davepolaschek

I like cooking pork butt-roasts (shoulders), especially on the grill. And since I’m often cooking for one or two, I have the butcher cut me small roasts, usually under two pounds. They’re plenty tasty relatively plain, but every once in a while a guy feels a need to get fancy. That’s how I came up with this recipe.

Ingredients

• One unsalted pork butt roast (2 lbs or so, but bigger will work, too)
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• One bunch spring onions, or one small to medium yellow onion
• Three cloves garlic (you could go with as many as six)
• 1-2 tbsp. Soy sauce
• Small can mandarin oranges (in light syrup)
• Small can pineapple chunks

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 325°F, or get your grill fired up
• Start a 12″ cast-iron skillet warming on a medium-high burner with a thin layer of olive oil in the bottom of it
• Season the roast, rubbing salt and pepper on all sides
• Sear the sides of the roast in the skillet
• While the roast is searing, dice the onions and garlic
• When you’ve seared all sides of the roast, shut off the burner, lift the roast, and toss the onions and garlic into the pan, setting the roast back on top of them
• Pour enough soy sauce over the top of the roast to lightly coat it
• Pop the skillet and roast into the oven with a meat thermometer in the roast
• Drain the pineapple, and dump it, the oranges, and the syrup from the oranges into a blender. Buzz it up, and toss it into the fridge for now
• When the roast hits 140°F, pull it out, and dump the citrus blend over it — in my case, it came about halfway up the side of the roast, which seems about right
• Pop it back into the oven until the roast reaches an internal temp of 155°F
• Pull the roast out and drain the juices from the pan
• Cover the roast with a piece of tinfoil, and let it rest until it reaches 160°F
• Slice and serve

Preparation time

15 minutes

Cooking time

An hour or two (30-45 minutes per pound)

Feeds:

6-8

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One thing to watch about a pork-butt is that there are “seams” of fat running through it. It’s easy to hit one of these seams with the meat thermometer and get false readings on the temperature, so don’t be afraid to check in more than one spot (just make sure the thermometer is clean).

Add some ginger and chilies to the citrus puree if you want a more Asian flavor to the pork. Or a little cinnamon, nutmeg and clove (go light on them!) to give it a festive holiday feel. This is a pretty simple recipe to start with, so there’s lots of room for playing around. Me, I think I like the recipe as written. It’s got good flavor, but there’s still plenty of room for the flavor of the meat to shine.

#recipe #grill

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Not something you’d usually think of cooking on the grill, this works well and small roasts are quick enough to cook that there’s no reason not to take them outside.

Originally written in late 2009

Ingredients

• 3 pound (or so) pork roast
• 4 yukon gold potatoes
• 1 large white (or yellow) onion
• 1 head garlic
• salt & pepper to season

Instructions

• Toss the roast onto the hottest part of the grill, and rotate it to sear the outside. Needs just a couple minutes per side, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper each time you turn it.
• Ready a piece of aluminum foil, about two feet long.
• While the roast is searing, slice the potatoes into ½″ slices, and place them on one end of the foil.
• Slice the onion into thin slices, dropping them on top of the potatoes.
• Mash up the entire head of garlic, throwing the slightly broken cloves on top of the potatoes and onions.
• Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the potatoes and onions.
• Place the roast on top of the potatoes and onions, and roll it up in the foil, trying to keep a layer of potatoes between the foil and the roast, all the way around.
• Seal the foil up as best you can. You don’t want any of the tasty juices to escape if you can help it.
• Place the foil package on the cooler end of the grill, and close the lid. You’re roasting, so you want to avoid opening the grill more than absolutely necessary.
• Rotate the foil package about every 15 minutes. After the first 15, you can place a meat thermometer into one end of the roast (right through the foil) to monitor the temperature.
• When the roast reaches 145-150°F, pull it from the grill, and rest it on a heat-proof cutting board, keeping the foil and thermometer in place. Get your plates ready at this point.
• When the roast reaches 155-160°F, open the foil, place the roast on a cutting board, and plate the potatoes. They should have absorbed most of the juices, but any leftover juice can be set aside for use with any leftovers. If the potatoes are a little stuck to the foil, just peel them loose as best you can. Some of them will get a little broken, and that’s okay.
• Slice the roast, placing slices on top of the potatoes.

