Soooo… Sunday, and the main vice is looking and working great. I’m very pleased. I sanded off some excess wood-filler (the white stuff!), along some of the seams. The flat work surface is fab!
The side of the bench, or the rear face of jaws that face out towards work/me are less contiguous. But the new insertion is better/truer that the former side of the bench itself was.
And in the closed position.
I put a nice meaty large-ish jaw on the front/opening face. So hopefully I can clamp up big chunky stuff! Because my bench is made of pine floorboards, it’s not as heavy as might be ideal. And despite all the stuff – five full toolboxes filled with hefty toolage! – certain things can still make the whole bench move a bit. Which is obviously annoying and disappointing. Still, this is my first ever DIY workbench. So it’s hardly surprising it ain’t poifeck!
A secondary vice or clamp within a vice.Bolted to a block of wood, and securely clamped in place.
A second Fuller 3 & 1/2” clamp sits clamped in to the main vise; a useful addition to and extension of what the main vice facilitates.
In other less happy news, my two home-made plane handles have both failed. And both in exactly the same weak spot. What one might want to call the Achilles’ heel of the plane ‘tote’, albeit it’s actually midway between the ‘ankle’ and the ‘toe’! My knob is faring fine tho’!
More Knobs!
Another ‘drill-lathe’ knob!
Another knob. This one’s from a harder, denser wood. Mind, it’s not my knobs that’ve failed thus far, but my ‘andles. The wood is from a load of evergreen for tree type wood we got off Freecycle, for firewood. I wish I knew exactly what kind of wood it is!
And she’s in situ!
Making these is great fun. Now I’m into the sanding and varnishing stages. Sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, and so on.
Looking for movies on Prime I saw Pacific Rim. It’s not at all the kind of thing I’d normally want to watch. I’m not a fan of Guillermo del Toro, at least not what I’ve seen by him. And modern sci-fi/monster movies? Naaah!
But call it my woman’s intuition, or whatever, I thought let’s try it. It is as dumb as I worried it might be. And it is like a Playstation Game turned into a movie. Another modern trend I’m not very keen on.
But, in its favour, first it’s just good silly old fashioned matinee movie fun. Second, it’s visually stunning enough to make up for its dumb-ass silliness. Too many modern movies like this rely on visuals, and do that quite well, but still fail as films ‘cause they’re so awful in just about every way possible.
Impressive CGI tech!
This suffers from some of the most egregious of the faults of so much modern film entertainment, with the boneheaded reduction of human culture to a muscle bound masculinity that’s apparently totally unaffected by any form of post-Enlightenment waves of awareness, from Feminism to Woke.
But ironically it’s not regressive, so much as hyper-modern. It’s a complete and bizarre paradox of our times. A form of ultra-contemporary moron-ism, that attempts to shroud itself in anything from allusions to religion (Stacker Pentecost!? A scientist called Gottlieb, German for ‘God-love’!?*) to cyber-spirituality (the whole ‘drift’ thing’). And it’s incredibly infantile
I can’t say exactly why, but in this particular instance I just let my inner child enjoy the spectacle of the film. And that’s ultimately what it is. A spectacle for children (whatever their actual age). And a fairly fun one at that.
Ludicrous monsters, neon, rain… stupid but fun.
* God-Love’s ‘other half’ – mind-meld in ‘the Drift’! – is Newton; so science and religion can resolve their troublesome real world issues in the dark and watery neon-lit imaginarium of cinematic CGI!!! Nuts…
Damn, it’s hard to be patient! I had to refrain from hanging guitars on these for about 24 hours, as last time I wasn’t patient it caused the fixture to work itself loose. So I had to do the whole job all over again!
One of my numerous classical type guitars.
This time I achieved patience. And patience was rewarded! the guitar pictured above was one I recently bought locally, for about – if I recall aright? – £13!!! And with a gig bag! It’s a smaller sized classical, handy for taking into schools.
The room as a whole is way too cluttered. Plus the back wall these guitars are hanging on needs a lick o’ paint! But it’s great to have hit these guitars off the floor, where we’re forever having to move them, or worry about knocking and damaging them.
