Addition to the birding station

I have a friend (Yeah, what a shocker, I have a friend! Of course in this case 'a' is literal. I have exactly one friend. . .) that lives about 20 miles away and he has a birding station outside his back door too. His includes a couple of suet cages and I see Jays and Woodpeckers on them from time to time.

We have Jays and Woodpeckers around here too, but apparently our birding station isn't classy enough for them since they don't hang out there, so I too added a suet cage.

So far it hasn't classed the joint up at all. Our feeder pole only has two hooks on it and they are currently occupied by one-each seed and hummingbird feeders so the suet cage was just kind of hanging there up against the pole between them.

Even I didn't find that very classy and a week later there were still zero beak-marks in the suet,
so I decided it was time to add another feeder pole.







 Since the theme of the existing pole is rebar & T-post, and I just happened to have some rebar and T-post laying around, that's what I built the new feeder post from.

The first job was to turn the end of the rebar into a little hook, but even my lightweight #3 rebar won't bend that sharp without hydraulics or some serious persuasion. Not having any hydraulics of the proper kind laying around I had to resort to the serious persuasion method, but I'm limited in even that since I don't have a proper oxyacetylene torch. (I'm still trying to maintain the illusion that I'm a wood man and not a steel worker and since cutting dovetails with an oxy-torch doesn't work too well I've never managed to convince myself it's something I just have to have! Except sometimes it might be nice to. . . oh never mind. . .)


What I can do is manage a little can of MAP gas, but no matter how long I hold the pathetic little flame against the rebar the best I can do is get just the faintest tinge of red, but then I'm not so sure that's not just wishful thinking.

With the bar as hot as I'm going to get it with my limited tools, I run outside to my bending station.

I'm not sure why, but when the parking slab was poured next to the barn slab they left this big steel spike embedded into it.

With that and a length of pipe I can get most of the hook bent into the end of the rebar.

And finish it off in the steel jawed bench vice.

In the process I did manage to crack one of the three bends. Don't know if I didn't get it hot enough or maybe bent it too fast, but it's just barely hanging on there and I will have to do a little welding to put things back together again.

Now that the end hooks were bent the easy bends were next. A clamp across the end of the end-hook to hold it in the proper orientation, and a little work with a pipe-bender

and I have three Shepard's crook looking bits for my new feeder pole.

Then it's out to the gravel drive where I can't set anything important on fire.

After a bit of welding to fix that broken hook, I clamp two of the crooks together at roughly a 120 degree angle and tack them in place.

I turned the first two crooks over and clamped the third crook into place.

After a couple tacks to make sure it stayed about where I wanted it, I added a few bead-welds to the whole assembly.

My brother the welder would point out that I've over-welded here, but with my (lack of) welding skills, overdoing it is not really a bad thing. besides, I could use the practice.

The area up near the barn is pretty gravelly under there and it takes more than a few whacks with the post-driver to get a T-post settled in and stable. Then some steel wire ties to attach the crook assembly to the T-post followed by some paint and we're good to go.

The suet, as well as a spare feeder and a garden ornament are hung with care,



but it's been a couple weeks now and still no takers on the suet (That will teach me to buy the cheap stuff!), though it only took a few minutes for a newly fledged Cardinal, of which we have loads of this time of year, to come check things out






and be the first to try the new feeder.

This is actually slightly unusual behavior. Usually the juvenile Cardinals will stand on the ground begging with little chirps and wing flutters while the parents pick seed off the ground from between the little one's feet and hand beak feed them. The greedy little buggers!

Close enough to count the ticks

This girl was wandering around just outside the shop several times today. She didn't seem to mind me moving around in plain sight, not even when I crunched across the gravel to get closer.

In addition to the traditional green browse, she was chomping down on the summer wildflowers growing on the downhill side of the drive where rain run-off tends to flow through on the way to the pond.

What?! A photo op?

You sure this is my good side??

You know what? I'd rather just eat instead.

Reality kicks me in the - tender place

It's my personal policy to keep reality at arm's length, and the longer the arm the better.

I mean this is the same policy that kept my childhood filled with fun fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Wizard of Oz; and playground games like Ring Around the Rosy. Never mind that we're talking some pretty dark stuff here; stuff like cannibalism, child predators, terrifying storms & lost children; or that we were dancing around the playground reenacting a killer disease and laughing about it. No, I didn't have to worry about all that stuff because reality was safely tucked away over there on the sidelines.

