Bees

I keep bees now!

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forgery

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 Ronny and Matt from Church invited some youth to try simple forging.  Ronny brought an anvil and some know-how.  Matt brought a little propane forge. Starting from some simple rod stock, a couple guys each got to pound on the red hot metal: to make a stylish little letter-opener:  I got to hammer too, and made a wee "garlic cleaver": I didn't do much of the metal - i just supplied some dumb hammering while Ronny moved the work - but I was proud of the handle: I cut off 5" of an oak branch that had fallen during the recent storm, shaped it with a rasp, then burned it with a blowtorch to get the color.  I sealed it with a quick clear coat spray.  The handle only took about 90 minutes (mostly the rasp), and I was pleased with the comfort and color. I mounted it on the blade by drilling a hole in the wood (slightly undersized for the tang), heating up the metal to really hot, and shoving them together.  The hot metal burned its shape into the woo
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The way it goes

I wanted to install a ceiling fan where there was only a ceiling light.  No problem!  I've done this many times before - maybe 30-45 minutes is plenty. HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAA! As so often happens in projects, this one snowballed and wound up taking over 3 hours .  Follow along with these easy-to-repeat steps and see if you can tell where the problem lies: Step 1 - Remove the old light fixture finger screws for the glass bowl -- easy peasy. a screw or two holding the light housing to the junction box --  boy, this box is pretty wiggly. the wirenuts and ground wire connecting the light to the supply --  hot wire is off; all is well. Pro tip: It's a good idea to turn off the breaker, but chances are good your breakers are labeled incomprehensibly or are outright lies.  What I do is turn off the room switch and then quickly tap the hot wire with a finger to see if i get zapped.  I didn't this time! Surprise!  A pleasant surprise!  The power supply run to the
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Bridge Construction

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We had a bridge going over a small stream in the back yard.  HAD.  Two years ago: Following some rain and flooding, it washed about 70 feet downstream and lodged against the fence: Because it was heavy (it's about 16x8, made of treated wood, with some steel and 12x12 timbers on the underside -- i have no idea how it floated), nothing i had could drag it back, certainly no without destroying it. I paid my kids to disassemble it - they spent probably 12 hours each with crowbars and a sledge hammer.  They stacked the wood and put the steel in the barn.  Awesome. I used some of that wood to build forms for a new concrete footer on each side -- there were some concrete blocks it had been resting on, but this time wanted more. As usual the hardest part is measuring and leveling stuff.  At least the stream was low, but schlepping stuff back and forth is hard. I got a harbor freight cement mixer, since i was going to be doing probably 1500lbs of concrete and mixi
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