I’ve spent a good chunk of today working on my workbench. First I had to clear everything off it; both the top, with the clutter that accumulates on that, and the base shelf, where I now store wood and several tool boxes.
My main vice, an old Record (the blue one!), now much better; more square.
Once cleared, I up-ended the bench and had a couple of goes at finding a new position for the vice. Formerly the vice was dreadfully out of square. On my second attempt of today, after a failed first try, I decided to radically rework the cutaway I’d made on my original attempt at mounting the vice, yonks ago.
Secured underneath, in a slightly raised cutaway, by four hex-head bolts.
Rather annoyingly I didn’t document the various stages. A pity, as quite a lot of effort and work was entailed. I used the layered or laminated nature of the workbench top to work back to a complete new plank, hoping as a result of achieve a squarer mounting. And it seems to have worked.
Next I need to ‘build back’ to use a modern political. 1 catchphrase, simultaneously filling in the excess I cut away, and providing the clamp with a wooden back face. I’ll also attach a wooden front face as well. But that might have to wait till tomorrow.
I cut a section of old floorboard and routed out a recess.
The floorboard timber I used to make the rear face of the clamp is the same stock of timber the whole bench is built from, out of an old Victorian town house. I cut it to size, routed out a recess to accept the rear face of the vice. Drilled two holes to screw it in place. And finally planed it flush to the bench surface.
The workshop, as it looks in the evenings now we’re in Nowonder.
As anyone who knows me well will realise, I’m a man of many vices. As well as the nice old blue Record vice, I have the red Fuller one pictured above. That’ll most likely get bolted to a block of wood, for use clamped into the Record vice. Compounding my vices!
And a bit later… after watching Pacific Rim, I couldn’t stay away. And went back and added a wooden (ply wood, in fact) front jaw. see pics below!
I couldn’t keep away… so I added a from jaw as well!It’s not totally centred, but it is planed flat/sanded.
Tragically all my plane handles I made recently l – I used both my Handyman planes, flattening stuff on the bench/vice – have broken. The dark wood one was too dry and brittle, and snapped off and was re-glued repeatedly. The soft pine wood one was always going to be too weak. I need to start over with these bits, and do them in a much denser stronger wood.
“What happens if people discover the greatest story ever told is a lie?” *
Well, duh… plenty of people have known this all along. And it doesn’t require a preposterously Byzantine conspiracy, predicated on the notion that there’s any sense in the gumbo of nonsense that is Christianity in the first place, to get there.
The Life of Brian is sooo much better in how it deals with the whole Christianity thing, rightly lampooning humanity’s bizarrely persistent gullibility: ‘Blessed are the cheese-makers’; ‘We’re the People’s Front of Judea, not the Judean People’s Front’, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ etc.
‘Seek the truth’, says the strap-line in the poster/DVD cover above. Not here, f-f-f-folks!
But first, let’s go back to that opening quote: I assumed that by ‘the greatest story ever told’ this film is referring to the same story sold under that name by George Stevens et al, in the 1965 ‘sword and sandal’ epic. Just like the awful religion we’re skirting around here, all of this is freighted with unexamined assumptions.
My route out of this blind-alley rabbit hole, an increasingly common one, perhaps especially since the 1700s, or thereabouts (but actually from a wellspring of scepticism as old as humanity, gullibility, and active questioning minds themselves), was rational free thinking, and evidence based reasoning.
One doesn’t need a cornball conspiracy theory movie – or do we? – to debunk blatant preposterousness-ness-ness… I really cannot be arsed wasting my time critiquing a movie that not even the powerful talent and charisma of Tom Hanks and other decent actors can rescue.
And poor Max Von Sydow. From Ingmar Bergman to Conan, Minority Report and this. How the mighty are fallen.
Like religion itself, this movie is, in my opinion, 1) at best, a pointless waste of time, best avoided, and 2) at worst, a cynical exercise in making money from the ignorant masses by feeding them a toxic mix of baloney and conspiracy.
Nothing to see here. Move right along.
* I believe this is a quote I lifted from the movie. I forget who says it.
Most of today has been given over to the dull but necessary chore of paperwork/admin. I had several piles of paper in numerous locations. I got most of it sorted. Sooo boring!
