Kelly Craig

Now in my 70's, I've dealt with ear issues since I was a kid.  I've had I don't know how many operations, and a whole lot of ear aches.

A few times, the affected ear took me to the deaf category, after the drum ruptured (I heard a literal explosion (okay, it was a pop) as the ear drum burst, which, interestingly, brought immediate relief).
Anything I did hear in that ear reminded me of my antique cylinder phonograph, with the megaphone removed. All words sounded tinny and far away.



All that aside, the years taught me the one, FIRST, guaranteed cure is, avoidance. Others mentioned this and that, but I know, first hand, the most important thing is, CAUTION, when you have a stuffy nose and blow it.  When you do, you push all that nasty stuff up that freeway from your nose to ear, and cause a 100 car pile up the DOT would be hard-pressed to handle.



Once, about 20 years back, I tried the advice of a friend. It was for treating swimmer's ear. I THINK it involved alcohol and vinegar.  One drop, and it felt like someone slapped me upside the head with a sledgehammer.  Put that one on my HELL NO list.


Interestingly, in years since, I've had good luck with drops that incorporated acetic acid (back to that vinegar thing).


One thing helped in many cases. It was just good old-fashioned sweet oil (olive oil). Go figure. "Experts" warn against it. Ramble it could hurt the hear and cause the small ear farm to grow.  All I know is, it, with some cotton, stopped the pain.  


On a couple occasions, a heating pad helped drainage when there was a lot of pressure.


Now, I am curious about DMSO. It has been used for a lot of cases of congestion and head infections. It can have iodine, a great antibacterial in its own right and,  added, or even zinc. When used with DMSO, which, by itself, renders tiny critters unable to reproduce, has a lot of potential.

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https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7245270/

For those who have no idea where to start, here are plans to build my version of a 2' wide by 4' long cart I built from a single sheet of 3/4 ply.  The one in the Instructables post held about 500# without a groan.

For those interested, here is the Instructables link to the step-by-step build:   https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Heavy-Duty-Mobile-Shop-Cart/

I made smaller ones too. In total, I have about nine of these, with wheels, in my shop.  


The one in the attached photo has a cart being built sitting on top of it.

Worth looking into, but fast may not equate to quality in applewood.  Poplar, for example, grows fast, but it is too soft for many uses.

Generally, fruit trees bought from reputable sellers have already gone through a grafting process to insure the rootstock is ideal for the location it's being planted in.

A friend just planted about five or ten thousand trees, as he converts fields that had circles covering them to orchard, and replaced some older cherry trees.  That's a whole lot of grafting.

Then there was the time my buddy got the genius idea we shouldn't mow the little five acre orchard we had, because it was unnatural. The snow landed on the tall grass, which kept it off the ground and left great, insulated play areas for mice.

I tried to tell him the big boys, probably, didn't spend hundreds of thousands a year mowing thousands of acres of orchard just so they'd look pretty. That it was likely they had good reason for mowing, even if I didn't know what it was.

Come spring and with the snow all melted, we had 150 trees girdled by hungry mice.  

My buddy wanted to pull the tress and plant new. I reminded him, in addition to the relative costs, we'd have to wait five years to see real profit coming back from those trees. I told him I'd seen the girdle problem before and the orchardist had all the damage bridge grafted.

We bought 450 trees (three for each girdled tree) that were JUST the rootstock that played well with North Central Washington. A guy planted them and grafted them just above the damaged area.

We did not lose one tree, and they all produced just fine.  

I live in orchard country and have since 59, when we moved there from the desert of Eastern Washington.

In the early days, trees grown for fruit could provide a lot of apple or cherry for projects, because the trees were much bigger than they are today. I remember marveling at the dwarf trees I saw being grown around places like Quincy, Washington.  They produced more fruit per acre, because they were able to plant them closer together.  Too, they were less labor intensive with regard to shoring up fruit ladden branches and for harvesting, because you no longer needed 14' ladders you, often, stood atop to get the upper apples.

