Two little hand planes doing all the work that the lunchbox planer could not. (Fig 1.)Makes a considerable mess in the process. (Fig 2.)
Why spend your time setting up and dialing in your lunchbox planer when it will vibrate itself to death leaving you with wonky uneven boards! When you can just as easily spend a few hours flattening those boards by hand on your bench with various sizes of hand plane. I’d much prefer to skip this step by having the technology work correctly, but here we are. Six boards that need the centre bulge sheared off with a chisel iron and a lot of sweat and banged up knuckles. My favourite!
On the other hand we have momentum and some forward moving progress towards a completed project within the calendar year. I haven’t made much of anything this year beyond my Axe-Box the other day. I don’t know if I’ve built any other items in 2026. I have fixed fences and cleared out the shop a bunch, but I don’t recall making a single item out of wood. No bunny hitch, no tables, no chairs, no stools nothing. This will likely be it for the year. I should try to do a good job.
In other news I have begun construction of my youngest daughter’s Halloween costume helmet. That is a pumpkin with gigantic eyes. It’s from a game she plays on her tablet apparently. Hot glue and cardboard and several hours of our time. I’ll show it off once completed because the under structure looks terrible. Soon we can paper mache the outside and texturize it ready for her to paint it. I need to figure out these huge eyes though, but I need it to be a solid mass first so that I can cut into it without it coming apart in my hands. Do we add lights? I don’t know.
Spent two hours running all six pieces through the lunchbox planer just to realize after the fact that the set screws had shaken loose and made the cutting deck uneven, so I have sloped boards that need to be hand planed to take the bulk out of the centre of each panel. Lovely. Wanted to avoid having to do that. A touch up with the hand planed is one thing but having to do the inner bulk of all six is a huge pain in the ass. Tiring too. Going to end up playing a lot of whack-fuck with my knuckles I can just tell. But after all that progress has been made. With three more full length boards to flatten up I can then trim my legs to final height, and start cutting my dove tail slash box joints for the joinery. A couple tenons and some routered slots and 8 can then round over the edges and spend a few days sanding everything. Dry fit assembly, glue up, and a choice of finish will complete this bad mamma jamma.
Work shop feeling a little crowded. But I’m out of the sun, wind and rain in here. (Fig 2.)
Not as relaxing as wood splitting but I will be happy to tear down the dog crate and open up some room in the front hall. Like I said, not heirloom quality, but it should be both sturdy and made of solid hardwood. Those are good things in my book.
I am nearly ready to throw this lunch box planer into a landfill though it operates so poorly. No amount of sharpening, cleaning and TLC seems to keep it from shaking itself apart on the regular. It’s no good to me if I tune it up, dial it in and ten minutes later it’s gone entirely to shit on me. I’m bad enough as it is, I don’t need machine faults to further fuck-up my wood work.
Didn’t take much time this morning to stack a bin full of the split Hickory. Now I have all four bins filled and I’ll need the others moved back over here so that I can fill those too. Given the volume of split wood I could likely fill three more bins and get a good way through a fourth I’d wager. So with that in mind along with the whole wasp incident I might just curtail the wood splitting operation until the conditions outdoors settle into a cool frosty morning chill. No more swarms for me if I can help it.
I do however need to find the desire to get out into the garage and pick up where I left off on the furniture build. I have gotten side tracked by cleaning up the basement and organizing the chaos that was left down there by the Girl Guide craft supply hand over to another unit. The kids are turning to their devices for entertainment now more than ever so the doll houses, dolls of all sorts, Shopkins and Lego can all get reorganized and packaged up together for storing away.
We sent away the Peppa Pig, Trolls, and Paw Patrol toys to the cottage so our niece & nephew could enjoy them. Now I think that the LOL dolls and the Shopkins might join them. However, at this point I would just like them tidied up and organized. I don’t need them to leave the house. I’d like to have SOME toys here for when tech inevitably goes down, or they feel like being actual physically able children again for a brief spell. We have some stuff split into bins and baskets stored nicely on a shelf. I’m good with that. I’m not looking to erase their childhood, I’d just like things to look tidy now that the fair is over, and before the Halloween/ Christmas crafting begins.
A cleared off table and a clean island top work wonders for my mood. I took the liberty of removing much of the paper recycling last week by going through last year’s paper that came home with both children. Not as much went out as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing. I felt like I did something. In the end that’s what matters to me. A slightly cleaner home, and the feeling of having done something towards that goal. Incremental bettering of our surroundings. The age of whole sale slaughter is done. I did that the very first year I had both children off to school and out of the house — finally! I opened closets, drawers, cupboards, chests, ottomans, and every nook & cranny that I could get into. It wasn’t until last summer that I finally got under the basement stairs! My kids are now Grades 7 & 4, so I’ve been at this for a while.
