I became lazy, and it cost me a little. There are two braces that are not yet attached to the bench. I knocked one off today. Which tells me I have to do this correctly.

The bench is currently in front of the garage/shop. At the end of every day working, I pick up all the tools and move them into the shop, someplace. It is very disorganized. I then put a heavy-duty tarp over the bench and call it a night.

A few nights ago, I left a couple of tools under the tarp. The rains came. No issues. The wind got me worried. When I got out to the bench, the tarp had been partially blown off the workbench, and the tools were soaked.

I spent the next 30 minutes drying, cleaning, and oiling the tools. I seem to have saved them.

The next day was hotter; I worked to the point where I could not move. Seriously, trying to stumble into the shade wasn’t working. Luckily my lady came to my rescue with water. She then helped me move my tools the 10 feet from the workbench into the shop.

This created a need for a way to transport and store tools.

The first step is the tool tote. Mine is a simplified version of the one shown.

I could have gone to the local lumber yard and spent $75 to get some pine of some unknown quality. The plans call for true sizes of 3/4 x 5 1/2″ and 3/4 x 6″. The 5 1/2″ isn’t really an issue; that is a 1 by 6. The 6-inch board requires cutting down a 1 by 8.

The Sawmill

I intend to cut my own lumber soon. It is currently on the back burner. I have the tools; I just require the will and the time.

There are about a dozen sawmills within a 75-mile radius. The first half dozen I contacted were all big operations. One “local” mill answered the call in Maine. They have a local number; you just can’t get it easily. Another only dealt with softwood. Two were custom saw work only. They either bring their mill to your woodlot lot, or you take your wood to them and they saw it to your specifications.

I ended up going south into Morador to visit the closest mill. It was worth it.

The mill is a small, family-run operation. They have a kiln for drying wood as well as airdried wood.

I intended to get some hardwood for tools and some softwood for projects. This was some cherry and hard maple at $6 per board foot. I wanted a piece of dark walnut at $12 per board foot. Finally, I wanted some pine for projects.

Not only did he have all the lumber I wanted, he had it in the sizes I wanted and rough sawn. This means straight off the mill, no other processing.

He was generous in his measurements. There were boards that I got at 1/2 price because there was a flaw in the lumber. The flaw would not bother me, but he still gave me a great deal. The 2 bdf of black walnut was just given to me. It is two inches thick and about 10 inches per side.

This wood is absolutely beautiful.

A board foot is a volume of wood. It is 144 cubic inches, or 1/12 of a cubic foot, or 1 ft by 1 ft by 1 inch.

When I got home, I cut a 19″ piece off the narrower board and planed it smooth and flat. It was then edged which gave me a good face and a squared edge.

From there the other edge was squared. Finally the board was ripped to width, and the rough edge was smoothed and squared again.

This allowed me to face the other side and bring the piece to thickness. Starting with a 1 inch-thick piece of rough-sawn lumber, I ended up with a 3/4 S4S piece of wood.

What was under the rough surface is beautiful.

Yesterday, I surfaced the piece of dark walnut. With no oil or finish on it, just planed flat, it is one of the nicest pieces of lumber I’ve ever seen.

Knowledge is not Skill

There is a process in machining that is bringing a piece to size. This is the process of making all the faces flat and square to each other. Each of 6 faces must be properly milled to have a piece ready.

Woodworking requires the same operation, but the tools are much simpler which requires the layouts to be much better.

With this first piece, I did not notice that the edges were not parallel to each other. They were smooth and flat and square to the finished face. They were not parallel.

The process is different from machining. When you are machining, you only need one reference face to start the process.

For woodworking, you first smooth a face. This does not make the board flat; it just means that it is smooth. This is a 5-minute process for me at this point. Smooth means that within a local area, the board is flat. The size of that area depends on the tools used to smooth it.

Next, the board needs to be made flat. This is done with a straight edge. By moving a straight edge down the face, you can check for space under the straight edge, indicating where the board is low. You plane off the high spots until you have a piece of lumber that is smooth and flat.

