Brian's Morning Newsletter for November 14th 2008
Good Morning, at least it ought to be.
I'm hurting in parts of my body for the life of me I can't recall feeling aches and pains before. Yesterday, as I mentioned, my brother Jackson painted window trim boards, as fast as I could cut, hand plane, and sand them. Wasn't too bad, until I decided that because he was doing such a nice job, which of course he always does, I'd go ahead and cut out the trim for the big windows as well. After the sun brightens things around here I'll run out and pop off a few pictures. Sorry if I sound like I'm tooting my own horn again, but these are the most elaborate house trim boards I ever made, which I guess isn't saying much since I never even got around to making the trim boards for this house, something I was supposed to do after the gang helped us put the drywall up.
I used real windows, ya know, store-bought windows for the major addition on the house I built down the hill, so I do know how easy windows are supposed to be to install. However when using salvage, which I love, the method we use to hold the glass in place is to block it in with wood, usually with saw mill byproducts. For years we have picked up the skinny pieces left over from Slim's lumber cutting operation. Leftovers can be found in many sizes, but we always kept our eye open for square or rectangle 1.5 to 2 inch wide pieces. That's the stuff we blocked in the windows with, actually if you ask dad he'll tell you all sorts of cool uses for these salvage sticks. Like my father, many things are different these days, for one, I'm older and wiser, not to mention, not as rambunctious, but I still have some energy left in me.
It still feels good burning calories the old-fashioned way. Holy crapola though, my shoulder feels like if it ever wakes up I better have a maximum dose of aspirin ingested. With my work for Desertgate installing WiFi in many different locations, I get to see all sorts of construction styles. I spied this style of windows trim on a restored Las Vegas Adobe house. Basically just the top trim board was styled. It was sort of a triangle in shape. 
I guessed the technique had something to do with shedding water from above the windows in other wise difficult to seal adobe walls. Anyway, I liked the way it looked and felt the need also in this project to keep rain water away from the windows. Jack secured a descent hand plane from over at dad's shop, and after I pulled the blade and sharpened it with a wet stone made for sharpening sickles, ya all remember sickles don't ya?
sickles About the only place we see them anymore is in horror movies. I believe hand tools will make a comeback after the energy crisis enlightens more people to the real cost of power. Not to go off on a too much of a tangent here, but this makes me think of the megalomania surrounding electrical generation we are currently seeing. I wonder whether people will ever curb their power consumption, or does our future landscape include nuclear power generators, five hundred foot tall wind turbines, deserts covered with photovoltaic cells, and coal fired power plants every where the eye can see?
Funny, but that isn't. I hope this isn't our future. I feel for our friends in Bernal, if the Green entrepreneurs, get their way, the locals will have to look at the mammoth wind turbines knowing the electricity generated is heading straight for our capital of waste, Las Vegas, Nevada. I don't know if you heard, but Hover Dam which was one of the greatest achievements to come out of the last depression, doesn't have enough water left in the reservoir to run the hydroelectric turbines (at the rate Vegas burns energy), because the city of waste and decadence is built in the most unsustainable locations in the United States. So now, the rest of us Americans need to step up and help Las Vegans keep their lawns green, their swimming pools full and their trillions of watts worth of advertising lights up too snuff. I think there are a lot more people beginning to think that scenarios, like James Kunstler's book, The Long Emergency, is not just prophetic ,but inevitable. Wouldn't this country be better off during this depression to relocate people out of the desert to more habitable locals? Just a thought. Think about how much energy we could save without the city of lights taking peoples money and their hope.
Anyway, tangents aside. The depressed economy is affecting all of us. I am trying to do much of the work on the new shop by hand, it isn't so hard really. People forget, because if you go to the hardware store nowadays and ask for a planer, the salesman will show you a power tool, because we live in a world that has no concept of what it takes to make energy. The difference between a power planer and the hand plane I used is I skillfully shaved the rough edge of the wood away with energy from the food I ate. True, my muscles ache, but it is still an awakening, and a damn good feeling knowing I could run one of my grandfather's hand tools, which means sharpening, the blade too, and making sure I take care of the blade so I don't have to sharpen it right away again. Because today, I assume, the consumer society we live in, would like us to buy the power planer, beat it to death as soon as the 90 day warranty is done, buy a new blade instead of sharpening, or just throw it away and buy another Chinese piece of crap next time we need a tool.
Here is one of the planes I used, plus the wooden mallet Jackson made for me.
Trying to keep the bytes to a minimum cuts the resolution of these images. If you can see it in this photo, not only is the top edge of this top trim piece angled from side to side, but it has also been planed from front to back along the top edge to make sure any rain that strikes it, is moved away from the wall. At the right side in this photo you can barely see the beveled edge I hand-planed into the top.
Here is one set of trim boards made first for the east facing, wide window.
all eight vertical trim boards primered
So far the only a couple of pieces of this shop are not salvage: The ten yards of concrete and the wafer board
All we need are the garage door and entry door closed in and two more of the sliding glass door thermopane windows placed, and we can restart our Axial Flux wind turbine building!
Today we will be building the electrical panels with room for the dump load controller, battery cables, ammeter, blade switch disconnect for the wind turbine, and holy cow have you seen the new Xantrex XW4548-120/240-60
Since we have grid power here I want to use the grid as a backup power, and for our 50 amp arc welder until we can afford the 220 volt inverter. It looks like the new inverters do it all.
Alrighty then,
Better get on with it.
Brian Rodgers
