Circular Saw

Hi all,
I finally threw off the malady that comes via the anti climax of Christmas and made a start on the box I am making for my wife. However, things soon ground to an halt. I don't know if it's the lack of wood working practise that is a result of my concentration on watercolour painting, but I couldn't saw a straight line to save my life.

I was sawing by hand with a lovely small saw, but I kept veering to the left. This isn't any good at all because one of the most important things when making boxes is that the sides and ends need to be exactly the same length and both edges need to be straight.

It was easy enough to square up the ends with my disc sander, but to sort out the length I would have to resort to the plane. This is where I encountered another problem because the nice little model maker's plane that I'd had for years had gone missing. I checked every draw, tool box and every place possible in my workshop no less than 3 times, but it had gone. There were two possibilities, some horrible little thieving bastard had nicked it or I'd thrown it out with some rubbish. Knowing me it was probably the latter.

Anyway, this whole episode got me thinking. Cutting wood to size with square edges and sides has always been a bit of a problem so I decided to buy a powered circular saw to make the whole thing stress free. I could then concentrate on the arty side of any projects, which to me is where the fun is.

Now you might think it easy to get a small circular saw and there would be a bit of choice, well you'd be wrong. I'm only working in 6mm (quarter inch) thick wood, so one of the saws a builders a uses would be over kill. I don't think that a saw that will cut roofing joists would be right for my delicate craft work. Most of them have teeth like crocodiles, so they would probably mince my small pieces of wood into tooth picks.

I did manage to find one saw that looked like it would do the job. It is made by Proxxon and the model is a KS230.

It got mixed reviews on Amazon, but like I said, there was no alternative so a Proxxon it would be. If only life were that simple, I would have ordered it from Amazon but it was mentioned in some of the reviews that it came with a European plug, which would be no good to me.

After scouring the Internet, I found that my best bet was to go and buy one in person from my nearest stockist and that was Axminster machinery, in Nuneaton. I knew the place because it was where I got my scroll saw from. So off we went yesterday on the 75 mile round trip to get me a new circular saw.

We were lucky because when we got there because we managed to buy the last one for a few pennys short of £100. I was also surprised about how small it was. If you look at the picture above, I have put my Dremel next to it, to give you an idea of size. One thing is for sure I won't be building a new garden shed with it. To be honest, the size isn't an issue, it will cope with making my small boxes and it won't take up too much space in the workshop.

I let you know how it performs in my next post, meanwhile I have a free book on offer on Amazon for the next two days. It is called "Bossyboots" and you can get to it by clicking on the books tab at the top of this page.

 It's certainly a book for the boys, but open minded ladies will enjoy it too.

Carp Rustlers

Hi all,
I hope you all had a very nice Christmas and peaceful start to the new year. This is an interesting year for me because in a few months time I will be retiring, that is to say that I will be reaching the age of 65.

To be honest, I haven't done what I would call a proper job for several years. I took redundancy from my management role in a factory in 2005 and since then it's been a bit up and down. I've worked for myself doing freelance writing work, had a heart attack and written several books mostly about fishing. I contemplating doing one more book before I pack up altogether but I'm not sure at the moment.

Anyway, you may be pleased to know that I'm going to fire up my scroll saw again during the next couple of weeks, and I will also be getting my pyrography iron out again. The project is a wooden box that my wife has requested to keep some cards in that she received for a xmas present.

I'm working on the design for the lid at the moment and it will probably revolve around some butterflies that will be inlaid into a piece of walnut and then worked on with the pyrography iron.

If you would like to see how I get on look out for my next post.

Meanwhile if you would like a free copy of one of my books, the one pictured above, please click here and enter the following code at check out for your free download TY59A. I hope you enjoy it.

Another Freebie for Xmas

Hi all,
Just to let you know that "Bossyboots" will be free for the next two days. It should give readers a good laugh over the Christmas period.

Just click on the book from the tab above and it will take you to Amazon for your free copy.
Happy reading.

Competition

Hi all,
Although I have ceased scroll sawing and pyrography on a short term basis while I have a serious go at painting, I thought I'd just mention something that happened the other day. My wife asked me if I could make her a church and a building out of wood so that she could decorate it for Christmas.