Paperwork… yawn!
We already have two guitar hangers, on the wall at the head end of our bed, his ‘n’ hers! But there are still several guitars w’oot hangers. So I’ve put two more up.
Messy holes filled wi’ Polyfilla.Screws help keep drying plaster out of the wall-plugs.
As usual, drilling holes in our walls is a right pain in the arse! It’s easy to do. But the resulting holes are very messy and ragged. So I’ve had to mix a bit of plaster filler to help cement the wall-plugs in place.
Filling other imperfections wi’ spare plaster.The walls are quite rough and pitted!
The Polyfilla info’ says it’ll be dry in 60 minutes. I gave it more like two or three hours before I screwed the fittings in place. But I’m going to leave actually hanging any guitars until tomorrow. Give it 24 hours to really go off!
The tools for this job (not inc. hammer drill!).The fittings, ready to go up.
At end of play the hangers are in place. But I need to be patient, and wait till tomorrow evening. Before I test their strength by actually hanging guitars on them. On occasion in the past I’ve been told eager, and they come out of their holes. Don’t want that!
Looks ok.This one’s a bit wonky. But that’s what happens with drilling in these old walls.
More ‘lovely stuff’ from AP, this time in audio only format. Eighteen wonderful episodes, all approx 20-25 minutes long, giving a total listening time of six hours forty-five minutes. Textbook!
I only wish there were more. Much, much, much more. Alan Partridge and Count Arthur Strong (the latter esp so in his radio guise) are my favourite contemporary comedy characters. Both are afflicted with delusions of grandeur. Aren’t we all, in our own sometimes public but more often furtively private ways?
Personally I think a large part of the appeal of these characters, in addition to the obviously clever wit and wordplay and occasional broad humour, is how they they play on the sensitive nerves of our fragile egos.
As much as aspects of their appalling self-regard and utter tactlessness may sometimes seem repellent, they’re also wounded but proud, wilfully set on going their own way. And I think both have sufficient humanity that we even identify with and love them – certainly I do – despite or because of all their glaring faults.
Characters like Partridge act as a comedy valve, allowing us to guffaw at the crassness of our own or others’ feeble fractured egos, simultaneously pompous and over inflated, and yet always covered in the peeling band-aids we all use to hide our frailties. Licking our wounds and dreaming of the greatness the world so often obtusely fails to recognise as our obvious just desserts.
From The Oast House is amongst the best Partridge we’ve been served for a long while, and overall far better for being ‘pure Partridge’ than the recent-ish TV show This Time, which was great, but perhaps over diluted by the abundance of ‘straight’ characters.
Coogan and co walk a fine line very adeptly, and perhaps the high wire act of balancing crass Tory corporate buffoon with lonely estranged single-dad (and now grandad), with an obvious if peevish intelligence, and even a penchant for half-decent poetry – Autumn Leaves, anyone!? – is at the heart of what makes Partidge, for me at least, easily the best single character comedy creation of our times.
Each episode works as a stand-alone bauble. But the whole lot form a necklace of pearls. Some threads, such as the ongoing cyber-drama of Partridge and his troll nemesis ‘High Noon’, run through the series. Other facets are singular to their given episode.
One constant is, of course, the erratic flight of a proud Partridge. And here, alone (or near enough; we have interactions with Rosa, his NDA-signed Philippino cleaner, and other occasional interlopers*) with his podcasting tech, we are treated to hours of pure unfiltered Alan. Love it!
For me, just over six and a half hours of vintage single malt Alan is both massively welcome, and yet not enough to slake the thirst. Come on Coogan et al, uncork the bottle and let the genie-us out!
* Lynn is, as so often in the non-TV Partridge stuff (like the books) a constant presence in the wings. Unseen/unheard, but there, as a sounding board (and many other things), for Alan.
Well, this was an ace read, no mistake! I was glued to it from start to finish. Palin has, as we all know, a very engaging character. And he writes as well, better even, perhaps, than he presents TV travel adventures.
