Hobbies | Grumpa Joe's Place

Take One Off the Bucket List

Posted on 14/10/2014 by Grumpa Joe

Some projects take long than others. As an example I built a work bench for my shop in 1992. The bench is the first project I built with my new Craftsman table saw. At the time my favorite can’t get enough, watch everyday TV program was The New Yankee Workshop on PBS, channel WTTW. The host was Master Carpenter Norm Abram. I bought his book and fell in love with the workbench. It was a good learning exercise for the new saw, and it developed my carpentry skills as well. There is one tiny detail I left out. It is the tiny detail I left out. The workbench included a unique built-in flush wood workers vise. I built the jaw part, but didn’t buy the screw mechanism for another three years. When I finally got the screw at a cost of nearly $100, it was too long for the bench. Oh well, someday, I’ll have it cut down and make it fit perfectly. The screw sat for another seventeen years until my oldest son asked me what I wanted for my birthday. “You know, what I really want is for you to take my vise screw and talk one of your machinist friends into customizing it.” Mind you, I worked in a place with ninety-three tool makers under my supervision and I couldn’t bring myself to ask one of them for the favor. That would be showing bad example. How would it look if the boss conveniently asked the company machinists to work on his G-jobs?

My son graciously said “Sure Dad.” I gave him the screw never expecting to see it again. After all he is a busy father with young boys who demand his attention and time too. The screw didn’t get here for my birthday last year, but it did show up for Father’s day this year.

The screw disappeared again, this time for three-months in my workshop. For the last month I have searched for the dang thing so I could finish the job. Then last night I saw the screw in a dream. It sat on top of my surplus TV in the basement out of harms way. The problem being that the TV was now so covered with stuff that make up all workshops that the screw became invisible. For that matter the TV was invisible too.

This morning I got up at my usual time fully expecting to get to the shop early to put my hand on that screw and to install the last piece of a twenty plus year old project. Wrong! Grandma Peggy had an agenda. Rather than piss her off I said to myself why not surprise her and take her on the rounds early, then go to the shop. And that my friends is what finally clicked. She hasn’t bothered me once all day long. I had two hours of fun installing this screw to the sliding block that is the vise jaw.

The large black crescent at the bottom of the picure is my belly sucked in as far as it will go. It is still not far enough.

Note, the many scars on the bench surface. This bench has been used extensively for twenty years.

I lied, the bench is still not 100% complete. A wooden handle must be installed on the end of the screw. I promise the handle will be added this year.

Filed under: Biography, family, Hobbies, Humor | Tagged: New Yankee Workshop, project, Woodshop | Leave a comment »

Secret Places Where Features Hide

Posted on 18/08/2014 by Grumpa Joe

Each year I try to make my garden different. Even though there are elements that cannot change easily like a pond, hard-scaping, and all the perennials. There is however, plenty of opportunity to paint a picture in the blank spaces using different colors and plant materials. This year one of my goals was to plant a garden that would deter rabbits. I think I succeeded, that is the rabbits have given me the impression that I have succeeded. The episodes of Wabbit Wars have been sparse because the Wabbits have not been able to get to me as often.

My color palette is yellow and orange. I elected different varieties of Marigolds and sought out other species of yellow flowers to mix in like the gold Celosia, Lysimachia, Lantana, Marguerite Daisy, and Orange Joy Asiatic lily. Close planting and weekly foliar fertilization helped the plants spread out and finally fill in the canvas. A seven minute video of the same plants would be terribly boring, so I decided to add some interest with winter scenes and an escape to the desert while I waited for Spring to arrive.

Yesterday, I posted a trailer using a new version of iMovie. It was my training session on how to use this new version of a program I was very comfortable with. The new version made posting on YouTube easier, but I felt it harder to compose the movie. There are so many short cuts built into this version that I had trouble doing things that make a movie a movie. The older version is more oriented to real movie makers. This new version targets a person interested in speed. I am sure all the features of the old version are in this new one, but I’m too old to want to spend all that time looking for the drop downs and secret places where features hide. In that regard, iMovie is a lot like Windows, it is the same stuff reorganized to make it look new and to make you work to find things. In a way, iMovie 10.0.4 is like my garden, it has many exciting things to see, but one must explore to find them.

Personal guided tours of the garden are available upon request. My favorite time to give a tour is between January and March, I spend less time touring and more time imbibing.

Please enjoy my garden called “The 2014-Monet Vision, Golden Glow”

Filed under: Biography, family, Garden, Gardening, Hobbies, Memories, Pond, Ponds | Tagged: flowers, IMovie, Painting, Palette, Wabbit Wars, YouTube | Comments Off on Secret Places Where Features Hide

More Capable of Picking Up Fast Women

Posted on 08/04/2014 by Grumpa Joe

Finally, I got to see some really old cars, some of them older than me. What really surprised me Saturday were two Buick’s one year apart which were identical models. Both were immaculately restored to perfection. Sadly, the show was so well attended that getting great pictures was nearly impossible, but I tried nonetheless.

The seventy-five year old Buick convertible with twin side mount spare tires has a rumble seat and straight eight engine producing 140 HP. Owner Gordy bragged about how his car would get to 110 mph in eleven seconds. That is impressive for a heavy pile of metal. Gordy’s Century is the same age as me, but in better physical condition, and more capable of picking up fast women.

1938 Buick Century Convertible Coupe, one of 500 produced.

1939 Buick Century Convertible Coupe

Oh yes, there were a few other cars at the show too. The cutest was the Pepto Bismol pink Studebaker with it companion pink golf cart.

The Best Looking Golf Cart I’ve Seen

The car that really got my juices flowing is a highly modified 1937 Ford convertible coupé done in gold. This car looks better than most 2014 models of today. I would take it in a second.

