Well Christmas is over with

At least for me it is. Due to work schedules my family did celebrated Christmas this past Sunday. My sister, brother in law, niece and my mother all came in from Benton. Dad and step mom came over and we all had a nice late lunch together. We were only missing my other sister, her husband, and two kids.

Sorry for not updating on the renovation of the living room. Everything came together, some needed a little encouragement to fit right but everything is done except for refinishing the wood floors, that was earmarked as a later project.

Having a house full of people was somewhat difficult for me. I discovered my social anxiety has gotten worse, trying to listen to give different people asking or telling me something overwhelmed me. There was a moment I even fled my house to the shop to get away. I love my family and this shouldn't have happened.

Living room renovation, discontinued ceiling tiles

Walls are up and painting is finished. While dad is working on making the window and door facing I went ahead and worked on the ceiling. There is really nothing wrong with the ceiling tiles that are there except from the damage done to them from the panels being pulled from the walls. I liked the fresh clean look of the ceiling tiles that I put up in the kitchen, 12x12 interlocking Styrofoam tiles. They were $29 for a box of 64.

Yesterday I called the hardware store that had them to check to see if they still had them in stock. Found out that they have been discontinued due to the factory shutting down. They only had the pressed cardboard tiles which cost $32 for a box of 32. With Christmas coming up I rather not spend that much on tiles.

This wouldn't have been as much of a big deal if I hadn't already pulled down a third of the ceiling in the living room. Throwing away the tiles that had the damage and paint on them Cheapest option would be to paint the damage areas on the few tiles and make it blend in, replace the tiles I have left and to pull a few tiles from the hallway and replace those in the near future. Another option is to pull the rest of the ceiling and hope I have enough tiles from the hallway to replace all the damaged tiles. Third option is to bite the bullet and spend the money on the more expensive tiles.

Shelves for the office

Going through my phone I found pictures of a set of shelves I put in my office above the computer. They were built to display some of my knick knacks that were still in boxes. 

Boards cut to size, plane used to round over edges and rasp was used on the end grain.

Brackets up, leveled and squared.

Shelves finish, already emptied two boxes.

Shelves are made from 1x12 yellow pine since the hardware store was out of white pine.  I used three sets of adjustable shelving brackets since I wanted the ability to adjust the space between each shelf.

Cold floors

My has house has bare pine wood floors throughout the whole house except for the bathroom and kitchen which the wood is covered by vinyl flooring. This makes for a cold wall from the bedroom to bathroom in the middle of the night. Plans call for the two main bedrooms to have carpet laid with the living room, hallway and office to be simply sanded and finished.
Going bare foot is almost unbearable, wearing shoes all the time isn't ideal either. When I lived at home with my dad many years ago I had a pair of leather sole moccasins house shoes. I have searched recently and all I can find are moccasins shoes complete with rubber sole. I miss my old moccasins and hope to find another pair soon.

Living room renovation, new walls

A lot has changed since I last posted about my living room. Progress happened faster than I could take pictures of each step. I hope that no one is disappointed in missing some of boring stuff.

Walls are now insulated and have up to date electrical. The light switches were a challenge in themselves, and took most of one day to short the mess out. We added braces along the seam between where the panel boards stored and the drywall started.

We even finished putting up the drywall. Careful measurements were made to plan our attack to reduce the amount of extra work of added strips to screw too since some areas were not 16" centers. Dad has been in the process of mudding the seams and screw heads, one more final round off mudding and sanding and we can start to paint.

The Toyota received new tires

With the winter season upon us and many predictions of this winter will be colder and wetter than normal I have been making a few preparations. I have to travel to and from work so I need my truck to be able to make the daily trip. The tires that have been on my truck since I purchase the truck the years ago are showing their age. They have reached the last wear mark so I decided to go ahead and replace them. All terrain tires without much tread are not really all terrain are they?
The Hankook dynapro tires have at least 60,000 miles on them shop I think it's a good choice to have them replaced. Wal-Mart was having a sale on their Goodyear wrangler trailmark, with the idea of trading the truck within the next year or two I think these will be a decent tire, my last two trucks I have ran Goodyear wrangler and was pleased with them.

