use wood braces to apply pressure while the adhesive sets up. There's even a nice diagram with the suggested bracing layout. Sounds simple, right? Well, for the two opposing walls, it was. I was able to get the braces in nice and tight. The back wall, on the other hand, was another story. Since there's no opposing wall to provide resistance, I had a hard time applying enough pressure to keep the panels adhered on my rather wavy walls. The cute diagram I mentioned previously just wasn't cutting it, so I had to get creative...

Scary, huh? and yes, those are bags of pellets for my stove. I rigged up some diagonal 2x4 braces that got wedged against the lip of the shower pan and nailed a few pieces of wood to the brace to make shelves for the pellet bags to sit on. Trust me, this worked much better than standing there pushing against the wall for 24-hours! Each bag weighs 40-lbs, so I figure I've got approximately 100 lbs of lateral force being applied to the wall. I checked for pull-away and haven't see any. So far, so good. We'll see what happens when I take this contraption apart!

Today's fun was trimming out the new window. I re-created the colonial style trim on my other upstairs windows using stock 1x4's and some off the shelf moulding from my local lumberyard. Here's what it looks like.

Tomorrow's starts the hardwood floor refinishing adventure. I'm renting a sander in the morning and hope it get the floor ready for polyurethane by the end of the day. We'll see if I actually get that far.

The madness begins...

2007-09-26T14:21:00.001-06:00

The month of October is going to be nuts for us. We're gearing up for YarnFest, trying to get the new bathroom in shape in time, and I'm looking at a little business travel inbetween. On top of this, my mother-in-law and two of her best friends (JoAnn and Nancy) are on their way to NY as I type this to spend the weekend with us. J&N are practically aunts to Beth & I and we absolutely love having them up to the house. Some of our most memorable travel memories have been with some or all of this crew, so I have high expectations that this weekend will be no different.

Well, in preparation for their arrival, I've had to delay some of the planned bathroom work that I mentioned in my last post in favor of cleaning up alot of my construction messes. For example, the den/bedroom was my construction staging area, so in order for someone to sleep there, it needed some TLC. This was actually good timing though since it forced me to put alot of stuff I didn't need anymore away.

I did get a good start on the shower, but only managed to get the trim work done. The panels each have to be custom cut to fit, so I decided to wait until I had a little more time to concentrate. I only get one shot to get this right, so I can't mess it up. I may get back in there tonight, after I clean the 'working' bathrooms :-)

BTW...the Red Sox magic number is down to 3 after our win & the Yankee loss last night. It's been a rocky ride the last month or so, but at least they've clinched a playoff spot. Now the October fun starts!

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 2

2007-09-22T17:24:00.000-06:00

Hello all. It's that time again, when I share progress we've made on the new bathroom. I'm actually quite surprised at how it's coming along. The drywall work is done (THANK GOD!) and it came out ok. It's not a professional job by any means, but luckily for me, the rest of the drywall work in my house is awful, so by comparison mine looks outstanding :-)

I had a business trip to Annapolis, MD this week so I didn't get a chance to do any work during the week. However, my wife did (Yay Beth!). She got 2 coats of paint on the walls done so the bathroom looked like this by the time I got back...

Now before you start asking too many questions, it's supposed to look like this. We're installing wainscoting along the bottom portion of the walls (toilet area to the right of the new wall), and shower panels to the left. Now, as for not painting straight lines, you'll have to ask Beth about that yourself :)

I started in on the beaded board wainscoting today since it's the last major item needed before we can have the new toilet installed. The kits I bought are working out nicely. For those of you who are interested, I went with MDF since it's inexpensive and going to be painted anyway. I found these complete wainscoting kits on-line at Elite Trimworks.com. A photo of the toilet area as I left it today (sans paint & toilet) is below. I'm really happy with how it's looking. The entire bathroom will have this installed eventually.

The last few things we did today was install the baffles on the recessed light fixtures and cut a hole for the recessed shampoo shelf that will be installed after the shower panels go in. Beth thought it would be cute to get the obligatory "Where's Joe?" photo. She's taken these when I installed the laundry room window, master bath window, you get the picture...

