Some folks still get it... heard a pastor praying that God would call some of the youth from the church to become missionaries to Iran or to unreached people groups in China or the ‘Stans.... he said “yes parents, I’m praying that your kids will be called to places where they may be martyred...why aren’t you...” guts
Took some time this morning to clean up some junk from my wood shop. Now most of my tools are in bags with their accessories and I've got another bucket full of scraps and offcuts. Just debating whether to take it out back and burn it now. Technically I'm not supposed to be burning today but on my walk I passed at least one fire belching dark smoke into the air, so me burning a small amount of wood in conditions that shouldn't release any visible smoke hardly seems like it's worth fussing over. Now I need to figure out some shelving for my work area. I thought I could salvage a piece of shelving I took down when I destroyed one of the rooms but sadly it only has three shelves and the whole point of the process was to get lots of storage. Maybe I'll cobble something together after all, I figure all I should need is some plywood and some 2x4s.
I decided to take the wood out back and burn it. I figured if one guy can create huge plumes of dark smoke I can have a small contained fire that releases almost no visible smoke. Then I spent some more time sifting through stuff in the workshop and filled my bucket with wood scraps again. It's looking a lot better down there. I've been trying to figure the best way to store my growing tool collection so I can find and access everything quickly and easily, and also efficiently store things like spare blades for my assorted saws. Blades for my jigsaw go in a neat little container which goes in the bag with the jigsaw. I don't yet have a similar container for my sabre saw blades, and things like blades for my table saw just need a hook on the wall to hold them. Along the way I've also accumulated a collection of electrical parts (back boxes, junction boxes, switches, outlets, bulb holders etc), plumbing parts (mostly PEX connectors) and various tools relating to both. Then there are the reels of cable and PEX pipe and other doodads that slowly accumulate. It's nice to have a load of bags so I can carry all the tools relating to a certain job at once, or all the accessories relating to a specific tool at once. It really gets tedious carrying something from the basement to the attic only to find I need a tool to change the blade and the tool is in a dark corner of the basement. It would also be nice to build a more permanent router table and a decent surface so I can make multiple things at once. I'm thinking specifically of picture frames - it would be good to be able to cut the wood, cut the corner splines, run everything through the router and then glue up half a dozen or more at once. Then I could sand them all at once, lacquer them all at once, and turn them out a lot faster than I can at present. But as of now the only large flat surface I have available is a table, and the table supports the dinky little router table I made out of offcuts.
Printer sat in storage for too long - plugged. A series of daily cleanings to no avail. Ordered a quantity of head cleaner and repeatedly ran the onboard cleaning system, to no avail. In an act of futility, I ordered a new printer, which I was planning to eventually get, for the volume etc. Old printer begins to print. Ran 150 full-color sheets. Beautiful. Quantity of head cleaner arrived today. New printer arrives tomorrow. Is fate linear?
My new tool bags arrived today. Most of them are full already. Now I just need to figure out where to keep the bags. They take up more space than a Tetris-style arrangement of tools on a shelf, but offer the fundamental benefit that I can pick up one bag and know that I have the tool and all the doodads that go with the tool. After much consideration I decided I'm almost certainly not moving the woodworking tools into an adjacent room. The headroom in the current room is better and I should have enough space to create suitable benches for major tools. Then I just need a table, possibly even something that will fold away when not in use, to provide a surface for gluing, staining, lacquering etc. I'm still trying to figure out if I can get away with using a single bench for both a miter saw and a router. Since the miter saw comes with a metal fence I figure what I'd need is a sliding fence for the router with the intention that it would sit slightly further forward than the miter saw's fence so a long workpiece could slide past the miter saw's fence. Then, if I needed to cut something particularly long on the miter saw, I'd just slide the router's fence back out of the way and remove the router. Failing that I may end up with a cobbled solution where parts of my router table sit across a cupboard door, folding out of the way (or not, they probably won't stick out very far) when I need to open the cupboards. The third possibility would involve creating a new stud wall so I'd end up with a miter saw based along one wall, a table saw along another and a router table along a third. I'm not really keen on that approach, it seems like too much of a faff.
I'm also a sticker for organization. If I plan to continue working, I'll set up for optimum shop use (and safety), even if I eventually need to take it all down. I like my tools to be readily accessible and hook a vacuum to stationary power tools. My extended family is excessively sloppy in that regard. Tools and junk simply lay where you lay them. I neither lend or borrow tools, for obvious reasons.
Man, I wish I had some proper space for like a shop, or even an enclosed garage. Our house is fine, but the storage is not that great.
Our son got COVID tested this morning. Most likely a cold, but protocols from school are to stay home if any symptoms. I was a bit concerned trying to get through to arrange a test yesterday as it took over 2 hours waiting to talk to someone. But it moved quick after that. Hopefully results in 2 days or less so he can be back to school on Monday, assuming he's over the cold.
So, my niece turns 19 and informs me that college is next. I'm thrilled that someone around here will actually read and, hopefully, will be able to engage in informed conversation. Have no doubts as to her capabilities.
We'll have to pray for her. College isn't what it used to be. Ideology, ideology, ideology... Depending what you study, of course.
I believe she is interested in mining. Her dad, brother and uncle are miners. The school is big also on engineering & sciences.
Underground miners seem to be a dying breed. But I see lots more of them needed in the future. I would like to see a trend to high-grade underground mining from the large open pits. There is a place for both, economically speaking, but the environmental footprint on an underground operation is so much smaller.
Underground, oof. Been there a couple times, know plenty of underground miners, and no thanks. If she goes that route all the more power to her.
Yeah. They will be reopening a mine not far from me soon. Protecting ground water seems to be the most critical thing - these days they spend enormous amounts girding up the surrounding areas before actual mining even begins. Ventilation requirements are such that a breeze flows through the system at all times. Interesting, however.
Growing up, many of us had old mines in our backyards. Walkerville, Montana. Lexington mine in the background. Walkerville is at the top of the hill overlooking Butte, "The richest hill on Earth."
Large parts of Cornwall in southwest England are peppered with holes in the ground that used to be tin mines. If you see a very small area fenced off with a warning sign, don't go in. You might find that dimple in the ground is actually several hundred feet deep. An interesting piece of trivia is that Cornish pasties always had a spine on them. The idea was that a miner, whose hands were almost certainly filthy by the time he ate lunch, could hold it by the spine to eat it and then throw the spine away.