Where is the goddamned glue?

I made this last week for the mm who has been very keen on archery since she hit a bullseye her first time shooting an arrow. The look on her face was pure victory and empowerment.

It's Ipe with maple and cedar grip. The string is made from some carpet thread I had around. Shot an arrow about 200 feet.

Did she wash her finger first?

Have you let her watch Top Shot yet?

It's still in the horse.


She did? or the bow did?

We can only hope...
She can watch Top Gear, once she's done with the Gs we'll move her up the alphabet.
(It's Hide glue)The bow did, she shot about 10 yards.

Awesome!

I should post some of the wooden swords glatt Jr. has been making. I taught him how to make a half lap joint for the guard, and he loves using a draw knife to shape the blade. I always figured we would be the dorky family that nobody would come visit, but he's very popular with his friends because he has shop privileges (with limits.)

Today I nearly made a very silly mistake.
I got a PayPal receipt for three month's worth of online number rental from Skype.
My mouth dropped open - WTF?!
I was a second away from clicking the Dispute link handily included in the email when my brain kicked in.
Hang on...

Sure enough, went to the official PayPal site and no such payment has been issued.
I knew there wouldn't be, but I did have to check.

I'd never fall for a bank scam because I do not have online banking and my bank does not have my email address. But the sneaky buggers nearly had me today - sheer paranoia because I know I'm already slightly overdrawn.

Last night I think I fixed the refrigerator.

There had been mysterious puddles of water under the refrigerator off and on for a few weeks, which I traced to an area under the crisper drawers. A couple of water drops on the back wall showed the water was coming down from up near the freezer. This machine does not have an ice maker or water filter, so it had to be a condensation issue.

So I pulled everything out of the freezer, which is on top, and started looking up there. I figured there was a drain that was blocked or frozen shut or something, forcing the water to find another path. It took a while to figure out how to remove the rear panel of the freezer to get to the condenser, and it was so cold working in there that I had to go find some winter gloves to wear. There was a rack to remove, and an ice cube shelf, and an unused ice maker hookup to snap off, and a frozen brittle plastic vent grate to snap off without breaking, and one screw to remove. And once I did all that. I could pull the back panel off. I saw the drain hole under the condenser, but didn't see anything blocking it. No water or ice was visible up there under the condenser either, but there was a little water in the drain hole.

So then I pulled the refrigerator out into the middle of the kitchen and saw that there was a drain hose on the back of the thing that leads from just below the freezer down to an evaporation pan at the base of the fridge. I got my wet-dry vac turned on, and then popped this hose off. Sucking all the spilling water up as I did so. Then I put the nozzle of the shop-vac right up to the hose. It made a perfect seal. And the shop vac whined like crazy for a bit while making a slurping sound. The hose was sucked clear. I tried blowing into the hose, and there were no obstructions.

Then I put it all back together and put the food back in.

I could have just pulled the stupid thing out into the kitchen and pulled the hose out of the back and sucked it out in the first place. It would have taken a minute or two. But now I have an intricate understanding of this refrigerator. And I found some year old food in the freezer that I got to throw away.

And since this is kind of a boring post, I'll throw in a picture of the condenser, because most people will never see what theirs looks like.

Frozen peas down the drain tube are notorious villains.

I have several ongoing projects at the moment ... a hoodie that I've been crocheting since last winter, another hippie market bag, and a gimp lanyard thingy which I'm hoping will work for wrongwaycorrigan's orienteering compass (the one that comes with it just snaps on, and I don't think it's anything like secure, since the cord just snaps into the plastic thingy too ...

I want wrongway to be able to go the wrong way with confidence.

Shouldn't this be labeled NSFW?

I was counting on the Cellar to comment on that. Thanks for doing your part.

Ooh, I was just thinking of bumping this thread the other day! I built a stairstep thingy for one of my cabinets so I could organize my spices vertically instead of laying them horizontally in a drawer as I have been doing up until now. I used the mitre saw all by myself! (Well, not strictly by myself. I had to message Mr. Clod to help me find the safety switch.)

Sheesh - This thread is becoming totally NSFW.

I want to marry all of you. Yes, you too Clod. ;)

Glatt, you are teh awesome. Our fridge died a week ago and I have been on deadline all week and have not had a chance to look at it. Thanks to you, I have a great step by step starting place.!

Well I don't want to marry YOU. Fridge slacker.

