We had to adopt doggy, unfortunately is old and senile like me, not really fit for rv life, and being with (partner) pseudo-family would end up being put down, so, since we can not keep him with us, we thought to give him another chance to live a few more years with some decent people out there.
He is just a senile old guy, but a wonderful doggy, besides the barking, well, i rant too, and too often, hopefully if we find some land on time, if he does not have a decent family by then, we may be able to re-adopt him.
proto2After I lost my (modified) pipe that must have gone to the junk yard with an old wrecked car on the first of the month, now I’m running full time proto two.
Works just fine. Hand carved, work of my own (numb) hands. Notice how nice is the white holly tree is made of, is she not a beauty ?
Get yourself a carving tool, like this one, stainless steel, 99c at the dollar store, clean your apples (or pears,) core out, put in a baking pan, cover of sugar, and bake.
They came out maybe not so good looking, but taste better than most candies, if you run into low blood sugar during the night, like I often do, a spoon of them, and a spoon of the syrup, just perfect to make you feel better.
Try them, is another piece of my childhood memories on a farm, and as a good pheasants food needs to be, is satisfying and ‘really’ cheap to make.
Easy stuff to make, see at the bottom of the blog the piedmontese bagnetto recipe, the other is vitel etonne, just home repaired mayonnaise (salt, lemon and olive oil,) and tuna mix, with few capers, on top of roast slices.
Took me some time before reaching the determination of preparing my ethnic foods, generally I’m too tired, and I just eat a few slices of ham and mayonnaise, or some mozzarella, in a sandwich (or janet gourmet meals, when she cooks.)
Here, tonight we had corn mesh, with pennsylvania dutch sweet pig, for the ones not familiar, the ingredients:
-two chopped large green apples
-one chopped large yellow onion
-a spoon of oil
-a teaspoon of salt
-one quart of broth
-a 2 lbs cut of roast round swine
-few leaves of thyme
Just cook the holy bejesus out of it, until the pig shreds and is tender, delicate plate, the mix of corn mash, butter and salt, with the sweet dutch pig, makes it a very filling and pleasant winter dish.
Serve as in the picture, with the juicy sweet dutch pig on top of the salted corn mesh. Delicious fulfilling and warm.
I’m going very slowly, I sleep the most of the day, I’m always tired, so I could not get too much done this month, however the special pipe manufacturing oriented lathe, is progressing a bit at the time,
I’m missing a number of parts and some further work (a shaft to hold the chuck, half done, a bearing holding the shaft, half done, a special screw-in tip, looking for one, may build if no other choice, like I built the collar adapter for the motor.)
As it stand, is driven by a Universal Electric direct drive motor, with master switch and rotation control circuit, adjustable from 0 to 1450 RPM, should cover the whole range of turning speeds I need, tested the motor, runs just fine after re-wiring, I’m still behind with holding the part safelly in the chuck (in the picture, not complete,) and turn it, missing just a couple of parts to assemble the whole thing, as usual, cost ‘zero,’ all recycled gifted parts, pieces of wood from recycled furnitures, bolts and screws taken out of something broken. Zero, is the price I like.
prototype two
As aside, pipe prototype number two, successfully went trough the test burn, it consumed one load of tobacco as designed, burning even around the chamber, result due to new design of burning chamber and a few improvements, such as stainless steel core.
The design is a bit rough, because lacking of the turning, the finishing, and possibly the artistic work of hand carving, which will be applied to the next prototype after the lathe is completelly operational. However, the functionality is there, this pipe can be smoked every day, with no issues evidenced so far, after a number of burns, however I’m making it a point to use it for an intensive testing, just to evidence eventual unplanned issues.
proto two core
Notice in the picture the stailess steel half core, on the stem side, the other completing half is going from the attachment to 1/3 into the chimney.) Possibly prototype three, will be built on a one-piece stainless steel core, which facilitates cleaning, and the final product could be distributed with a compressor air attachment for small individual bottles, for the proper maintenance from the part of the final user.
It is not really beautiful, actually it is quite ugly as it stands, the two people which looked at it said: ‘it looks like the Mammy Yokum pipe,’ close enough, but just an experiment to start with, testing wood characteristics, tools, and afterwards with loading, packing, running the first burn, centering of the ring, burn trough the load, and amount of the unburned leftovers.
proto01-load
First issue, the load, it loads a very big amount of tobacco, pretty much two times and a half of a Canadian pipe, most of the pipes I had in my life have been Canadian, somehow I find the design and functionality fitting my purpose, apparently most of pipe smokers in my family liked Canadian pipes, and that is just how it happened.
The load issue may be good or bad, depending on personal taste or expectations, but for the purpose of this first run, I took my time and just enjoyed the experience, and actually, ‘tentatively,’ I would state that the longer load and fewer cycles of refueling, is appealing, unless I may find later other reasons to avoid this design.
proto01-burn-aft
Now obviously my final purpose, as soon as the lathe I’m working at (I decided to build my own for the purpose,) may be complete, is to produce a finished pipe, (even if I’m now thinking of an enhanced unfinished rough design as another separate product,) then I will look at some more mundane tasks such as flaming and finishing, and obviously getting proper stems (either printing them on a 3d printer, or buying them.)
So, how did the burn go ? Well, the aft of the chimney worked exactly as meant, no leaks, absolutely and barely no heating of the outer side (due also to the equal thickness of the walls,) however as you can notice in the last picture below, the burn did not reach the bottom of the chamber in the fore side.
proto01-burn-fore
The problem there is about half a load (out of five halves of total load, 20%,) of unburned tobacco towards the bottom of the fore side, due to the perfectly cylindrical cut of the chamber, in future versions I will have to either change the center of cut and foster blade size, towards the base, or adopt a double stem cut along the whole bottom of the chamber, to drain air equally from fore and aft.
Well, every experience is a learning experience, hopefully for prototype number two, I’ll have the lathe running and correct complete load burning results, in the mean time, I think the wood choice is correct, (home grown holly tree, here, I’ll leave to others the polemics, but as far as I’m concerned, it looks to me as a very nice wood, thermally efficient, which will also result in beautiful white pipes, once the original skin is removed by lathe turning.)
Took me almost two weeks, and I’m not done yet, these days I can’t do too much, something light for an hour or two, then I need to take a nap, I feel tired all the times.
Anyhow, this is how the router table progressed, still does not have a side fence, but works just fine, I used it for other projects, such as the painting jig below.
paint-stand
Here the painting jig, I decided I’ll paint some water color, has been 40 years since I did so last, but anyhow, this is it, entirely built from scrap cuts of baseboard.
I did not have any long pieces, except one, that explains the dwarf legs, but is stable and does the job (as you can see,) hopefully I may paint a bit better with time.
I need to get some decent water colors and brushes, those are from the 99c store, and are just worth their price, 99 cents, need also some better paper, for the first test I used a page of laser printing paper, but is not ideal.
small-objects-jig
This is a jig to hold small objects in the drill press, it does the job, even if I could have thought of a better design, still needs a lock below the tray, and I still need the right (forstner) drill bits, for carving in a more decent manner.
Also, all recycled scrap wood and scrap parts, cost of materials, zero, a price I like.
Anyhow, took two weeks to do this little, I’m a wreck these days.
Winter Collage 