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

BRK #132

Wood Box Day 2022 Edition...!

After a hearty lunch of Thanksgiving leftovers, we all began our Wood Box Day projects.

The end goal was to replace some of our plastic containers with wood boxes and/or other natural materials. Planning is an important part of projects like these, and once we all agreed on our goals for the afternoon, we referred back to these plans to make our ideas a reality.





Caleb spent his afternoon creating a box for all the measuring tapes scattered about the Workshop, Classroom, and Library. His was highlighted with hand-made dovetail joints.





Grey, Daniel, and Fred worked on a prototype for wooden boxes to hold our event dishes. Here's Grey and Daniel adding in a few additional blades to the table saw so they could accomplish some fancy cutting and joinery.





Julia and I teamed-up to create a replacement or two for the plastic bins that hold the seat cushions for the mass bench in the Classroom. She practiced with a wide variety of hand- and power-tools for this project, and we were both very pleased and proud of the end product. The lid comes next...!







Final verdict: Wood Box Day 2022 was a success!

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #133

This morning, there was a tremendous amount of impenetrable fog surrounding Basecamp at Wheaton Labs. I had decided to hike up to the Caldera and take a few moody photographs.



The picnic table built this past summer at the PTJ 2022.







Looking north from the Caldera:



Here are some turkeys wandering through the fog.



Once I descended the trail back to the buildings at Basecamp, the cloud had dissipated. Eventually, it was "clear as day."



On my way back to Basecamp from doing errands, I took a quick snapshot of the setting sun.



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

BRK #134

Sunday means Nest Labor, and today I continued a small project for the kitchen. I finished containers for the mason jar lids and rings, and now I'm making a small rack and container for resealable bowl lids. Here's the label I made for the box portion of the storage system. Not too terribly pleased with the freehand lettering I'd done. However, I had a chance to practice more wood-burning for signs, and that's a positive.





This evening I settled-in with the electric projects kit. It's been about a week since I last tinkered with it, and it was good to become reacquainted. This project focused on the integrated circuits (the large boxes labeled "U1" and "U2") and how to modulate the sounds by changing the connection terminals. There was also a photo-resistor, so you could activate and deactivate the sounds by showing light on it and then covering it.



Finally: to re-balance myself after eating so much pie over the weekend, I'd been eating home-grown sprouts at every meal. This is the big jar of mung bean sprouts I've been digging into since Friday. They keep growing...! Today they had little green leaves and well-developed roots. They're absolutely delicious, even plain.



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

BRK #135

Monday is back with a vengeance...! Fortunately we were prepared.

Much of the first day was spent in the workshop/classroom. Here's a few photos of Grey, Daniel, and Caleb working on the last bits of their Wood Box Day projects:





Caleb wasn't pleased with his results and attempted to conceal his identity. Moral of the story: attempting fine woodwork with pine is like polishing a turd... Generally not recommended.



We kept ourselves warm with the massive batch box RMH found in the Classroom. I'll never grow tired of this device:



In the second half of the day, a number of us were out at the Lab with various projects. Here's my first encounter with a "survey monument" (that is, property border marking).



Finally: the super star of the day was SEPPer Julia! Her humble and sometimes unassuming affect belies her natural curiosity and eagerness to try new things and challenge herself. She has made quite an impression on all of us here at Wheaton Labs, and we're happy she's decided to stick around.

Here she is in the Classroom, stacking some of our newly-milled lumber for drying.



And she was all smiles this afternoon at the Lab, as she cut down her first dead-standing tree with a chainsaw.





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

Is the new batch box that's in the workshop itself not performing as expected, that you still prefer to fire up the original batch box in the classroom?