In this very easy to read and rather compelling book he tells the story of the ship Erebus, a ‘bomb ship’ converted for polar exploration, that has a fascinating story, full of life and death. For the sake of ease and simplicity, we can call the life part the Ross expedition, and the death part the Franklin expedition.
Built in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, it’s military or naval purpose condemned Erebus to the doldrums of instant obsolescence, initially. Until she was realised to be, along with the equally scarily named (slightly older and slightly smaller) Terror, perfectly suited to adaptation for work in the polar extremes.
Designed and built to be quite small but very strong, so as to carry heavy mortars (the ‘bombs’), she needed less fiddling with to be made ready for the freezing conditions of polar exploration than most ships.
Survivors trek southwards.
Palin tells her tale, from her birth at Pembroke in Wales, to her re-fitting(s), and her periods of idleness at Chatham, right the way through to when the ‘nearly ship’ of the British Navy became one of the most famed.
As well as the story of the boat, there’s also the interwoven strands of broader history. After Napoleon’s defeat, Britain’s maritime pre-eminence helped these tiny islands punch well above their weight internationally, helping found a massive global empire.
And this empire was growing apace as much for reasons of a more enlightened kind, as for those more normal reasons of imperialistic avarice; ever more wealth and power. Erebus would find fame not for her martial prowess, but for furthering knowledge and science, as well as national and commercial interests. Oh, and for both triumph and tragedy.
And so it is that the 19th C. enquiry into global geo-magnetism assumes an important place in these tales. This is a golden Age of Enlightenment influenced rational science. The era of Darwin and the rise of ‘natural history’. And representing that we have several characters, chief of whom is Joseph Hooker, aged just 22, travelling on Erebus, under the care of the dashing Captain, James Ross.
This document has two handwritten notes on it. One says ‘All Well’. The other? Less so… *
Having already followed Erebus’ career, from manufacture to patrolling the Med, and then into Ordinary (semi-retirement!), the biggest chunk of the book is concerned with an epic four year voyage to the Antarctic, under Ross. It’s terrifically evocative and gripping stuff!
After the triumphant return of this initial expedition, it’s successes – which were by no means complete – soon lead to another attempt at finding the fabled ‘Northwest Passage’. But this time the crew on Erebus, under Capt. JohnFranklin, would be almost entirely different, as would their fate.
Intriguingly several characters we have already met in the Erebus’ former wanderings – such as Franklin and Crozier – come into the foreground in this ‘second act’ of polar adventure. And it is their misfortunes that we follow next.
Palin does a great job of telling this story in a way that maintains one’s interest, because, at the crucial moment in the doomed second voyage, all goes eerily quiet. Franklin, who we first meet in Tasmania, and is now Captain of Erebus, and all aboard both Erebus and Terror, simply vanish. No news is forthcoming.
One of the many ‘rescue’ missions, makes a grim discovery.
As anxieties mount back home, officials dither. This is partly understandable, as polar explorers were known to get frozen in over winter. But the degree of tardiness in the face of growing certainty that something was wrong is pretty shocking.
The story then switches from that of the boat and her crew to that of those searching for her/them. And here things are slow and patchy in developing. Once again Palin unfolds this in a masterful manner, maintaining one’s interest where it might, like the attempts to locate the lost explorers, have simply petered out.
And thus it is that the Erebus’ story brings us up to very near the present day, as she is eventually located, in 2014.
Our voyages of exploration, unlike Ross’, Franklin’s, and even Palin’s (he journeys in the footsteps – or should I say wake? – of these heroic explorers) may be from the cosy comfort of our homes. But Palin takes us, through words and pictures, on an amazing journey, to the very ends of the earth.
A computer enhanced sonar image of the wreck of Erebus.
And this fantastic story takes in not just heroism and the awful sublime grandeur of nature, at her most powerfully disinterested in us mere mortals, but runs the gamut of feelings, from intoxicated wonder (and plain old intoxication; these are rum-soaked sailors, after all) and elation, to illness, death, and horror.
Beautifully written, on a fascinating subject; well illustrated, with maps, old paintings and prints, and plentiful photos (ranging from daguerreotypes of crews, to kelp festooned wreckage), this really is a fantastic book!