Preparation time

10 minutes

Cooking time

about 20-25 minutes per pound

Feeds

8

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The leftovers from this will make pretty tasty sandwiches the next day, too. The small amount of juice that didn’t get absorbed by the potatoes will keep the roast from drying out in the fridge overnight.

#recipe #grill

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Not traditional in any tradition, but not all that far off, either. Originally written in late 2009.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds beef stew meat
• One large white onion, diced
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 2 – 100g packs S&B Golden Curry sauce mix, medium hot
• 1 quart water, boiling
• 8 oz carrots, cut into 1cm cubes
• 8 oz baby red potatoes, cut into 1cm cubes
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 3 or 4 quart round porcelain casserole with heavy domed lid

Instructions

• Pre-heat oven to 275°F
• Saute onion in a couple tablespoons cooking oil.
• Place in bottom of 3 quart round casserole.
• Brown beef in pan used to saute onions.
• Add to casserole.
• Add curry sauce mix, and one quart boiling water, which should be enough to cover the meat.
• Stir to break up curry bricks and make sure everything is in the water.
• Lid and place into oven for 3-4 hours, stirring hourly.
• When meat is falling apart, remove soup-bone (if present), any gristle, and skim off whatever fat you can. Make sure the meat is in bite-sized chunks.
• Add carrots and potatoes.
• Re-lid, and put back in the oven for another hour, or until the carrots and potatoes reach a consistency you like.
• Season to taste, and serve over rice.

Preparation time

20 minutes

Cooking time

5 hours

Feeds

6

Pretty simple. Tasty. Hearty fare. All things I like when the morning low temp is below freezing. And the house smells pretty darned good while it’s cooking. It’s also better after the meat has had a chance to cool and re-set the gelatin, so any leftovers won’t last long.

#recipe #soup

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Originally written 16. January, 2022

A friend is building a lathe from scraps and I wanted to make sure he has something to work with when he gets it working, so I made a bedan for him.

The handle is a sandwich of cherry and sycamore. I had enough of this sandwich for four handles for lathe tools. The ferrule is a piece of .50 BMG cartridge I had laying around. And the tool itself is a 10mm square HSS rod I got from China.

The picture above is just the one bedan, but four views of it, so you can see all four sides at once.

Steps to build this:

1. Set up the blank between centers and turn a tenon as large as possible on one end.
2. Put that tenon in a chuck and turn the opposite end to fit the ferrule.
3. Back off the tailstock and put the ferrule on.
4. Put a drill chuck in the tail-stock and drill a ⅛ inch pilot hole, making sure the chuck is holding the handle straight.
5. Drill a half-inch hole about ¾ the depth of the ferrule.
6. Drill a ⅜ inch hole to a total depth of two inches.
7. Put a live center into the hole and finish turning the handle.
8. Trim the ferrule and wood with a hacksaw, remembering to back off the live center so you don't saw the point of it off.
9. Bring the live center back in, and finish the handle (I used a BLO and shellac friction finish), then part it off from the tenon.
10. Grind about 1.5 inches of the piece of HSS to a round ⅜ inch in diameter.
11. Grind the corners down on the piece of HSS for another half to ¾ inch
12. Put the piece of HSS into the handle, first by hand, and then pounding it in until it's home.
13. Mix up some epoxy (about 7.5ml, or ¼ oz) and pour that in around the HSS, getting it slightly domed in the ferrule. You'll probably need to pour a little, then wait for it to run in, then pour a little more.
14. Clean up any spilled epoxy.
15. Let the epoxy cure overnight.
16. Finish up the handle with some paste wax.
17. Grind the end of the bedan to 45 degrees and sharpen it up

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That's it. Took me about three days elapsed time, but only a few hours of work. I was working on other projects at the same time.

I made a second one for another friend, using 1 inch diameter brass for the ferrule. I think this is a better fit for ⅜ and ½ inch bedans (9 and 12mm).

#project #woodworking #woodturning #tools

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I’ve turned a number of pens over the past couple months (starting in mid-February, 2023), and haven’t posted any of them until now. I guess it’s time to catch up with them.

