The Big Firkle 2020

[ZimbiIV]

Timbo,

Last week I lost the top of my little PVA tube, in which I keep a mix of 3 parts pva 1 part water, for sticking 3mm ply end on.

When I lost the top I stuck a bit of 1mm brass rod in to seal it, today needing to use it I squirted some onto the said 3mm ply end.

Well the upshot is if you need some VERY bright green PVA,  let me know. It's free of charge, about 100ml of the stuff.

paul

[FairTmiddlin]

Awwwww Arlo bumped his head.

But Tim's got a tender behind.

[Timbo]

5 hours ago, ZimbiIV said:

Well the upshot is if you need some VERY bright green PVA

Zombie films! Perfect for that skin peeling effect or a remake of The Mask! 

[Timbo]

28 minutes ago, FairTmiddlin said:

Awwwww Arlo bumped his head.

But Tim's got a tender behind.

After 19 years of a daily injection with a wide bore needle I has what is known in the mountebank trade as posterior rhinosis...I've got a butt like a rhino! 

My little mate had a bit more colour by home time. We watched The Tiger Who Came To Tea with a commentary by Arlo. This lock down thing has thrown up a surprise in how quickly my boy has gone from the odd word to gabbling away. 

[TheQ]

11 hours ago, ZimbiIV said:

Timbo,

Last week I lost the top of my little PVA tube, in which I keep a mix of 3 parts pva 1 part water, for sticking 3mm ply end on.

When I lost the top I stuck a bit of 1mm brass rod in to seal it, today needing to use it I squirted some onto the said 3mm ply end.

Well the upshot is if you need some VERY bright green PVA,  let me know. It's free of charge, about 100ml of the stuff.

paul

Take up model railways, It would be good for sticking down Static grass..

[BroadAmbition]

Hey Timbo - How's the shed security holding up?  

Griff

[Timbo]

So, I was on the phone to a professional Yorkshireman I know when I locked my keys inside the shed. I didn't know whether to be annoyed, pleased or ashamed that it only took me seven minutes the following day to make a bump key and get open two 'A rated' padlocks. Additional security measures have now been added.

Bang! And the twerp is gone! Or very nearly. A fall in the shed, resulting in a crack on the back of my head, had left me firstly thankful I'd turned off and unplugged the table saw before I fell over and secondly that I was now facing an even bigger 'firkle' to reorganise the shed following instructions from Ellie!
"Get that place organized and everything put away properly! No more projects until all your tools have a home and all the cables are out of the way!"
Outwardly I managed to look resigned if not glum. It's important to look truly chagrined when the chosen punishment is extended periods spent firkling in the shed on the exact project you had been contemplating and wanted to get on with! In the meantime I had a train to catch, I mean finish!

Couplings had been giving me grief. My redesign had not worked out as I intended. The couplings were weak and easily snapped off. I discovered this when I dropped one of the wagons. If they couldn't handle my mistreatment then they would not be suitable for a two year old's attentions! So I redesigned the redesign. This time I extended the chassis  and cut a dado either end to accept the wagon sides.

Armed with my final design, there was a flurry of adapting rolling stock and trains to fit. Doug would have felt very much at home! Soon a new tender was created, a couple of wagons and my favourite, the carriage. 


I box jointed the sides of the rolling stock using spalted ash. The chassis was made from pine, wheels and carriage floors made from black walnut. On the carriage I made the roof a 'lid' so that it could be removed to put the passengers inside.

The part I found the most difficult was drilling a hole into the centre of a dowel to make the buffers. But very soon I had a train to play with. But there was one thing missing. A whistle!


