Thanksgiving 2012

   I've been somewhat of a slacker on the blogging lately.  Since the blog is supposed to function as somewhat of a journal I probably should give some mention of Thanksgiving day with family. Rachel and Chet drove up from Oregon and we had the local Tunnells and Veatches, along with Margie and family. We had a total of 21 in attendance, ate way too much food and had a great time.  One of the highlights for me was spending several hours in the kitchen cooking with Rachel and Linda.  I also love the happy sounds of the grandkids playing nicely together (which they usually do).  Of course we would always love to have everybody here but it's tough to do. The logistics of a complete family gathering are pretty daunting these days. Somehow I failed to end up with a group picture for the blog, but I think its already been distributed pretty well on face book.

Lance learning the basics of leverage

Lance putting in one of the screws on the frame for his "car"

    I spent some quality time with Lance a few days after Thanksgiving.  He was in the mood to make something and decided he wanted to make a car.  Since we had no wheels available we did a little bit of a down payment. We started to build a frame for a car out of some treated lumber left over from the demolition of our old deck. The first task was to remove some nails from the boards we wanted to use.  It gave me the opportunity to demonstrate to Lance the proper use of leverage in pulling nails. Lance was really impressed with the little trick of using a scrap piece of board under the hammer or crow bar for leverage. He told me that he was going to teach that to his kid some day.  You have to love a kid that gets so much pleasure from building something.

Sawed, Stacked, and Stickered Big Leaf Maple Wood

     Happiness is a large pile of lumber drying at the bee store. I am the proud owner of half of this large stack of big leaf maple boards.  The wood was free. The trick was getting the rather large and heavy logs to a local friend with a sawmill.  Quentin supplied most of the labor and took advantage of our local missionaries to help him stack it.  Some of those boards are very heavy.  My major contributions were some cash to the sawyer, covering the bee store while Quentin did all of this, and providing a place for a large quantity of maple wood to dry. Stickering refers to the placement of the thin wood strips between all of the boards as they are stacked neatly. This helps ensure good air circulation so the boards can dry evenly.  Otherwise, the ends and uncovered surfaces would dry much faster than the rest of the wood and there would be lots of cracking and warping. If not properly stacked and stickered, much of this pile would end up as firewood.  Spell check keeps trying to tell me that sticker can't be used as a verb. Obviously the people who wrote that program don't know much about wood working.