Good times! And I see no real advantage in giving that up now that I'm 'grown'. In fact I think an abundance of reality should make the American Medical Association's list of things that are really bad for you. After all, if I let in too much reality the flaws in the stuff coming out of my shop would be downright depressing; my enjoyment of a TV show purported to take place in Austin Texas but with California hills in the background of most every exterior shot would be shattered; and when I looked at myself naked in the mirror - well, actually, best not to look at yourself naked in the mirror after a certain age, best to just close your eyes and remember what you used to look like naked in the mirror before you were a certain age. . .

But this morning reality reached out and grabbed me by the balls and hasn't let go yet!

Yesterday, as I was signing for a loaner car to use as my van was serviced, (Mercedes service might be expensive but they do serve it well lubed with plush waiting rooms stocked with snacks and drinks, personalized service and readily handed out $50,000 loaner cars.) it was pointed out that my driver's license had expired last month.

Being the law-abiding citizen I am, first thing this morning I drove into town to correct that oversight. Of course if I really was all that law-abiding I guess I would have had someone else sitting behind the wheel rather than driving myself in on an expired license, so I guess I would have to remove all that 'law-abiding' crap; if I didn't keep reality at a distance that is. . .

Anyway - being a small town office, the process of renewing my license was pretty simple and quick and friendly. (When I was working and I, and all my co-workers, needed to maintain valid passports because of all the travel we did, we would regularly drive 50 miles outside the city to a small town passport office where we weren't treated with disdain, disrespect and (Insert the 'dis' word of your choice here.)) But this morning, when the clerk handed me my temporary license, complete with grainy, black & white photo, reality sunk it's pointy little claws deep into my gonads!

Holy Crap!

You know those mug shots of the week the local paper publishes in order to shame it's citizens into goodness? I'm one of those mug shots!!! Where the hell did I get all those chins! And when did I get so jowley? (Not jolly, jowley; you know, all those extra saggy bits hanging off my face.) My ears stick out, my eyes are beady, my nose is crooked! Hell, if I ran into myself in a dark parking lot I'd piss my pants!

You know that 'only a mother could love' line?? I just found out they were talking about me!!!

I let my guard down, reality snuck in, and now it's going to take weeks to repair the damage and regain my non-reality vision of myself. In the mean-time I guess I'll have to wear my hat low and limit the public's exposure to the hideousness as much as possible.

Reality sucks!!

Gardening: long overdue update

OK, just because I've been silent on the garden front doesn't mean nothings happening out there, just that I've been lazy remiss about recording the goings on.

It's well into summer heat here with morning lows in the mid 70's and daily highs in the low to mid 90's. That's normal climate for us but it still seems pretty mild this year compared to last year at this time when much of the country was stuck under a persistent high and regularly hitting the 100's. (Of course this mass oppression was happening just as I started off on another trip.) This means the cool weather crops are done and none highlighted this more so than the spinach and two different leaf lettuces.

In general I think my 'crops' got a late start, even those started inside under the grow lamp, because of a very cool spring which had us seeing night time temps well below 50 weeks after last frost. At least that's what I'm blaming for the mediocre results from several of the plants. I think maybe my results would have been a little better is I had reversed the day cycle on the grow light and kept it on overnight, turning it off for a few hours of rest during the day. This would probably have kept the plants warmer during the nights which were dropping into the 40's and even high 30's once in a while.

As it was, the spinach never had a chance to mature to the point of good firm leaves before the heat caused it to bolt. I got several harvests of spinachy tasting though floppy leaves but was never able to get beyond the floppy stage before they bolted and I cut them off at the knees as lost causes.

The Bronze Mignonette lettuce also stayed very floppy with some harvests of very thin, almost tasteless leaves. It never bolted in the heat but more-or-less just faded away. I have seeds left but I don't think I'm going to try this variety next season. There's so many others out there to try.

The Buttercrunch lettuce also never really firmed up and it bolted big time once the heat set in. Though it was susceptible to insect pests it grew well enough and I harvested a fair amount of it. This one might make it into the next season's lineup but probably under row-cover to cut back on the number of insects harvesting it before I can get there. The stems were about 3/4 of an inch in diameter at the base when I cut them off and one has stubornly decided to send up a new plant. Since I don't have anything else going in this slot I'm going to just leave it alone and see what happens.