I am in love with this one

The rest of the show worth looking at.

Filed under: Biography, family, Hobbies, Hot Rods | Tagged: Buick, Car, Ford, Golf Cart, Studebaker | 2 Comments »

Amazing Glass

Posted on 07/03/2014 by Grumpa Joe

In 2001 my Garden Club introduced me to a show at the Garfield Park Observatory in Chicago. Artist Dale Chihuly made special pieces to place strategically throughout the tropical room of the hundred year old observatory. As president of the club I suggested we visit as a group and see what this was all about. It would be a two-fer. One, we would visit the worlds largest indoor garden, and two, we would see some amazing glass works.

Four carloads of anxious gardeners drove into Chicago’s war zone to make the visit, none of us were sorry. In January, as Peggy and I approached Phoenix from the south on the I-10, I spotted a billboard titled Chihuly in the Garden. This image settled in a working bit of brain matter within my cranium and stuck. In the last six weeks I learned that the garden referred to is the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Our field trip this week took us there to see what the amazing Dale Chihuly produced. We were not sorry, but thirteen years has passed since my last viewing of his work and the amount of energy required to see all of this exhibit took its toll on us. We came home and crashed.

The Desert Botanical Garden is not new to Peg and I. In years past we toured there to see how desert plant materials look when arranged artistically. Looking at cactus and the myriad of water starved plants that thrive au-naturel in heat gives a scuzzy appearance. The same plants in a garden environment are absolutely beautiful. I will not say much more and let my photos tell the story.

We visited on a dreary late winter day with a thick grey cloud cover. It held the heat down but threw off my pictures. After seeing them, I decided I should have used a setting for a snowy day instead of the standard landscape setting. The photos are acceptable, not great.

Filed under: Biography, family, Garden, Gardening, Hobbies, Travel | Tagged: ART, Art Glass, CactiGarfield Park Observatory, Chicago, Chihuly, Desert Botanic Garden, Phoenix | 2 Comments »

Horn Man

Posted on 06/02/2014 by Grumpa Joe

A year ago I got the bug to make some Christmas gifts. I began a project in late November to make twelve Intarsia flowers for the women in the family. I struggled to complete five in time. The project over whelmed me. This year, I began making gifts in September thinking it would be enough time. Except, the people I made gifts for had aged and I no longer felt comfortable making teddy bears for my grand kids. When I began Intarsia, my oldest grandchild was four. Today that same child is nineteen. When it all started as a hobby, I set a goal to make an intarsia piece for each grandchild. I managed to give my first three kids a hand-made intarsia art piece. Then there was a lull in grandchild production. By the time new kids were born my life had changed dramatically. Four more kids came. Dan was a toddler when my wife Barb had her heart attack, and my drive to make intarsia art faded to zero. Barb died, and three more kids came during my grief. I lost the idea, until last summer when I realized my life calendar is running down. The idea of making Dan a teddy bear didn’t compute because he is thirteen now. The same went for the rest of the kids, they are eight and ten. I took care of my ten-year old grand-daughter last year with a flower. The two youngest are brothers and are avid fisherman, each got an intarsia fish, Brad got a largemouth bass, his brother Ben a stripped bass. So that left me with Dan.

Most Intarsia wood workers are craftsmen not artists. They make the art from pre-designed patterns. I did this for the flower and the two fish. I bought pre-designed patterns and made the art-piece as a craftsman. I decided to design the last work from scratch. I had made enough art-pieces to feel comfortable with the art form and needed to jack up my experience a level.

I thought long and hard about what kind of piece to make for Dan. He is not a fisherman like his cousins, he is a swimmer, and a very good one. I couldn’t imagine how to design a piece of art made from wood to depict swimming. I am not creative enough, but I did vision him playing his trumpet.

I called his father and asked him to photograph Dan while he practiced. I received two photos and chose one to work with. At first, the project excited me, then fear took over. I froze with the fear of actually designing a piece and executing it. For two months, I could only think about how complicated a work I had decided to take on. I procrastinated by making the two fish ahead of the one I designed. My design would be the reward for completing two projects ahead of time. By the time I got started on the Horn Man it was November which is a short month in the wood shop because of Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

I finally began with my grand-daughter who helped me transfer the photo into a line drawing. Once I had the line drawing it took a couple of days to decide where the cut lines would be, which colors of wood I needed, and which direction the grain would run. Actually, this was the easy part since I have spent over forty years in a business which relied on my visualization and transfer of designs into workable drawings.

With the baby steps initiated, I began to gain confidence in completing the piece. There were several set-backs along the way. The largest cost me too much time. Originally, I decided to make the piece a traditional two-dimensional intarsia piece. There was no way for me to execute a two-dimensional design easily. I needed to shim some parts and to slab cut others to create the third dimension. Making the trumpet was one such set-back. I scrapped what I was doing and chose to make a three-dimensional trumpet, except I didn’t have enough information to make a 3d horn. I spent time on the web searching for images of trumpets and printed out several pages of trumpet details to study.

It became clear that the Christmas deadline could not be met. Lucky for me that Dan lives in Texas and I was going there in January, so the deadline moved to mid-January.

I finished the Horn Man a week before Peg and I were leaving for the West. Just before the final glue together, I felt the piece needed something else and I decided to add the musical score. A month earlier I acquired a piece of wood which was perfect for the music, it is so dark it looks black. The wood was a nightmare to cut. It is so dense I wore out many saw blades before I finished the music lines and the notes. Four days later I finished it, then I scrapped it because it overwhelmed the piece with its size. I was now three days away from leaving for Texas. They say necessity is the mother of invention and I redid the music using some very thin plywood that cut super easy enabling me to finish the music in four hours. The end result turned out to my satisfaction.

The photos tell the story.