Recreation

After learning that the cord on my ear buds was just about long enough to tug at my ear while I was running, I decided it was time to check out other options. I've had excellent luck with Acoustic Research products in the past, and I figured I'd see what they had in earbuds. I found them for cheap at Amazon, and they arrived this morning.

I'm not a gigantic fan of lots of noise, so I've been fascinated by hand tools for about a year now. I recently acquired a very nice Disston panel saw second hand. Since I also have a set of drawers to build for my wife, and the material at hand to do them, this looked like a fine opportunity to try out my new saw. This made doubly opportune because the stock I bought is too long to easily crosscut on my table saw, and too wide to use my miter saw.

The new printer is here, and it's everything I hoped for, plus more. This machine was ridiculously easy to set up. My hard-wired Linux computers found it on the network right away. The printer comes with a CD that includes a Postscript Printer Description. As far as Linux is concerned, a PPD file is a driver, and right away I could print to my new printer.

Since my wife has been on a successful weight-loss plan, and I've been on a weight-gain plan on the new job, I decided it was time to do something about changing my weight. Because I've been unhappy with how thin my legs have gotten, and how little muscle tone there is, I decided that running, as well as some weight lifting, would be a good bet for winter-time exercise to encourage the weight loss.

Currently I'm sharpening my planes and chisels with sandpaper. And that's fine as far as it goes. But I've got a set of cheap diamond stones, and they're a lot faster at cutting the metal, even in finer grits, and they don't make a mess of loosened abrasive like I get with the finer grit papers.

Scraper Close UpA while back I bought a cabinet scraper, because I'd seen them used on TV, and I wanted to try it out on my bathroom vanity. The experiment succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

I put Batch 9, my honey-wheat beer, into the keg today. It's wicked-clear and very dry. Initial gravity of 1.062, final gravity of 1.002, for a final strength of 8.3% alcohol. That's light for a mead, but strong for a wheat.

New Stanley No. 5 Plane I bought this plane off ebay last week.I was a little apprehensive about buying a plane without seeing it, but when it arrived it was in nearly perfect condition. The only thing it needed was to be sharpened.

I reground the bevel and put a nice edge on it tonight (well, a nice edge for me). I wanted to put a fairly aggressive curve on it to use it as a scrub plane, but I couldn't get a curve. I did manage to take the edge off enough that it didn't leave tracks when I went after the flat side on a 2x4.

Powermatic Model 90I bought a new toy at a steal of a price. $190 for a Powermatic Model 90. With, at least in theory, a working 220 volt, single phase motor.

I'm working on a picnic table for my friend Cher, and I discovered that some of my lumber was pretty rough. I could have spent forever trying to sand it down, but that didn't look like a lot of fun. Fortunately I've been reading about surfacing wood with a hand plane, and I discovered that one of the planes my dad gave me had the round corners you need for a surfacing plane.