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There are times I am amazed in two completely differing directions.

First, I am sometimes amazed by the things I can remember, and at the same time, shocked by the things I forget. The picture I have included is a number that will forever be in my mind. This is the address of the first location I worked as an adult - the Payless Cashways store on Hickman Road in Clive, Iowa. I believe I will remember this forever. It is right there with things like the PO Box number my mother had, the phone number for my grandparent's home, and the birthday for Denny Dreuhl, a friend from Drake. There are many more of these, but this list comes to the top this morning.

Then there are those items on the other side of the ledger. Ask me today what I had for supper last night, I may or may not remember. Tell me something very important this morning, and it may well be gone from my memory by the middle of the afternoon.

What in the world is this?  Does this happen to everyone, or am I the only one who struggles with this? The most infuriating thing is the harder I try to remember something, the more quickly it seems to slip through my mental "fingers." It reminds me of a game we played when we were young. We would cover a watermelon with Crisco, throw it into the pool and then two teams tried to get it to opposite sides of the pool. One second you had the perfect hold on the watermelon, and suddenly, you realized it was gone. That is exactly what some of this feels like. Just like trying to hang onto smoke.

Then comes the next bit of the story. Some items I haven't been able to bring to mind will come floating back in, days, weeks, or sometimes months later. I know the human brain is an amazing thing, but just where in the heck has this information been hiding?  It astounds me when the information shows itself. Many times it is in the middle of the night, or at a time when I am thinking nothing about the topic. Maybe there is a "partition" of the brain that just keeps working on hanging questions. It is out there, in the background, trying to come up with the information not readily available.

Do you suppose that theoretically, every piece of information we have ever processed is actually still in there?  If so, I really feel I let myself down on some of those high school and college tests. I can remember looking at questions and having absolutely no idea what the question was even about. Now, that could mean I had never seen the information. I wasn't the best student. I got good grades, but I can't say I studied the way I should have. But there were those frustrating times when I would leave the test, and on the way back to my room the answer presented itself. Ah yes, the brain had been working on it "off-line."

If any of you have a secret on how to get some of this long processed information to come out, share it with all of us. I know there are things we would all like to remember. Times and places, and things said. Secrets we were told, now really secrets as we can't remember them. All of those things. If you have found the way to release all of this, share it with us.

On the Toybox front, there has been a lot going on. I have all of the aluminum pieces on the trailer and am in the process of putting the final coat of finish on it. I must tell you, it looks beautiful. I hope my sister and Karen LOVE it. All I really have left is some final fitting and tweaking of various parts, and the electrical work. There is not a great deal of this, but I would like it to be right so all of the interior lights work, as well as the trailer driving lights. This is something a little out of my element, so I will go slow and read a lot, and watch a bunch of YouTube videos. This seems to be my preferred way to learn things like this lately.

I finished and delivered "Nick" to the Iowa State Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation this week. He'll be up for auction at this year's Corndog Kickoff. Bid early. Bid often. The State Fair has always been one of my family's favorite summertime activities. Keep an eye out on my Etsy store. Nick's brothers and sisters will be available to purchase later this summer.

Have a great week. Think good thoughts this weekend as I am installing an air conditioner for my daughter. Shouldn't be a big deal, but things can go wrong. We don't need that. Now if I can just remember where I put that tape measure.

Mosquitos

For the rest of you in the Midwest, and some of you in other areas, I am sure I am not alone when I talk about mosquitoes being the terror of the summer. For those of you further north, or in other cooler parts of the country, you can probably trade the word mosquitoes for black flies. Either way, I think we all are aware of pests that are so invasive at times during the summer they literally drive us back into the house. Here in Iowa, I knew with certainty we hit this point one night last week. I was leaving the house to go to the gym and one of my neighbors was out walking his dog. With a pained look on his face he told me I shouldn't be out any longer than necessary as the mosquitoes were terrible. As I was already slapping them off my arms, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Did you ever stop to wonder if the lowly mosquito provides any positives in the world?  Like so many things, with this question in mind, I went to Google. The first thing I found was a note that mosquitoes serve no purpose other than to annoy us. I had a moment when I gladly agreed with the answer. I decided to keep digging for more information. There was, in fact, much more. Apparently, the mosquito is a food source for many fish and birds and there is an argument the elimination of the mosquito could have serious ramifications up and down the food chain. On the other hand there is a belief the mosquito is the largest transmitter of disease in the world. So, like so many other things, I guess there is good with the bad.