After flattening the surface, you now need to test for twist and then remove the twist. Twist is called “winding,” and you use a pair of self-balancing straight edges at opposite ends of the board. You can sight over the closer stick and easily see if the board is twisted. If it is, you can plan out the twist.

Next, you smooth and flatten an edge, making it square to the board. The squareness of the edge to the face is measured with a try square or any other precision right-angle square. This is a skill I am still working on. The near edge is always to high.

This is where I made a mistake. I wasn’t paying enough attention and ripped the board over wide and then brought the edge back to square after the rip. I didn’t make a guide mark for parallel.

I also didn’t get the board flat enough.

Yesterday, I finished the backboard and the two sideboards. Today, I’ll be attaching them to make the first part of the assembly.

Sharper, Sharper

Friday I thought I had a sharp plane blade. It was able to remove 1/4 inch from the faces of the end boards.

Yesterday I learned that my plane was not sharp. I spent a good hour sharpening plane blades. I’ll spend still more time today.

The difference is really incredible. What was an upper body workout becomes light work. Plus the sound of the wood being peeled away is beautiful.

What I need to do today is to finish sharpening the jack plane. Currently it is only cutting on the corners. I’ve touched up the blade on the diamond wheel, but I still need to take it through the regular sharpening process to get a blade that works as I want it to.

I will also be focusing on making sure I don’t produce cupped boards.

All in all, I’m very excited to get the next few projects finished.

The tool tote, a couple of boxes. The first being a simple 6-board box for reenacting. Then a jointer box to hold my wood tools well organized and safe. Then a stool and the start of other projects.

There is so much more pride in using hand tools and fitting pieces by hand then the feeling I got when I feed wood through my jointer and planer.

It doesn’t matter if you are provided a path to what you want if you can never reach that path.

We talk about 18 U.S.C. §922(g) often. This is the prohibited person section of the US Code. It is what is used to justify form 4473.

The government is allowed to create regulations that are necessary to perform the task they are required to do by law. This is how come the NFA has a registration and background check plus all the rest of the BS that goes with purchasing an NFA item.

All of those regulations are in place to make sure that you have paid your taxes. The entire NFA is based on collecting taxes. The registration is just a byproduct of collecting taxes. The background check is just a byproduct of collecting taxes.

§922(g) states who is prohibited from possessing a firearm. This is a horrible mutation from the original version of §922(g). The original version was a restriction on FFLs from selling to a prohibited person.

A prohibited person could buy a gun from somebody else or acquire it by gift. They could still lawfully posses it.

In addition, they could manufacture a firearm and possess that. §922(g) was only a restriction on the sale of interstate commerce in firearms.

When Congress passed the original §922(g) in 1968, they also included a method to get your Second Amendment protected rights back. Under 18 U.S.C. §925(c).

This means there is a procedure to get your rights back by asking Mommy Dearest for permission.

In 1992, Congress added a rider to the appropriations bill.

This has been going on for the last 33 years!

What this means is that you can apply for your rights back, but there is no money for the ATF to process those requests. So you have no mouth.

The most recent version of the rider is:

The Department of Justice just announced that they are opening a web portal for people to apply to regain their Second Amendment protected rights. Since “main justice” is doing this, it comes under their budget and not the salaries of ATF personnel.

This is another major Trump Administration end run around a violation of our rights.

Laundry detergent is not the same as regular soap. There’s reasons for this, and they’re complex, but basically we are not made of cloth. We’re made of leather. Soap cleans leather just fine, but does less of a good job of cleaning cloth. If you want your clothing to be soft, clean, and to last for a long time, regular soap is not going to work. That said, in a pinch, you can absolutely clean your clothes with any regular soap bar. It will be very harsh on your clothing, and difficult to rinse out, so be prepared to do several rinse cycles.

I prefer liquid detergent, but we’ll start with powder because it’s easier.

Ingredients for powder laundry detergent:

• 1 bar Fels Naptha soap
• 2 cups Borax
• 2 cups washing soda

Start by grating up your soap. You want to grate it into very small pieces. You can do this by hand with a regular cheese grater, but it takes a long time. You can also do it in your food processor by cutting the soap into one inch cubes and then pulsing them until they’re in “smaller than pea” size pieces. I prefer to grate mine.