* This is the only written document covering the death throes of the Franklin expedition to have survived and come down to us.
This model of Erebus shows her in her warlike guise.
PS – I love model ships, and have a few books – one or two rather lovely! – on the subject. I once even tried my hand at building a wooden one, as a child. It was an awful balsa-wood failure (trashed by my sister!), inspired by the three Unicorns of Tintin/Haddock fame. I still hanker after building some nice old ‘age of sail’ type models. Erebus seems like an appealing subject. Hmmmm!?
Also worthy of note, it appears Ridley Scott has made a film or TV series about the expedition, named after the other boat of the expedition, The Terror!
Preserved in the permafrost, the cadaver of stoker, John Torrington.
Arrived today: an Xmas gift for Teresa, who loves her Hammer films.
Several months ago I ordered a Hammer boxed set from Amazon, for one of Teresa’s Christmas presents. It took them so long to source the set I was thinking it was never going to arrive. But Amazon have always been pretty good at fulfilling their orders. And I order from them loads. So I was patient.
The only packaging was the shrink wrap!
And today it finally came. It arrived whilst I was out working. Teresa, however, was working from home. But even though she was in, she only got it after hearing a knock at the door, and opening it to find no one there. Inside our door was a bizarre courier note for a completely different address!
Hardly in a pristine brand new condition.Look at these corners!
Outside it was raining. Heavily. And the Hammer DVD set was simply sat outside in the rain. And it wasn’t wrapped properly either, just sealed in clingfilm. As the pics here show, the corners are damaged, and the bottom of the plastic case is cracked. Frankly I think this is appalling.
Both card box and plastic case are damaged.These cracks on the plastic case are not suggestive of careful transit.
It’s a Christmas present, so we won’t be opening it til late December. What do we do if we discover DVDs inside have been damaged, due to the absence of adequate packaging, and the shoddy delivery service? Simply dumping a more or less unprotected set of DVDs outside in heavy rain really is beyond the pale.
It looks second hand.
But the other side of the equation is that this set is out of stock in most places, and took Amazon two or three months to source. These facts, and the reasonable price I paid, incline me/us to keeping it and hoping it’s ok.
UPDATE: 28/1/‘22
So far we’ve watched maybe four or five of the discs. And thus far they’re all in working order.
Viewed from the underside, after a night gluing up.
Well, turns out I needn’t have stressed over this drum not tightening up. It’s tightened up a treat. Very much like the first one. And this despite the cat-damaged goatskin being a ways off-centre (as can be seen in some of the accompanying pics).
All clamps save the one holding the elastic removed.
Next I need to remove the excess goatskin, and then wrap tape and a textile wrap around the drum, before finally securing them all with shortened tacks. I’ll aim to get all that done today. So I should have the drum finished in just a few hours. What fun!
The topside view.
Here, in the above image, one can see how off-centre I had to make the skin, to avoid the kitty-damaged areas winding up on the playing surface. Chester has left his moggy-mark on this one!
All clamping inc. elastic removed… she’s holding!
After a day that quickly filled up with other activities, I finally got back to the drum. Having taken off the last bit of skin tensioning, the elastic, I had to remove the excess goatskin. This left a much messier residue than last time.
After cutting off the extra skin, it’s a bit of a mess; needs tidying!
I left the protective ‘frog tape’ masking in place, so I could clean up the messy residue of goatskin and glue. Using a knife, then a chisel, and finally some sandpaper, I cleaned up the mess as best asI could.
Double-sided carpet tape and fabric binding.
Then I took the protective masking tape off, and put a band of very high-tack carpet tape on, followed by the fabric tape. So, this new drum is pretty much done now. I decided to join the fabric tape edge to edge, rather than as previously, with a fold-over.
I did the join/seam differently this time; no fold over!
The end to end join is nicer looking than the bulkier fold-over. At least I think so! Not sure if I’ll use the tacks this time or not? I’m leaving them off for now. I can always add some late if I feel the need.
Next step is to start playing it, and get a video of that up. So folk can hear how it sounds. I’ll be making a few more. I really want one with a much deeper bass note. So I either need less tension, and/or a bigger drum shell.
