Out of Plumb

It is raining this evening so continued progress outside is held up. What I did instead was finish the light in the living room. We acquired this old brass chandelier trim plate from the 1930’s from, you guessed it, some auction. It used to have 4 fixed lights around the edge and then a substantially larger hanging light, or at least that is what we assume. Anyway I had always wanted to find a use for it but couldn’t locate a light that would work with it. We don’t have the room to hang one. It sat around until one of our halogen floor lamps died of a bad switch. All of a sudden we had our lamp! Some small copper plumbing fittings and a lot of polishing elbow grease later and we were set. Test runs of the lamp illustrated one big detraction, it was bright. Like sun tan bright. Now a lot of times that is great, the wife loves it for weaving rugs, but other times, like for movies or TV it sucks. Someplace, and I think it was from the scrap brass bins at Pacific Steel, I snagged two brass bathroom light fixture arms. Some careful bending and they were installed through 2 of the 4 small light holes. I used a pair of copper shot glasses from eBay and simple replacement lamp sockets to finish the arms. Allelectroncs.com furnished a 110V relay and a pull chain switch. With the relay wired up, when you pull the switch you can transition between the big light and the 2 small ones. I am darn proud of myself. It’s one of those things that turned out well and looks both fancy and expensive. Let that be a lesson for all the other folks out there, the house of your dreams is just a dumpster dive away!




The living room light is the second light we have built our selves. The dining room is also graced with a Franken-light. This one I built out of scrap aluminum turnings some years ago. It has a little more of a love/hate reaction. Either you like it or you don't. With 8 sockets it can be a bright little beastie, but over a dining room table that is what we wanted. I know it is loaded with mismatched bulbs in this photo but hey, smoke them if you got them.

60 posts. It seems like just yesterday I was only boring the family with this crap, now I can bore the world! What a power rush. We have been doing winter stuff here, yard pick up, fruit harvesting, tree pruning ect. Fired up the furnace this weekend and tweaked the blower speed for a little less “whoosh” and a little more heat. A furnace fan need not make the registers jump when it comes on.

A financial shot in the arm has rejuvenated the housework. I bought 200 or so old eyeglasses at an auction this summer and by the time they are all gone it looks like we will make just over $2000. Not bad for a $22 investment huh? What really sucks is I COULD of had 400 glasses for $50. What a dumb ass. Of course at the time many thought that already for spending the $22. Anyway to celebrate my good fortune I thought I would buy all of you a cool refreshing electronic beer. Enjoy.

I burned my finger up today. I emptied out the jointer’s chip bin and set it alight. At first I didn’t want to burn and it took me some time to get me to combust. I had to use the torch to get myself going. In the beginning I was just smoldering, but I picked up after I blew on myself. By the time the rain stopped sprinkling I was burning quite well and at this point I am naught but ashes. I used wood I got from my uncle after he died. Sort of symbolic, but mostly just for me.



The stubby finger is both depressing and entertaining. Sometimes I will look down at it and think, damn it. Other times like typing I will reach for the 'e' key and hit 's' every time, that’s funny. Doesn’t hurt much now unless it really gets whacked. It split badly when the stitches were taken out. About 5/8 of an inch long and about half the depth. It will add weeks to the recovery time but the split greatly eased the folding and pinching of the skin. Its much more rounded and ‘nub’ like now so the shape is much better. After all it’s all about the nub, or so I’ve been told.