SIDE NOTE: All orchard ladders are tripod like, because a tripod will not rock on uneven surfaces, like that four legged restaurant table.

Now, they string wire between poles at the ends of the rows and tie the branches of the dwarf trees to them, instead of using props made from 2x's or just small (around), fairly straight fir or pine trees.

Today, there isn't ever going to be much in the way of useable fruitwood, aside from for firewood and  small projects, like kitchen utensils, bowls and such.  Every year, one of the hundreds of orchards around me is pulling up all their trees to replace them with a more profitable variety. Subsequently, I, pretty much, always have a lot of cherry and apple to play with.  Even small pieces are pretty, for their grain.

The older species could be used, but they'd take a lot of grooming, as indicated by others.

We are all in on the shower thing. Ours is about six feet long and three feet wide.  Our house doesn't have a tub, but I've plans to install one, if only for the occasional Epsom salt or other medicinal soak. Well, that and resale value of the home.

If adding a shower, or even a tub, don't forget the safety bars.

SIDE NOTE:

ONE of my big frustrations with home builds is, builders seldom install 2x's behind walls where cabinets, towel bars, grab bars and so on would go.  Having grab bars that are more than iffy suction cups or buried in plaster/rock goes a long ways toward more sincere safety attempts.

If swapping cabinets, it's SUPER simple to cut rock just enough to allow one to sneak in 2x's, into which the upper cabinet screws would mount. I feel a lot more comfortable trusting a cabinet full of Fiestaware when I known the downward pressure has a few more, high shear strength screws to get past before a failure.

Yep, on that mention about different areas producing different results for various post setting methods.

In the Pacific Northwet, a cedar post can be trash in five years. Treated pine will hold up better. You'll get seven, or six, or eight (they rot from within, where the treatment can't get).

My personal fence, the part that is not metal pipe, sits atop stirrups resting in concrete. The bottoms of the 4x's will go decades before rot will affect them.  Generous applications of oil from various contraptions Edison couldn't have dreamed of add years to the durability of the posts.

Because I can (have tile saw, will travel up to 50'), I cut granite scraps from a fabricator's pile into squares about 6"x6", polished the edges, then glued them to the tops of each post. Rain and snow will never soak into the posts via the tops.

SIDE NOTE:  ALL the horizontal 2x's have about a 5-degree angle cut on top, so there are no real horizontal surfaces to catch and hold water, aside from the very tops of each cedar board, which gets generously oiled.

A house was being built next door. In the course of that building, there were a lot of cut-offs being tossed around the job site. I asked if I could sort through them, for lumber and OSB I might be able to use. They gave me the go-ahead, so I did. I even cleaned (stacked the trash for easier removal and to weigh down things that would blow off.

I had fenced in the upper yard to give our two doggos a few thousand feet of romp room. Too, I cut a section of the railing out of the deck wrapping three sides of the house and installed stairs into the romp area. I was using some heavy gauge wire panels to block escape into the wilds of the neighborhood, and wanted to install actual gates for each of the four escape options.

Meanwhile, a friend had just installed railing around his deck and asked if I wanted the left over aluminum tubing.

I used some of the 2x6 from the house build and the aluminum to make gates.  I purchased inexpensive handle type latches you'd use on an exterior-interior door, joined a few pieces of the wood and cobbled together these.

I yet have two to finish and will make the pipes closer together. As they are, the gaps are more than adequate to block our dogs from exiting, but people visiting with smaller dogs still have to watch them, to insure they don't slip through the 5" gaps.

P.S. The wood decking is being replaced with composite. Some of it will not be, IF we get the remodel going, to improve the interior stairs, which would include a hobby room and office.

SIDE NOTE: Under all the decking I'll be slathering Henry's roof tar. to protect the support framing from water penetration, with extra attention at where the deck ties to the house (the builders errored and tied it straight to the house, so that area will get goop and flashing).

SIDE NOTE: The aluminum tubes were shy of the lengths I needed, so I used some scrap conduit to join them. The sloppy fit was solved by just peening over the cut portions of the conduit, until if fit tight on the other tubes.