These pens are either based on the Anvil EDC Pen Kit or the DuraClick EDC Pen Kit from Penn State Industries, both of which take a Parker style refill, which means I can use my favorite refill, which is the Uniball Jetstream, a gel refill available in black, blue, or red in various widths. If a pen doesn’t say what kit it was based on, it’s based on the Anvil.

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First pen was a piece of greenheart? with the aluminum hardware.

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And an elm pen with gunmetal hardware.

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Next was a piece of maroon and white resin with brass hardware.

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A friend sent me a pen blank of some dark green wood which turned almost black when finished. I chose the gunmetal hardware for this one.

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I had a scrap of ash, and filled the pores on it with some black grain-filler. The black anodized aluminum hardware seemed like a good match.

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I had some ipe left over from other projects. The photo is taken just after it was turned, and I suspect the wood will darken up considerably after exposure to air and light. Gunmetal hardware again.

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Birdseye maple got blue stripes (need more practice on that so I get nice crisp edges) and black anodized aluminum hardware.

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A piece of mimosa got gunmetal hardware.

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Some more Birdseye maple with brass hardware.

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I paired another piece of mimosa with stainless steel hardware

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And finally, a pen of cholla cactus with green and red resin and brass hardware.

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Those were the first ten pens I made. I’ve given away four of them so far. Friends seem to enjoy them, so I’ll probably keep making them.

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Edited to add on 4/4/23, a white oak pen with black grain-fill and gunmetal hardware.

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Edited to add on 4/5/23, a bradford pear pen with brass hardware.

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Edited to add on 4/6/23, an ash pen with violet grain-fill and brass hardware. I need to use more violet dye in the grain-fill next time, and sand to at least 220 grit before filling the grain (I only sanded to 120 this time, and sanding back the excess grain-filler left me with the grayish color).

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May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen in burnt bronze with juniper wood

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May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen kit in black anodized aluminum with a piece of juniper showing both the redder heartwood as well as the pale sapwood.

I like the assembly of the DuraClick EDC, but the fact that the click doesn’t match the other metal parts isn’t great. Also, an 8mm drill leaves the wood very tight around the mechanism. Both of these pens have a microscopic crack in the wood due to the hole being just a hair too small.

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May 30: A DuraClick EDC pen kit in brass with pine wood. I got the tip of the wood a little too small. Turns out, pine is softer than most of the woods I turn.

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June 1: A DuraClick EDC in aluminum with juniper wood. I had a little tear out on this, but the DuraClick is a thick enough kit that I could almost recover by making a small waist in the wood.

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June 1: A DuraClick EDC in stainless with pine. This pine blank had a knot and crack which I filled with sawdust from the same piece and some CA glue. I like the way it turned out.

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June 2: An Anvil EDC in gunmetal with ipe. This isn’t the prettiest piece of ipe I have, but the grain should get a little more interesting after it gets some sunshine.

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June 2: An Anvil EDC in brass with apple wood from my yard in Minneapolis. I was worried there wouldn’t be much contrast between the wood and the brass. Plus I had an incident when trimming the blank to length, and almost threw it away.

After gluing the wood back together and waiting for it to dry, I discovered a small knot buried in the blank, and other cracks. It took quite a bit of CA glue to turn this blank into a pen, but it was well worth saving, I think!

The figure in this piece of apple was some of the best I’ve found while using the pieces of tree I moved from MN. This is the first pen I think I would be happy selling for the kind of prices some other woodturners charge for pens.

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June 8: An Anvil EDC Pencil in black anodized aluminum with a birds-eye maple body. I had planned to take a longer break from pen making, but needed a completed pen in the shop in order to make a box to hold a pen, so I knocked this one together.

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June 12: I got a Vesper Starter Kit a while back and finished the three pens today. I don’t think I’ll be buying more of that kit. They look pretty good, but they’re a little fiddly to assemble, and I don’t think they’re as good looking as some other pens.

First is the chrome kit with a juniper barrel, which was given to my doctor’s nurse/admin as a retirement present.

Then the gold kit with a white oak barrel.

And finally the gunmetal kit with a juniper barrel, which was given to my doctor as a retirement present.

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June 24:

I made three mechanical pencils using the Anvil EDC pencil kit and a scrap of cherry I found in a pile of sawdust and shavings while cleaning. Pretty nice looking for scraps!