I didn't mention the part about how two weeks ago I was looking for the answer to this problem at the base of the fridge, which is the warm side of the cooling loop. I had been using an over-sized pipe cleaner style brush for years trying to keep the warm coils under there free of dust bunnies for efficiency's sake. But my long brush could only clean about half of the coils. So when I pushed the thing away from the wall last time, and took the panel off the bottom in back, I saw that there was a tremendous amount of dust bunnies back in there. I vacuumed as much up as I could, but by using a can of compressed air, I was able to blow most of the dust out the front (and all over the kitchen floor).

There's an evaporation pan down at the bottom next to the compressor and warm coils and a cooling fan. All that heat and warm air down there evaporates the water in that pan pretty quickly. Anyway, the hose from the freezer drain leads to that evaporator pan, and that clogged hose led to the puddles of water on the floor.

Then the only other bit is the control panel inside the fridge up near the freezer.

That's pretty cool glatt!

Maybe we could just go steady?

Hi. Have we met? Steady, I'm not. :p:

Well done glatt!

Today I made hard boiled eggs and mashed them, as a treat for the chickens. Yes. I have cannibalistic chickens. :eek:

I've been working on this ladle off and on all weekend. It's bigger than it looks. Holds about a cup. Made from a hunk of black walnut. It was fairly time consuming since the wood had been drying out in my shop for about ten years, and was pretty hard.

I doubt it will see any use. It's not terribly practical, but it was fun making it.

Lovely, but I wouldn't use it for food. Black Walnut is toxic.

It's lovely :) Today i made soup. yesterday I made jewellery.

Good to know. It also stains your fingertips, when you are carving and sanding it.

Today I made music with a lovely bunch of people. Yesterday I made music with the same lovely bunch of people. Tomorrow most of that lovely bunch of people are going away on the ferry (weather permitting). Or not :)

I've been making little crocheted bags that are sized to hold tarot card decks.

I've moved on to trying to make a cozy for a Kindle Touch.

Glatt, is the color off on that? It looks more like black locust to me, or olive wood, especially the grain.

The color is correct, but it's unfinished, so it might look a lot darker with a finish on it. But now that you mention it, I'm not positive it's black walnut. It was a long time ago that I cut up that log. The tree's leaves and bark looked like black walnut, but there were no walnuts present at the time it came down. I don't think it was black locust though since there were no thorns anywhere.

time to dust off this lovely...

http://cellar.org/2012/yepitswood.jpg

can you take a close up with a sheet of white paper next to it?

Black walnut is really chocolaty brown, Locust is orange when freshly cut down, greenish yellow when dried turning cafe au lait brown when exposed to light for a long time. The grain is very open somewhat like oak or ash but not quite as large pored. Very similar to Mulberry or Osage Orange if you are familiar with them, I think you have those down near you. Black walnut has very fine grain structure, a lot like mahagony.

Perhaps

Maybe.

Definitely not Mulberry or Osage Orange. The leaves were all wrong. But black locust and black walnut leaves are similar enough that I could have confused them. And I was actively looking for spines, and saw none, so I ruled out black locust in my mind. That's about all I remember from that day a decade ago.

Biscuits

Nice bright colors. I bet they taste great too. Well done!

Actually they don't - far too sweet!
But the staffroom will gobble them up :)

NOT possible. :)
They look wonderful!

They Look Lovely !!!

Spoon in front is older and has darkened for a year or two. Spoon in back is a day old. The wood is yellower when cut into and noticably darker when aged.

Does not look like black walnut from here. manymany variables, sure, but the color seems to be far too light, and variable.

I made a social story for a boy who hates the cleanup transition. First day was a positive step.

I know you're dealing with this on a different level, but that sounds like every boy I know.

Congratulation on the positive step. Was this the first day back after a long break? If so, was that a good thing, or a more difficult thing?

Often it is more difficult, but he really missed school and had a nice day over-all. His behaviors are usually not too intense, but he has no sense of time. Past, present, and future all run together so between the picture schedule and hopefully the social story, I hope to have him ready for an integrated kindergarten next Fall.

Oh good grief! that's what Thor's like and he's 5th grade. And he's not alone. I read an article somewhere that postulated that the increase of IEPs/diagnoses in boys was due to society deciding that "girl" behaviour is a more acceptable norm, so we are trying to make boys behave more like girls in the classroom. I brought up all of my kids the same -they all had dolls and cars and were dressed in bright colors (same clothes handed down). I was sure the behavioural differences between the genders were all bullshit. I was so wrong! My daughter is strong, confident, and independent, and my sons are sympathetic and not sexist, but you can sure tell the difference by their behaviours which one is which gender.

You do not know this autistic child, bite me.

How does that work where you are? Would he simply join the class along with everyone else, or would there be some sort of special needs helper who would be in the classroom to work with him as needed? Or would he leave the classroom at times to have special sessions with someone?

