Rabbits, groundhogs, and feral dogs (Oh My!)

July 18th, 2012 2 comments

I usually only blog about woodworking, mostly because I personally find that far more interesting than the daily monotony that is homesteading (weeding, collecting eggs, trimming hooves, etc…). This has been an interesting couple of weeks though.

I don’t consider myself a violent person, I’m very slow to anger, and make it a point not to pick fights. And I dont like to kill anything, and try very hard not to do it unless it’s for food. Now thats not to say I can’t apply violence when it is absolutely necessary.

I grew up hunting a bit with a trusty BB gun, like many boys, and am actually a pretty consistently good shot with a rifle or shotgun. During college I did start training as a martial artist and kept it up for about 5-6 years and earned a black belt (I recently started training again, mostly for fitness). Those skills served me well on the farm this week…. Read more…

Categories: The Farm Tags: , ,

DIY wooden tortilla press

July 13th, 2012 6 comments

Half of woodworking with power tools always seems to be making jigs that help you make that actual pieces you want to make. Turns out the cooking can be that way too. So here is how today went:

4:05pm – Realize I dont have a dinner plan

4:10pm – Decide fish tacos sound good, but all we have are wheat tortillas. (ewwww)

4:12pm – Decide I need to try to make corn tortillas again (they didn’t turn out that great last time, crumbly and not thin enough).

4:13pm – Remember that I ment to go buy a tortilla press as some point, but never got around to it. Decide I could just make one (it can’t  be that hard). Read more…

Categories: The Farm, Woodworking Tags:

Dust collection with a Thien Cyclone Separator and a short shop tour

June 26th, 2012 15 comments

For the last 3 years since I’ve gotten into woodworking I’ve made do with an old 1HP Grizzly dust collector. It worked well enough when connected to one tool at a time. Up until recently that hasn’t been a problem. I left it connected to the table saw and used my shop vac on the router table. The only other power tool I had was a thickness planer with very poor dust collection anyway.

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Wall sconce doorbell cover

April 18th, 2012 6 comments

During our recent entrance way renovations I had a lot of time to develop a hatred of the look of our doorbell. It’s a hunk of plastic covered in gaudy designes.

Having been long inspired by the Greene & Greene wall sconces I decided to embark on making my own as a cover to the doorbell hardware. I’m NOT a stained glass artist and as I looked at what went into making a piece I realized I didn’t have the time to learn (on this project, but I’ll definitely do so in the future). Read more…

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Making a hybrid high-angle plane for figured woods

April 10th, 2012 4 comments

Recently a lot of the cherry I’ve been working with has had a lot of curl and figure to it. As much as I love my Stanley Type 2 #604 the 45° bedding angle just isn’t steep enough to handle highly figured  hardwoods.

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Categories: Hand Tools, Woodworking Tags: