Little projects

Although the big excitement of this blog is well past (tropical sailing, hurricanes, sharks, squalls, etc.) nevertheless I figure there may still be one or two readers who maintain a desire to learn how I get my splinters these days. So here is the update on the little projects I’ve been fussing with the past few months.

One of the many winter projects it does not look like I will complete before spring is rebuilding the newel posts in the house. I’ve wanted to construct a hollow mast for a while now but haven’t had a boat that needed one. So I built three test posts to practice for newel posts in the house. Now I have the router, router bits, and outlines of a plan for the final design. But I’m stalled because of dust.

You can see the mousetraps in the background. It’s an ongoing battle with those little vermin. But I think by installing strobe lights in the shop and the attic and the garage, they are being kept out because I have not caught any mice in my traps since installing cheap Amazon strobe lights in those spaces.

Dust. Up until recently I ignored dust in the shop because it’s just sawdust, how bad can it be for me? Turns out, plenty bad. So I picked up a Harbor Freight dust collection machine to suck up the dust from the various saws and drills I use. Of course it’s not enough to just assemble it as I should. I researched online and decided I could make the machine more efficient if I reconfigured it. Reconfiguring it required building a whole structure to hold the bits and pieces in their new layout. That job is almost done. I’ll still need to install it in the shop’s attic and then plumb the ducts all over the place. That should happen this weekend. Then I will be ready to start on the backlog of projects, including the newel posts, a new outdoor shower, repairing the kayaks that were beat up in the storm last fall. And so on.

The thermostat shows why I haven’t been moving forward with shop projects. The space is unheated except for a wood stove. And since it takes a good 45 minutes to bring the temperature of the space up to anything civilized after lighting a fire, it can be tough to motivate myself to get out there in the evening when temperatures are so low. But spring is on the way!

As for Cupcake, we thought the addition of a wood stove/cabin heater would be nice. So I mocked up a cardboard copy of the tiny stove we like. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere we can put it that will give it safe clearances from wooden surfaces. No heater for us.

Finally, I made a clamp storage thingy. Low tech, but don’t those clamps look nice and organized?

Supposed to have 24 inches of clearance between the stove and combustible surfaces. We have less than 10” so it’s sweaters for us.

Here are the girls. We checked out Giant’s Staircase in Harpswell. Lovely spot.

And I made this high-tech, custom holder for my tire pressure gauge. I’m pretty pleased.