Busy Sunday

It is great to have an almost functioning shop again.    About all that remains is to go through all my supplies (fasteners and scavenged parts, mostly) and get them organized so that I know what I've got.  I expect to save quite a bit of shelf space by consolidating & organizing the supplies, and this should allow me to use that shelf space to hold still more supplies. 

I already put the shop to use.  We picked up a pretty good wheelbarrow for $12 at a garage sale.  It only had one problem: the wheel was wobbly on the axle.  I had some thin-walled plastic pipe and I cut a sleeve/bushing to make the wheel fit right. Wobble gone!  

Angel & I did some good garden work today.  We basically need to move all the amended soil for the garden to the north edge and pile it in sort of a temporary "berm."  This will give us room to work south through the garden area. Here's what we do:

• Break the soil apart with a pick.
• Pull out the big rocks.  Some of them are bigger than two fists and are real tool-breakers.
• Pick out some of the medium sized rocks.  This leaves a sandy soil that compacts too easily.
• Add a large amount of compost & mulch.

This is time-consuming, heavy work.  And we're racing with the seasons to get the main garden ready for winter.  If we get this all done, we'll spread the bermed soil evenly through the garden area, cover it with some mulch -- perhaps straw if we can find something that hasn't been treated with fungicides, etc. -- and add a bunch of night crawlers.  Come spring, we should have a garden ready to plant!

The north & east sections of the property continue to get better.  I've almost finished with that work.

Completely different topic: The Presidential Election.

Even though the debate was fairly lame, I think that Senator Obama was asked a good question, namely, what sacrifice would he ask of Americans at this time.  

I am not surprised that in his answer he only alluded to a need to conserve energy. Remember, after all, what happened to the last president who actually asked Americans to put in some heavy lifting for the country.  Jimmy Carter tried hard to get us to conserve and we rewarded him for his efforts by voting him out of office ASAP.

There are many things that we as Americans can do for the country.  And I don't mean "go shopping" either.  Since I'm not running for office, I have the freedom to say what's on my mind.  Here are some things that we should be doing:

1. Figure out how to use less energy.  Find one person with whom you can carpool.  That will cut your fuel costs in HALF.  Yes, you'll relinquish some of your precious independence. You'll also have to cooperate with a neighbor to make it work.  Quite a sacrifice.
2. If you are able, grow a little bit of your own food.  Even if all you can do is put a couple of tomato plants in pots on your condo balcony, those tomatoes will be fresher and won't be transported who-knows-how-far from their place of origin to your local supermarket.  They won't be sprayed with anything that you didn't spray 'em with either.  Sacrifice?  Well, you'll need to pry yourself away from the TV and remember to water your vegetables.
3. Bake some cookies for the neighbors.  Do not expect anything in return.  Just show a little kindness to people whom you may not know all that well.  If you've got a Grumpy Gus (no offense if you're named "Gus" and are reading this and aren't grumpy, okay?) next door who is just too surly to deal with, well take some cookies to someone else on the block.  Smile.  Introduce yourself. Make nice for 5 or 10 minutes.  No agenda.  Now there's a sacrifice for you.

Now I could go on, but three things are enough for now.  If you're interested in more things you could do, file a comment on the blog and I'll think about making longer list.

Take a deep breath. Hold it gently for a couple of seconds, and let it out.

Is that the right rock?

Setting up the Workshop

My friend Ray M. was able to pick up the work bench that I wanted.  He & Rick S. dropped it off at the house on Friday AM.

This work bench is 8' (count 'em!) long w/a maple top.  It weighs 165 lbs.  I have exactly the right spot picked out for it in the garage.  Remember we have a somewhat oversized 2 car garage and Angel & I only own one car (un-American, I realize that...) so my shop space gets to be pretty big.

On the way back from yoga class this AM Lyn spotted a garage sale.  We picked up an inexpensive wheelbarrow.  We've been pricing them and this was a great deal even if it does need a tiny bit of work.  The garage sale people also had a full-on metal work bench (actually it looked like a teletype desk).  It had a smallish bench vise mounted on it.  $10 for the whole thing.  I was sorely tempted, but I am afraid of using up too much real estate in my shop, so I passed.  After all, I am seriously considering some kind of blacksmith shop and/or welding shop for my space, so I need to save some room.

I have a pile of high quality scrap wood.  It includes some nice pieces of cedar and quite a bit of purple heart.  I've got the purple heart organized and put on a shelf, but the rest of my wood is fairly disorganized.  Once I've got it straightened up I'll have still more room.  I am pretty sure that I'll "need" a bench grinder.  That is best set up on its own stand (that can be bolted to the floor) rather than on the work bench.  Why do they call it a bench grinder then?  Anyway, that means more floor space.  It is important to keep things organized.

Oh... back to *my* work bench: my goal for the day is to get this thing built and get my heavy bench vice mounted on it.  This will finally give me a good work surface.  That will make lots of little tasks that I've been struggling with go much more smoothly.

BTW, our garage stays pretty comfortable.  When we built it, the guys said that no one had seen a garage this well insulated.  That's primarily because of the guest quarters over the garage, but it makes for a much nicer workshop too.

Hey, I just figured out that I can add photos to this blog... you use the "Add Photo" button!!!  I'll try to do another post soon that includes a photo of the shop.

I'll try to do more later.  Right now I feel a strong urge to mess with wrenches.