Irish Class, April 6, 2009
At least half the lights in the classroom were out this evening. Casually looking around was no problem, but reading my notes or the fine print in the dictionary was hard. I felt foggy in my head, and made several stupid mistakes. I mentioned this to Wes, and he will try to get it fixed for next time. Just in case, I might bring a small flashlight.
Lit. “Exercise of translation”
At this minute clergy and worship committees at liturgical churches in this area (Twin Cities, Minnesota) are rearranging their plans for the morning: Snow is falling. I doubt there will be many outdoor Palm Sunday processions today.
Some churches may try to move their processions completely inside. How well this will work depends on the individual church. When liturgy argues with architecture, architecture always wins.
This afternoon I helped represent colgaffneyis at the Minnesota Tartan Day ceremonies. Like last year I was one of the musketeers. My first shot failed, but without harm. The second went off correctly.
Afterwards I went home. I did the tax return for our son J, following up on this morning’s work. Everything is clean. I will wait a day or two in case I can think of any additional deductions, then electronicly file the returns.
I try not to think too much about the IRS, and hope that they do likewise in return. But there is no avoiding the subject.
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Lee-Valley/Veritas® announced the Variable Gang Saw, the latest of their innovative woodworking tools announced annually on this day :-)>
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A couple years ago I bought a battered broad axe on Ebay. The front end of the blade had broken off and the rest of it was rusty and pitted. The handle had many small cracks, suggesting too much exposure to extremes of temperature and humidity. However, the price was right: About $50, compared to a new retail model like this.
I used a grinder to reshape the broken front of the blade, and bathed it in vinegar to loosen the rust. A wire brush in an electric drill then finished the rust removal. Not much can be done about the pitting, but the edge was clean enough that I could sharpen it.
I filled the cracks in the handle with a structural wood filler and let that dry. Afterwards I sanded it and applied several coats of boiled linseed oil.
The axe still needs some work, but it is now presentable:
There is a larger image here.
Sometime this summer I hope to try it out.
A couple years ago I bought a Kuri-Kuri Mini Drill from Highland Woodworking. It is a nice little tool (particularly because it uses standard hex-head bits), but I thought that as a “miniature bit brace” it needed some improvement. So I added a freely rotating grip and came up with
This was a little harder than it looks. The wooden grip started with a cut down spare file handle. I had to drill a 1/4″ hole straight through the center (I do not have a drill press). I then took a rip saw and cut it in two longitudinally, then put it back together around the shaft of the original drill. I did not trust glue to hold under the strains this will go through, so I screwed the two pieces together. Even with countersinking the edges of the screws stuck out too far, so I had to grind them down. After that some sanding smoothed it out. At first the grip did not turn smoothly—perhaps I should have used a 17/64″ bit (if I had one)—but some WD-40 fixed that. Then one heavy coat of boiled linseed oil as an initial finish. After that I can count on the natural oils from my hand.
Those of you who do not follow mia_mcdavid‘s LJ can read about it here.
I bottled the cherry stout that I started on December 22. Final gravity 1.024. This seems absurdly high, but my final gravities are often high, and the initial gravity for this was 1.070. Alcohol content 6.2%. mia_mcdavid and I tasted the little bit left over from bottling and it seems promising.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 
