I am very happy that Election Day is finally here. In a few more hours, we will no longer be subjected to countless inane political commercials broadcast on every form of media available to the campaigns as well as those "non-partisan" (sic) 501(c)(3)'s.
Those that know me also know that I am a fiscal conservative who typically votes Republican in national and state elections. That is, unless the candidate is an idiot (paging Todd Akin), clueless (Sarah Palin), or entirely out of their freaking mind (Michelle Bachmann). There are exceptions to every rule. This election is a fairly easy one for me since I honestly believe that Gov. Romney is far more qualified, prepared, and able to get the economy back on track and create jobs. What's not being said in this election is something everyone already knows...when unemployment is low and the stock market is doing well, no one really cares all that much about funding for PBS, Planned Parenthood, or even abortion for that matter. For me, solve the big problem and the little ones have a way of taking care of themselves.
What's difficult is trying to make that point to democrats or socially-conscious liberals. I boil it down to big-picture vs. small picture politics. Big picture equals jobs, low unemployment, and an economy where where it's possible to make more than $0.02 a year in your savings account. Unfortunately, we're a long ways off from achieving any of those goals.
As a final note: I attended an open enrollment meeting yesterday to discuss my company's health care plan for 2013. Like clockwork, our premiums are going up by 100%. That's right, 2013 will cost TWICE AS MUCH as what we paid in 2012. Why you may ask? Well, it's called the Affordable Care Act of 2011! Ironically, the only thing "affordable" about it is for people who weren't paying anything for health care in the first place. I particularly enjoyed President Obama's claim that "if you like your current health plan, you can keep it!" What he didn't say was how much it's going to cost you & your employer for the privilege...
Happy Voting America! I hope I have good tidings to share in the morning.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
Jesus...where to start???
It's been 6 months since my last post. I suck. I know. Getting past all that, what has happened since the last post?
- NHC (which was fucking awesome, BTW). I'm planning to go to Philly next year if at all possible.
- Lots of work travel (Canada (twice), California, Missouri (twice), Las Vegas (twice), and Chicago.
- I finally bought a motorcycle. Hell Yeah!! It's only been 20 years in the making but I finally own one again. And it rules. Bought a Suzuki DL1000 V-Strom Adventure. Has everything I was looking for in a bike: fun and easy to ride, plenty of power, installed luggage, and unlimited customizability. I'm as happy as a slinky on an escalator. :-D
- The Red Sox had their worst season in 50+ years. Not talking anymore about that but at least they fired Bobby Valentine, which was perhaps the worst managerial hire in 50+ years as well.
- A new nephew was born. Welcome Jackson Brantley Harris! Can't wait to see you at Christmas.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Portable Bar for NHC
The SRB guys thought it would be cool to have a decorative cabinet to surround the club jockey box for NHC in Seattle. Being the sucker I am, I volunteered to take the lead on it and build one. I had 3 basic goals for the design: 1. It should look like a miniature bar from the outside, 2. It should be somewhat portable, and 3. It needed to support pouring of beer from the jockey box. Sounds pretty simple, huh?
My design is a 3-sided frame & panel cabinet with hinges between the panels to allow the cabinet to be quickly broken down for transport and storage. The front frame has 3 equally spaced panels and each side frame has a single panel. The front and side panels are connected with a piano hinge in each inside corner.
To save some money, I cut the rail and stile pieces from 5/8" plywood and used 1/4" oak plywood for the panel inserts. I used off the cap moulding to wrap the insides of the panels to add some detail and dress up the bar a bit. All of the assembled panels were wrapped in 1" white ash to hide the plywood edges. The top is also white ash which is segmented into 2 pieces to allow it also to be folded down to capture the sides. The folded top will have a hook and loop latch installed to keep the sides from opening up during transport.
Here's a few photos of the assembled bar without finish applied. I'm planning to apply a mahogany stain/polyurethane combination finish to give it an old tavern look. I'll post a few photos of the finished bar when it's done. Cheers!
My design is a 3-sided frame & panel cabinet with hinges between the panels to allow the cabinet to be quickly broken down for transport and storage. The front frame has 3 equally spaced panels and each side frame has a single panel. The front and side panels are connected with a piano hinge in each inside corner.
To save some money, I cut the rail and stile pieces from 5/8" plywood and used 1/4" oak plywood for the panel inserts. I used off the cap moulding to wrap the insides of the panels to add some detail and dress up the bar a bit. All of the assembled panels were wrapped in 1" white ash to hide the plywood edges. The top is also white ash which is segmented into 2 pieces to allow it also to be folded down to capture the sides. The folded top will have a hook and loop latch installed to keep the sides from opening up during transport.
Here's a few photos of the assembled bar without finish applied. I'm planning to apply a mahogany stain/polyurethane combination finish to give it an old tavern look. I'll post a few photos of the finished bar when it's done. Cheers!
