Flattered by my Granddaughter asking my help.

 Flattered by my Granddaughter asking for my help.

I have to say, that it is really flattering when one of my grandkids asks for my help. Felicity came to me, this last Sunday, asking me to help her out with a project she wanted to do for school. Of course she also wanted to make a really good grade.

Her project was to make an earring stand out of wood. Now, since I have a workshop full of woodworking tools, not to mention that Felicity has a Tool Box full of woodworking tools, which she got for Christmas last year, I was glad to help her along.

I let her choose the wood  she wanted to use, and she also chose the design she wanted to use. So, I assisted her in cutting and shaping as we were using my power tools, and she is a little leery of using them.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of her first attempt:

 Now she seemed to be satisfied with this result. But, keep in mind I was assisting her, in her design.
She showed it to her Grandmother Debbie and after they discussed it and tried it out, it didn't really work out very well at all. So Debbie and Felicity came back and asked if we could do something better.

I was happy to help, so back to the workshop to try again. This time we used thinner wood, added hooks for clip type earrings, and drilled smaller holes in the thinner wood for mounting earrings with posts. In addition we made a wooden stand with a slot cut into it to hold the earring mount.
Here is the result of this attempt;

Just so you know, she will be showing both results in her class, and explaining that your first result doesn't always work out, but you have to keep trying.
I'm right proud of Felicity.

God Bless from the gahillbilly.

"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"

Workshop, cleaning and toy making.

Here is the 23rd of May 2012 and I have been busy working out in the workshop.  I toted my shop vacuum out there and vacuumed all the crap out, including dead bugs, animal feces, spider webs, and other assorted unmentionables.
Then I started sawing and sanding the blanks for my various toy cars, and I think I am going to do a boat or two. We shall see. Maybe a tugboat, sailing boat, and a speedboat. We shall see. Doing boats is going to be a bit of a challenge just shaping the hulls. It will involve a lot of hand work with jig saw, miter saw, and sander. Well we shall see.
I've been thinking about doing some wooden wind-up toys, such as cars, trains, and even boats. I have been researching availability of wind up motors and mostly what I have found are antique motors and they are rather expensive to say the least. I know that they are still being used in third world countries, so I reckon I need to dig deeper on the internet to find a source of these motors.
Of course, I can also try my hand at battery operated motors, which are actually easier to come by. I was also thinking I could do some steampunk  mechanicals using windup motors and/or clockwork motors.

I plan on taking pictures and posting them, but my camera needs to be repaired, it has decided to start malfunctioning on me. *aarrggh*

Doing this stuff is really painful for me, because I have to climb up and down a rather steep incline to get to and from and my knee hurts like hell, it has gone from bad to worse. I reckon I'm going to have to start using crutches since my knee doesn't seem to want to hold me up all the time, especially when walking on uneven ground.

God Bless us each and every one.
gahillbilly.

"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"