Had a few problems at the Wal-Mart I went to, had to wait about three hours due to most employees calling in sick, and the ticket being written up with the wrong tires causing a price issue. When all was said and done everything was corrected and taken care of.

The end of No Shave November for me

Had a great short run this year being able to participate in No Shave November, but it has come to end. My vacation has ended which means I must return to work and to an outdated idea of professionalism. For nine days I didn't have to worry about shaving and ended with a beard that just started to become soft after the rough stage. I didn't care how I looked all week since I spent my vacation either in the mountains camping or at the house working in the living room.

With returning to the routine of shaving, I have switched over to using a lotion based aftershave instead of the alcohol splashes. With the colder weather my face dries out quicker so the aftershave lotion helps to prevent that. I have stocked up on Nivea sensitive post shave balm last year when the local Wal-Mart's put several items on clearance to redo the shelves.

Overnight at Devil's Den

With months of preparation, I finally made my trip up to Devil's Den. I drove up Sunday afternoon and stayed overnight in the campsite. Monday morning I ventured out on the Butterfield Hiking Trail. The trail is roughly 15 miles, I only was able to make 3.5 miles before having to give up due to a old injury acting up. Couldn't ask for better weather conditions, sunny highs in the 80's, lows in the 40's with a full moon keeping me awake most of the night. Monday the wind was blowing good enough that I wished I had packed a hard hat with so many acorns falling to the ground.

My tent

Simple tarp shelter

Memorial to the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps.

Starting the Butterfield Hiking Trail

Suspension bridge marks the official start

The ruins of the old road bridge

signs like these were scattered along the trail

after a 400 ft elevation

Living room renovation, stripped bare

This last Friday I had removed all furniture from the living room, except for the couch since it was too large to fit anywhere else in the house. I have since pulled off each and every panel board from the three walls that will be redone. Two are outer walls which will have to be insulated. The last wall is shared with my bedroom, we decided to redo it also since it will look nicer. This leaves one short wall, the large walk through opening and heater is along this wall so we are leaving it alone to act as a accent wall.

All baseboards, window and door facing's, and the crown molding has been removed and will not be reused, everything will be replaced using the left over panels ripped down to width. This will give everything a fresh new feel and easier to have everything match in color.

Sneak peak of the panels being put back once they were cut down.

Movember and No Shave November

Working for a security company has it's down sides. One is the outdated idea that beards and facial hair in general is considered unprofessional. This means I cannot easily participate in activities such as No Shave November, I currently sport a mustache so participating in Movember already happens although I think the rules are I was suppose to shave everything off October 31st.

So glad to have the natural face warmer on such a cold day.

A loophole I have is I'm taking off for vacation starting today. So for the next nine days I will be participating in No Shave November. It won't be a proper beard in such a short period of time, it will be a short lived face warmer.

Beard was trimmed back during the summer months, but was never fully removed.

Living room renovation, preparations

Spent most of last night working on cleaning up my office in preparation of renovating the living room. Will be setting up the TV in the office along with my recliner so that I won't miss any of my few TV shows that I still watch.

Friend from work is helping me nice all the big furniture out of the living room so that I can start working removing the paneling on the walls and installing insulation and update the electrical. We will be doing the same wall treatment as we did with my bedroom, paneling up to the chair rail and drywall the rest of the way.

Was planning on staying this next week but moved it up due to us losing two people at work and causing the rest of us to go back up on hours. My deadline to have everything done is the weekend before Christmas. This is including having all the furniture moved back in and decorating.

Morris the cat

I currently live on ten acres of land with a huge front yard and surrounded by mostly pine trees. Last year while I was still moving in I had a suspicion that something was watching me. I never seen anything but my dad mentioned one day he saw something yellow bounding across the yard towards the crawl space under one of the storage buildings.

Weeks pass without another sighting so we thought it must have been just passing through. Months later Dad told me he had a furry face stare at him while he was cleaning up one of the sheds to make room for a project of his. He put out some food and then left for the day. We were unsure what ate the food the next day since I knew I had raccoons running around.