I was working on cleaning out the accumulated castoff from all the auctions we have worked this year, sorting out the junk. Oh hell, it was all junk. Anyway there was a pile of boxes in the corner of the living room each with one or two things at the bottom, stuff that we were not able to sell or otherwise use. In amongst this monument to American consumerism was a blood pressure cuff or a spazmocrapmographer as it was labeled. Well they might have spelled it slightly differently but I am close enough, especially since it didn’t work. That’s cool; I didn’t need my pressure anyway. Crap. In my wisdom, and even the most tepid of you have to see the brilliance of this, I decided to take it apart. Oh it was fun at first, you could blow into the tube and the fluid would rise up the vial. I was soon bored and began to wonder at all uses of a 12 inch long glass tube. I decided that I must have such an object, you know incase I ever do think up a use for a 12 inch long glass tube. Did you know the ‘fluid’ was mercury? I suppose I knew, but I just didn’t connect it. I was after all basking in the glow of my nifty glass tube. Well the next thing I know 2 table spoons of the stuff is pouring out on the floor. My first thought was that I need to level the dining room because let me tell you that quicksilver was moving well, quick. My next thought was that if my wife ever finds out I had a quart of mercury pooled in the corner of her living room she will make me burn down the house and move to another state. It is at this point in the story that I should relate that she is not home and I am still in my underwear. Watching a tighty-whitey clad guy with a stubby finger chase 2 ½ gallons of mercury around his living room floor at 3 in the afternoon would have been memorable for you, trust me. I got it, eventually. I guess the moral of the story is that if you ever are suffering from spazmocrapmographer tube envy fight it my friend, fight it.

N'uff said.

So things have been slow on the house on account of how careless I was. The guys in the staff room were trying to come up with a descriptive term for situations like this. Not necessarily my grand adventure specifically but colossal moments of ignorance in general. We came up with "Fucktard"”. I guess I would define it as someone who makes a monumentally ignorant choice with out the somewhat dubious excuse of diminished mental facilities. It is an apt description of what went down. Not bothering to watch what you are doing while running boards through the jointer makes you a big-time fucktard. Ask me when I see you and I'’ll spill the whole account. No joke I had 2 kids faint when I told the story in school, the administration asked me to stop regaling them. I think it was the sound effects that got them. Like the slapping noise the finger meat made each time the jointer knives came around (rolled up wet paper in a fan) or the sound of trimming the finger bone smooth again with surgical pliers. That was like trimming a dog's nails only with more of snap. As to appearance, get the biggest carrot you can find, bite the top in half lengthwise and pull out that whitish nobly thing that tastes bitter, the cavity that remains is real close, just less orange. It was like you made a mold to cast the tip of a finger bone in pulsating moist pink clay. Hey no problem, your welcome.

I showed that beast of a jointer. I was back on it this weekend, in part just to symbolically "get back on the horse" but also to keep the table saw from getting any ideas. I might have to snap a shot of the blood splatter on the floor, ceiling and walls. Looks more like I lost a leg than a finger. It's everywhere. For the moment I don'’t plan on cleaning it off. I figure it's an appropriate reminder. After all nothing says, "Don'’t be a fucktard"” better than blood on the ceiling.

Well I have been dreading this ever since it happened, the day when I would have to confess to the world my shining moment of stupidity. I would like to say I realize that it may seem like I screw up and hurt myself all the time but that just isn’t so. I am quite experienced and familiar with the tools, possibly to familiar. I think I might have adopted this attitude of easy contempt for the tools and their dangers. Thinking back on it I can see a series of mistakes that got me hurt on the jointer. 1. Most of my tools are 2nd hand that I have fixed up. This means some of them are missing parts that while they don’t affect the quality of the cut do greatly effect the safety of the machines. I have never tried to track down these missing parts. 2. I had the jointer fence all the way open (6 inches) even though I was only jointing boards 3/4 of an inch wide. 3. I allowed myself to be lulled by a simple and repetitive task, forgetting that the danger remains the same despite the complexity of the cut. 4. I was tired and had adopted the ‘as soon as I get this done’ mentality. I had only slept 3-4 hours the night before so my senses were extra dull. The result of this is:

Middle finger, left hand.


Their are a lot of “it could have been worse” things that can be said. For instance jointers like to pull when they get a hold of finger sized bits. The usual result is several fingers if not he whole hand. I was extremely lucky because I in a glorious moment of stupidity had the fence all the way back. There is one area where my luck did run out, my wife. You see this happened at about 8:10 in the evening. At 7:55 my wife had come up to the shop to tell me it was too late and it was time to come in before I hurt my self. My response to her was ‘just as soon as I get this done’. Well you know the rest of the story. At this point I am wondering if it would be easier to just divorce her rather than live with that particular “I told you so” for the rest of my life.