Spring is here, well just about anyway so it’s time to work on the motorcycles, and the first picture is the empty crankcase of an 82 honda 350 RFVC that will be rebuilt here. Bill may be bidding farewell to a crummy snowmobile season or just being silly, I vote for silly!

The Spring cleanup that began last spring has gone right through this winter is coming to an end and now is the time to begin working on the automotive and motorcycle projects.

My friend and fellow retired Ceramic Shop owner; Trudy asked me to repair the sculpture pictured below of a boy weaving a cane basket (not shown) and it was quite a challenge. 5 minute epoxy allows a progressive repair with diminishing rigidity and talc filled polyester (bondo) makes a manageable repair.

Grampa has been getting a bit tired of chasing after the tools most often used, hence a toolbox was needed. Everything has it’s own slot so putting then away is as easy as setting them down. It is made entirely of bamboo purchased from the dollar store (about 30 bucks worth). It’s nailed together with bamboo nails, epoxyed with dollar store 5 min epoxy and doweled with dollar store bamboo chop sticks, even the ready rod used to tension the handles is made of organic materials (hemp rope from the dollar store).

Call me Crazy! but since I’m getting close to 70, there is a whole bunch of things I can do that could not be done at an earlier age. One of them is to be able to put signs all over the place and nobody can say anything because I’m retired and not a threat to anyone. So I decided to finally put the sign up on the garage that I always wanted to do saying "Northern Coachwork and Maintenance" and now it isn’t an actual business but rather a free teaching site on the web. These letters are made of foam and will be coated with latex exterior paint to make them weather proof.

This teapot was made in Alberta Plainsman clay using a method I called Kido Batai (meaning Battle Force in Japanese) and is the beating of rolled clay slabs with a natural grass whisk clutched low on the bristles. This produces many beaten thin slabs that is completely perforated at all edges and then assembled into a teapot.

If anyone recognizes the birds shown here, please tell me what they are because I would really like to know. They are in a group of about 20 and fly in a group though some act as individuals.

Part of the new molding process requires that all the remolded sculptures be separated into their mold parts and then oiled with linseed oil to make them water proof. Remolded thin raw clay castings cannot withstand the wet nature of plaster of paris, used in the mold making.

In winter the Bean Pot gets a good workout with chili, deep brown beans and also pea soup.

The benches below were made with pine and spruce construction grade 2" by 4"s cut into 1" by 2"s and 2" by 2"s and screwed together with a blind face cover to hide the fasteners.

Sculpturewise the main piece right now is the Piaggo figure holding up a young cat and the new molding process will begin shortly. Once the method is tested there will be a complete di scription, you can count on that!

Patterned after a dining room chair but with external dowling and no screws. The Black and Red mold discoloring is most prized and delightful to see with the danish oil and Helmsman applied. There are shown some screws in the construction but were only used temporarily and replaced with raw bamboo pins cut from the garden sticks you commonly see.

Grandpa has noticed a considerable improvement in his health since he replaced the first two meals, including morning coffee with juice from apples and carrots, a half inch of ginger root, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, pinch of cloves and a quarter of a lemon. This juice is a magnificent energy drink and keeps me going until supper. The zucchini from the garden lasted until January.

Leonard Kainulainen brought my load of wood, all ten cords of white birch and I highly recommend his service for anyone locally that wants a reliable supplier of cordwood. My axe needs a new winding on the handle which is made of steel oval tube welded on, for splitting wood and cutting through the lake ice without losing the head.

In these pictures the ice is only about a foot thick and frozen right to the ripples of sand that can be seen with a flashlight. In all the pictures the water is only boot deep and the brushed look is just a natural formation that is hard to capture with a camera.

Along with the benches it was decided to make a matching wood chair so one could sit in front of the stove and feed and tend the fire. It is entirely of milkrot and mold stained pine connected with round Bamboo tapered wedges which I liken to screws, and bamboo skewers as nails that are all predrilled and glued. This project cost a whopping 20 bucks and is made from wallboard tongue and grove pine and next time I might just remove the grooved joints altogether because they don’t coincide with the seat planks at all. It’s quite comfortable, very pleasing to the eye, ultra strong and super light, what more could you ask?