A section of red meranti about an inch and a quarter square and seven inches long was clamped in the vice after cutting off one end and putting it to the side. A half inch drill bit was chucked into the corded drill and four holes of increasing depths were drilled into the long section of meranti. This long section was then taken to the band saw where notches were cut at forty five degree angles. I then used some half inch dowel with one side flattened to make reeds to fit into the top of each long hole. Testing was fun. Drove my neighbours mental. So was even more fun. I glued the reeds into the top of each tube. Then in the short section I had put to one side I drilled halfway through with a forstner bit to make an air chamber and then drilled all the way through with a six millimetre drill to make the mouth piece to blow through. I glued the mouthpiece onto my four chambered whistle and waited impatiently for the glue to set.

Toot! Toot! Oh yes! After all that work I know the one bit of the train set that will get played with the most!

As some wag pointed out, I would need to make a box to put the train in. I laid out the engine, rolling stock and whistle. I was running short of wood!


I just didn't have enough wood left to make a box with dividers large enough to put everything in. In the end I opted to fix the whistle to the outside of the box with magnets. I thought I had cracked the hinges this time around making the hinge mortises flush. I thought wrong. But as before I fiddled around until I got the lid to fit. I added catches and small brass feet to the bottom to stop the wood from getting scratched too much. Finished at last!


Right after this coffee and a shower I will take it round and give it to Arlo to see what he thinks of it all and how many seconds his interest lasts and how long my joints hold up!

[Timbo]

With much anticipation I gave Arlo his train. Instant success! He knew what it was...roughly how it worked although he is still getting the hang of the train pulling instead of the rear wagon pushing. There was the odd crash, the occasional pile up...but...not only was Arlo fascinated with his train it kept him entertained for two straight hours and was put carefully back in it's box only when Grandma had introduced the prospect of sloshing paint on toilet roll tubes. 


I was wrong in prediction with the whistle. The whistle is something bigger kids find fascinating. Arlo was more interested in putting things into the wagons. Particularly three primary coloured blocks from his toy building site that he insisted  on putting inside the big carriage so a different colour showed inside each window. I'll remember that and make him some 'goods' to load on his train. I will wait a while though as I'm all 'trained out'.

I'm now into day one of the BIG BIG SPECTACULAR FIRKLE! I've started mucking out my office in preparation to redesigning my storage and workspace in both the shed and my office.

I spent most of the day sorting through my timber racks and veneers. In no particular order starting with lumber I have Beech, Cherry, Black Walnut, Sapele, Honduran Mahogany, Yew, Canadian Maple, American Ash, Spalted Ash, Tulip or Poplar, Pine, Cedar, Cedar of Lebanon, American White Oak, English Oak and plum. In veneers I have Tiger Wood, Birds Eye Maple, Sapele, English Walnut, Burr Walnut, Burr Chestnut, Cedar, Camphor, Spalted Olive, Ash Olive, Mahogany, Ripple Mahogany, Sassafras, Koto, Poplar, Yew and Oak. 

Some time ago now, I made two lumber racks that sit under the computer benches in my office. Pine frame with two uprights at either end with London shelf brackets screwed to them. I must say they do a very good job of storing lumber and keep it relatively straight.

My fascination with making boxes means that I have lots and lots of odds and ends of scrap wood as even the tiniest piece of wood can be made into a drawer pull, lid handle or splines. A six inch by six inch scrap of five millimetre plywood is too big to be thrown away and could end up as a substrate for a veneered box lid or base.

By tea time I'd waded through the wood racks and started on my artist materials. I have boxes of soft pastels coming out of my wazoo! Water colour paints by the box full, acrylics, charcoal, pastel pencils, sketching pencils, charcoal, inks, brushes by the dozen, pens, nibs, red squirrel hair brushes, wolf hair brushes, goat hair brushes, stubs, erasers, putty pencils, burnishers, sharpeners, pastel papers, water colour papers, sketching pads, artists journals, cartridge paper and calligraphy paper. There's fake gold leaf, real gold leaf and copper leaf. There are portfolios rammed on shelves and in the back of cupboards. As the piles of art tools grew ever higher I started sifting through some of the sets I had that I'd bought as replacements or on a whim, most of them unopened. These were donated to Gracie for her ever growing collection of crafting materials. Eventually I'd worked my way through both my art materials and those that were Uncle Albert's.