Eventually the cat grew accustomed to my dad and began to wait for his daily meal. Dad will talk to him and pet him while he eats. We moved the food bowl away from the dusty area of the shed to the carport. Dad named the cat Morris since he began to appear from under the old MGA.

Morris now waits for me to get home from work every morning for his breakfast and then waits for Dad in the afternoon for lunch and snacks. Morris is usually found in the middle of the driveway sunning himself while he waits.

Morris loves to come into the shop with me and watch me work on whatever project I have for the day. He will follow Dad around and will supervise any task dad is doing. He will also protest if he feels he isn't getting enough attention. Morris is a happy cat and has decided being a pet again isn't so bad.

Problems with store bought handles

Very disappointed with the selection of axe and tool handles available now a days. I have been through five hardware stores and only walked away with three handles for projects at hand or for the possible future hafting jobs. I have ordered online and received decent handles but there was still flaws.

One of the biggest complaints is the grain orientation. The grain should be in line with the axe head to give the most strength and prevent cracking. The grain also shouldn't run out on the sides of the handle. 80% of the handles I have looked at, the grain was 45 degrees or worse.

Proper grain on left, poor orientation on right.

The second problem I have is the thickness of handles, I have purchased handles simply because they had great grain orientation but the handles were more useful as a baseball bat. These handles require work to thin them down, I have used a Dremel with a rasp bit, a four in hand rasp, spoke shave, and several sheets of rough sandpaper to work the handle down to fit comfortably in my hands.

My only theory for the thick handles is at the factory when they are changing cutters they are not aligning the cutter head back up properly. I have seen in the same stack of handles some will be thinner than the overly thick ones. Too bad most thin handles have poor grain orientation.

My future plans are to further equipment myself with the tools and skills necessary to produce my own handles. Will only then need a decent source to rough cut hickory timber or even some hickory trees that need to be removed. I believe with the amount of time I waste fixing a handle I could carved out my own.

True Temper Flint Edge restoration

My small collection of axes has been slowing growing. I wanted to get a boy's axe to fill in the size gap between the hatchets and camp axes to the full size felling axes. I lucked out and won a True Temper Flint Edge 2 1/4lb boys axe head on eBay. The head also had BSA marked on the opposite face making this axe have just a bit more history.  It looked as if someone took a angle grinder to the faces trying to remove the rust. There was grind marks all over both sides.

I had to remove the grind marks from the axe head, wished to been able to leave the patina alone but the grinding ruined that. I started with a hammer and a file to remove the small amount of mushrooming on the poll. Once that was worked down I started with 100 grit sandpaper to work the grind marks out. I worked all the way through 320 grit paper, using WD40 to help float the dust away. The head has a nice worn look to it and I finished it off with Johnson's paste wax to prevent rusting.

I had a 28" boy's axe handle floating around in the shop for awhile, I always pick up handles whenever I'm in a hardware store and find one worth getting. It's easier to pick them up as you find good ones than to go and hunt one down when you need it. Handle was fitted to the head and before mounting I gave the whole handle a good sanding with 80 grit paper. I wetted the handle down and went back over with 150 grit. Was real happy with finish sanding that I took two other axe handles and roughed them back down to repeat the same process. Smooth but not slick, I have the problem with over doing it. After mounting I gave all three handles a coat of stain. The next day they received their first coat of boiled linseed oil.

My dad really enjoyed this axe restoration, he was a boy scout when he was a young boy. He mentioned he is going to look for his hatchet he had when he was in the boy scouts which will be real treat for me. It is a real hot to breathe new life into a old tool, it's a disgrace to allow a tool to be abused and destroyed, but it's a even worse to clean one up to simple be a wall decoration. This axe will be put back to use when it is needed to complete a task.

House renovation, pantry

The kitchen was very simple, three very large shelves that spanned the whole width and depth of the three and a half foot by two foot closet pantry. This was also the access to the attic. The closet was dark and hard to see much of anything further back on the shelves.