Anyway, I'm always eager to earn some brownie points so I said, "Get me a picture of the type of thing you want and I'll knock you something up." All was quiet for the next ten minutes while she used her Kindle Fire to scour the internet, then she said,"Cancel that order, I've found what I want on Amazon and it is only £18."

I was slightly disappointed at not having a chance to display my scroll sawing and pyrography skills but at least it would save me the bother.

We are Amazon prime members which meant that the item came the following day and I was astonished. What she had managed to order was a small village consisting of a church, several buildings, a picket fence plus some trees. And what's more it had lights. It was made from plywood, with pyrography details and the quality was very good given that it was made by machines, probably cut out with a laser etc.

I just couldn't compete with that sort of stuff, to be honest, it would have cost me almost £18 for the wood let alone the time to make it. If I was to make it from scratch I guess there would probably be 100 hours work in it.

So what does this mean for scroll sawing and pyrography. Well it will make it much harder for anybody to make any money out of mass producing wooden objects because the laser cutters can do it much quicker. So, all we can do is concentrate on doing one off projects that are unique in design and have a bit of art about them. The more value that is added to the wood the better.

To this end, I have asked my wife to get me Dremel for Crimbo so that I can use it in conjunction with the scroll saw and the pyrography iron. I'm looking forward to doing a bit more scrolling and pyrography in the new year and making some stuff the laser boys can only dream about.

In the meanwhile, if you want to how I'm getting on with the paintings why not pop over to my challenge website and have a shufty.

Also I'm giving away one of my books, pictured above, for Christmas. It's the second book in "The Fishing Detectives series and is called Bun In The Oven. If you pop over to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/267076 then type in coupon code VZ64V at the checkout you will get your free download.

If I don't manage another post in the next week, here's hoping you all have a merry and peaceful Christmas.

Proof that the world's gone mad

Hi All,
If ever I needed proof that the world has gone totally mad, it came yesterday. I went into a shop to purchase 2 chocolate bars; a little treat for me and the mrs. It went like this.

I put the two bars of chocolate on the counter and was informed by the the shop assistant that it would be cheaper to buy three.

Thinking this was some cleaver sale pitch I said, "I don't want three, I'm on a diet."
She replied, "It's cheaper to buy three. Three bars are only £1.20, but if you buy just two they are 67p each so that will be £1.34."
For a moment I stood with my mouth open because I couldn't quite grasp what she was saying. To clarify the situation I thought I would repeat what I thought she said.
"Are you saying that two bars of chocolate will cost me £1.34 while three bars will cost me £1.20?"
"That's right," she said whilst looking at me as if I was practicing to be a village idiot.
What could I do, "charge me for three," I said, "and I'll pick another one up on the way out." And that is exactly what I did.

My wife didn't believe me when I relayed the incident to her, so I produced the extra bar for proof. She knows I'm tighter than a gastric band, so she knows Iwouldn't spend extra money without being drugged.

So there you are the world has gone mad.

Anyway the main purpose of this post was to let you know that the book below

will be free on amazon on the 26th and 27th of November, why not grab a copy while you can. Also I have just posted another watercolour painting on my Artistic Challenge blog. If you would like to check it out here's the link.

Water Quality

Hi all,
I'm afraid this post doesn't include any references to scroll sawing or pyrography, but if you are interested in what comes out of your tap please read on.

Those who have been following this blog will know that I have been very busy renovating the bungalow we moved into almost two years ago. Well, the work is almost done so I thought I'd treat myself to a new tropical fish tank. I had successfully kept tropical fish in the eighties and nineties but divorce, redundancy, heart attack and several house moves saw me giving up the fish.

Anyway, now that my days are more settled I thought I'd  rekindle the hobby and spend the rest of my days sitting on my couch watching the fish meander up and down the tank. What could be more relaxing?

I went out and purchased an 87 litre tank and all the stuff that is necessary to set up a new aquarium. I filled it with water and and left it for a week to start the cycling process prior to introducing some fish. So far everything was going well, then I tested the water to see what the hardness and ph levels etc were.

