!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

BEL #762

I wanted to bid a fond farewell to Geoffrey, who is heading off to Nevada tomorrow (after a long, grueling trip in a box truck). Thanks so much for all your contributions to the team, man! Best of success on your journey.

A little bit of everything happened today, which is normal during the change of the seasons, I suppose. The team picked-away at the wing wall repairs/renovations over at Allerton Abbey today. Here's Seth trimming a post to size with a chainsaw.



I think I'm going to call the process of clearing all the unwanted grass from a hugel berm "goat mode." I feel like I cleared all the stuff that we wouldn't eat, from top to bottom. I am so, so ready to plant vegetables all over the place.



Finally, another fun one: we decided to build another roundwood chair. Eventually we'll make a video featuring the process, and this one is considered practice for our video instructional. It's still in process, but we ought to be able to complete it tomorrow afternoon.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #763

In this video, fellow Boots JP and Geoffrey repair one of the roundwood kitchen chairs with pine pitch:



That's all for now. Thanks for watching, and enjoy your day...!

Maybe time to invoke the spirit of Wheaton "Labs" to add draw-boring to one of the chair repairs and compare the results. I think draw-boring would get you to at least a 9, 10 if done carefully. Pitch could be used also to assure a 10. Done well, drawbored joints become like one solid piece of wood...


Tapering pegs on the shave horse would be simple. Roundwood would require less precision overall than in the video, just need to be careful to keep the offset between 1/8th and 1/16th in small pine pieces (and always toward the shoulder!).

I tried growing a lot of different plants in and around my elderberries over the years. There were only a couple that survived. Walking onions did phenomenal directing under the elderberries. They actually did better there than anywhere else.
I could ramble on for sometime about elderberries but I’m here to talk walking onions. 🧅

BEL #764

More woodworking this afternoon on a personal project. I wanted to build another roundwood shelf for inside the tent, and I decided to take Amy Gardener's suggestion on skipping the dowels and just using the sticks for supports. I'm pleased with the current results...!

Here's the tenon-maker attachment for the drill, and a finished tenon.



I drilled all the way through the vertical posts with a matching 1" paddle drill bit. The end result is an excellent fit. In some cases, the tenon is nearly flush with the edge of the post it goes into on the opposite side.



Wrapped up in the early afternoon, when I felt I was getting sloppy and needed to eat. The test fit as I was finishing for the day seems so far, so good. I may be able to finish this next weekend, or even earlier this week if I'm uppity enough to work though an evening or two.



I'm also curious if I ought to put cross-wise tenons closer together. Right now they're roughly 1" apart, but I wonder what would happen to them if I overlapped their passages by as much as a half-inch or so. The end result of that would be that one tenon "locks" the other in place, however I am concerned about strength loss. Anyone with experience doing that? How did things turn out for your project?



That's all for now. Next up, it's a Monday. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!