Tomorrow starts the shower panel adventure. With any luck, the bathroom will at least look like it has a working shower by the end of the day. I'll let you know if it actually works out that way. Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. We are :-)

Great Weekend

2007-09-17T10:51:00.001-06:00

We had a marvelous weekend. Celebrated E's 13th birthday with most of the upstate 'clam-steam' folk on Saturday. This made up for Beth & I missing the ACTUAL clam steam a few weeks back. The photos we took on Saturday are up on the gallery, plus Beth has a cool post as well. Even better is a URL to our first-ever YouTube video post. Yippee! You can imagine our glee when it worked. I was playing around with the video mode on the new camera and was amazed at how good they came out. I learned a valuable lesson though...640x480 video mode EATS memory space. A 20 sec clip was over 40 MB! Next time I think I'll go 320x240. I'm sure it will look fine for YouTube viewing, and likely won't take near as long to upload.

Even before we headed over for the birthday shindig, I made a new batch of beer. I racked a Fat Tire amber ale clone recipe that I got from Northern Brewer. I can't get this beer where I live since New Belgium Brewing doesn't distribute east of the Mississippi River (they're located in Ft. Collins, Co). It's one of my favorite beers, and I try to have one whenever I'm traveling west. The goal is to have it ready by the time our distinguished knitting guests arrive. It's gonna be close, but I'm hopeful that we'll all be able to enjoy a glass or two together!

I Just Love My New Camera

2007-09-11T18:24:00.000-06:00

Here's a few shots I'll taken since I bought the new camera.

This is my favorite view of our house. It shows the porch, the odd collection of roof lines we now have, and our front yard. If we ever have to sell our house, this will be the photo in the brochure.

A view of my windsor chair, taken in sepia mode. I loved how the light was coming through the dining room window. This would be a near-perfect shot if I hadn't failed to notice that the front left leg is levitating...DOH!

Our sweet Cozmo. The poor guy doesn't venture from this spot much anymore. He's a handsome boy, but looks rather sad.

This is a pie safe in our dining room. It's amazing how sepia mode can hide so much...I wish this room looked this good in color.

I'm going to post the rest of the 2007 General Montgomery Day shots up to our Kodak gallery. Hopefully, within the next few days.

Retail Silliness

2007-09-08T06:59:00.000-06:00

I decided that yesterday was the day that Beth & I got a new digital camera. Our old one still works, but it 6 years old and has certain personality disorders that drive us absolutely crazy when we're picture taking. The worst of which is a 1-2 sec shutter lag that cost us a personal memento photo with Robin Williams, not to mention countless other shots that passed us by before the damn camera was ready. Well, no more! After doing a bunch of research, a lot of wishing, and a lot more waiting, I decided to buy a Canon S5 IS. It seemed like the perfect mid-point between a point & shoot and an SLR. Plus the price was in the palatable range. I'm quite the novice photographer, but am interested in getting better. Having several friends who are quite good provides added inspiration to take better shots as well.

OK, now to my retail story...After looking at many many websites, I realized that Circuit City had the best price. An added bonus is that they allow pick-up of on-line orders at their stores, which is nice since I have one a few minutes from my office. So I ask myself a simple question..."If they allow on-line pickup, then they'll surely honor the on-line price in the store, right?" WRONG! The same camera was on the shelf at $50 more than on-line. I ask a few of the floor sales people WTF? They told me "why don't you just order it on-line at this computer? You'll be able to it up in 5 minutes from the counter." Needless to say, I stood there dumbfounded. Being the engineer that I am, I stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out how they could do this and stay in business. I think I've got an explanation but won't bore you with it. :-) Bottom line, I got it at the price I wanted so that made me happy.

The silver lining is that the new camera ROCKS and I can't wait to post a few new galleries with it. Today is General Montgomery Day in the village, so there will be plenty of opportunities.

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 1

2007-09-06T18:15:00.000-06:00

If you read Beth's blog, you're at least familiar with the trials & tribulations of the master bath remodel we're currently doing. Well, since the whole woodworking and home improvement slant is supposed to be MY thing, I thought it was about time that I blogged about it.

We're currently in the middle of putting up drywall, which has turned out to one of the most significant tasks to overcome. I've done drywall work before, but never an entire room from scratch, from sizing and screwing up the sheets, taping and mudding the joints, and the sanding. Drywall sanding is kinda like paying taxes, just when you think you may be done, there's more- lots more. Well, we started doing the ceiling last night and luckily, we rented a lift to provide the muscle. A machine like this can save a marriage, and I'm convinced that if I hadn't rented it, Beth and I would have ended up killing each other while trying to do it ourselves.