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July 29:

Three Anvil EDC pens, red resin with gold glitter (boy, is that a mess to turn!) and brass hardware; dark-green-dyed buckeye burl with gunmetal hardware; and a blue-dyed ring-porous wood with brass hardware.

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#Woodworking #PenTurning #WoodTurning

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Originally written Aug 8, 2017

It all started back in February, when I went down to Minnesota Milling to get a slab of elm. I picked out one that had been outside and was “nicely spalted” and had it squared up, then headed home. I planned to make a low roman workbench, as Chris Schwarz talked about. There's a video here from the Mortise & Tenon guys explaining.

February, March, April, May… I spent a lot of time repairing cracks in the elm as it dried out, putting in a dozen bow ties and filling many cracks with sawdust (usually elm, but sometimes whatever was on hand) and super-glue. I also tried epoxy (didn't like the texture) and a mix of wood glue and sawdust (that wasn't as nice for sanding). I also spent a lot of time planing the bench flat with a jack plane, usually taking much smaller cuts than I should have, but I was learning as I went. I'm much better with a plane now.

In May, I started to make better progress. I cut the ash legs to size, and cut 1.5” tenons on them. Started drilling 1.5” holes in the bench-top for the legs, and after I had finished five holes, broke my drill bit, snapped the power-cord on my electric drill, and tore up the bench a bit. Not sure exactly what happened, but the bit bound into the wood, snapping the drill out of my hands, and somehow it kept running, wrapping the cord around the now-spinning drill. I bored the last two (and a half) holes 1” with a bit and brace and cleaned up the messy one with a knife and chisel.

Holes bored, I needed to reduce the tenons on two of the legs so they'd fit the smaller holes. That was okay, as my tenon-cutting technique (using the now-defunct electric drill) had been a little sloppy. I picked the two smallest tenons and reduced them from roughly 1.3” to 1” using a spokeshave and rasp. Took me an afternoon, but I now had eight legs that all fit pretty well in their respective holes. I numbered the legs and holes at this point so I wouldn't get confused at some point in the future. I also marked orientation so I'd have the grain running the same way as the bench-top (roughly) so staking the legs would be less likely to split either the leg or the top.

Everything marked, I pulled the legs out one by one and sawed a kerf in them with a backsaw. That gave me a 2” deep kerf in a 3” tenon. Once they were all cut, I made some wedges using a scrap of red oak I had on hand, hit the legs with glue, pounded each one into the bench, and then flipped the whole assembly to put in the wedges. On the first wedge, I discovered that the red oak I'd used wasn't the best idea, as it broke off partway into the leg. I dug into my parts bin and grabbed a dozen walnut wedges I'd made back when I was putting together my shop stool and used those. Glue the wedge, hold the leg securely, drive the wedge into the leg, repeat.

Some of the legs didn't reach the bench top at this point, but I wasn't too worried. The whole 3” tenon was in the bench, but because of the angles (which weren't all the same), some of the legs ended a little short of the top. After everything dried, I sawed off the protruding bits, then went back to filling in the holes with sawdust (this time using a mix of oak and macacauba left over from building the planes for the tool swap) and super glue. In one case, I actually used a macacauba coin to fill the last 1/8” of the hole in the bench-top.

Bench almost done, it was time for some holes. I had three holdfasts made by a co-worker back in March, and they had 5/8” shafts. I have a nice 5/8” wood owl bit, but a hole drilled with that was too tight for the holdfast. I left that first test-hole as-is, and will make a bench-dog / planing-stop to fit it. I drilled other holes with a cheap Chinese 11/16” auger bit, and the holdfasts work great in those.

The last thing was making a few bench dogs. I took a piece of ash that had initially been slated to be a cane, but the grain in it wasn't cooperating with me. But I managed to cut a couple 1” x 5/8” x 6” pieces out of it and then turned them down using a tapered tenon cutter (by hand) to make 3” long 5/8” diameter tenons on them, with a couple inches of conical section leading to a rectangular top. They seem to work pretty well, and I'll make a few more from oak or ash or whatever's handy as I need more bench dogs and put more holes in the benchtop.

