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.

Valentine

This is an interesting day. All the way around.

After checking Wikipedia, as I thought this might be a thoroughly modern way to drive economics, I found that Valentine's Day, or the Feast of St Valentine has been celebrated since early times, with the holiday taking on its association with romantic love in the 14th century. But leave it to the capitalists and business owners to make this day really big.

Several years ago, I was invited to a Drake University event in Kansas City. I went because the person who invited me is someone I have a great deal of respect for. Don Adams  was my VP when I worked at Drake. It was a social/networking gathering, but the speaker was the CEO for Hallmark. Obviously, this is a big time of the year for them. I remember him telling us his Board of Directors was no different than the ones we were working with. They wanted a double digit net income growth year over year. That's all. The interesting thing is when you are talking about a company the size of Toybox Woodworking, a ten percent increase is easy to achieve. However, if you are talking about a multi-billion dollar company, ten percent feels different. And it is different. At that level it takes more people, more facilities, more everything.

At the level of my little venture, it takes one new project, a little more time. Now, the interesting thing is that the thought process is really not a great deal different. It still takes the leap where you say you are going to grow and change. Interestingly, I have one person I have a great deal of respect for and his first question in situations like this is always, "Are you sure growth is good?"  If you answer positively, you can be on your way to growth.

So if I set aside the look at economics, and just think about what this holiday, it strikes me that we should tell those we love and care about how we feel every day. It shouldn't take a day on the calendar to make the time to tell someone they are important. I know I try to make sure those in my life who are important to me know it, but I also know time is so fleeting. Sometimes it gets away from us and months or years go by without us saying anything. For that reason, Valentine's Day does serve a useful purpose. It is a stake in the ground telling us to let those we love know it. It is easy to get caught up in the consumerism of the day, but I need to let that cynical attitude go and concentrate on those important to me.

On a separate note,  a little over a month ago, I was responsible for hosting a meeting. We had the meeting at a restaurant in downtown Des Moines and part of the morning was a tour of American Dream Machines. If you haven't spent time on their website, I recommend you fix that.   We were fortunate enough to have a top to bottom, front to back, personal tour of the entire place and all of their inventory. I landed on the 1949 Chevrolet pickup like the one in the picture. I have never been a Chevy guy, in fact I have never owned a Chevy, but I have a memory of my Uncle Norm's pickup. It's a good memory.

Anyway, given the day, and the color of the truck, if any of you have hit the lottery, or had your money tree bloom, and you are looking for a tangible way to tell me how much you care, I will make a place in the garage for this truck.

Wow, in a few hundred words, I went from cynical non-commercial to the most self-serving person ever. Truly though, I had been looking for a way to show you this truck and the opportunity presented itself. If you are interested in muscle cars, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s, go check out the website.

On a final note today, I wanted to let you know that last Saturday one of the gentlemen who teaches the welding class I've been taking told me that at this point, I can weld. I can knock that one off the DIY list. This weekend I will start putting veneer and epoxy on the Teardrop trailer. We will see how that goes. Additionally, I have another project I am starting for YESS. I love doing things for them.

We traveled a long way today and talked about a lot of things. I hope you have enjoyed it. Drop me a note or comment if you did.

Lazy

I started my day today by reading something from Seth Godin called "Hard Work." Click on the link. You'll like the post. I found myself laughing out loud as I read it, thinking about my mother and her words to me about this same topic.