Made of Spruce and Pine 2" by 2"s that are internally clamped with steel threadrod, glued with carpenter’s glue, finished with teak oil and three coats of Minwax Helmsman clear satin urethane. At 22 bucks a quart it didn’t disappoint, I like it better than the Varathane that is much cheaper but has a poor satin finish.

After it was glued together, it was cut out to fit a rock insert that was made of old black marble chips that were once fireplaces in apartments in Toronto. The big trick here is getting the chips to lie in the same plane (flat) on the topside and since these chunks were all different thicknesses they must be supported and bonded together with fiberglass but how the heck do you make a design facing upwards and then turn each piece over in the same pattern?

The trick proved the be aluminum foil, that was brushed down on the layout to create a pattern so the pieces can be turned over onto a piece of glass to get them in the correct relative placement and dead flat. They were grouted first on the back and later on the front and then fiberglassed. Also notice the Spice rack made in old Finn Style and finished in the same way.

The pictures of aluminum foil in pix 14 and 15 are just fun photos that occurred when the glue dropsheets were removed.

While trying to finish the Sauna, varnish was not drying very well in the late November fall so we tried to assist with the old oil lamps that will eventually be the light source inside the new bath house. A Safety note here! Kerosene lamps can be extremely dangerous because they are almost Molotov Cocktails that just haven’t been thrown yet and you really don’t want to put more fuel than is necessary for the time they are used. They need to be on a mount that secures the tank with wire and screws to the wall so they can’t be knocked down. Also a guard needs to be put in place to keep the shade from being knocked off, especially in a sauna where everyone is bathing. They are not really advisable in a bath house unless they can be situated in a safe place.

Once the weather closed in, the carpentry went on inside with the construction of the benches. They fold up as is seen above.

Again demonstrating the ability of the Nikon there is a picture of a Laker (fresh water lake ship) that you can barely see on the horizon and to it’s right the zoom shot and all this with a built in 42x lens but I’m finding the Sony has a warmer wood tone on it’s standard setting.

The Duncan Kiln has been installed but it requires two elements and the roof still leaks above it after about 30 futile attempts to tar it up.

Classes have begun again and the alphabet nude collection is being revisited with a new molding system that has yet to be defined. Since the existing molds, in most cases are inaccurate and difficult to clean they will be replaced using an unfired mockup that will probably be oiled with linseed to make it waterproof for casting in plaster negatives.

Shown are "Pia" (Piaggo) with the cat "Vespa" and obviously the name was inspired by my early years with an Italian Scooter. Varron keeps crashing his plane, looks decidedly Gay and Woo Ty Ling so named in my attempt to cope with her somewhat Oriental appearance, that I dare not try to change.

The "Ghost Writer" is a show stopper, and everyone notices it and makes a comment. It wound up in a fire and then got buried in the ground for a few years until I tried to make a garden there and discovered it.

The shed shown was supposed to be a "Garbage Shed" because there is only pickup in the summer here, but after it was finished it was decided that it would be much better as a Sauna so that’s the plan. It now has an awning and is getting a floor. The construction is different in a variety of ways, for one the studs are turned sideways and let into their neighbors for fastening and strength. The covering boards are all 5 foot replaned fenceboards with no attempt being made to join them on the studs. This type of construction is suitable for uninsulated buildings because the interior and exterior finishing wood is applied at the same time with one layer. Also the awning is made of lightweight Spruce curved struts covered with artificial rawhide and varnished as is the rest of the building.

Grampa writes under the pseudonym of Namron Soar but it’s all boring Scientific stuff that no one ever reads. You can listen to him droning on about the same old thing again and again but don’t try to argue the point because it’s all Non-Theoretical, meaning there is little to actually discuss. Re-presented in this book is the comparison between Figmentalism/Idealism/Enlightenment, Plus, The Laws of Reality, Entitic Science, Nonreal Entitic Science and the new kid on the block; The Practical Laws of the Sphere.

To Read Brainworks    Click Here    for the Book Index and you can scroll down to find something that might interest you, like the topics mentioned above. Chapters Six and Eleven are even slightly funny. (No Chapters in ’Voice’ yet)

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