The photo may not show this in great detail, but several of the ceiling joists have wood shims installed over them. This is because back in the day, there was no need to ensure your framing was plumb & square since you could make it so when you applied the plaster. Well, it's not quite so easy with drywall...if you don't want walls that look like wavy mountain roads, you must shim the low spots, one by one, until all studs and joists are even. I cut sets of 1/8", 1/4", and 3/8" shims on the bandsaw so that the 5 joists from left to right would be level. Each wall had to be handled the same way, which is why it took me several weeks to get them done. It's tedious detail-oriented tasks like these that make me want a new house.

Another recent completed task is the new vent fan (shown below). We got a Panasonic whisper-wall, a direct vent model which true to its name, is very quiet. A major advantage to a complete remodel is total control over where to run the electrical. With this in mind, we went with the new fan, recessed overhead lighting, and three times the number of outlets and switches we had before. This photo also shows the new window, which is another major upgrade :)

Up next is taping & mudding the ceiling drywall, refinishing the oak floors, and priming everything. Before long we'll actually have a working toilet again (after 6 months or so) and a second shower (after 2 years). Geez, it's amazing what you're willing to live with. I've got a deadline of October 18 for finishing everything (anybody know why??), so the next 6 weeks ought to be quite busy...

Magic Number = 17

2007-09-05T08:35:00.000-06:00

I just love this time of year. Pennant chases in baseball, college football is back (Go Ga Tech and Fla Gators!!), and the weather is cooling as we head into fall. For all these reasons, it's hard for me to feel sad on any day between September 1 and December 1.

Back to baseball...I've really become a big Boston Red Sox fan over the last few years. Alot of it has to do with my hatred of the Yankees (i.e., the evil empire) as well as my being a lifelong fan of those other perennial losers, my hometown Cubs. I can't really explain why I identify with the Red Sox, but I just do. I'm not that vocal about it in public since I live in Yankee hell, and a Yankee fan would just as soon run you over if you have a "B" on your hat...

But I digress...the good news is that the Sox are up 7 games with 23 to go, which gets us to the title of this post. I'm losing faith that the Mariners or Tigers will close the gap in the wild card, but that's OK. The playoffs are actually more satisfying when the Yankees are involved (and lose) >;-D

Can I get an Amen????

2007-09-03T06:33:00.000-06:00

I heard a story from NPR yesterday in the "This, I Believe" series. Usually, these stories are testimonials of someone's convictions and/or experiences. This one is no different, except for one thing...It was about barbecue! That's right, kids. Good old fashioned barbecue. While I was listening to it, I found myself nodding, smiling, and sharing the joy. For all of you other barbecue lovers out there, you must listen to this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4827993

I couldn't have said it better myself. Makes me want to go fire up the smoker! Happy Labor Day All!

I Heard You...

2007-08-27T08:39:00.001-06:00

Alright, alright, alright...I know I've been lazy, and busy, and lazy over the last few months. But that's no excuse. I promise to get back to bloggin' soon. I do have lots of old house renovation and construction stories to share so I hope all of my usual readers will be back to comment (and insult) at their usual frequency. :-)

Be back soon (and don't say "we heard that before...")

Tap-NY Recap

2007-05-08T10:04:00.000-06:00

Hello campers. Well, a little over a week ago, I attended the 10th annual Tap NY Craft Beer and Fine Food Festival. What a great time. I traveled up to Hunter Mountain with a tour bus group from our favorite local haunt, the Golden Rail Ale House. Here's a photo of the group in front of the Hunter Mountain Ski Lodge.

This festival is a beer bonanza, with selections from over 30 NY state craft brewers. All of our favorites were there, including Lake Placid, Blue Point, and Brooklyn. Lake Placid took top honors this year as the best craft brewer in NYS. Well deserved, I think. If it's not my favorite brewer, it's in the top 2-3. I urge all of you to venture out and try selections from these incredible breweries if you can find them. If not these, then patronize your local craft brewhouses and breweries. It's well worth the effort. You will be rewarded!

What makes the trip even better is that I've gotten to know the organizer of the event (and many of the attendees), so it just feels like you're hanging out with friends. I've posted up the photos from the day on our Kodak Gallery website for all to view. Bear in mind that this day was in fact a day of drinking so several of the photos look incriminating. However, it was all in good fun.