When I was young, I'd spend time thinking about the most efficient and effective way to accomplish tasks. My mom was always on me about this. She told me I was lazy. I remember a specific instance where I had figured out a way to lace and tie my work boots in about half the time it had taken me in the past. I was particularly proud of this accomplishment and I thought I should share the approach I had discovered. After showing mom, she clearly explained that I was lazy and should go back to lacing my boots the way everyone else did. She was quite pointed about this, but as some of you know, I can be a little obstinate. To this day, if I have boots that require lacing, I do it the same way, the way I discovered as more efficient.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I had someone ask me how many hours a week I worked. My answer was fifty to fifty-five. Then I was stunned by the follow-up admonition that I wasn't a work-aholic. I didn't respond, but my mom's voice came back to me loud and clear ... LAZY. It rocked me back on my heels. I thought I was past this, left way back in my childhood, but her words came roaring up again to raise the question. The fascinating thing for me was the fact someone could make a determination about my entire work ethic simply by hearing a number. There was no discussion of how effectively I worked, or how much I slacked off during the day. With one single number I was compartmentalized into a segment of the workforce. I call bullshit. I'd much rather have three folks working for me who are intelligent and thoughtful, bouncing ideas off each other to make the result better than ten employees who just plod ahead, doing things the same way they always have. Seth Godin would call them cogs. Give me the smart ones every time. I will win the battle with those folks.

As I contemplate this today, it makes me wonder two things. First, how many of these types of landmines did our parents plant in our lives with no real intention of doing so?  And second, as a parent how many of these have I landed on my kids, or my friends and acquaintances? The second question concerns me more than the first. As for the things my parents and grandparents saddled me with, honestly they are at this point mostly in my past, or are so clearly part of my life they will always be there. This "lazy" thing is obviously one of them for me. But in truth, at this point I have gotten past most of this and found a road forward. Regarding the second question, I'm not sure how to think about it, or how to change it going forward. When this person challenged my work ethic solely on the number of hours I work, and not on the quality of my work, it was enough to make me pause. But have I done the same thing to someone else?

It seems to me the learning here is about the way I carry a message and the way I receive a message. Lately this has come top of mind again, not solely through this exchange. The business and working world is transforming as the average age of those in the workforce continues to get further and further away from mine. (I think I found a really elegant way to say older.) I received an email from a vendor a couple of weeks back asking for feedback on a customer situation. I gave very clear, concise feedback and the next thing I knew I received a follow-up email asking why I was upset. I wasn't in the least upset. I had just given the requested feedback very quickly and succinctly. Apparently this had not been the manner my much-younger (millennial) vendor was prepared to receive the information.

Long and short, communication is the hardest thing we do. It is tough because of the history we have with family and others and it is hard because of where we are aligned in the ever forward march of history. It takes time and effort every day to get it right, and even then, we will only be so close to right. Tomorrow is another day to fight the good fight and try to be closer to understood. If we all try, we will begin to find middle ground.

Have a great day.

Slapshot

For those of you who know me, not just here but in the real world, you know I have a tendency to repeat myself. Well, here I go again. Back in January 2015, I wrote about seeing the world through "New Eyes" and I seem to have landed there all over again. It could be the time of the year, but as all of this crossed my mind again, I knew I needed to share it.

These thoughts started for me during the Christmas season as I watched children open Christmas gifts. The genuine unbridled joy of watching someone open a gift they had never considered getting is great for the soul. Although this happens with people later in our lives, the experience with children is incomparable. The most enjoyable gift for me to watch being opened was a small oil tanker we gave to my grandson. It wasn't a big gift at all, but at that moment in time, it grabbed his attention and all of his thoughts. And, for a few moments, as I watched him, there was nothing else in the world more important to him or to me.

I hope you have all experienced the joy of Christmas through the eyes of a child. Although I would say there is nothing like it, I discovered Saturday night before last there might be an experience which rivals the feeling. That evening, I had the opportunity to go to a hockey game with my company and we had really good seats. In fact, we were in one of the suites on the ice. We were extremely well cared for, with food and beverage, but the joy for me was watching people who had either rarely been or never attended a hockey game. They saw the game in a way you rarely get to watch, from just on the other side of the glass. When somebody gets body checked into the ice in front of you, it is literally right there, inches, not even feet away.

