Well Grandpa resisted for a year and finally gave in to Monika and made a copy of a German sculpture that her Dad used to mold in plaster. Apart from the fact that it was a studio mold and not a refined production mold, it turned out OK but needs a lot of cleaning.

The molding procedure is tedious and as you can see from the dates on the jpg it took more than a day to do.

Not really sure what Gabe was taking pictures of but it might have been the sailboat test that was underway with it’s new paint job. I must say that He and the camera look Great!

The Sailboat should have a name, but at least it has a number, 11 which was Grandpa’s age when it was built. The mast is Sitka Spruce that was purchased at that time from W. S. Piper & Son in Westfort as was the clear pine for the hull and the lead for the keel that was finally installed in grade 10 at Selkirk Highschool. When Grandpa was 50 he finally made the boat work with Radio Control and at 70, as shown, was painted for the third time, and next Summer all the Boys and Girls that vacation here will be able to use it. The boat gets away a lot so someone will have to man the Kayak to fetch it because we haven’t figured out a way to stop it when it starts streaking for the great beyond all on it’s own.

This is our Hippy Family Trailer and as such it certainly get it’s use. It was given to me by Betty Lucy, one of Grandpa’s bosom buddies that’s part of the Wednesday Lunch Club. I immediatly gave it to my boy Jason because he had the truck to move it and he immediatly allowed all of his friends and mine to stay in it, which is Great. Jason put’s it on his Dad’s lot in the winter.

There is a beautiful leafy plant below that I can’t identify.

You can see how nice the Sauna looks inside but I have trouble using it when it’s 20F below. I can’t say it doesn’t work because it does even at that temperature but I just hate running to the house in my Kimono and have to dry my hair in frigid weather. (Should have built it with a changing room).

Kids playing with a good quality camera gives me fits but they love it and the pix are good.. well mostly.. I have a ton of pix that they took that came out very blurry. Don’t you just love Digital!

Linseed oil and spar varnish give this new canvas deck with vinyl window it’s water shedding ability, as does the spring steel coated wire in the perimeter. Stainless steel spoons were used as the fittings.

Obviously this is just a mish-mash of stuff. Squiggs the nutty girl Siamese is always a gas. Another pix shows three robins in the mountain ash tree at once. In another I put old molds out in the sun and rain to make them beautiful old sculptures. The pea garden looked great until the Deer got there. I made a tomato planter out of a metal stove liner. My Nikon takes fantastic beetle pix.

I know it’s illegal but I quite often make rustproof washers out of dimes and nickels by drilling a hole in the center and this time I made rollers out of loonies for the sliding door on the new display shed. So Sue Me!

Grampa bought up every single large cutting board that the Dollar Store sold and also all the garden bamboo, some of which was split and needed to be filled with polyurethane foam. The entire structure, to this point, is coated with Min-Wax Poly and still needs to have the superstructure added. It has a sliding door that is bonded monocoque as is the rest of the structure and slides on Loonie Rollers.. I may have to go to Jail!!

It sits outside in the snow and minis 20F degree temperatures awaiting it’s display box made of glass and covered with fiberglass reinforced aluminum cladding.. See future post!

This is dedicated to my favoritist of all my Cats the Nose Beast.

I don’t really play favorites with my cats but he really did have a special place in my heart. Actually he was the first cat that I had that was ’fixed’ and so he seemed to have a special need for some kind of meaning in his life and that became me. We would dance together, to my tunes, (I know that’s nutty) and he was a constant companion on all projects. I miss him so much.

In some of the pix below you will see him in the lower left contemplating the birds but no attack.

Shown is one way of replacing the ’HONDA’ lettering on the motor so that it says ’Velocette’ and the obvious question is ’Why on earth would anyone do that?’ Well the roots of the Honda were in the old English bikes and many features were copied when Honda began to make bikes way back when. This is Grampa’s concept of a ’Tribute Bike’ in which Velocette is honored by converting an XL 350 into what the Velo might have looked like if it was still made at the time of the Honda.

The Bamboo Easel is a sight to behold and is made entirely of dollar store bamboo as is the tool case. Go Figger?

In these pictures the ice is only about a foot thick and frozen right to the ripples of sand that can be seen with a flashlight. In all the pictures the water is only boot deep and the brushed look is just a natural formation that is hard to capture with a camera.

