Knife and Kit

Something that had been on my personal desire list for a long time was making a knife. I've made some handles, well, replaced handles for knives before, and certainly continue to replace hatchet and hammer handles all the time, but I'd never done the blade and handle together. 

I had set aside a piece of logging bandsaw blade 5 or 6 years ago, and finally got it out and cut it up with m y hack saw. then filed down the edges, drilled the handle rivet holes and carved a madrone handle.  After a batch of times with the sharpening stone, a bit of oil for the wood, it's a pretty solid tool.  It's not for kitchen use, but future outside butchering.  Thus, I asked Melissa to make me a carrying kit for all my 'outside' knives.

 She used some denim from some old jeans (I have tons of jeans that people give me for filters for the veg oil) and I think it turned out great.

views and times

Jack takes in his morning view, overlooking our fruit tree meadow

 While Melissa and I prepare a typical breakfast of dried persimmon, apple, yogurt and granola... and don't forget my strong coffee. (notice the baked bread there on the side)

 Later, coming in from the rain, I'm ranting about how they can't seem to make a poncho long enough to cover your legs!  I had high rubber boots on, but since about 5 inches of my legs were exposed, the water started soaking downward and filling up my boots! I'm not that tall that a poncho should reach past the top of my boots! arrgh!

A Tree in the Forest

One of the tops of the redwoods that got cut off to provide more light to our house was just lying there in the woods while I cleaned up around it... so I decided we needed to drag it out.  Melissa drove the truck while I managed the rope:

We got it up on the mill and cut it open.  Revealing the inside of a log is an amazing thing:

Because this was a tree top, there were lots of knots, making for difficult milling and interesting wood:

 After an afternoon of milling, I got 5 or 6 planks from it, ready to be made into the laundry deck.

Car Parts Update

So, since I don't have much to show for my days of organizing the forest, here's a couple new pieces:

the plastic pull handle for the truck's emergency brake came off, so I whittled a new one.

I felt good about this idea because my hand made (Oak) drivers side door handle has been working well for a couple years now:

As each interior piece breaks, I'll just keep whittling new ones.

Even More Tree Work

With the holidays and all the clean up necessary, there's not a lot of other stuff to show off... but this is a dramatic thing going on. Check out the tree guy way up in the tree in this photo:

and this one was one Steve, the tree guy, wanted me to take.  He's been cutting trees in these mountains for 15 years, and he was impressed by the size of this old redwood on our property.  the point of the picture is to see the diameter of the trunk compared to the guy.

More of the Mess

A batch of photos of the mess from the tree trimming. (much worse than a christmas tree lot)

 One or two branches came down on a plastic barrel I had over by the hot tub, dented it but didn't break it.

 I'm in this photo, way in the middle back... for a bit of the scale. the amount in this picture is about a fifth of what needs to be picked up and moved around, and then chopped up. I'm tired just looking at the photos.

Huge Mess!

(looks like blogger has changed their formatting. will be interesting to see how this looks on the published side) 

So we got a guy back up her to do more tree work.  This first picture is a little into the project already, but you can see the trees directly to the south of the house... with the sun creeping into the shot on the left (east)

Then check this photo out after he was done for the day.  (I was his helper, to save money.  mostly refueling the saws and organizing rope. not unpleasant work, but a surprisingly hard workout)

Barely looks like anything was taken out, right? well, there's days and days of 'slash' clean up on the ground. A HUGE mess. Just going in there to organize it enough to start to cut the stuff up will take days. I'll take some pictures of the before and after today. 

In the meantime, Melissa worked on all the solstice cookies - Great Grandma McTavish's date-filled-oatmeal cookies. Made on the mountain on the shortest day of the year. 

    

Work on the Gen

Well, I've gotten the diesel generator all up to speed for running on veg oil.  Here's the full view:


You can see the fuel line "T" here with the valve switches (the brass bits):


and an old lemonade/ice tea jar for holding the (cold looking) veg oil:


and the still annoying alternator being worked on to get it to create the proper amount of electricity.


Days can just disappear when trying to get this stuff done. sheesh.

Living the life

December is the time for setting up the firewood for winter. great stuff.

Different kinds of accomplishments

Melissa has finished the first round of cushion making. Here's the love seat by the fire with the micro-suede cover sewn to fit over the hand cut re-used foam cushions with hand made (and stuffed) pillows.

Here's the fuel injection pump from a gas generator that my neighbors gave us -unworking - about 3 years ago. I managed to take the thing apart all the way down to find this little brass bit needed to be adjusted and cleaned. I put it back together and she runs.

The morning view

I finally got my laptop holder together. Foolishly, I wanted to make it extra cool with some special notches (through mortises inside a rabbet groove) which took 5 times as long and ended up looking worse than other options... but it's done now, and holds the laptop above the keyboard.

You can see I also bring my morning tea up to the loft on a little wooden tray. The tray was a gift from Art and Joanne's last trip to Hawai'i.