I remember one summer we were in Maine to spend time with my sister. We had gone to camp for a couple of days. Camp is a nice little cabin on a lake in the more remote part of Maine. We had absolutely wonderful days there. The thing I remember the clearest however were the mosquitoes. Along one side of the cabin was a narrow screened porch with a counter built along the side to the screen/lake. It was a wonderful place to sit, have dinner, and talk or play a game. Just a wonderful place to be. But the thing I remember were the mosquitoes. It sounded almost like rain as they flew against the screen by the thousands, trying to get to us. I am glad none of them had tools to get through. It was still a bit disconcerting.

As I think about the mosquito hoards in the neighborhood last, I still find I can smile about all of it. It is all just part of the circle of living in this part of the world. We know we will have mosquitoes right now, but we also know when the weather gets hot, they will dry up and go away, being nothing more than the "flying drops of water" they are. And we know the summer heat will come, fall will be nice, and we will plunge back into winter. By the way, I don't know about you, but that whole cycle seems to go way too fast anymore.

Enough philosophy for the day. I talked to you in the last blog about CNC routing. I am enjoying the new challenge, but last weekend I had a little bout with breaking tooling. I've done some reading and it seems like I may have done two things wrong. First, I may have been running the router too fast which heat to build up in the bit, causing failures. The second thing is that I spent less on tooling than I should have. This is a recurring lesson for me. I start out by trying to save a little money and when I get all done, I discover (AGAIN) I should have just bought the good stuff in the beginning. With that said, I have some carbide tooling coming, rather than the high speed steel I have been using. I have high confidence this will make a difference. I will let you know what I find out.

If there are any of you involved in CNC operations and have thoughts for me on any of this, I would enjoy hearing what has worked for you. I know there are a lot of things I can use the CNC router to make, even if they are as silly as this reminder. I look forward to continued progress as I learn more about the machine and discover new and interesting projects to create.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

I hope you have a great week.

Creativity

When I talk about woodworking, I talk about straight lines and right angles.  You haven't seen me produce chairs with curved seats or highly sculpted pieces ... ever.  Those things aren't what I do well.  But I added a CNC router to my arsenal of tools and it allows me to now add different dimensions and shapes to the work I am doing.

Let's start  with the basics.  CNC stands for "computer numerically controlled."  The idea behind a CNC anything is that a computer will its control the movement.  So, a CNC router is a router controlled by a computer.  The computer makes the decisions to move the router in any of 3 directions, or any combination of the three.  The three directions, typically identified as x, y, and z, are left to right in front of you; closer or further away; and up or down. The combination of these in very small increments makes virtually any cutting pattern possible with patience and time.  This type of technology has been available in large shops for years, with price tags in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Recently, CNC routers have become much more accessible to woodworkers like me.  As with many things, when they came to market they were expensive and a little fickle. Over time they have come down in price, and have become much more consistent and reliable. As I have worked with my CNC router, I've destroyed some wood and broken a couple of router bits, but overall, learning this new technology has been relatively easy and straightforward. Now I just need to find additional things to make.

So far, I have created functional things for the shop. If pieces need to be exact dimension, this technology will let you dial that in. If you want to work to the thousandth of an inch, you can. I started messing around with inlays. The first thing I did was to inset a cutout of the State of Iowa into one of the cutting boards I regularly make.  It came out all right, but I still need to perfect the technique. I've made a couple of signs and one of them was good enough to give away, while one is hanging in the shop, good enough for me, but not the world.  With practice these will also get better.

This Star Wars trivet is nothing that I would have ever tackled before.  I wouldn't have even thought about it.  But with the help of Inventables, I could download the plan and run it on the CNC. 

For any of you looking to get into this kind of work, I have found Inventables to be very helpful.  They have a good website of projects that will let you get started. You can make a copy of the item you want to cut out and make changes to fit it to your personal needs.  Although I haven't taken advantage of the feature, you can even buy the product to make the project from for many projects on their website.  I have plenty of wood in the shop that I've been able to use and don't see that changing in the near future.

Okay, on other fronts ...

Those of you who have followed my adventures for a while might remember that this week was a big one.  This is the week I had agreed to have the teardrop trailer finished for my sister.  It coincides with a rather big date for her.  Enough said about that.  Anyway, although I am close, I was unsuccessful in completing this project on time.  Fortunately, my sister asked if I could keep the trailer until she has a place to store it.  It looks like I have a few extra months to get this done, and that is just about the amount of time it will take.  I have included pictures of how things are progressing.

It looks as though when I finish my sister's trailer, I may have another to work on.  This won't be a teardrop but a tailgating trailer. We are just beginning to work on the concept, but it should be a lot of fun.  This will, like the teardrop, take a bit of time but should be interesting. 

Thanks for reading my blog.  If you have crafts or projects you would like to share, I would love to see them.  Have a great day.