The bench has been working really well so far. With a couple holdfasts, I can position small boards for ripping or resawing. If the board moves around on me, I sit on the bench and throw a thigh over the board and now everything's held very solidly. I haven't done any planing on the bench yet, but that'll be soon, and I expect it'll work well once I put in a few more holes for work-holding.

There were also a number of offcuts I used for other things, including my shop stool, a bowl, and some spoons.

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When the bench was a year old, a friend asked for my thoughts on the bench. Here's my reply.

For height, about knee high. Width should be narrow enough that you can put one leg on each side of it while sitting on a board on the bench. Length should be 1.5-2m. For thickness, 7-10cm is a pretty good minimum, as that will give enough thickness that a holdfast will hold properly. The eight legs are staked in with 2.5 or 3.75cm round tenons. The legs were 5cm square ash stock planed to octagons.

Can I do everything on it? No. It would be hard to cut dovetails on it. Or do assembly. But I cut and plane wood to size on mine all the time, both standing and sitting. It's very handy for that, and on a nice day I move it outside so I have less mess in the shop to clean up afterwards. I move to a higher bench for cutting dovetails or assembling pieces. I'm very glad I built it and I use it a lot. I still use a high workbench too, though.

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I also made a pen from one of the offcuts from the bench in February of 2023. I'm still getting use from that slab I bought six years ago.

#woodworking #project

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Originally written Dec 18, 2021

I bought a miter box from another woodworker a while back, and needed a place to set it up, since my main workbench is a bit… chaotic most of the time. I also had scored four 92 inch long 4×6s from a neighbor, who had planned to use them as the corners of a pergola he never got started on.

First step was cutting down the 4×6s to 30-ish inch lengths and taking off the rounded corners, giving me nine 4×5s. Then I started building.

I started by cutting a recess for the Veritas small inset vise into the top of the bench, and cutting a line of ¾” square dog holes along the edge of the “front” board of the bench. With those two boards glued together, I attached a couple legs.

I also glued up the back of the bench, three 4×5s and a couple legs.

My joinery wasn't great, but I had a couple ½×10” carriage bolts, so I put one of those through each of the front legs and tightened them down. Much more sturdy! For the back legs, they got three 4” long deck screws each.

That done, I glued the two assemblies together, aiming to get the top of the bench as flat as possible. Then I braced the legs with a tubafor, mortised into the legs (with more deck screws).

A little flattening of the top, then leveling of the legs later, plus a few coats of BLO, and it was time to wrap things up.

The miter box sits on two ¾” thick scraps of pine left over from my bookcases. This makes the deck at the same height as my main workbench, so I can use that to support a long end of a board.

I also made a deck for my Stanley 77 dowel maker so I can mount it on the front of the bench when I need to make dowels.

Definitely not the prettiest construction, but I find myself using the small vise very often when working small parts. I've got two pine-scrap dogs to go with it that are enough for now.

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Update February 9, 2023

I'm still using the bench on a regular basis. The only thing I've changed about it is that I painted a bunch of it with leftover paint from other projects, and I added a Veritas Universal Vise to the left front corner of the bench to hold things I want to carve.

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Update March 12, 2024

This is a recent photo of the bench in use. The green carving vise is to the left, and in front is a board which will be one of the long sides of the box that’s going to hold my pen-making supplies after I put in some grooves with the Luban 043, which is sitting on top of the pine board.

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#project #woodworking #HandyTools

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Originally written Mar 3, 2021

We live on a street that's called a “loop” and which actually is a loop. It's one mile around, and a lot of people walk their dogs. Beginning some time last fall, either someone new moved into the neighborhood and never learned to pick up their dog poop, or one of the existing residents stopped picking up, but there's been a lot of poop both in the ditches and on the street.

So back in January, after I went into our ditch to pick up some recycling that had blown out of a neighbor's bin, and stepped in some (fresh, not frozen) dog poop, and then tracked it into the house, I decided it was time to take action. Rather than standing in the ditch with a sand wedge and “blasting out of the bunker” every time someone walked past with a dog, I decided that maybe a nudge would suffice. So I bought a Dogipot Bag Dispenser and got permission from the neighborhood HOA to put that and a sign on the corner of out lot, near an intersection on one end of the loop.