I realize this has been a beer blog lately without much woodworking. That is going to change. Now that Spring is here, I have grand plans for getting back in the shop and starting a few new projects.

My Wife Rocks...

2007-04-22T06:41:00.000-06:00

My wife had a really trying week. I'm still out of town, and as such, the house Gods saw it fit to punish me again for it. Well, this week was no different. For a short history of what has happened, check this out. When I left NY, we were in the midst of one of the worst Spring Nor'Easters in history. As a frame of reference, we got the most rain in 24 hrs (7+ inches) since 1882! For the first time in my life, I experienced a real "100-year storm" that we frequently plan for at work. However, there was a silver lining to all of this. If this storm had happened in the 2004/2005 timeframe, it's likely that I would have been faced with a massive recovery effort. Who knows if it was luck, karma, or what that lead us to this point, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

As for the title of this post...my wife has come a LONG way since we got married. For an example, read this. She wasn't always this level-headed under pressure. In fact, if this happened 7-8 years ago, there's no doubt in my mind that we would having a serious discussion about my changing jobs. SOON. Luckily for me, we can now get through just about any house issues that are thrown at us, errrr, I mean thrown at HER :-)

Thanks to all who commented on her blog and shared their support during this week of hell. I appreciated them as much as she did.

What's wrong with this world?

2007-04-20T16:48:00.000-06:00

Here I sit in beautiful (sic) Mentor, OH on a Friday night away from home watching a CNN feed of coverage from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Today had the unfortunate luck of being the second in a week where a questionably sane person decided to take a gun and shoot innocent people. The Virginia Tech shootings happended just 3 days ago, and the wake of those events are still on the front page. I'm sure that I don't have to share my feelings about these dispicable acts, as they likely echo those of 99.999% of all Americans. However, there are a few things that I feel I must talk about here, since at the moment it's my only outlet...

What I wrestle with more than anything during weeks like these is the contradiction of how they happen in our society. We live in a society predicated on free will, giving our citizens the ultimate in personal freedoms. The duality comes in when you realize that ultimate freedom also breeds ultimate carelessness. Our society gives people every opportunity to hurt others; we just hope & pray that won't. Why would they? I'm generally in favor of protecting people's freedoms because I truly want to believe in the good of people. Furthermore, I'm not really sure how beneficial to society as a whole it would be to ban all handguns. Something just tells me that mentally unstable people like the freaks of this week would simply find another means of doing their bidding. Which brings me to my final thought...

I'll be the first to admit that I understand very little about mental illness. I can't even imagine myself in that situation, where I've lost all appreciation for the value of human life and am willing to kill others and myself. Perhaps these two individuals were so out of their minds that their thoughts of hate and murder appeared to them to be pefectly lucid and sane. All I have to reconcile the acts of the past few days is the hope that they weren't fully aware, because the contrary really scares the hell out of me.

Tucson

2007-04-14T06:57:00.000-06:00

Remember way back when I blogged about finally getting some head? (in my beer, you perverts...) I know, it's been a while. Well, at the end of that post, I lamented having to take a film camera with me on my trip to Tucson. During the lag of having to remember to take the film in to get developed, waiting for the HS kid behind the counter to do his magic, and remembering AGAIN to go pick up said film, over a month has gone by. A month! By digital standards, I'd having taken 1000 photos and blogged up at least 5 posts. I'm such a spoiled kid...But alas, my rant much end and I must share some cool pics I took while out there.

I was lucky enough to go to Tucson with some seasoned visitors. Several from my company make the annual pilgrimage to the Waste Management conference so over the course of the last 5-6 years, have discovered many cool day trips in the surrounding desert and mountains. On the Sunday I was there, we drove east a few hours to Chiracahua National Monument.

It's the former home of the Chiracahua Apache Indians from as far back as the 1400's (remember Cochise & Geronimo? Chiracahua Apaches). In addition to the historical context of the place, it also has some amazing geological formations, which look like stone towers rising out of the ground.

The only downside to this day was that we didn't have enough time to truly enjoy this place. We had to get back to Tucson by 4 in order to attend the conference reception. Work is always getting in the way of fun...

Next year the conference goes to Phoenix. I've never been there either so I'm hoping I get a chance to go. I've already heard great things about the red rocks of Sedona...