Everything was okay except for the water's general hardness figure. The test strip indicated that the water was very hard and I should proceed with caution.

I scoured the internet for information on tropical fish and hard water and even bought two books on the subject. Advice about which fish could be kept in hard water and what could be done to reduce the hardness was easy to come by along with some conflict.

The majority suggested the only foolproof way to reduce hardness is to go to your fish dealer and buy RO water, (known as RO water because it has been through a process of reverse osmosis) and put that in your tank instead of tap water. You can than add some minerals to it to make the water safe for the fish.

However, the minority suggested that  because most fish were now bread in captivity, water hardness wasn't a big issue any more and that fish had now adapted to it. I mentioned before that I'd kept fish successfully when I lived about 8 miles away, I hadn't tested the water then so perhaps the minority were right.

Anyway, I decided to give it a go and purchased 4 Zebra Danios which are renowned for being hardy and able to tolerate hard water. One died the very next day but because the other three looked okay I put the death down to the stress of transportation. However, two days later another one died which was upsetting. Was it the water and just how hard could it be? I decided to buy a more scientific test kit which would produce a reliable figure. Once this was known I could decide what to do next.

The test involved putting some of my aquarium water in a test tube and then counting how many drops of a special solution it took to make the water change colour.

The leaflet that came with the test kit advised that some tropical fish species like Tetras need to have water that changed colour when between 3 and 6 drops were introduced. Other tropical fish, like guppies etc could manage to live in water that changed colour when up to 11drops were needed.

The test scale finished at 12 drops,  which according to the leaflet was only suitable for keeping gold fish. Armed with this information I began counting the drops as I began the test. I was a bit concerned when I reached 13 drops and the water was still the same colour and by the time I'd reach 20 I was under no doubt as to why the 2 Zebra Danios had died. It took more drops to change the water in the test tube and I was devastated when the count went to 25. What the hell is coming out of my tap liquid rock?

My next step was to see if there was any information on my water companies website and I was pleased to say that there was. However, I wasn't quite so pleased when I found what I was looking for. According to them the water for my post code is very hard and the figure suggested that it was slightly harder than the the result that I got from my test kit.

Now you might think this is unacceptable and there must be a mistake. Well there is no mistake and what's more there isn't even a standard so they they don't have to bother complying.

Sadly, this was the end of another dream. Buying reverse osmosis water and humping it about the countryside isn't an option. I purchased the fish tank hoping for some relaxation, so doing a 20 mile round trip for a tank full of water every week is not on. So, I returned the 2 surviving fish to the fish supplier and put the tank up for sale on ebay. It cost me about £400 in total and I guess I'll be lucky if I get £75 for it. The only good news is that I won't be killing anymore fish.

At this point I asked myself a serious question. If fish can't survive in this water, how can it be safe to drink? In my opinion it can't so I went out and purchased a water filter. It won't get rid of all the nasty stuff in the tap water like florid, but it it will help with some of the other stuff.

By the way the art challenge is going well and you can get an update here if you would like to see my latest effort.

Pyrography

Hi all,
 I'm back with another bit of pyrography to show you. It isn't mine I hasten to add, it is something my wife did. Well I made the box and originally and did a pyrography design on it that at the time I thought was okay. However, it transpires that my wife never liked it and finally told me so. "It isn't quite right, fuchias are delicate flowers and your rendition looks like an ugly brute" she said.

Anyway being as I'm one of those chaps who are always eager to please. I ran the box over my belt sander, to remove the ugly brute and presented it to her. "There you go my little passion flower, let's see what you can do with that."

After about a week of staring at the box she finally came up with a design and burnt it in with her pyrography iron. Her it is.

I love to know which you think is the best. In my view, it's okay, but it ain't quite right either, non too handsome thistle and a fat bumble bee with short wings. Still, you can't expect to do great works of art every time. Talking of art, I'm still not doing any pryrography because I'm busy with my my watercolour challenge. If you are interested in watercolour painting here's the link.

I'm getting better but very slowly.