I ask because my wife just started this year as a school based substitute teacher in my son's elementary school. So she's been having all these random experiences with special needs kids as she moves from class to class in the school, and she's got no training at all (and isn't required to) for working with them. So she's been winging it, and mostly doing pretty well, but it's been exhausting at times. I was surprised there are so many kids who are on the spectrum at this school. Some of them seem to have staff in place there specifically to help them, and others don't.

I'm interested to hear how this works in your are as well.

This is what we have here. They also have dedicated classes with specially trained Special-Ed teachers and "Paras" or assistants that work with specific children on an as needed basis.

Glatt,

I did a color correction with the white paper as reference to get a better idea of what kind of wood that may be. If you are sure that the leaves of this tree resembled walnut then I would guess this is butternut, especially if the wood is somewhat woolly when you sand it. It also looks a little like cherry depending on how I balance it. It seems like it was shot under fluorescent light which is usually lacking in some of the wavelength of light so it is difficult to fully color correct it.

Cherry tends to have small, very black pitch pockets, there appears to be a pitch pocket on the back of the top spoon.

First guess would be butternut, tannish brown.
Cherry, reddish brown, spicy smell, pitch pockets.

Butternut, eh? Well, it was a long time ago, but I figured it was walnut at the time, based on the leaves.

Here's butternut on the top and walnut on the bottom. Or maybe vice verse.
Attachment 36485

Could very well be butternut then.

It will be based on his IEP. We will have a meeting with all stake-holders at the end of this year. Parents (child if parents desire), teachers, therapists, and district officials will all sit down and figure out what supports the child will need to be successful. We have to meet the legal requirement of least restrictive environment in his placement. There are a whole gamit of settings available based on the child's needs for success. Everything he needs goes on his IEP, so it will change dramatically from child to child. Hopefully Mrs. Glatt gets regular work across a few classrooms so she can get to know what the individual children require and what the school is legally required to provide. My buddy will hopefully go to an integrated classroom which is visited daily by a special ed teacher who can advise the gen ed teacher. What he needs mostly is social interactions with typically developing peers. I believe based on his development so far that he will not need an individual aide and is far too strong academically for a special needs classroom. He may need pull out for speech but we'll see. He hopefully will not return to the potentially self-injurious behaviors we've seen fade and will learn to attend with minimal supports. It is way too early to say what he will be capable of come next Fall.

the latest tiny wafer, about the size of a nickel.

Is this the way it really works in your school, in your honest opinion? I know you obviously have the best interests of the child at heart, as do most of the teachers in our district--except in our district, they are expected to keep their mouths shut during the meetings. It is an absolutely adversarial process with parents on one side and "the district" on the other, and all district members are expected to toe the line of 'offer the most minimal services we can possibly get away with.' I had heard stories, and I was so sure that it wouldn't be that way with us, that we were going to work positively and constructively with them... but it turns out, no.

In our district, it is a given that you bring a legal advocate with you to every IEP meeting, unless you are a brand new parent and don't know any better yet.

Cool!

I'll assume that was directed at foot. ;)

I don't quite understand what holds the arrow on the shaft. Do you have component pictures?

Right now it is pinched in the slot of the arrow end, somewhat like an old fashioned clothes pin.

We (the inch and I) had to come up for supper before we could glue it in place with pitch. (Tree resin)

If parents know what they want and are assertive, they tend to get good results. In NYS parents have veto power over any placement. If the parents don't show up, which happens, the district has free rein. We are contractors for the district, so we don't have leverage outside of the detailed reports and testing. The teachers who get the children in the next placement, actually have substantial power at these meetings and work among themselves to try to divy up slots appropriately. One weakness I see is in one to one aide assignments. They are expensive and I think the district would rather a child be placed in a 12-1-1 than in an integrated room with an aide. Money is tight so any district feels pressure to give less. In that case, a teacher won't advocate to get a difficult child placed in their room if they fear that no aide will be available. If you have a good open meeting though, all the possibilities will be discussed. Our district tries to be flexible about 1/2 integration etc... if that is attractive to parents. By law there is a parent advocate at the meeting but some parents do as you mention and get legal counsel (none of mine yet). The new chair-person in our district has begun calling parents prior to the meeting to get a sense of what they feel the child needs. That way if her teachers feel the parents' wishes may not be reasonable/workable she can go into the meeting with an acceptable compromise. That happened with one of my kids last year. I've only been to one meeting that simply blew-up and everyone was caught off guard even yours truly. The parent later relented and accepted services.

This is only my experience and it is limited to CPSE transition. I don't know how it plays out later.