Several winters ago I started slashing my hoard of books. I donated or recycled about 400 paper backs, hard covers, and design text books, and fancy satin finish full colour art and design magazines. I went over it three or four times over several months and again the following year just removing stuff I didn’t like. Books about things I had lost interest in. I did the same to my closet and wardrobe. I don’t need business attire for every day office life. I work from home and now spend most of my time in work pants for manual labour tasks, or in sweats. I had to keep some for obvious reasons, like weddings, funerals, and the odd in person meeting. But I don’t need a closet full of that stuff. I also pared down my t-shirts and sweater collections. I was ruthless where my own property was concerned. Less so with my kids.
But I will say this, I care not for Play dough and I will toss that shit in the trash in a single heart beat if I think it has gone off. Jammed up shapes, jigs, presses and the like will go to the tip along with the crusty ass playdough. Anything cracked and broken will go to the curb too. I don’t care!
Also now that I look at it I’d really like to get a move on the furniture build so that I can remove this massive dog crate from my front entrance. Swap out twenty four inches for 11.25″ in depth is a win for freedom of movement by the door. Then the kids mini couch can go downstairs too. That blocks the hall closet door. He’ll, the inside of the closet is a mess and I need to pull all manner of boots and shit out of it that doesn’t fit either child anymore. The cycle, it never ever stops!
Nearly three days on and I’ve still got itchy bite marks from the damn ground wasps that swarmed me on Sunday morning. With any luck these deep morning frosts will kill them off fairly quickly and I can go back to splitting sooner than later. I guess we will wait and see if I catch the furniture building bug and decide that that’s what I’m doing in my down time from now until winter comes. Did I mention that the fan on my Mr Heater Big Buddy died after a single season with one use? I changed the batteries and everything, Nada. But the propane still lights, and it heats up pretty well, it just doesn’t move the air around by itself anymore. I now use a secondary fan/element heater to do that. I am weary of the open flame heater because of saw dust particles catching flame and igniting while I’m working. Not a good look to spontaneously combust my garage when I’m in it. Not a good look to do it when we’re not there either. Ha!
Sleeping through the night has been a challenge since Sunday because my After bite and Benadryl creams seem to wear off around 2:00 am, and then I am plagued by full body itches that wake me up. I’m certain the dog hates it too. I’ve used cooling gels, scrubs and antihistamine creams but the incessant itch comes back on all eight bite locations. Some worse than others. Like my face & neck are bad, and my leg & hip itch just as much. It could have been so much worse, so I keep telling myself. I made out pretty well given how many wasps swarmed me while I was occupied weed eating at the farm.
Tried to get ahead over the weekend and wound up weed eating right over a ground wasp nest. Took fewer than ten bite/stings because I was covered from head to toe because it was cool and raining. Luckily! So now I’m going to leave that portion alone until we get consistent Frost’s which will cause the wasps to die off and/or go dormant. Then I can proceed. So instead I took the hour to fill three of the four bins and set up the camp site for my wife’s Guide group that is coming tomorrow. I basically filled all three bins from my first stack of split wood. I probably have enough left to fill four more! Yikes.
Lovely day to stack wood into bins. (Fig 1.)
Now I can go home and work. The waste wood here can get tipped into the trees because I am not touching any more of this batch. The bottoms all rotten and the wood explodes into shards instead of splitting into nice prices. Unfortunately the folks whom dumped it didn’t stack it so it’s water logged and rotting from the inside out, and top to bottom. Not to worry though we have lots!
So much left to stack away into bins! (Fig 2.)
Fair weekend is done for another year, thankfully. I only spent ten hours there, so a short one this year. I didn’t go to meet anyone and that saved me about twelve additional hours of standing and walking. I need to put some arts & crafts on my immediate to-do list in preparation of next year. I’m all pumped up for it and I have the most time possible if I start now.
I was trying to clear the weeds around the biggest wood pile behind the barn and stumbled upon a wasps nest in amongst the older more rotten logs. I got hit a good eight times much to my chagrin. Luckily the dog is ok. I did have to pull over three separate times to let wasps out of the car, and swipe them off of me. I was wearing full length pants, a bulky sweater and a jacket so many of the potential swarms stings were muted. But one went up my shirt and got my hip real good, and the top of my butt, and the face/neck stings were direct hits. Could have been far worse, though I’m not thrilled about the stings I did get. Ha!
Two of the eight that made it through to bare skin. (Fig 1.)
On the plus side the weed eating is just about done. So tomorrow I will stack wood in the first pile, and I might take a break and work on my furniture build. See if we can’t get some Frost’s to roll in and subdue the wasps before I go back. The nest looks to be about ten to fifteen feet over from where I had planned to start on the spring time bucked bits, so that’s a no-go right this moment.