I also had bought Chris Pye's Lettercarving in Wood: A Practical Course and got busy learning. Mostly I needed to learn to carve Os that looked good.

First was finding a piece of wood. I had a fairly clear piece of alder, and from carving my previous sign I knew that alder worked pretty well for me.

Next was carving the letters. I did the smaller script letters with a V tool, just tracing along pencil lines, but the larger letters were incised with gouges at a 45 degree angle. I ended up using 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 sweeps to get the Os looking the way I wanted. Probably could do it with fewer tools, but that would've taken more time for learning…

Then I painted the letters with Real Milk Paint Aqua paint, which looks like a nice turquoise, which fits, since we're in New Mexico. I think there were four coats altogether.

Then I carved the circle and slash with a #7/14 gouge.

I used some 1Shot Bright Red lettering enamel to paint that.

Then I put three coats of Cabot Satin Spar Polyurethane on the sign, hoping to lock everything in.

Today, the post went in the ground, and the sign and dog-poop-bag-dispenser got attached to the post. Done!

I've already gotten compliments on it from a couple neighbors. Hopefully it'll encourage folks to pick up after their pooches, but time will tell.

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After almost two years, we've had almost zero poop left in our ditch, in spite of other neighbors on the opposite side of the loop have many problems.

The one thing I would change is that rather than using polyurethane, which is already peeling and looking bad after just two years, I should've finished the sign with tung oil, which is easy to renew. As it is, I may have to strip the paint off in order to remove the rest of the polyurethane.

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#project #woodworking #LetterCarving

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Originally written Mar 22, 2021

For the surprise swap in 2021, I made a set of squares for BigShooter. A try square, a miter square, a straightedge, and a box to hold them.

The try square was first. Brass bar (inch wide stock, draw filed to clean it up) and African mahogany (aka khaya). Glued together with fish glue and screwed together with brass screws, and with brass trim which is glued on and held with a couple brass brads. Same setup for the miter square. Both required a little fine-tuning with a plane after the holes were drilled and I checked to see how close I had gotten. The straightedge was a simple piece of mahogany with a brass strip glued along one edge, and with inch marks in the wood. They're all finished with tung oil and paste wax.

The brass trim was all ⅜×3/16” square tubing, with one of the wider sides filed away using a bastard file to make a U-shaped piece. The screws are put about halfway in, then sawed off and filed flush. I also used a 7 or 9 sweep gouge to carve flutes in the sides of the mahogany so it felt nice in the hand.

I built a box to hold the tools using some butternut and Baltic birch ply, with a poplar-edged insert. The box was built to fit into a medium USPS flat rate box. I used some ipe trim inside the top lid to dress it up a little and cover up the gap where the box went a little out of square when I glued it up. Oops! The box also got some walnut feet (which made it slightly too big for the box until I planed them smaller) and brass hardware, and was finished with tung oil and shellac.

I included some piñon coffee and chocolate with New Mexico chile as an added treat. Here are some additional photos from the build.

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#woodworking #project #swap

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Over the past couple days, I continued to tackle the entropy that is my benchtop. I made these two small and quick storage solutions to try and keep things organized.

First is a caddy to hold my twist drill bits. I use these a lot, and all of the commercial solutions I’ve seen figure you only have one drill bit of each size, which isn’t the reality in my shop. For the smallest size (1/32 inch), I have 15 bits, which leads me to believe I’m on my second dozen, and have broken 9 or so. These bits are pretty fragile, and when drilling pilot holes for small screws in wood, I will sometimes break them.

So I found a piece of canarywood on the shelf and drilled some holes in it. The front row is by 64ths, from 2-16, and the back is 17/64, then the 32nds to 3/8, plus ½. Fairly quick build, as it was just drilling a bunch of holes, but also much-needed.

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Next is a small caddy to hold my nut-drivers and a handle I made to use them by hand, rather than with my 1/4” drive cordless drill (though I use that pretty often, too).

The caddy is rock maple. Again, mostly just a bunch of holes, but the spacing was tricky and carving out the recess for the handle took most of a morning using gouges.

Both of these will probably spend most of their time on the top of my bench, but they’ll keep the tools from getting lost in the clutter. And they were nice projects to tackle while I was waiting on parts for another #project.

#woodworking #project #shopFurniture

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