While watching this, I found myself thinking of moments in life that have this type of affect on all of us. As we go through our day-in, day-out experiences, what really takes our breath away? There are times these pass by and I tend to discount them as no big deal, rather than recognizing them for what they are. As I think about the last year, the kind of things come to mind are: Watching my daughter graduate from the University of Iowa, holding my granddaughter, Daisy, for the first time, running errands one day with my son, listening to the joy of my daughter's voice when she announced she'd been admitted to law school, watching Sara at the hockey game, and lately, for me, when I finished a quilt top, and laid down my first welding bead.

All of these things are special, once in a lifetime events, but for myself, I know I don't always recognize and celebrate them as they come by. To make it even more confusing for those around me, I tend to "celebrate" events like this very quietly, often times by myself. For many of the moments I listed above, nobody even knew were important to me until they read that last paragraph.

I guess I come to the question - what will I do with this? If this causes a moment of thought for you, what will you do with this? As I start the year, I think I need to acknowledge more of the truly wonderful things happening to me, and learn to share them out loud. I've actually become more comfortable in some ways talking to you about these things. I need to make a change there.

Okay, on the shop front. I am having a ball with the new CNC router. The accuracy it adds to the work I do is amazing. Things I have struggled with in the past are so much easier. I will admit to being surprised by the amount of time things take to be produced, but I'm even finding ways to speed up this process. I am also learning that when a project feels like a failure, it isn't. It is just a step toward success. While this isn't new for any of us, it is really good to remember it once in a while. The nice thing about what I am doing with the CNC right now is I can run something, look at how it worked and then go back and adjust the inputs and the results. There is already more success than challenge and over time this will only get better.

I already see that in the future this CNC will be for sale as I move to a more high capacity unit. Not today, but soon I'll have pictures of some of the successes I've already experienced.

Enough for today. We are facing bitter cold in the next few days. If you are in any area with challenging weather, be safe and be careful.

2019 Begins

As is typically the case, January is a time of reflection and introspection. Be clear, I am not a "New Year's resolution" person. I haven't had success over the years with stating on one given day the things I will change about myself in the coming year. It just hasn't worked for me. If it works for you, I applaud your ability to use this time of the year to determine your upcoming course of action and then do something with it. For myself, I've always had to kind of sneak up on something, starting a new habit or activity without the fanfare and public announcement of a New Year's resolution. Then some great deal of time down the road, I will either admit to what I have been working on, or my friends and family will just notice it.

Several years ago, probably four or five, I came across an article about ten essential DIY skills. At the time, I had seven of the ten. I can't remember what all of them were, but I knew there were three I still needed to acquire. The first of these was to build a computer from scratch.  I tackled. With the help of my son Andrew, and Newegg.com, I acquired and built a computer that still functions in my basement today. To be completely honest, Andrew did much of the work and all of the tricky parts, just telling me what I needed to do next. But, with that experience, I knocked "Build a Computer from scratch" off the list and had eight of the ten in hand. Then, as so often happens, time passed. A lot of time passed. Then, out of left field, my daughter Megan entered and helped me pick up the next skill.

Apparently, somewhere along the line, I had mentioned that I didn't know how to sew and would like to learn. In my household, this is really not something I need to be able to do as both Sara and Megan are quite accomplished, but it was on the list, so, I wanted to learn the basics. For my birthday / Christmas Megan gave me a jelly roll of fabric and the time and direction to turn it into a quilt top. For those of you who quilt a lot, you already know that a jelly roll race isn't the most complex quilting project ever taken on, but for me, it was big. Thanks to my daughter, I have now completed a quilt top. She and Sara will quilt and finish it. With my jelly roll race quilt top complete, I checked sewing off the list I was working from.

One skill was left. Welding.