The old boy had been persuaded to go to an art class to give him something to do. When he was younger and in the RN he would draw and paint ships and sailing boats. He was quite good. But he only attended two of the classes later in life. He just had no interest in anything other than his television. There is one unfinished watercolour that he started that I will frame at some point.

Tomorrow, things will get musical as I find better places to store my banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, concertina, whistles, recorders, fife, harmonicas and my keyboards. At the minute I'm quite pleased that I have a habit of loaning musical instruments to folks who are considering leaning but 'want to try before they buy'. This means that my four string and five string banjos, my Takamini semi acoustic, my Strat and Tele as well as my big keyboards, amps and speakers are all being stored under someone else's bed for the minute!

[ExSurveyor]

Been busy then.

[YnysMon]

Wot, no ukulele? I’m thinking of getting one. Just for fun. Why not? Brass band is off, no choirs, no playing the organ in church. I read earlier today that churches may be reopening but singing will be a no-no. Too risky. Sigh.
Seriously though, I’m not really complaining. I’m all for keeping us safe.

[Timbo]

Ukulele is granddaughter Grace's department. She has lessons at school. We are very lucky that a family get together soon turns into a jam session as our eldest son Mikey plays guitar, bouzouki as well as piano. If only he would take his piano to his house and free up some room in our neck of the woods! If I was to take up another instrument it would have to be the tenor saxophone...as I couldn't afford anything above £9.99.  I sold my trombone many moons ago when I stopped playing for Hatfield Colliery Band and I now regret it. As for the organ...I'm not much of a church organist as I can't resist adding 'shave and a haircut' in the most inopportune moments, but look forward to trips to the Lowry dealers in Yarmouth although my last instrument was a Technics...for the digital drawbars.  My Party piece, Born to be Wild, really needs those drawbars. If I could just get a Technics machine with the Lowry revolving speakers life could be one step closer to complete!

 

[Timbo]

'I've got too any tools!' said no woodworker ever. Well not out loud. Well, not out loud to his Mrs anyway. But I do seem to have such a lot of tools. So many tools that my seven by eight foot shed cannot cope with the amount. So many tools that my eight by seven foot shed and my study is having a hard time accommodating everything and leaving enough room to work! You know you have a woodworking tool addiction when you discover brand new unopened boxes of tools that you bought two years ago! I mean, I can't even remember buying these! Hang on, were they a resent? I dunno, but if I'd known I had them I would have used them on a couple of projects I've been putting off until I had the tools to do the job. So we have a circle jig for my router and a panto-graph for my router.


A massive spot of firkling today. I raved out all of the tools and machinery from the shed and turned my bench to sit lengthwise along one side of the shed. I then butted up my drill press station to this.

I now have much more floor space or I would have much more floor space if Dylan had not decided that the shed was now a suitable place to park his ginger beagley butt.


Next I went through all of my power tools and sorted out those that I use daily from those I might use on an occasion when the setting sun clips the horn of a unicorn. I then sorted out those tools that I only use on the boat. The boat! The boat! For every tool I have here I have duplicate, and in the case of orbital sanders a quintuplet, sat in the narrow space behind Royal Tudor. Oh lummy! Quickly I knocked up some rough shelving in my study to store things like the biscuit jointer, spare orbital sander, a jig saw or two, small circular saw, large circular saw, heat guns, multi sander, micro sander, spray gun as well as my collection of camera tripods, sliders, jib crane, steady cam and Uncle Albert's fishing rods.


Onto the study floor went the mortiser, the cross cut saw and stand. I found my rocking horse from when I was a nipper...that can go for Arlo to ride!

With all of the seldom used power tools and spares out of the way, I really did have a lot more room in the shed. I had space to store the jointer and the planer. I put the sander onto a set of wheels and the scroll saw now had a home under the bench.