I keep thinking the onion leaves are going to fall over and brown off any day, but they keep going. Once they do give up I'll pull the bulbs, dry them and see what we ended up with. This is Texas Sweet which is supposed to be a good, and unregulated, substitute for the highly publicized Vadail that comes out of Georgia. To prove the sweetness I harvested one bulb and ate it like an apple. Pretty good!

The Chard, being one of those heat lovers, is doing well though the leaves have grown past the 'eating raw' stage and must now undergo a little cooking to knock down the bitterness. This variety is Bright Lights which is supposed to have bright red stems and veins but we have only seen a hint of that so far.

The carrots have done better than I expected. The Danvers, over on the left, are seriously browned off now but the carrots below aren't bad. The Little Fingers on the right are doing better but still showing signs of stress. I pull one or two of each, rinse them under the hose, bite off the pointy tap root and nibble on them as I check the garden in the morning. (Don't tell the wife who would freak out if she knew I wasn't scrubbing them down with soap before eating!)

The potato experiment, where on a whim I planted a sprouting potato from the grocery store, continues but I won't know how well it's going until the top browns off and I dig in to see what's been happening below.

I did throw the rest of the sprouting potatoes, a batch of organics we bought that had been out of the ground just a little too long, out into the compost pile and there are now a half dozen, completely neglected but still decent looking plants growing out there as well.

Next summer, assuming I don't end up with plans that will take me away for much of it, unlike this summer, we are going to try sweet potatoes, of which we eat a lot. They are a tropical plant and like the heat so should help fill in the summer garden.

Just because I had empty space where the lettuces and spinach was, I threw down a few bean and squash seeds. Both seem to be doing pretty well but only time will tell if they produce anything.

So far the zucchini has been a bust. It has been producing fruits but they just end up rotting away before they grow as you can see. (The large one is only about an inch in diameter.) As some rot others start growing farther down the stem so I'm just leaving it alone to see if there is any change in attitude here.

The cucumber on the other hand can't seem to get going. it has set a lot of very tiny little fruits but they never grow more than an inch long before drying up and falling off. The dang thing continues to send out tentacles so this is another one I'm just leaving alone.

The yellow pepper has been setting and growing lots of peppers but none have matured beyond the green stage yet. As green peppers are not very welcome at our table I'm leaving these go in the hopes of yellow in the future.

The tomatoes have been a mixed bag.

The Flordade, which has supposedly been bred for a climate like ours, has produced one stunted plant that has set a single fruit which is still very green. This is a red variety so it will get left on the vine to see what happens.

The Beefsteak is almost as tall as the greenhouse will let it grow and has had lots of blossoms, but has yet to set a single fruit. I think this one is a bust.

The yellow pear is doing pretty well. So far the fruits, about the size of a ping-pong ball, have had a very mild tomatoey taste so I'm letting the rest go until they fall off into my hand to see if the taste gets stronger. If it doesn't, good grower or not, it probably won't make next year's garden.

 The Cherokee Purple has also been doing well with lots of fruits though none of them have matured to harvest yet.











So there you have the latest from the garden. Mixed results but, if nothing else, we have been providing habitat and both web building and hunting spiders are among those taking advantage.

Curtain rod mounting blocks: a quick project

I won't go into all the details, but we need to hang curtain rods around the 4 sides of some free-standing shelving. There's a wood platform sitting on top of the shelving that extends several inches over on each side. These overhangs are where we will  mount some rod holders. What follows is the recipe for some simple block curtain-rod holders.

Set up the table saw with the rip fence and a stop-block. Take one 4x4, (Treated because that's what I had.) using the stop-block as a length guide, run the 4x4 through the saw, flip 180 degrees and make a second pass to finish the cut.

Repeat until you have 4 blocks measuring  approximately 3.5 inches on each side.

 Orient all the blocks with end-grain up then pick two adjacent sides on each block. It is important that these be adjacent sides so the curtain rod ends, two to a block, will meet at 90 degree angles. Find the center of each of these sides by drawing diagonal lines from corner to corner.