I am now out of the shower, and have rubbed myself down with after bite and benadryl creams, and am in the process of washing all the clothes that I had on to get rid of any angry wasp pheromones so they don’t come back at me upon my return.
Also checked myself for ticks while I was in the shower and so far I’m all good there too. My face and hip do hurt pretty good right now, I’m not going to lie. I was so caught up in sweeping down all the long grasses and weeds I didn’t even notice the swarm. My safety goggles and headphones protected my eyes and ears, but my neck and cheek still got got, if you know what I mean.
I’d swear that at any one point I probably had ten to fifteen wasps on me just going to town with their stingers. Thank god it’s cool and rainy and I had all these extra clothes on otherwise instead of just eight or so stings, I’d have fifty or more – easily. Yuck! Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
Take care of yourselves out there. Be aware of your surroundings! Wear the appropriate PPE.
Both of my kids did the butter sculpting competition this year along with me, so that was a tonne of fun. My older child received another beauty of a rosette for her first place finish, to accompany her even bigger rosette from her Christmas painting in the Home Craft building. She was very excited, and us along with her. This was her second year competing. My youngest entered for the first time this year and made a lovy cob of corn. She worked very hard and I am proud that she came out and gave it a lot of effort.
The youngest cob of corn. (Fig 1.)The eldest’s prize winning “Year of the pumpkin” display. (Fig 2.)
I was able to place second, which I was disappointed with, though I did have fun on my second year of competing. I lost to the grand champion of the two day event, a very spectacular bunny rabbit, so that made me feel less bad. Losing to the best of the best is never fun, but it’s the kindest way to tell myself I lost. Ha! I have pinned my blue 2nd place ribbon to last year’s rosette display in my office. Seems I was good for second place in multiple events, as my ceramic bust sculpt that I painted won the same prize.
I was certainly happier with this second place finish than I was about doing so in the butter sculpting live competition. (Fig 3.)
I was in no mood for photos of my own work so once they announced, and we all clapped & cheered like adults, I walked away and didn’t look back. I do believe my kids took photos of my entry, but I don’t have those photos on hand. Oh well! Better luck next year.
The last of the split wood in Wood Pile One. (Fig 1.)Empty bins need to be filled next. (Fig 2.)
It only took a combined 19 hours but I have completed all of the useable wood in all three mounds found in Wood Pile One. The rest is bark shards, and waste wood that can get tipped into the tree line at the back of the property. I can’t do anything with rotten any ridden wood rounds. If the arborists that dumped it here in the first place had left some room to manoeuvre then all this wood could have been stacked on its side so as to not become water logged and rotted out from the bottom up. No matter. We have more than in necessary for Mae syrup and to heat both the stone cottage and the farm house for a couple of years. I haven’t even touched Pile Three at the back of the barn yet.
Next week I can start to clean up the weeds and stack some bins with wood. I have some cut rounds from the spring which I can start on back there too. I can see myself finishing out the year back there. I’ll definitely be needing my chainsaws though because a lot of what’s there isn’t sized to be very useful. I need to cut bits down to no thicker than 14 inches. I’ll blast through my pre-cut stuff and can reassess afterwards. As the temperature begins to drop I’ll be happier about being in the full sun behind the barn. Also bring closer to the house means the dog might get out and wander a little more to get some additional exercise.
I wonder if any new wood will turn up this year? Might have to save some for next year if nothing new arrives in the fall or over the winter. Or maybe the tides will turn on the business end of things and I’ll be too busy working to spend my mornings at the farm splitting wood. Who knows.
I am a little sad that the front stuff if all done now. The last bit was kinda rotten and wasn’t all that fun to break down.va but anti climactic if you ask me. Maybe I need to put my focus on the furniture stuff instead? I just might have to. Keeps me at home and nearer to the office that’s for sure. We’ll see how things play out over the next week or two.
All told we were there for four hours last night. Caught the fireworks and saw some of the Monster Truck Rally. What we didn’t see we definitely heard! Ha. We did pretty well as a family. A fair few ribbons for our troubles.
Seems I deleted the other ribbon photos I took, or I just thought I had taken them I can remedy that over the rest of the weekend. (Fig 1.)
Now it’s Friday and it is still raining a bit. We did the ride night in the drizzle. Luckily it wasn’t raining too hard, but we did end up with wet butts. Good time. Memorable night.
My ankles ache from walking around the fair all ready so lord help me with the next three days! It’s been quite some time since I’ve had insomnia like this. Usually I need a midnight pee and that’s that. I wonder if I’m excited for the butter sculpting contest? Time will tell.
You must be logged in to post a comment.