I am a happy man! (long)
Robert Tarr
>Hello gang,
Yesterday my horoscope said I was going to have a great day and it turns out, it was right.
My wife told me that her Dad wanted to get rid of two chainsaws that he used to build his log cabin and wanted to know if I wanted them...said "They both run great and has a smaller one and a larger one, made my Still or Steel or something like that...said you could have them both for $50 plus shipping..." So, I am the proud new owner of 2 mostly new Stihl chain saws to compliment my little chainsaw that mostly works, sometimes.
Day goes on and my neighbor asks me to give him a ride to the town works building (he is a police officer and his car was in for service.) He likes to turn small stuff and on the trip I asked him if the town had a log dump (thanks Mike S. for the idea) and he said he had never thought of it, but yes, right behind the "Works Building". So, we hang out and chat with the guys and trade ribbings back and forth. We ask about the log dump and they said yes and to take all we want...said too bad you didn't ask yesterday, they had a bunch of black locust come in, but now it is burried, but when they get to it they will set it aside. Only about a truck full though!!!! So, we head back to the dump and running low on time, I was only able to find one piece of the black locust (about 15 inches across and 19 inches tall) some cherry, some apple (very small piece) and 9 pieces of spalted maple (large pieces already cut into squares about 15X6X10). Told us to come back as often as we want and take as much as we want.
I come home smiling and on my front porch sits a box that contains 9 old woodend planes from a coffin maker's estate in NH., with some complex profiles...turns out one didn't have a cutter, but all were in almost new shape (not bad for being 100 years old).
So, I am in the basement turning my little heart out and my wife comes home and sees the stash of stuff I picked up (she is getting into turning too, and we are both way down on the learning curve) says Wow those are some big pieces...do you have to cut them down and I said, yes. She asked if we could turn them as is, if we had a bigger lathe....to which, I said yes (trying not to scream like a little school girl). She said that might be in the works for the Winter. (As a side note, she really liked Bill G.'s Poolewood when we were at the picknic and has been hinting around at that and the big Powermatic 3520 at the Woodcraft in NH.)
We go out for dinner and we drive through a neighborhood that we are thinking of moving to. We drive by an huge tree that was knocked down this weekend by the weather. So big in fact, that it took two power poles with it. The piece on the ground was bigger than my full sized truck. She looked at me and told me I need to keep a chainsaw and come-along in the truck....I love that woman! She then started devising places to store turning blanks and wanted to know where to get that "paint on waxey stuff that Mike Rubes put on the turning blanks at Bill G's picnic..."
Went to bed happy and feeling more lucky than the day before! I had to share with a group that would get as big of a kick out of the day, as I did.
Have a great week everyone.
Robert (who still has to figure out how to compress pictures from my 4.11 Megapixel camera to fit on this site...guess it is time to buy more software.)