Wanting more shelf space and a cleaner area for the area that will store my food we painted the walls a very light blue to cover the rough and dirty plywood that was used. We cut a total of eight a shelves that would wrap the three walls of the pantry made brackets to support the shelves. Everything was painted the same color as the walls to match. It took awhile to get everything to line up and level for each shelf but was happy with results. The ceiling was closed off to the attic and the access was moved to the hallway.

Investigating the Gurdon light

So I tagged along for another outing with the paranormal group to investigate the Gurdon light in Gurdon Arkansas. This is a well known unexplainable area. Each year the area is walked by several groups of kids and adults, and has become sort of a tourist spot for the town of Gurdon.

There are a few stories of how the Gurdon light came to be. Many trace the Gurdon Light legend to a murder that took place near the railroad tracks in December 1931. William McClain, a foreman with the Missouri-Pacific railroad, was involved in an argument with one of his employees, Louis McBride, regarding how many days McBride was being allowed to work. During the Depression, the company did not have the option of giving McBride more hours on the job. McBride became very angry, hit McClain on the head with a shovel, and beat him to death with a railroad spike maul or a spike hammer. The Gurdon Light was first sighted shortly after this murder, and many have come to believe that the light is actually McClain’s ghostly lantern glowing.

Late last year I was informed that the railroad company had came in and removed the rail line after it had been left abandoned for so many years. This made me interested in returning to the location to determine if the light will still show since one of the more popular explanations is that the rails themselves are giving off static electric discharge. We didn't know what to expect to be left behind from the removal of the track and didn't know if we would still be able to reach the location where we seen the light before.

When we arrived we confirmed that the rails had been removed leaving only the gravel rail bed that had been leveled off to form a small road. The five trestles that we needed to cross were left behind making it easy to cross the now filled creek beds that were dry the last two times we were there.

When we finally reached our normal location past the fifth trestle we stopped for a moment to wait to see if the light would show. A few people that came along were not prepared to be out in the woods, complaints of insect bites were frequent. There were also those that were too inpatient, expecting the light would show immediately and wanted to left when they were told we may have to wait awhile.

While leaving the area I kept looking over my shoulder hoping to see something and get everyone to stop. Once I thought I did but I only had half the group with me and by the time we all stopped to look it was gone. The rest of the group moved a bit quicker and was already halfway back to the vehicles.

Hold on

Usually when we buy a new tool like a axe or hammer the handle is coated with varnish, a finish that is said to cause blisters. Most of us have gotten into the habit to remove the factory finish by scraping and or sanding. Personal preference I go up to 220 grit paper for most everything. Handle is wiped down with boiled linseed oil and left to dry. Many people and few friends tell me this is too slippery you will wear your hands out trying to hold onto the handle.

My mind wanders off thinking of the age when made a living swinging a axe. How from constant use the grit and oils from these men hands worn the handles of their axes smooth. My Gransfors Bruks small forest axe came with the handle waxed giving it a nice grip but I know a couple hours use will wear this off. A tool handle can be made as rough as someone wants it to be but it will eventually be worked smooth unless that person only has the tool for decoration.

Maybe

So I wonder how much of this advice is pure nonsense that has been past on as useful knowledge and how much was actually put to daily use by the older timers that swung the axe most their lives. As for me and my tools, well I will continue doing the same process until I find something that's needs to be changed through actual use of the tool.

Edit:

I have finally quit sanding the handles to 220 grit and making them to slick to hold onto. 80 grit paper is used to even everything out and remove any rough spots. Handle is wetted down with water to force the grain to rise, once dry 150 grit paper is used to remove the raised grain.

House renovation, kitchen

I haven't done much in the kitchen yet, other than the pantry closet, putting up new ceiling tiles, and adding a whole house water filtration system. New outlets replaced the old grime covered outdated outlets that lacked a ground. There was a single light bulb lighting the entire 12'x20', I don't see how Mimi could see to cook. We moved and added a light fixture over the dining area and another over the kitchen area, these Will be replaced soon with a nicer three bulb fixture and a ceiling fan.

Where the washer use to be.

First for sediment, second is a carbon for removing taste.

Pot rack has produced several knots on my head, slack has been taken up until I can barely past underneath without touching.