Front of the Portable Bar
Back view of the bar with the jockey box installed
View of the folded bar ready for transport.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
NHC Preps
I'm registered for the National Homebrewer's Conference this year for the first time. I've been wanting to go for years and finally get the chance since it's coming to Seattle. Several of my buddies in the Snake River Brewer's Club are also going to so we decided to participate in Club Night, which is essentially a homebrew beer festival with each club pouring their creations for 1600 of their closest friends...
To get ready for Club Night, I'm building a 6-tap jockey box from a 100-qt marine cooler and a cold plate that a few club members donated. Here's a few shots of the progress made thus far (Thanks to HomeBrewStuff.com for supplying all of the dispensing hardware, tubing, and accessories):
All that's left is installation of the supply tubing from the kegs and we'll be good to go. It's also going to have a decorative wood cabinet that wraps around the front and sides for the impression of a portable bar. I'm also building that. It will have have a frame and panel design on all three sides with hinges so it van be broken down for easy transport and storage. I'll post some photos up once I get some of the woodworking done. We're gonna represent in Seattle!
To get ready for Club Night, I'm building a 6-tap jockey box from a 100-qt marine cooler and a cold plate that a few club members donated. Here's a few shots of the progress made thus far (Thanks to HomeBrewStuff.com for supplying all of the dispensing hardware, tubing, and accessories):
All that's left is installation of the supply tubing from the kegs and we'll be good to go. It's also going to have a decorative wood cabinet that wraps around the front and sides for the impression of a portable bar. I'm also building that. It will have have a frame and panel design on all three sides with hinges so it van be broken down for easy transport and storage. I'll post some photos up once I get some of the woodworking done. We're gonna represent in Seattle!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Yarn Swift for Beth
I got the idea to build Beth a new swift when we went to Portland last summer and saw a vendor who was selling tabletop models that broke down for easy storage. The design was rather simple and I knew I could make one for next to nothing. After hearing Beth swearing about her current swift was a piece of crap, I decided to start this project. I found some notes posted on the web from another woodworker that had the same idea and started the woodworking.
I built it out of 3/4" ash left over from the bookcases I blogged about in the post below. These swifts don't require much wood to make (2 pcs 3"x24" and 2 pcs 1"x36"), so the whole project goes fairly quickly. The toughest part of the project is getting the center holes aligned and drilled so it will spin true. The prototype isn'rt perfectly centered but is close enough to spin effortlessly when Beth has a skein of yarn on it.
The design is nearly identical to the link above, with all parts able to be disassembled for easier storage. The base legs and spreader arms go together using bridal joints with the whole assemble held together with a 4-1/2" bolt, a few washers, and a plastic knob. I added a jam nut under the plastic knob to prevent too much friction being added from over-tightening. The center hole of the spreader arms has a brass sleeve inserted to prevent run-out in the drilled hole. Below are photos of the parts and the assembled swift when completed. It takes less than a minute to assemble. I finished it with 3 coats of a satin wiping varnish. The pegs were left bare wood to avoid staining or marring the yarn. I already have a request from one of Beth's fellow knitters for another one!
I built it out of 3/4" ash left over from the bookcases I blogged about in the post below. These swifts don't require much wood to make (2 pcs 3"x24" and 2 pcs 1"x36"), so the whole project goes fairly quickly. The toughest part of the project is getting the center holes aligned and drilled so it will spin true. The prototype isn'rt perfectly centered but is close enough to spin effortlessly when Beth has a skein of yarn on it.
The design is nearly identical to the link above, with all parts able to be disassembled for easier storage. The base legs and spreader arms go together using bridal joints with the whole assemble held together with a 4-1/2" bolt, a few washers, and a plastic knob. I added a jam nut under the plastic knob to prevent too much friction being added from over-tightening. The center hole of the spreader arms has a brass sleeve inserted to prevent run-out in the drilled hole. Below are photos of the parts and the assembled swift when completed. It takes less than a minute to assemble. I finished it with 3 coats of a satin wiping varnish. The pegs were left bare wood to avoid staining or marring the yarn. I already have a request from one of Beth's fellow knitters for another one!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Craftsman Bookcases
The house we bought in Boise in great in so many ways, from the location to the garage. One of the few downsides is lack of available wall space for bookshelves as compared to the NY house, so we've had to be a bit more creative. One solution was to build smaller bookcases that could sit on the hearth in the family room. One full wall of our house is dedicated to the fireplace and hearth and is covered in stone veneer with built in glass curio shelves. We really like the wall, but it has limited functionality in terms of decorating.
So my charge was to find a design that the wife would like and would work in this space. I found one in issue 179 of Fine Woodworking magazine that fit both bills. The design had to be tweaked a bit to better match out needs, but the changes were modest. I stretched it out to 48" wide and shortened it to 32" high. And oh yeah...the wife wanted two. Here's what the finished products look like:
They're made of white ash, using traditional frame and panel design. All of the frames are assembled using mortise and tenon joinery and the panels (sides and back) were resawn to 1/4" from 4/4 stock. The back was also changed from the plan to accommodate the wider stance. I was worried about shelf sag over a 48" run of heavy books, so I split the back in half and added a center rail with holes for a fifth shelf pin for added support. The back consists of 1/4" thick slats that have ship-lap rabbets milled into them so they slide into the top and bottom grooves and make a nice paneled back surface.