Mix together all the ingredients in a container that’s about 1/3 larger than your batch, and mix it well by stirring with a wooden spoon and shaking it. This is a great project for kids to help with, as you can seal the detergent into the container and then let them toss it around. You need to use a glass or hard plastic container, and not the softer “recyclable” containers you may have on hand. The lid also must seal tightly, or your detergent will clump horribly.

To use, add 2 tablespoons of powder to the drum of your washer (front loading or top loading). Do not add it to the automatic dispenser, as it will clump and block things up. For very large loads, you may need an extra tablespoon. For hand washing, dissolve 1 tablespoon of powder into a cup of hot water, then pour that into your wash water after the detergent has dissolved.

If you would like to have stinky laundry (ie you’re one of those folks who like scented detergent), simply add several drops of your favorite essential oil to the dry ingredients, and stir until it’s all incorporated.

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Site Display Issues

Somehow how, some way, my theme was lost. I’ve reset to a working theme.

It is loud, it is in your face, and it looks like 100 other sites. I do not have the time or energy to put it all back right now. I’ll be working it over in the coming weeks.

Woodworking

It is difficult to know or anticipate what you don’t know. I like to anticipate; I sometimes fail.

Right now my hands are scratched and bruised. My thumbnail is a beautiful shade of blue and black.

I’m currently working on flattening the benchtop. This consists of using the smoothing plane to take down local high spots. Then use a straight edge to make sure that you have a flat surface from side to side. Then you use winding sticks to make sure your top is not twisted.

My top is not yet smooth, much less flat, much less without twist.

On the other hand, there is no noticeable difference in moving from board to board.

Up coming woodworking projects

I intend to make a wood journeyman’s tool tote as my first action. I intend to pick up my wood at a local sawmill. 4/4 rough-cut pine.

If I can find some 6/4 or 8/4 cherry, I’ll pick up enough to make a rabbet plane and a router plane.

Vehicle Issues

I drove home from the autoshop today with a lighter wallet and a much cooler cabin. The bearings on the A/C condenser went out.

If I were the only person to drive my truck, I would have ignored it for a while. But I am not. So, I got it replaced. The issue is that it is too easy to turn the A/C on. All it takes is pushing the A/C button OR turning the knob counterclockwise.

We Must All Watch the Same Videos, Read the Same Articles

There are days when I finish writing an article and then watch a video that covers the same issue. Sometimes I learn more, and sometimes it feels like they are responding to the article I have not published yet.

In the Sotomayor situation, I was pleased to watch two videos where the presenters quoted nearly the same things I did. All of us pointing out that Sotomayor is an agenda-driven rogue justice.

Question of the Week

When I was a kid, people would buy a car for cash every couple of years. A car loan for 48 months was almost unheard of.

Today, I’m seeing people taking out 6- and 7-year loans on a vehicle.

How long do you expect your cars to last? My truck is 15 years old; it needs bits and pieces to be fixed or replaced. I expect to get another 5 years from it.

My first car, a 1967 VW Microbus, was traded in on a 1987 TransAm in 1987. I expect my cars to last 10 to 20 years.

This is a beautiful piece of furniture. I made a workbench.

The beauty of this bench is such that I would be afraid to use it. It is that darn beautiful.

My bench is 60″ by 27″ by 34.5″ It was made from construction lumber, 2x10s, 2x4s, and 4x4s. Now that it is done, I don’t know that I can move it. It is that heavy. I might have to get retractable wheels for it.

This is the basic starting tool for woodworking. Until you have a chance to work on a real workbench, designed for hand tools, you don’t understand just how much of a tool it is.

For years, my goto woodworking bench was a sheet of 3/4″ plywood over a frame of 2x4s. It was stable enough, but it wasn’t really usable for planing.

There are several things that hand woodworkers do constantly. We saw boards either ripping, resawing, or crosscutting. Cutting tenons is an example of both. We drive chisels into wood and dig out mortises. We make boards flat and straight by planing.