 At the drill press mount a 1 inch bit, spade or forstner, then set the tip on the surface of a block then set the drill stop for a 1 1/4" deep hole. Drill two holes in each block using the center marks as guides. Hang onto the block firmly to keep it from spinning. Better yet grab it with a clamp

One of these holes will capture one end of each curtain rod. The other will be the cradle part of a slot into which the other end of the rod can be slipped.

To lay out this slot orient all 4 blocks with the top (End-grain) facing away from you with one hole facing up and the second hole on the left side

With a square draw guidelines as shown. Vertical intersecting left edge of drilled hole. Horizontal 1/16 - 1/8 above the centerline of the hole and a second horizontal 1 to 1 1/8" above the first horizontal. Then, using the same drill-press setup, remove most of the waste by drilling three more, overlapping holes taking care to stay inside the lines.




Once the holes are drilled use a sharp chisel to remove the rest of the waste. The idea here is that one end of the curtain rod will slide in the horizontal slot then drop down and rest in the cradle formed by the remains of the original hole.

Take a break to partially dismantle the table saw cabinet because you heard a whine-clunk-whine instead of the usual whine when you tilted the blade to 45 degrees and started it up.

Figure out that the belt between the motor and the arbor has jumped ship. Crank the trundle back to 90 degrees so you can reach the critical parts. Use a pry-bar to compress the motor spring. Reach up underneath and blindly slip the belt back onto the arbor. Hide behind a handy piece of plywood and flip the switch to see if everything stays were it's supposed to or if things are going to go flying in all directions.

Because everything stayed in place, reassemble the saw cabinet. Re-tilt the blade to 45 degrees. Re-set the fence to slice just a little bit more than a 1/4" off the corner of a block. And now we're back where we started before we were so rudely interrupted. . .

Run all 4 bottom corners of each block through the setup to get rid of them - the corners, not the blocks! (The block nearest to you in the photo is sitting upside down and you are looking at what will be the bottom once it's mounted in place.)

Decide that worked pretty well so take all 4 blocks back to the table saw, fortunately still set up for the corner cuts, and run all 4 vertical corners of each block through the saw.

Clamp the belt sander upside down in the bench vice. Take a block with all 8 corners knocked off (Like the one on the left) and give it a good sanding, making sure to ease all the edges. (Like the block on the right.) Repeat three more times.

Again, the blocks are shown here sitting upside down.

Give the blocks two good coats of your paint of choice.

And now they're ready to be mounted to the cover over top of the shelving units.

Once mounted measure and cut 3/4" EMT to the correct length, which is about 2" longer than the inside distance between block faces.

Turn the whole thing over to your resident interior designer who has already chosen the curtains, help her get everything hung. Stand back and enjoy. (Even though you know you should already be moving on to the next project. . .)

Adding cold fire to the van

If you got here through my other blog then the title of this entry might make more sense, if you got here direct then not so much.  For those getting here direct, I was attempting to add a little evening ambiance to the van's interior with this project.

It all started when I rediscovered some battery powered LED tea-lights we had laying around. There is a very tiny chip in there that causes the yellow LED to flicker like a flame.

After messing around a little I figured out that if I deconstructed the tea lights, threw away the excess and got down to their working parts I'd have a pretty small package. To make it even better, the flame shaped diffusers were easily separated from the body of the tea-lights and fit over the LED snugly enough to stay put. The deconstruction might look a little drastic but the price sticker on the bottom of each tea-light said we paid 58 cents apiece for them. If it all blows up in my face I'm only out a few bucks. (OK, worst case, if the failure is spectacular enough, a few bucks plus the cost of a new face shield. . .)

Since I really didn't want to be dealing with those little button batteries I needed to figure out some other way to power my 'flame'. Two button batteries = 3 volts. If I string 4 of these LED assemblies together in series, end to end as it were, that would = 12 volts which is exactly what the house batteries in the van deliver! (OK, someone check my math here! Serial readers will remember that I've shot myself in the foot with sloppy math more than once. . .)

Anyway. . . I wasn't going to need the switch on each of the tiny boards so off it came. I bridged what used to be the switch contacts by soldering in a piece of wire and threw the switch into the project bin to be used on something else in the future. The button batteries went into the battery box where they'll get used up next Christmas in one little sparkly ornament or another.

