I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve written. It’s
not like there’s nothing to write about. Little Hands is still the president,
making the U.S. look like some banana republic. tRump himself gives volumes to
write about, none of it good.
I started teaching two classes at Lansing Community College.
I’m getting back into the drill of prepping lectures and demonstrations,
getting the courses set up, doing administrative work, and oh, actually
teaching. Teaching would be a lot more fun if there wasn’t any administration
and accountability. Familiar lament, I’m sure.
I’ve been plugging away at the woodworking thing too. I
built a 6’ work table with adjustable in-feed and out-feed tables for my new planer. Supposedly
a portable table, this beast takes two humans to lift. It’s hell for solid, but
not really portable unless you have a big red S on your chest.
My portable planer table with planer, in-feed and out-feed tables.
Last weekend I attended a two-day Wood Expo, at a lumber
mill down in Charlotte. There were several
hundred people in attendance, mostly old retired guys with beards. There were two
bathrooms; a single port-a-pot out in the lumber yard and a single men’s and a single
woman’s one seater in the retail building. First time I can recall the men’s
room line being longer than the woman’s room line. The women on attendance
found this highly amusing.
I’m finding that woodworking tends towards being an expensive
hobby. Especially if you want to keep all your fingers. I have come into some
power tools but they are mostly missing their safety equipment. The scariest is
the table saw. There’s the obvious possibility of accidently removing your
fingers with a rapidly spinning saw blade. Then there’s a hazard called
kickback. Not the kind of kickback associated with say, building a Trump Tower
in Moscow. This kickback is when a board jams, then flies at high speed back towards
your face. In woodworking circle this is also known as, “eating a board”. As a
bonus, a kickback event often rakes your fingers across the spinning saw blade.
Naturally my saw is missing the equipment to minimize both these little hazards.
To reduce the
possibility of these hazards I ordered a set of nifty table saw push blocks. The
set cost a bit over $100. The second time I used them I got distracted and hit
the saw blade with a block. This would have been pretty nasty had I been suing
my hands without the push blocks to feed the saw. At the Expo a company called
Stopsaw was demonstrating their finger saving table saw technology. As a finger
surrogate, they shove a hotdog into a spinning table saw blade. The saw senses
the hotdog, stops the blade, and drops the blade off the table, all within in 5
milliseconds. That’s 0.005 seconds. It’s pretty stunning to watch this spinning
blade just disappear right before your eyes. You don’t really see it happen.
The blade is there, then with a loud bang, it’s gone. The hotdog just gets scratched. At worst, a
band-aid fix. Unfortunately, the saw cost about $2,500. Not exactly chump
change.
Push block gouges.
Between teaching, Lise’s work, Wood Expos, working around
the house, and the usual distractions, we just have not been getting out for
birds or odanates recently. We slipped in one trip to Shiawassee National
Wildlife Refuge where we scored a Baird’s sandpiper. That puts me at 248
species for the year and Lise at 242. With a couple months left to go.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 