If you swing a mallet and hit something and your mallet bounces, that is wasted energy. A solid workbench doesn’t bounce; it acts perfectly with the mallet, allowing hard strikes or controlled strikes.

If you are planing you need the work to stay in place. If you have your work attached to a flimsy work surface, every time you take a cut, the work and work surface move, stealing work. If you brace your foot against your work surface, you are unlikely to be in the correct position for planing.

If you are sawing, you want the work at the height at the correct angles.

Adding a leg vise to the bench will make it even better. That is happening over the coming days.

I’ll be drilling some holes for bench dogs and other work-holding tools.

So here is the astonishing thing: I had a round item on the workbench, I was planing a test piece. That round item did not move.

The number of times I’ve had things fall off a table because it is wiggling…

I’m excited.

Conclusion

The next steps are to make and attach a leg vise to the table. After that is adding some blocks to the underside of the table where I’ll be drilling 3/4″ holes for the work-holding thing.

There are two projects that come next: a journeyman tote to carry my tools and a 6-board chest for Ally for use at events.

After that is a knockdown cabinet with shelves for Ally to use at events.

Side Note

I was picking up some stair treads at Home Depot on Tuesday. As we were checking out we noticed a sale on the Husky 5-tier tote storage rack. The totes are 27 gallons with the nice flexible plastic. Each rack holds 8 totes by their upper edges and two more can be placed on top for a total of 10 totes.

The totes were on sale for $8 apiece. The rack was $149.

If you are looking for more storage, this might be the right thing for you.

I belong to a small (in the hundreds) community of social media folk who are LGBT and are all done with the bullshit of the alphabet mafia. The vast majority are Trump supporters. All of them are Conservative. All of the ones I’ve personally connected with are intelligent, forward thinking, well educated, and forthright. It’s been a breath of fresh air to be able to have conversations over why I disagree with some of the stuff going on right now (the BBB comes to mind), without getting trampled.

One of the ladies I follow is a big butch dyke. When I say big, I don’t mean fat. She’s stocky, muscular, a little bit masculine but definitely female, and she has the (if you’ll excuse the term) typical lesbian short haircut. She’s a Christian, an unabashed Trump supporter, and is married to a person who is not a Trump supporter. They provide a fairly balanced viewpoint of things, which I really appreciated during the election time.

This lady was recently told that she has to stop identifying as a lesbian. Because she has a masculine look to her, and she wears cargo shorts and high neck tees, she’s “trans masc” and therefore that’s what she needs to present as.

Let’s just say that this order didn’t go down well with the butch. LOL… She very clearly, very concisely, and very pointedly explained that “we the normal gays” are no longer part of the “rainbow community.” There may have been some four letter words, but most were beeped out because TikTok is like that. Let it be said, the butch was not the least bit interested in backing down from her personal viewpoint of her own lesbian self. In Leftist speech, they didn’t respect her pronouns so they’re dead to her.

That whole incident has led to a new movement, though, and I thought it was a good idea to let you all know about it. The first thing these few hundred LGBT people did was to “fix” the pride flag. They took off the “TIAA+” part (the triangle on the left side) and replaced it with a purposefully poorly tacked on other regular rainbow.

Note, this is my version of it. I wanted you to get the idea. Basically, the idea is that if the alphabet mafia doesn’t want anything to do with “normal” gay folk, then they can go. And they should take their part of the flag with them.

The second thing they did was reclaim the rainbow. Keep in mind, these are largely Christian people. Not only did they lose their “gay” rainbow to the alphabet mafia, they lost their Biblical rainbow. So they took it back. Now, they’re doing an upside down rainbow. The upside down rainbow is meant to look like a smile. It represents both the original basis of the rainbow flag (solidarity, wanting to be a part of the greater human community, etc.) and the idea that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.

I rather like it. So if you see someone with an upside down rainbow, they’re probably a gay Conservative. I might start sporting this one myself. And again, that’s my version of the smile. 🙂

Sotomayor is the target today. She wrote the dissent, which Kagan and Jackson joined.

The issue that Sotomayor is having is called “reading comprehension”

Trump ordered McHahan to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department [of Education]. The Sotomayor decided that “facilitate the closure” and “close” mean the same thing.