It's All About Patience

2007-03-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

I decided to rack my latest brew (Sierra Nevada pale Ale Clone) to the secondary fermentor yesterday. It had been in the primary for 2 weeks, which is plenty long enough. Typically, 1 week in the primary is enough to finish fermentation, but I spent last week in Tucson at the Waste Management conference, so the beer just had to wait.

One basic tenet of homebrewing is that one must DRINK beer while making beer. So with this in mind, I decided to crack open one of my hazelnut porters, of which I've written much about lately. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that good things come to those who wait...

That's right, kids...the beer has CARBONATION! After thinking about it for a little while, a tiny light bulb went off in my engineer head. Yeast takes longer to do its thing when temps are low. Well, my kitchen rarely creeps above 60 in the winter unless the pellet stove is raging. Since this batch is sitting in boxes on the floor, I imagine the remaining yeast in these bottles was working at a snail's pace. No matter, the beer is now carbonated and the brewers are happy. The lesson I learned from this is that most things that happen during brewing are cause & effect, provided you know what to measure and where to look to see what it means. This all comes with experience and a few messed up batches along the way. The good part is the longer you do it, the higher the probability that the batch will turn out good.

Getting back to that Sierra Nevada...Russ & I have high hopes for this one. The first tasting was very positive. Nice bitterness and clarity. Should turn out even better since we just dry-hopped it with another ounce of cascade. We'll bottle in a week, then wait another 2-3 to try it out.

I'm planning to post some Tucson photos next. Wife stuck me with a film camera out there (the horror!) so I have to get it developed first.

Cheers!

Project for a Good Friend

2007-02-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

A little ways back, my friend Dominic asked me to help him make a chess table for his new house. He priced out some tables in catalogs, but the nice ones he liked were well over $1000. Plus, he wanted the satisfaction of building one himself the way he wanted it. The plan was to make it almost entirely out of walnut, with an inlaid chess board made from alternating walnut & maple squares. Here's the finished product...

I've been meaning to take a few photos of this table for the last 2 years, but for those of you who know me well, I can be quite the procrastinator... The photos are from Dom's upstairs den, with some very nice chairs that I'm sure his wife Sue picked out :-) This was the first piece I made for someone else and have to admit that it's the one project I'm most proud of. Dom tells me that he & his family are pleased too.

If memory serves, it took us about a month to complete the construction, working mostly nights and weekends in my shop. The walnut was given to us by another friend, who also happens to be a professional woodworker. A very generous gesture indeed. We reverse-engineeredg the design of a similar table from a magazine, using a traditional shaker design. The table's legs are tapered on both inside edges and the stretchers have a bead detail along the bottom to dress them up a bit. The finish is 4 coats of a high-gloss Sutherland Welles polymerized tung oil. Dominic applied the finish himself. It left a very nice smooth finish but it took a little while to dry between coats.

Seeing this table again really has me motivated to get another project started. Any ideas?

Tink, Tink, Tink...

2007-02-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

That's the sound of sleet against the windows of the house today. I'm just grateful that I can work from home.

New Tools!

2007-02-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Hello all. One peripheral benefit (errr...weakness?) of the windsor chair class I took is a new appreciation for good hand tools. So, I've been perusing Ebay lately looking for a few bargains. Luckily for me, I've found a couple.

I recently bought a Stanley #4 Type 11 smoothing plane (from about 1920), an outside caliper for doing lathe turnings, and an antique Stanley bevel gauge. A photo of a similar plane is shown in the photo. I doubt mine will be in this good of condition, but half the fun is restoring these old planes & bringing them back to life. I've put bids in on a few others as well, but they weren't successful. My wife is pleased that I still have the ability to practice restraint in this area, although I have been accused several times in the last week of having an Ebay problem...

Well, gotta go, there's auctions I'm watching (not...) :-P

Beer's still flat...

2007-02-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Now I'm stuck with ~1.5 cases of it. Disappointed...

Flat Beer & Frozen Pipes

2007-02-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

There aren't many things that piss me off more than the two things mentioned in this post's title. I'll share a little bit about both today.

