Not Half Way (Darn!)

(Some of my readers have indicated that they would like to be notified each time I post something new here. I've looked into various ways to automate this, but I haven't found a good "opt in" method for you to use, although I know a few of you use RSS feeds for this purpose. RSS feeds will work, but not all of you may want to go that route. So, I've decided that I'll simply send out an email myself to a list of those of you who wish to be notified. I'll start today with what I consider to be a default list, but if you do not receive that email and would like to be included, please send me an email, and I'll add you to the list. Or, if you wish to be removed from my initial list, let me know that as well--I won't be offended. Thanks for your interest and support!)

Today (Thursday, May 5th) was to have been my sixth chemo infusion, which would have represented my being half done with chemo. Alas, my platelet level was too low, and so my oncologist said we had to skip this infusion and proceed with the next scheduled one on May 18th. This is a bad news/good news situation for me. Bad in the sense that I'm eager to get all of these chemo infusions over with. Good in the sense that I now have a couple of weeks more to enjoy without any down period due to the infusion. The oncologist said that I just needed more time to recover after the last infusion, and that with me now taking a daily dose of blood thinner medication, this was not all that surprising. She did not seem to be concerned but suggested that this might happen again in the future, making it unclear just when the twelfth and final infusion might occur. Prior to today, that would have been on July 27th--now it looks like it will be August 10th.

But let's move on to more interesting things. I have been feeling good enough to be able to spend quite a bit of time in my shop recently! Yay! Last fall, my good friend, Richard, allowed me to salvage three logs from a derecho-damaged cherry tree in a timber near his home. I had it sawn and kiln dried and thus obtained about 60 board feet of lumber from it. After planing, I used a portion of this wood to make a bench for Kathie and me to use at the foot of our bed.

I have yet to stain and finish it. I'll put a dark stain called Cabernet on it and then a semi-gloss topcoat. It is a simple design, but the cherry wood has a pretty color that I think the stain will enhance (and better match our other bedroom furniture) and very nice grain.

Another project I just completed was to make a shallow bowl or plate for Kathie to use as a napkin holder. I have always found it difficult to discard potentially useful scraps of wood from other projects. So, I keep a box around to hold these odds and ends. As you might imagine, the box fills up with all kinds of pieces of usually small sizes and of various wood species. I took the request from Kathie as an opportunity to pull out a number of different woods, glue them together into a block about 10" square and maybe 3" thick to be turned on my lathe. I was really pleased with the end result. There are eight woods altogether in the finished bowl: walnut, poplar, padauk, bocote, cherry, maple, leopardwood, and purpleheart. Here is the finished product:

I also have one "Oops!" story to share. When we moved to our new home, I decided to invest in a new table saw. I had been aware for some time of a new saw manufactured by a company called SawStop. They came up with a technology that detects when conductive material meets the spinning saw blade, most importantly the skin on your fingers and hands. When this happens, a special mechanism in the saw almost instantaneously (i.e., within milliseconds) jams a brake into the saw blade and drops the blade out of sight below the table, thus keeping the saw from taking off a finger or otherwise badly damaging a hand. You can see a video of this by clicking here. My old saw, which was a very good Powermatic table saw, could not do this! I rationalized that moving my old saw could be avoided by selling it to someone else. Then I could simply buy a new SawStop table saw and have it delivered to my our new home. Clever, eh?

While working on some pen-making projects recently, I had a need to cut some lengths of thin brass tubing. I had always done this before on my table saw--cutting aluminum or lightweight brass pieces is usually OK if done carefully and slowly. But remember how I used the word conductive in the prior paragraph? While I had read the SawStop owner's manual thoroughly when I got my new saw, on this occasion, I simply forgot that the saw was fine cutting nonconductive material like wood, but that fingers and metal, which are conductive, would trigger the special safety technology in the saw. So, as I slowly but ignorantly pushed the tubing into the blade, BAM! The brake jammed and dropped the spinning blade out of sight. Here are the parts retrieved from my saw after the fact.

What did I learn from this mistake? First of all, it was rather shocking when it occurred, and my first impulse was to check my fingers. But I soon realized what had happened. I also learned that my saw actually works as advertised--good to know for the future. Lastly, I learned that while this safety feature is much to be desired, it does come at a cost. I had to replace the brake cartridge at about $60, and I am having the blade tested and sharpened to make sure that it is safe to continue to use it. That will maybe cost $100. Oh well!