They don’t.

The law requires that there be a Department of Education. It describes what the functions of the department will be. Nowhere does it say “there shall be 3,284 employees” nor how the executive chooses to organize what employees the department has.

The law requires a few people to be employed by the DoE. That could be as small as “the director.”

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law,… does not mean they have broken the law. Nor did the Executive order the closure of the DoJ. Sotomayor is known to talk differently to regular people than she does to the other justices. Trump talking to The People is not the words he used in the his Executive Order. This is normal.

It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.

And here is her big mistake: the Constitution grants the power of the Executive to one person, the president. The president decides how best to execute the laws of the United States. He decides who is necessary to carry them out.

The courts do not get to decide how the Executive administers, staffs, or prioritizes the executive branch. That is the responsibility of the executive, and the executive (president) has the only authority to do so.

Sotomayor is upset because without that gigantic staff, the DoE won’t be able to award over $120 billion of our tax dollars in student aid.

Since she also believes that student loans can be forgiven, this means she believes that the Executive should be forced to hand over billions of dollars to students.

I just found that I live in a food desert.

Luck for me, we have just enough to prime the food pump.

You’ve seen pics of me. I obviously like food. However, I’m trying to be a lot healthier in what I’m eating. I love sweet treats, and if I could tolerate dairy, I could be happy with the occasional yogurt. However, dairy free yogurt is twice as expensive, and the cups are usually smaller. It’s a sad thing. That’s when I ran across this chia seed stuff.

So before you ask, yes, this is the same type of seed you used to smear on clay figurines in the 70’s and 80s (ch ch ch chia!). However, instead of growing them, you’re going to be eating them. It sounds odd, I know, but they’re cheap, and when they’re soaked overnight, they’re really tasty!

This recipe makes a single serving, so feel free to upscale as much as you like!

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (or any other milk or milk substitute)
• 1 tbsp honey (or other sweetener of choice)
• 1 tsp cocoa powder

Put all of the ingredients into a jar or other container with a lid, and whisk together well. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, then whisk again, as sometimes the seeds or the cocoa can clump. Cover the container and put it in the fridge for at least two hours, and best overnight. Before serving, top it with a bit of fresh fruit or whatever you like!

It really is that simple, and it’s tasty. Just be careful to mix, let it sit for 2 to 3 minutes, then mix again. The seeds make a sort of gel around themselves (which makes them sort of like mini tapioca balls when you eat it), and so once that begins to happen they are easier to stir.

For those who are diet conscious, the above comes out to about 200 calories, 5g protein, 9g fat, and 28g carbs (but with a whopping 9g of fiber, which makes your net carbs only 19). A fairly balanced dessert!

This has nothing to do with Shannon, but anytime I think about needing to lie to make a point, Shannon is first in my list of doers.

So the federales learned that there was an illegal pot farm using criminal illegal aliens for their workforce.

They raided the farm. While there, word went out that ICE was picking up criminal illegal aliens. This caused the usual suspects to quickly converge to attempt to impede the feds.

This led to Trump ordering federal agents to arrest people who attempt murder on federal officers or impede federal officers in their official duties.

They found slaves on that pot farm. These were children. Not children of the workers, nope, just children that were being used for slave labor on the farm. According to official reports, these children were malnourished and maltreated.

The lies immediately started to flow from Democrats and the evil left.

They are claiming that these children were actually legally working on this farm. The law says that the children of farmers can be given chores and other work on the family farm. This is an exception to child labor laws.

This is why you can find young teenagers working in the family store as well. They are the children of the store owners.

These were children as young as 14 who were given no options. They were not allowed to leave. They were forced to work. This is slavery.

It is pure evil to even suggest that these children wanted to be there.

Next, we can look at the “pot is legal in California!” argument. Yes, it is legal in CA. That farm might even have been licensed under California law. What is also true is that pot is still a controlled substance under federal law.

That makes the pot farm illegal under federal law.

The law in California also prohibits anyone under 18 from working in the pot industry.

As more than one person has said, more and more I am coming to believe that these people are not stupid, they are not morons, they are not ignorant, they are evil.