 Next step was to solder the black wire from the LED on the left into where the red wire is currently attached to the LED second from the left and so on down the line until I end up with one red wire on the left and a black wire on the right. This turned out to be a delicate process because the little printed circuit boards were really cheap (Hey, what do you expect for 58 cents?) and even my little 30 watt soldering iron was enough to destroy them if not applied very carefully. With only 4 tea-lights to work with and a 12 volt target to hit I didn't have any room for screw-ups.

Even with extreme care it was a near thing on a couple of the solder joints and I was pretty stoked  to see them light up when I temporarily hooked the assembly up to a small 2 amp battery charger. To make sure everything stayed functional, especially since a couple of my solder jobs partial delaminated the foil contact from the fiberglass PC board, I mixed up some 5 minute epoxy and encased all the important bits just like in military electronics.

While all this was going on I was taking frequent breaks out in the van to see where I might put something like I had in mind; or at least sort of had in mind. I selected the circled area for a few reasons. It's in view of either seating area, is up out of the way, is close to a 12 volt power source (The under-cabinet light over there is 12V) and there's about 2 inches of clearance between the wall and the far right edge of the cupboard door which is plenty for my tiny fire to fit into.

So now that I had a fire source and a location for it I had to figure out what to build around it. (If you get the impression that some of my projects are not really fully planned out so much as just evolve as I go along, you might be right. . .) At first I was thinking some sort of carved wood sconce, but before I got there I saw a piece on PBS about hand made paper piercings, (These are extremely popular in Hispanic communities and are strung up thickly at any self-respecting fiesta, just like used car dealers here in the US string up plastic flags; although there's a lot more fun to be had at a fiesta than there is in a used car lot.) that got me to thinking about pierced tin lanterns which got me thinking. . .
Which is always dangerous!

Anyway, I did some measuring and cut a piece of tin from a roll of roof flashing (Doesn't everyone have one of these laying around???) and, rather crudely with my limited tin-working tools, folded a hem around all four edges.

I then drew up an equally crude pattern on some paper that I stuck to the tin with spray adhesive. Grabbing an inexpensive gouge and a small hammer I went to work and discovered it was pretty easy to create the little football-shaped piercings.

The results are not exactly machine-age quality but then I was thinking hand made, more along the lines of a family recycling a tin can into a candle lantern. (Fill the can with water, freeze solid, pierce with a hammer and nail to the pattern of your choice, dump out the melted ice, insert wire handle and a candle.) Actually, the truth is I was screwing around to see how I might do something like this but it all went much better than I expected so I just kept on going. Frankly if I had known I was working on the finished product I might have taken a little more care in manufacturing it. Instead, I tell myself it has character.

Next I turned the tin over on a hard rubber mat and with the handle end of a grinder wrench (If you don't know what that is it's not important other than it's steel, has a 1/2 x 1/8th inch slightly radiused end and can be whacked on the other end with a hammer.) added a few 'rolled beads' like the kind you see around a tin can to make them stronger.

At this point it was clear I wasn't going to be able to easily abandoned the work I'd done so far so I fashioned a couple of wood blocks that would help the tin hold it's shape and act as mounting points. Once again, for mounting I turned to the Command strips and you can see the recesses I cut in the wood blocks so everything would sit flush against the wall once the strips were in place. I also drilled some random holes at random angles through one of the blocks, thinking that light would shine up through the holes and create a pattern against the ceiling. (It does a little bit but not much. the block is too thick, therefor the holes too long, to let much light make it all the way through.)

Being more of a copper man than tin man (There's a joke, or at least an insult, in there somewhere but I'm not going to try to find it.) I layered on a base coat of black paint, covered that with a coat of copper paint, then randomly ragged on a touch of deep red to give it character and some antiquing black (Dark walnut stain would have worked just as well.) for soot and wear. And finally a shot of satin clear-coat spray to give it a metallic sheen.

Next step was to fasten the wood blocks in place with some silicon calk. I recessed the bottom block up high enough that it can't be seen when sitting down across the room from it. In this photo you can, just barely, see a strip of some opaque paper I cut from scrap in the recycling bin that I added to cover up the three lowest piercings in the tin after darkening the visible side with a black marker. Testing revealed that these three piercings went just a little too far (Piercing run-amok!)  and allowed a direct view of the flickering LED's in there, and it was too distracting to leave that way.

