Around the house

Water tanks

Nothing is ever simple. Major renovations frequently start as a nugget of action such as “I wonder what’s behind that wallpaper?” I’m leaning more towards aesthetic these days, although I still have no idea of it, even if something fashionable smacked me on the head.

Simple gravity fed water works, but to complete the picture, wed thought to align the tanks to maximise free space, complete storm drainage works (when it rains it pours!) and flattening the remainder of the area for installation of a garden/tractor shed.

Around the house

Moving tanks

What better way to convalesce from shingles than to supervise some earthworks. I’d been mulling over the idea of converting our electric pump based water supply to gravity fed for a while. Four tanks at house level and one tank at the top gate, with the idea of running the fire pump every month or so to transfer water upwards, and have Newton do the work for us downwards. The added bonus of having water when the power went out, if not the ability to boil it for a cuppa, was a bonus.

Around the house

Bee garden

Anna wants a bee garden around the biolytix. In preparation for the eventual gazebo I’ll put there and bbq deck I’ll put elsewhere, I thought some planks of timber sounded pretty easy.

The more I thought about it though, the more I thought about how to do it properly. Cement in the posts, bolt the rails, use spirit level to make things straight… It’s amazing how 90 degrees is not what you thought it was…

Astronomy

Moonset

Plugging in my trusty MB-D10 battery pack into my D300s for some extra power, I set up for a timelapse of the moon setting which I’d seen the day before. There’s always something striking about seeing the moon in daytime blue and white. The stills are from the day before when I’d noticed (whilst constructing the bee garden), and the timelapse  itself. The timelapse is made up of pics taken every 30 seconds.

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Around the house

Around the vegetable garden

Some pics from around the vegetable garden. We’d gotten our tomatoes in quite late last season, around Christmas so our cropping was also late. We’d rebuilt this bed using copious amounts of chook poo from the Stoneys somewhere (maybe too nutrient rich), and we those howling hot northerlies which killed our other celery, parsley, coriander and lettuce seedlings.

Still, it’s gratifying to have tomatoes ripening this time of year. The cherry and mini roma varieties are going great guns and very tasty too. Unripe tomatoes from a pile of prunings Anna made have ripened very well. Millipedes and other critters seem to have taken a liking to the larger varieties. And the chooks have made a haven in the undergrowth of the main bushes!

Woodwork

Leigh Jig

I have the serious impression that there is a great conspiracy out there and our lives are all just a joke for some uber being’s amusement. After a bit of research, I decided upon the Leigh Superjig in the 18 inch width from Carbatec. Essentially an ‘easy’ way to do some half blind drawer dovetails and some finger joins for the carcasses. Dowelling is a bit inelegant for a 3rd year student.

I bought the set of router bits and noted that the Leigh bits had an unusual 8mm shank. A bit more research revealed that I’d need an adaptor for the Leigh e-bush which meant that I’d need to define which router I’d use. Happy with Makita (what we use at TAFE- they seem bulletproof in the face of the ‘chisel tossing idiots’ as my sister-in-law calls them), I decided to assess their range.

The lightest model the RP0900X1 (check it out, it’s probably still wrong) seemed to fit the bill perfectly as it is advertised as being an 8mm router. Great, thinks I, no collet adaptors needed. the fewer widgets, the less chance of things going wrong.

Bzzzpt! Thank you for playing, next contestant please!

I lost half a day trying to make my 8mm bits fit in the 8mm router. Finally out of exasperation, I pulled my ruler out and measure the 2 collect adaptors. 6.4mm and 9.5mm. Waitaminute! What happened to 8mm? I lost the rest of the day hitting the hardware stores of Warrnambool to be told that no such thing exists. And so I checked Makita’s website again. Then I converted 3/8″ only to discover that it isn’t 8mm!

Kudos to Makita Australia, because a few unimpressed phone calls later, a chap called Matt organised an 8mm collet adaptor to be freighted to me gratis (for the advertised 8mm router I bought under false pretenses, I might add).

In the meantime expecting Easter to waylay my collet, I decided to venture out to Carbatech to grab a 1/4 inch straight bit so that if all else failed, I’d at least be able to rout something! I asked for the long shank 8mm straight bit and by the merest chance the short shanked one happened to be on display. Long story short (pun), the long shank is actually shorter than the short shank. As I wanted a long cutter, I bought the short one because it was longer.

If my head could shake any more it would explode!

Woodwork

Blackwood shelves timber dressing

It astonishes me how tasks scheduled for shed time expand to fill and exceed normal time. perhaps some dimensional instability bleeding out from the TARDIS? The thing about making something well is that it takes time. Changing the task to involve labor saving devices (power tools and jigs) only gives the illusion of saved time for what it actually does is shift 90% of your effort from doing to preparing.

Thus my whole day is spent preparing, making sure that all my planks are the same width and thickness. This is something I learnt during the TARDIS window construction because you really want all components identical (or near as) so that future machining, jigging & fitting can be performed in single actions.

Woodwork

Blackwood shelves

My new project includes curves. I neglected to pass muster for a curvy construction last year as the TARDIS didn’t really have any in it. Just like my second year organic chemistry exam where I knew the molecular structure of all the vitamins except that the examiners didn’t ask it, so too I think I strove too high with the TARDIS…

So, I sourced some blackwood from Smiths Sawmill in Naringal and spent the last couple of classes dressing it up. It is magnificent timber and if you’d asked me before I knew, I’d have said that any grey timber was probably only fit for firewood. But trim away a bit, square it up on the buzzer, make it parallel on the thicknesser and then smooth it through the drum sander and my gosh the results!

I had to glue up some smaller planks to make wider ones for shelves. the start of my curvy project looks a little square right now…