First, the beer...this being the hazelnut porter Russ & I made a few weeks ago. The yield was a bit low due to the crappy siphon I had. It wreaked havoc on my primary to secondary racking and cost me a little under a half-gallon of beer. That being said, when it came time to bottle, I cut back on the priming sugar since I didn't want to over-carbonate the beer and potentially cause bottles to spew their caps all over the kitchen. The last few beers I've made have been too carbonated, not to the point of exploding, but those that have to wait for 10 minutes after pouring due to the 4 inches of head in the glass. I definitely wanted to avoid this. SO, what happens next? I crack a few of these beers with great expectation only to find out they're flat. I mean TOTALLY flat. I can't tell you how disappointed I was. However, not wanting to throw in the towel, I decided to try & re-prime some of the bottles with more sugar. I figured the batch had nowhere to go but up, so what the hell? I haven't cracked one open yet but will share the results with you soon.

Now for those pipes...Beth has been very good at keeping the friends & family up to date on our house woes, so shouldn't be new to any of you. However, it IS relatively new to find out that you have a house can have pipes on the 2nd floor freeze when those on the 1st are fine. Sound strange? Well, giving full credit to the idiot who owned our house previously, our feed pipes to the second floor are right next to an uninsulated outdoor wall that happens to have some draft issues. I must admit that a little influence is also due to sub-zero wind chills we've been having in NY lately too. All of these things together equals no water in upstairs bathrooms. Luckily for me, the pipes were in reach and could be insulated and heat-traced without needing either a sledge hammer or a chiropractor. 3.5 hours on a ladder in my basement's stairwell was all it took. In my house, that's not too shabby...

On a completely unrelated note, I urge all of you who visit here to read the following. Over the last few weeks, there has been ALOT of press on the recent findings of the IPCC on global warming and the potential influence of man (and his CO2) on it. What I find fascinating about this topic in the press is the near addictive quality of buzzwords and sometimes unsupported conclusions that are reported. I'm of the opinion that much of what gets reported on this topic (given the current level of understanding) is likely more due to politicos and not scientists. I'd like to see far more SCIENCE reported and far less propaganda. However, science doesn't sell. That is unless geeks like me are reading it...

All's Well that Ends Well

2007-01-31T18:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all. My apologies for being so lazy with my posts. BUT, thanks to my lovely wife bustin' my chops to get something done, I'm back....!

The title of this post says it all about the latter portion of my windsor chair class. I spent the better part of last weekend finishing it up. This was the second 3-day weekend (out of 2), with the expectation that I would be able to actually complete it. Luckily for me, I actually did, but not without some drama and a few near disasters...

I should have known that problems would arise when glue-up began. My first ever chair glue-up was no exception. It started out well, with turning tenons on a lathe. My first mistake was using too much of my prior woodworking knowledge as a basis. Rule #1 - CHAIRS ARE DIFFERENT. The sooner you accept this, the better off you'll be. So, with that in mind, I started assembling the legs & stretchers. This is shown on the right in the first photo (with Ferris making it look way too easy). Mine didn't go so well.

When I attempted to glue up the base assembly, I learned that I had made the tenons too fat, which didn't give me near enough time to make adjustments before the glue set up (Reference Rule #1 above). What happened next almost made my cry. When twisting the legs and stretchers to line them up, I heard a loud CRACK! The side stretchers both sheared right off . The 'lining' on this black cloud was that the legs were saved.

The rest of the class went much better. And I actually finished a day early. This took a colossal effort on Sunday (at the shop until 9 PM). I saw first hand what makes these chairs so strong. Every major arm, leg, and spindle piece is a wedged, through tenon joint. When done properly, it makes the parts near impossible to take apart. Below is an example of some of these wedges. It's a shot of the top bow where the spindles get secured. I just love the way the uncut wedges look like a bad Coolio-style hairdo. I deem this photo "Bad Chair Day". Bad pun, but I thought it was funny...

The whole process was quite enlightenening and very satisfying. Up until it was actually done, I had SERIOUS doubts about whether I could actually make a chair. Now I know I can, which is a really cool feeling. The last photo is the graduation shot with me & my chair, freshly painted and looking spiffy. The other chair is the one my instructor made. I must admit, mine didn't turn out too bad...Hooray!

The next thing I'm planning along these lines are a couple of stools with hand-turned legs. I want to do the proverbial "crawl-before-I-walk" thing in my shop since I won't have an instructor correcting my mistakes at every turn. I hope to start on those in the next few weeks.