Here you can see that I mounted the LED's on a small strip of wood, again using silicon calk as the glue. (This stuff sticks to just about everything, including your hands and tools!) With another Command strip, I mounted the mounted LED's in place in such a way that I can remove the whole mess if something goes wrong or needs to be changed. This photo also shows the hole I drilled into the face of the adjacent cupboard for the electrical leads. The hole is large enough that I can shove the small connector I attached to the LED leads through it. Don't worry, (As if you were. . .) the hole will be hidden by the sconce.

The second Command strip showing above is one of two that the sconce will mount to.

Now it was time for more electrical work. After removing all the contents and a couple of panels from the cupboard the existing wiring was exposed, including that of the under-cabinet light. All I had to do now was splice into those leads, add a switch and plug in my LED's. Mounting the switch was not technically difficult but it was a little nerve wracking to mark

 and then cut into the nice pristine headliner covering the cupboard bottom. A good sharp #11 Exacto knife made short work of the vinyl and foam. (I wonder if surgeons also have the jitters when making that first cut??) The top side of the cupboard bottom (Huh??) is also covered with the same padded vinyl so I carefully drilled a small hole in each corner of my initial cutout, making sure to go all the way up through the vinyl on the other side. This marked the 4 corners so I could make the same cuts on the top side knowing everything was going to line up properly.

With a Forstner bit just a bit larger than the switch-body is wide chucked into my drill I went to work. Contrary to what may seem like the right thing to do, don't spin Forstner bits at high speed. this makes the cuty parts fly around so fast they don't have time to - well - cut. Instead they burnish, which makes making a hole a whole lot tougher. (You like that last sentence? I though it was pretty good!)

Using a slow speed and keeping a close eye on the other side of the wood, I was able to spot the pilot spur of the bit as it broke the surface. This let me drill the last little bit out from the top, eliminating blowout and splinters.

When drilling out an opening like this never drill out both ends then come back to the middle. It will be nearly impossible to keep the bit from wandering off in undesirable directions when trying to remove the middle part. Always start at one end and work your way sequentially towards the other end, attempting to space the holes out such that you are drilling through no less than 2/3rd's wood and no more than 1/3 air. This will keep the bit on track and the left over points can be removed with a few passes of a rasp.

 With the switch in place I made the final connections

and put the panels back in the cupboard. There's one on the back which covers the wire runs and another fitted padded square, that sits over top of the wires seen the the second photo up. Here the lidded sauce pan and small mixing bowl are sitting on top of that one.

With the sconce in place and the cupboard door closed, all is ready for the big test. All except the sun. I had to wait a few hours for that to finally get in position, namely a whole lot closer to the horizon.

Without any fancy camera gear this is the best shot I was able to get of the sconce all lit up. Since the flicker program is identical in each of the 4 LED assemblies and they all start at exactly the same instant when I throw the switch on, they flicker in sync which gives the illusion of one large flame in there.

All in all, this is a project that worked out pretty well and I can imagine myself sitting in the van in the evening mesmerized by my cold fire.

I tried for a 10 second video of the lit sconce but that's even worse that the photo above!  I include it here only because it gives a vauge sense of the 'flicker effect'.

Did you know???

Did you know the origins of the saying 'just between you, me and the fence post'?  I didn't, not until I read an article in, of all places, the electric co-op monthly magazine. And I found it fascinating.

Alexander Graham Bell's patents for the telephone expired in 1894 and suddenly independent phone companies were popping up like fleas in an empty apartment, (If you've ever moved into a place that was vacated by pet-owners a few weeks before you know exactly what I'm talking about!) more than 6000 of them by the first few years of the 1900's. Only they were all focused on the towns and cities where infrastructure costs, namely stringing and maintaining wire, could be easily recouped because of the high volume of potential customers, leaving rural residents ring-less.

 That is, until Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck & Co. started selling phones by mail through their catalogs. Seems that someone took note of the miles and miles of barbed wire fencing through the Midwest and designed a phone with an alligator clamp that you clipped to the top wire of your fence. As long as your top wire was touching the top wire of your neighbor and his was touching his neighbor's and so on, you had a phone system!

Of course this was all one big party line so when one gossip leaned close to the handset and told another, 'just between you, me and the fencepost', there were a lot of fence posts out there listening in!!