Along with the benches it was decided to make a matching wood chair so one could sit in front of the stove and feed and tend the fire. It is entirely of milkrot and mold stained pine connected with round Bamboo tapered wedges which I liken to screws, and bamboo skewers as nails that are all predrilled and glued. This project cost a whopping 20 bucks and is made from wallboard tongue and grove pine and next time I might just remove the grooved joints altogether because they don’t coincide with the seat planks at all. It’s quite comfortable, very pleasing to the eye, ultra strong and super light, what more could you ask?

Made of Spruce and Pine 2" by 2"s that are internally clamped with steel threadrod, glued with carpenter’s glue, finished with teak oil and three coats of Minwax Helmsman clear satin urethane. At 22 bucks a quart it didn’t disappoint, I like it better than the Varathane that is much cheaper but has a poor satin finish.

After it was glued together, it was cut out to fit a rock insert that was made of old black marble chips that were once fireplaces in apartments in Toronto. The big trick here is getting the chips to lie in the same plane (flat) on the topside and since these chunks were all different thicknesses they must be supported and bonded together with fiberglass but how the heck do you make a design facing upwards and then turn each piece over in the same pattern?

The trick proved the be aluminum foil, that was brushed down on the layout to create a pattern so the pieces can be turned over onto a piece of glass to get them in the correct relative placement and dead flat. They were grouted first on the back and later on the front and then fiberglassed. Also notice the Spice rack made in old Finn Style and finished in the same way.

The pictures of aluminum foil in pix 14 and 15 are just fun photos that occurred when the glue dropsheets were removed.

While trying to finish the Sauna, varnish was not drying very well in the late November fall so we tried to assist with the old oil lamps that will eventually be the light source inside the new bath house. A Safety note here! Kerosene lamps can be extremely dangerous because they are almost Molotov Cocktails that just haven’t been thrown yet and you really don’t want to put more fuel than is necessary for the time they are used. They need to be on a mount that secures the tank with wire and screws to the wall so they can’t be knocked down. Also a guard needs to be put in place to keep the shade from being knocked off, especially in a sauna where everyone is bathing. They are not really advisable in a bath house unless they can be situated in a safe place.

Once the weather closed in, the carpentry went on inside with the construction of the benches. They fold up as is seen above.

Again demonstrating the ability of the Nikon there is a picture of a Laker (fresh water lake ship) that you can barely see on the horizon and to it’s right the zoom shot and all this with a built in 42x lens but I’m finding the Sony has a warmer wood tone on it’s standard setting.

The Duncan Kiln has been installed but it requires two elements and the roof still leaks above it after about 30 futile attempts to tar it up.

Classes have begun again and the alphabet nude collection is being revisited with a new molding system that has yet to be defined. Since the existing molds, in most cases are inaccurate and difficult to clean they will be replaced using an unfired mockup that will probably be oiled with linseed to make it waterproof for casting in plaster negatives.

Shown are "Pia" (Piaggo) with the cat "Vespa" and obviously the name was inspired by my early years with an Italian Scooter. Varron keeps crashing his plane, looks decidedly Gay and Woo Ty Ling so named in my attempt to cope with her somewhat Oriental appearance, that I dare not try to change.

The "Ghost Writer" is a show stopper, and everyone notices it and makes a comment. It wound up in a fire and then got buried in the ground for a few years until I tried to make a garden there and discovered it.

The shed shown was supposed to be a "Garbage Shed" because there is only pickup in the summer here, but after it was finished it was decided that it would be much better as a Sauna so that’s the plan. It now has an awning and is getting a floor. The construction is different in a variety of ways, for one the studs are turned sideways and let into their neighbors for fastening and strength. The covering boards are all 5 foot replaned fenceboards with no attempt being made to join them on the studs. This type of construction is suitable for uninsulated buildings because the interior and exterior finishing wood is applied at the same time with one layer. Also the awning is made of lightweight Spruce curved struts covered with artificial rawhide and varnished as is the rest of the building.

Grampa writes under the pseudonym of Namron Soar but it’s all boring Scientific stuff that no one ever reads. You can listen to him droning on about the same old thing again and again but don’t try to argue the point because it’s all Non-Theoretical, meaning there is little to actually discuss. Re-presented in this book is the comparison between Figmentalism/Idealism/Enlightenment, Plus, The Laws of Reality, Entitic Science, Nonreal Entitic Science and the new kid on the block; The Practical Laws of the Sphere.

To Read Brainworks    Click Here    for the Book Index and you can scroll down to find something that might interest you, like the topics mentioned above. Chapters Six and Eleven are even slightly funny. (No Chapters in ’Voice’ yet)

      Previous Book is all in ’Voice’    A Moderate Way