I found a box of 'stuff I don't use/don't know what it is but is too useful to throw away.

Does anyone have any idea where this metal thingy is from or what machine have I not fitted it too?



I found my old bench vice. I was lucky enough to be given an older but bigger vice by a neighbour but I have a job in mind for the spare vice now...who said I have a lot of vices?


Things brings me almost to my latest shed based projects. This will be a three item project. I need to build a tool cabinet to store all of my tools. I'm also going to build a matching cabinet for my drill bits and router cutters and finally I'm going to build a Japanese style portable tool chest to transport tools down to RT and back again.

For the minute though...I'm still firkling as I seem to have made more mess than I've tidied up!

[grendel]

12 minutes ago, Timbo said:

panto-graph for my router

oh yes you have  -- oh no you havent, where is it - Behind you...

[grendel]

17 minutes ago, Timbo said:

Does anyone have any idea where this metal thingy is from or what machine have I not fitted it too?

looks like a work support table for a grinding wheel or sander.

[grendel]

the last picture looks like the bandsaw fence.

[OldBerkshireBoy]

Where does the word fence come from? I ask because I am more used to guard or guide.

[Timbo]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

looks like a work support table for a grinding wheel or sander.

Aha! I think it's from the back of the bench sander. I don't think I've ever fitted the thing!

1 hour ago, grendel said:

the last picture looks like the bandsaw fence.

That's a fence I bought to upgrade my £99 Screwfix table saw. Cost just a little bit more than the saw did and is a very good fence. I hung onto it when I got rid of the Titan saw. I need to buy some T track so I can use it as a fence on my band saw.

5 minutes ago, OldBerkshireBoy said:

Where does the word fence come from? I ask because I am more used to guard or guide.

I think it's an Americanism that's passed into common usage OBB. My next door neighbour who was a carpenter always used to have a go at me for calling my table saw a 'table saw' which he said was the American term. According to Barry it should be called a bench saw in English. There's not much that our transatlantic cousins  do right but woodworking tools is one of the things they do really well. There's many a time I sit and drool at the availability of quality tools and timber across the pond.

[Timbo]

The Big Firkle continues and has moved on to my bedroom where I was keeping some of my Granddad's old woodworking tools. I've decided I'm going to restore them to be used rather than gathering dust. First off, his old bench planes. I'm just going to clean them with some meths, then square the sole and sharpen the blades. But I'm saving those for last.

Right under the bed, I found the old boy's mallet. This is taking me a bit of time and effort to restore. I can't get the head to separate from the handle. I tried WD40 and some mole grips but it won't budge. I've tried tapping it on the bench but it still won't budge. So I'm soaking it in petrol, meths and vinegar overnight and will give it a good go on the grinding wheel tomorrow!

[JanetAnne]

5 minutes ago, Timbo said:

So I'm soaking it in petrol, meths and vinegar overnight and will give it a good go on the grinding wheel tomorrow!

I do hope you have given up smoking dear boy! 

[grendel]

I believe there is a pin to remove to get the head separated from the handle.

[SteveO]

A blowlamp would shift it 

[JanetAnne]

6 hours ago, grendel said:

I believe there is a pin to remove to get the head separated from the handle.

It does have the look of a German ww2 hand grenade about it. Are you sure removing pins is a good idea now he's doused it in petrol?

[grendel]

Ah Tims ignorance is understandable, its too modern for an archaeologist to recognise - I think we should let him off.

[Vaughan]

I have a horrible feeling those stick grenades were set off by pulling the knob on the end of the handle!

Maybe the Vikings had a different type?

[FairTmiddlin]

4 hours ago, Vaughan said:

I have a horrible feeling those stick grenades were set off by pulling the knob on the end of the handle!

Maybe the Vikings had a different type?

Brings a new meaning to banging in nails though!