The only DIY projects I've done lately are repotting and trimming plants. It is a beautiful day today so I have the windows open and I was outside for a bit. I got one top-heavy succulent into a new pot.
Thanks for your post @Beth Gallagher. We had three warm days here and I put in several hours getting my place ready for routine seasonal maintenance. I still have my hydrangeas to prune and lots of tweaking here and there. The weather turned cold today. 20 degrees lower. Way too early for planting anything sensitive to cold or frost. Your post pointed out to me that these are DIY projects and not cruel and unusual punishment for being an under-funded homeowner as I was perceiving them.
@Faye Fox , if you prune your hydrangeas now, you won't have any blooms this summer. They bloom on last year's growth.
A couple of our guests at our restaurant in Bonners Ferry, Id. made pens. I think he did the lathe work and she found the materials. Elk horn and bone was one of their best items but everything they did was beautiful like the pen in your picture John. I have an 18”x 40” wood lathe but the mini’s used for making pens are relatively inexpensive. Amazon has a myriad of them from real pricy to about a hundred beans or so. Turning is easy to learn how to do and once ya get going the only thing between doing what you like and not is the imagination. Here’s a guy who knows a little about pen making.
Pretty cool. I bought a set of chisels & a gouge set a long time ago. I never tried my hand at carving but I've used them for other projects. The one thing I wish I had was a drill press. I've done stuff like this mantle piece, this cornice, a kitchen stand for trash can, microwave, toaster oven (to make use of the floor space) and a bunch of other stuff. I have the little circles you use to mark the spots for dowels, but there's no way I can do those with a hand drill.
I like succulents. I recently found out that some grow naturally here in my zone. I was shocked. I always thought them to be in semi-arid regions (thinking they are quasi-cacti).
I only prune down to a live bud. It is bad to prune them in this climate after August because the next year's buds set in and stay dormant until spring unless there are several warm days and nights during late fall or winter which may kill some or all the old-growth buds that set in in August. I found I had more live spring buds by waiting till I can see life in the spring which determines how much I will prune them. It is a very unfriendly climate for hydrangeas, but the other side of the Cascades is perfect for them. I am one of a few that has any success with them and mine are over 20 years old and some years are loaded and other years more sparse depending on the late fall temperatures and how many warm days that bring buds out of dormancy just to freeze when the cold returns.
Good looking work! Dunno if you’re familiar with Harbor Freight but I bought a table top press for about $75 and it did extremely well. WEN is a name that’s coming up strong lately and they produce a 5 speed on Amazon for around $100. Obviously, neither one is made for high volume commercial work but for DIY and Hobby work they’re a jewel in disguise. Just like those fold up treadmills that are advertised, a table top drill press can be stored under your bed.
Thanks for that! I just might do it. In fact, I have a friend's table-top storage chest that needs to have a leg repaired. It's a short corner leg shaped like an "L" and it's 45° mitered...looks like it was done in a factory with a chop cutter. I can't saw with that degree of precision, so I need to butt a short piece against a longer piece. It's really screaming to use a dowel, but a hand drill ain't gonna work. This gives me an excuse to go to Harbor Freight!!!.
@John Brunner Among the prettiest woods are Bubinga, Zebrawood, Tigerwood, Rosewood, Padouk, Leopardwood (below), Bubinga Padauk Goncalo Alves This is the wood which Smith & Wesson traditionally used for grips on their more prestigious handguns: Model 29, for example (The Dirty Harry .44 Magnum) : Pictured in wooden presentation case. All this time I've been trying to remember one of my favorite woods, and it just popped back in: Coco-Bolo.
I used to order free samples of veneer wood, just to have a collection of labeled grain patterns. I've heard of Zebrawood, Tigerwood, and Rosewood, but none of the others you mentioned. Nice looking magnum. I've never owned a handgun in the .44 caliber. Friggin' hand cannon. It's not a Casull, but still recoils I bet.
@John Brunner The nice thing about a .44 Magnum is that it can use .44 Special ammunition, a down-loaded, shorter-cased .44 caliber, developed by S & W in 1907 for their new revolver, the New Century. Comparison:
One thing I might mention about a table top press is that there is a conversion kit on Amazon that you can use to make the press a vertical lathe. I see some good and bad reviews but as a side, I used my table top to turn 1/2” dowels into decorative pins for some of my work without the kit but I think the kit would make for more accuracy.