It seems like I just hit SEND on my last post yesterday, but the dates on my feed don't lie. I thought I'd take a moment and share some of what I've been up to. There's no time to waste, so let's get right into it!
Like so many of us living north of 40° latitude, I've been spending a bunch of time moving snow around. Fortunately, that snowblower that I got all the parts for just AFTER the storms last year has been running beautifully, so I've had time and energy to do other things as well. Honestly, if the snowblower hadn't worked this year, I would have just stayed snowed in. I don't remember if I did a post on the snowblower repair or not, if not then it's a work in progress.
I didn't take any screenshots of the posts I've been working on, but aside from every picture in this post being part of a series that will be its own post, I've also been working on some of my backlog of folder of post photos.
Which reminds me, I need to dig some holes for some posts before the ground freezes again. Like the title said...
Along with clearing snow, I've been clearing things out of the driveway, like this pile of 'good enough not to burn' lumber. I'm still trying to get the Garage-In-A-Box set up. I think I have enough space cleared at this point, but I've been too busy with other little things to tackle that particular assembly just yet.
One of those things has been the early seedlings. We're trying to keep things a little more spread out this year, to see if it helps at all with the fungus gnats and, well, fungus. I'd like to get one more set of these built before my work season starts back up, and order another pack of those pink lights. I posted about those lights and the seedling stands before, for now I'll just say that they were inexpensive and are almost a little too much like sunlight.
Because the lights on the upstairs stands are SO much like sunlight, this year I've cleared off and improved the seedling stands in the basement, so that we can put the things that like a little more shade and less intense light down there. The small trays on the very top are thyme, which seems to hate sunlight, artificial light, moonlight, flashbulbs, and LEDs. The only light they do seem to enjoy is outdoor shade, and these old flourescent tubes. I was going to take all the old tubes out, but a few of the plants enjoy them so much that I'm keeping them around for now. Besides the spiky succulent, the lower trays are filled with kale and cabbage seedling. They like the cooler temps, and absolutely loved the LED light bulbs with the globes cut off, which were the first lights I had on the upstairs seedling stands. The shelf below this one is set up the same way, but the lights are off because I don't have anything to put in them yet.
Part of getting the basement stands ready was fixing up (and reconfiguring) a bunch of the old LED light bulb arrays. Because the LED light bulbs draw a maximum of 9.5 watts each, this light speaker wire is enough to connect several of them on a single plug, and I like to string 6-10 of them together so I don't need as many electrical outlets. These lights have been in a tangled mass of wood, cardboard, lights, and wire for about a year now. I spent almost a whole day getting half of them sorted out so I could use them on these shelves.
Since I'd done such a good job cleaning up the basement lights and shelves, and thought I would treat myself by clearing even more space by building a project I've wanted to do for some time now. The strange mess you see in the picture above is the start of my small aluminum (and hopefully copper) melting foundry that I hope to finish soon and get a lot of use out of this winter. I've been collecting small pieces of aluminum for years, just waiting to turn it into ingots, and maybe even a few cast goodies I've had in mind. This part of the project didn't go exactly as planned, but it was close enough, and got rid of an old bucket, some old cardboard, a bag of plaster, and a bag of playsand that have been sitting around in my shop area.
The thought of all that fire got me thinking about the rocket stove, which suffered a small collapse in the front a little while ago, when I was running it to take the edge off those -15° nights (and mornings, and days). I could technically still use it, but as you can see from the black mark it was leaking quite a lot of smoke out the hole, some of which was finding its way into the house. The picture above is after I'd already removed all the loose material I could, as well as the front access cover. I have a few ideas about patching this up, but I may have to wait for warmer weather. None of the materials I'm aware of will cure properly during the wild temperature swings and bitter cold we've been having lately.
One of the materials that did seem like it could help a LOT with this whole stove project is sodium silicate, or water glass. The internet is positively lousy with people showing you how to make this stuff and ways you can use it, so I figured I would give it a try. Two popular uses are as a deflocculent in clay mixes, and as an adhesive in furnace applications. I wanted to see if it would work as a glue to hold together what's left of the front of my rocket stove, which was holding together but riddled with cracks. It seems to have significantly improved the rigidity of what remained, and I feel a lot more confident about being able to patch the rocket stove back together. Sodium silicate can also greatly improve the strength, water, and fire resistance of concrete, and I'm thinking of playing with some cast aircrete mixes treated with this water glass for a future rocket stove build. I'm already working on my own lousy post about making this fascinating stuff, and hope to post many results about my own projects and tests with it.
What I'm most excited about right now, though, is my new bandsaw mill. I've been trying to purchase one of these for the last 3 years, and this year had finally given up (after several orders were unfulfilled) and decided to just expand my chainsaw milling operation. Out of the blue I got an email saying they shipped an order that they had previously suspended, then cancelled, which I just recently had confirmed the cancellation of. Now that I have it, I'm thinking about complaining to see if they'll give me any of my money back, but right now I'm just too exuberant. Good thing too, because they said it would take at least 10 days, and it only took 3, and I was NOT prepared for it. Gross weight on the package this thing came in was about 750 lbs. It had to be unpacked, hauled uphill through the snow, ice, and mud to its first assembly spot, and that's as far as I've gotten. They just dropped it off last night, with no notification, and the corner hanging about 4" into the road. I put some reflective cones around it last night and spent all day today lugging steel parts uphill. The post about assembling this thing is going to be cathartic.
I've taken to playing with Rubik's cube while I'm resting between cleaning, hauling, and building things. I've always been good with puzzles, but never took the time to master this one. Now that I can barely read anything without reading glasses, I've been spending short breaks working on just that. This particular model has the extra challenge of having a couple colors that look practically identical in my living room light. I've been resisting the urge to look up any tips, tricks, or guides. This is something that should be easy for me, but my mind has some sort of block against being able to visualize all the movements properly, so I figure it's best to figure it out myself.
I was also loaned an Oculus recently, and have been having some fun playing in VR land. I wish I had a little more time to spend with it, because this a technology that I've been looking forward to since I was a child. All of my interest in programming was born of a desire to be able to create 3d digital worlds that you could move freely in. That hobby has long since fallen by the wayside, but other people have built their own worlds and I'm anxious to see how they've grown the technology. I'm already impressed with the head and controller tracking, and curious to look into how they've accomplished it without any static sensors in the room.
That pretty much catches us up, and I'm so anxious to get a post out right now that I'm not even going to proofread this any further tonight. Tonight I'm going work on some of the math for how best to turn my log pile into project boards, and if I do a good enough job at that, maybe play with some light sabers and heavy firepower in the Metaverse.
Be well everyone, I hope to see you back for the more detailed posts on all these projects!