I had considered taking a class through adult education several times, but always talked myself out of it. Typically, because the class was held on two different weeknights starting right at the end of my workday. Since I'm not good at leaving work on time, I knew it would be a problem, and I'd end up missing too many classes. But this year, they offered a Saturday morning class. This is perfect. If I were home, I'd just be paying bills or sorting paperwork, but now, for the next eleven weeks, I will learn to weld. Last Saturday was the first class, and yes, I learned to melt metal with electricity. This may not be for all of you, but I can't even tell you how cool this is. I know I will enjoy this experience.

If, after this class is finished, I never weld or sew again, it is like so many things. This is learning nobody will ever take from me.

Now, I thought the other thing I should do is to go out and look at the current list of essential DIY skills. Like so many other things, it seems this list has changed over time. Below is the list I found through Google today:
1. Emergency Preparedness
2. Jailbreaking/Rooting your phone
3. Building a computer from scratch
4. Photo Editing
5. Cooking
6. Home Repair
7. Auto Maintenance
8. Sewing
9. Working with Electronics
10. Coding

Well, it looks like there are a couple of things on this list that aren't skills I possess. I will need to decide if those are things I need to take on as a challenge or not. Where are you with this list?  Are you adding to your individual skill set? Do you have any good recommendations as to where to learn some of these things? Let me know your thoughts.

As you can tell, I am excited about 2019 on a personal basis.  I sometimes start the year not looking forward, but not this year.  I am excited about what lies ahead and I hope each of you feel the same way.

Happy New Year.

Flood

Every now and then a moment, or an item, causes a flood of emotions within me.  Now, that being said, those of you who really know me, know this happens more often than may be the norm for the rest of the world. I admit this, so now we can move on.

This year will be the fifty-fourth year I haven't had my father around. I don't tell you this so you will feel sorry for me. No, we all have things we carry in our lives seen by others as pluses or minuses. This is something I tell you as it strikes me that at this point, I have very few things left that belonged to him. The other day when I was cleaning up the shop, using the hand duster that I've used so many times, I was struck by the fact that it was my father's. Then I was noticed it was stamped with the sale price of $1.00.  An item that had been manufactured many years ago, produced and sold for a mere dollar, was still effectively doing its job. I actually laughed as I've purchased at least three refrigerators in the years that I can remember, at costs significantly more than one dollar.

The thing that I am really getting at here is that for me there are so many little things that help me to remember those who are no longer with us. Sometimes it can be a song, or a fragrance, or in this case a hand duster. And as I said, often it comes back as a flood. There you have it. A hand duster brought back all sorts of memories.

On to more current business. During the last few months I've been busy in the shop. I finished another library project for a unit in town that helps to protect young men and women. This time it was about twenty-five running feet of bookcases and a standing desk used to check out the books. All in all it looked very nice. I also completed four cutting boards for a dear friend and then, for another friend, I created a rack for hair ribbons for his daughter. I finished a Christmas present for my daughter, but I can't tell you about that  Not necessarily because she might read it here, but, one of you might tell her.  Along with these projects, I also completed card/literature holders for YESS, and a retirement box for my cousin's son. I started working on the kitchen cabinets for the house again, but I'm a little intimidated by those right now. I have the design work done, and the cut list complete, but the naming convention for the parts is a little confusing. I need to find the time to sit down and sort it out.  One of these days ...

The biggest excitement right now is that I just purchased a CNC router for the shop. This is completely a "hobbyist" level piece of equipment, but it will give me a good start at discovering all the ways I can use it to move my woodworking forward.  Maybe it will even allow me to add curves to my woodworking. Only time will tell. I am, however, very excited about it. I expect it to ship in the next week or so. There is about ten hours of assembly before I can test drive it. Additionally, there is a new software I will have to learn, so that will take time as well.  This is going to be a fun journey and I hope that you will be excited to go along with me.

Well, I finish this thinking about the fact that my daughter is just about to finish her first semester in law school. We had everyone home for Thanksgiving and it looks like we may have everyone around Christmas. Business and work have been good this year, and I have much to appreciate.  I hope that this finds you and all of your family and friends healthy and happy. 

Have a good week.