It's a good beer day

2007-01-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've recently got back into homebrewing. I made my first few batches in college, but they didn't turn out that great because I really had no idea what I was doing. Luckily for me (and most of my friends), good beer isn't a necessity in college, so it served its purpose. Nowadays, I'm far more interested in drinking GOOD beer. So to make beers actually worth drinking, I'm finding it takes a little more preparation and care during the brewing process.

We bottled the latest batch today. It's a hazelnut porter, made with a standard porter kit from MoreBeer.com. Now we buy supplies locally from Party Creations in Red Hook, NY. Bruce & Gloria run a great store, and have all the supplies and expertise brewers need to make great beer. My fellow brewer Russ is a big fan of hazelnut porters so we decided to try our hand at one. We added hazelnut liquer right before bottling to give it the added flavor. A taste from the bottling bucket was positive, with a nice smoky flavor from the smoked malt we added to the recipe. It'll be ready in a week or two, after some carbonation is made in the bottles. I'll write up more when we get a real taste.

Our next set of brews are a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone and a Bellhaven Scottish Ale clone. Both of these are personal favorites and I can't wait to get them both in the fermenter.

One last note...I have to give a Super Bowl shout-out to my hometown Bears! They just beat up on the Saints 39-14 to get back to the SB after 21 years. Go Bears!!!

Windsor Chair Class #1

2007-01-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well, for those of you of frequently visit the Porch, Beth mentioned the chair class I got for Christmas. It's set up as (2) 3-day weekend blocks with the end result being a completed Sackback Windsor chair that I take home with me. The basic prototype is shown here. It must be stated that the class I chose is in the 1700's - 1800's tradition, which is handmade with all hand tools. The only exception being the turnings, which are provided by the instructors. If I survive the class and still have the patience required to make more of these things, I'll probably tackle some turnings on my own later on too. Now back to the chair...

The class is structured so that the instructors, Ferris & Maureen Rugar, make chairs alongside the student. I'm given a thorough demonstration, then it's my turn to have at it. Day 1 started by learning how to make spindles by hand using a rather large drawknife and a spokeshave. Each one starts out as a 3/4" square blank, and ends up (about 30 minutes later) as a round, tapered spindle. The photo here is a "before & after." I managed to get better as I trudged through making 7 of these puppies, although a few are rather ugly. The other Day 1 activity was BENDING!! Taking normal strips of green oak and turning them into elegant, rounded shapes like the bow (upper arch) and the arm (middle section) on the model chair. Bending is pretty straightforward, but you have to have the right equipment, which means a steam box (pic #1) , a form (pic #2), and tools to keep you from burning the crap out of your hands and face. With a little help from the instructors, I managed to avoid harm and get my bends done right. I'm definitely going to build a steam box for home bending. As you can see from the photo, it's pretty low-tech, but the results are great.

Day 2 was all about shaping the seat. It starts as a flat, rectangular hunk of pine and eventually becomes a very comfortable place for your bottom to hang out. Now it takes a remarkable amount of work and MANY very cool tools to get you there, but it's all worth it. Here's a few shot of me adzing and scorping. I couldn't make up these tool names... By the end of the day, I had the makings of a seat, but my arms and shoulders were pretty sore.

Day 3 was my introduction to drilling holes the old fashioned way, with a bit brace and spoon bits. For a modern woodworker who uses a cordless drill about as often as I use a pen, I wasn't looking forward to this. However, this part held true with the other "traditional woodworking" lessons I'd been taught up to this point. Once you see what's inolved and actually do it, it's not so bad. In fact, it's relaxing not hearing any power tools in a shop. This whole experience has me re-thinking my shop, with more focus on hand tools and hand work. I'm not a purist, and there will always be power tools in my shop. However, there are some things that should be done manually. This class has given me far more confidence to do just that.

That drilling photo isn't a mistake. I was instructed to use either my forehead or chin to apply downward pressure on the brace. It looks (and feels) weird, but it works. The second photo was the end-point for Day 3. I now have a seat with 4 balanced chair legs installed. I have to wait 2 more weeks to finish my chair. Much more on those experiences later.

We're off and running...

2007-01-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Well, after months of prodding from my wife, I finally got off my keister and set up my own blog. This way, SHE can write all she wants about knitting (which will be ALOT), and I can share some of my own stuff. I've got much to catch up on so their will be plenty of posts in the near future. However, since I've still got my bloggin' training wheels on, no point in hurtin' myself right outta the gate...