Stephen B. Thomas

Tom cut in line at the Barber Shop.

(Author's note: This one is just so notoriously, egregiously bad. But I simply couldn't resist. My apologies...!)

Here's the "Wild Animals" set. Six coasters for US$25, with shipping included. Features a toad, grizzly bear, bison, rattlesnake, bobcat (?), and a beaver.



Drop me a PM if you're interested. Thanks!

M Pearson wrote:Just out of curiosity, have you been a boot for 4 years now?! You must really like it Are you doing one of those programs where you end up owning a piece of the land?

Yep! I've been here since May 2022, though I've traveled for a couple months at a time maybe once a year. I still stay in a big canvas tent most of the time.

I think the easiest way to explain my situation is that I've been granted stewardship of an acre over at the Lab, and I don't own it. I'm permitted to stay there, rent free, for life, and build stuff and grow stuff on it. Right now I am a part-time Boot, having stepped-down from the High Commander spot this past Spring. I spend time with the Boot team in the first half of the day, and on my own projects in the afternoons and evenings. When I'm able, I do construction over at the stewardship acre in the afternoons. I hope to keep documenting those tasks and my progress in this thread.

It's a massive understatement that I'm grateful to Paul for his generosity and for granting me both such great opportunities while here at Wheaton Labs, and for providing a "soft landing" into what seems to me to be pretty close to an authentic homesteading lifestyle. He granted me stewardship of that acre, and I really do want to turn it into something even more special in the years ahead.

M Pearson wrote:Also out of curiosity, it seems in your early days 4 years ago you were doing the SKIP program and quickly did 20 BBs, but that since then you haven't continued adding more. What made you change your mind on that?

Being the High Commander is a demanding position (well, for me, anyway), and after I achieved that threshold amount of BBs I stopped pursuing the PEP stuff, and just focused on supervising the Boot team. Nowadays, I am working on personal projects and/or spend time over at the acre, so achieving more BBs just isn't on the radar at the moment.

It's funny to note that, after all the experiences I've racked-up at Wheaton Labs, had I documented them anyway I would likely have exceeded PEP1 by now, and would be well on my way to PEP2. So it goes...! I still do several errands for the Boots outside of typical Boot time, that being part of High Commander-type stuff, or Nest Labor projects that are part of Boot life.

BEL #840

Back in the swing of things today, over at the acre. I made a promise to myself that the only way I'll feel justified in attending Missoula's Halloween weekend movie viewings (I've gone every year for the past four years) is if I finish this willow feeder to my satisfaction. I have less than a month and a half to make it happen, but I don't want to miss out on it. So back to it with a vengeance I go...!

I have a funny idea about the roof. I want to make a frame and cover it with canvas. It'll remind me of life in the tent, plus it'll be light-weight and allow natural light to permeate the structure. It may be a terrible idea, but it's the one I'm obsessed with at the moment. The poles I had started several weeks ago are now dried and ready for use. I cleaned-off the remaining branch stubs and "nubbins" with my hacksaw and hand-rasp-thingie.



With four poles cleaned and refined, I laid them out in the grass next to the building frame. It may not look like much, but each of the poles is roughly 11 feet long.



I opted to carve out notches in the thick ends of the poles, and set the narrow end of the adjoining pole in each notch. Here's the mark I made for my first go at the notch work.



With my saw, I roughed-out the width, then followed-up with hammer and chisel work. I love it when I'm reminded how much I enjoy using a nice, sharp chisel for this sort of thing.



I'm undecided as to how the pieces will be finally connected, so I just temporarily lashed these two together after the notch was set. I marked so that a 3-inch section of the pole will stick out off each end.



I am leaning heavily into  using wooden pegs/drawbore joints to keep things held together, though I am concerned about wood rot. I have some finishing oil so I might use that to make the joints water-resistant, to a degree. Still undecided.

Anyhow, I was unable to finish all the notches this afternoon, so I set two pieces aside for processing, then left the lashed-together two leaning up against the building frame.



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

I'm hoping to assemble a few sets of wooden coasters for the upcoming holiday season. These will consist of 6 coasters (about 4" diameter) of a specific theme, all made with public domain images (except where noted below), most of which were originally printed from woodcuts. Assuming you have an account here at Permies, each set will cost US$25, shipping included for the continental USA (this is the "special Permies hook-up price").

The themes I have planned are as follows:
- Wild Animals: forest-dwelling animals, including grizzly bear and rattlesnake
- Pollinators: winged insects including bees, moths, and butterflies
- Mazes: round maze patterns, each one unique (not public domain, but randomly-derived with a Java applet on a computer)
- Trees: ...a bunch of trees
- Antiquity: woodcut imagery, illuminations from old books and documents, and illustrations

Here's an example: I finished up the "trees" category just last night:



As I finish my initial sets of each theme, I'll add images to this thread so you can preview them.

If you're interested or curious about these sets, please comment here or drop me a PM. I've also just shipped out my most-recent custom job, and have room in my schedule for more. Send me a PM to start the ball rolling. Thanks!

Judith Browning wrote:My guy Steve has been hand carving wooden spoons, bowls and things for decades building a good  business....

We have a spoon and a scoop that Steve made, here at Wheaton Labs.

When I first moved out here to Wheaton Labs, I had very little experience baking bread, and never tried anything that needed yeast and to rise. It had only been brownies and cookies of various types, from scratch.

Then I learned the poly-dough recipe, and that pretty much opened the doors wide open for me. Nowadays, I'm to the point that I'm striving to make the Boot team some bread each week. In the cooler months, I bake twice weekly. It's been pretty great, and I think I have solid proficiency with the recipe.

Tom struggled with the way to express his feelings about the wooden-shake roof he had just completed. Finally, he drove it home: "Nailed it."

Tom interrupted to pipe in: "Well, I know a little bit about plumbing."

"Is that a boy cow, or a lady cow?" asked Tom, udderly confused.