The finish is golden oak stain followed by 3 coats of a satin wipe-on polyurethane. Here they are on the hearth wall. I'm very happy with how they turned out, and more importantly, so is the wife even though they took many more months to complete than originally planned. Now it's up to Beth to unpack book boxes!
So my charge was to find a design that the wife would like and would work in this space. I found one in issue 179 of Fine Woodworking magazine that fit both bills. The design had to be tweaked a bit to better match out needs, but the changes were modest. I stretched it out to 48" wide and shortened it to 32" high. And oh yeah...the wife wanted two. Here's what the finished products look like:
They're made of white ash, using traditional frame and panel design. All of the frames are assembled using mortise and tenon joinery and the panels (sides and back) were resawn to 1/4" from 4/4 stock. The back was also changed from the plan to accommodate the wider stance. I was worried about shelf sag over a 48" run of heavy books, so I split the back in half and added a center rail with holes for a fifth shelf pin for added support. The back consists of 1/4" thick slats that have ship-lap rabbets milled into them so they slide into the top and bottom grooves and make a nice paneled back surface.
The finish is golden oak stain followed by 3 coats of a satin wipe-on polyurethane. Here they are on the hearth wall. I'm very happy with how they turned out, and more importantly, so is the wife even though they took many more months to complete than originally planned. Now it's up to Beth to unpack book boxes!
Friday, December 9, 2011
Partigyle Experiment
A few of us in the Snake River Brewers crew wanted to do an experimental brew to celebrate Nov. 11, 2011 (11/11/11). So what us geniuses decided to do was a recipe that had an OG at least 1.111 with 111 IBUs. We'll all age the beers a year and taste/judge them on 12/12/12. Cool concept, huh? I thought so too, but was somewhat horrified at the potential of brewing up 5-10 gallons of a pretty expensive beer that might end up tasting only slightly better than river sludge... So what to do?
To limit the potential damage, I decided to try my hand at partigyle brewing. It involves doing a single mash, but collecting the multiple "runnings" from the mash tun to make multiple beers of different strengths. This was a standard practice back in colonial times, where brewers would make a "strong beer" from the first runnings, a "table beer" from the second, and a "small (or children's) beer" from the third. I'm an all-grain brewer that uses fly sparging so hard could it be, right?
The recipe I used was based on Terrapin's Wake 'n Bake Oatmeal Coffee Stout, which is a strong american stout. I ramped up the recipe to make sure I could get ~2 gals of a 1.111 beer out of the first runnings and 6 gallons of a ~1.080 stout out of the second. Anything left over after that would be a bonus. I ended up hitting my targets on the first 2 batches with 4 gal of a 1.032 mild left over. Looking back, I could have made 10 gallons of a 1.060 stout but really wanted the "middle" beer to resemble the Wake 'n Bake. The brew day went very well but was long, since I ended doing 3 separate 1-hour boils.
At this point, all three are either kegged or bottled. The 1.111 will be cold-conditioned in a keg for a long time. The middle beer was racked to a secondary and had 4 oz of roughly ground, dark roasted Ethiopian coffee from High Desert Coffee Company in Mountain Home, ID (thanks, Jim!) added for 4 days. It tastes absolutely delicious! The Mild was bottled shortly after the primary. It ended up at 1.008 so it should be an easy drinking light brown ale at about 3.2% ABV. Samples I tasted so far have been promising, with a nice roasty nose, light body, and dry finish.
Prost!!
To limit the potential damage, I decided to try my hand at partigyle brewing. It involves doing a single mash, but collecting the multiple "runnings" from the mash tun to make multiple beers of different strengths. This was a standard practice back in colonial times, where brewers would make a "strong beer" from the first runnings, a "table beer" from the second, and a "small (or children's) beer" from the third. I'm an all-grain brewer that uses fly sparging so hard could it be, right?
The recipe I used was based on Terrapin's Wake 'n Bake Oatmeal Coffee Stout, which is a strong american stout. I ramped up the recipe to make sure I could get ~2 gals of a 1.111 beer out of the first runnings and 6 gallons of a ~1.080 stout out of the second. Anything left over after that would be a bonus. I ended up hitting my targets on the first 2 batches with 4 gal of a 1.032 mild left over. Looking back, I could have made 10 gallons of a 1.060 stout but really wanted the "middle" beer to resemble the Wake 'n Bake. The brew day went very well but was long, since I ended doing 3 separate 1-hour boils.
At this point, all three are either kegged or bottled. The 1.111 will be cold-conditioned in a keg for a long time. The middle beer was racked to a secondary and had 4 oz of roughly ground, dark roasted Ethiopian coffee from High Desert Coffee Company in Mountain Home, ID (thanks, Jim!) added for 4 days. It tastes absolutely delicious! The Mild was bottled shortly after the primary. It ended up at 1.008 so it should be an easy drinking light brown ale at about 3.2% ABV. Samples I tasted so far have been promising, with a nice roasty nose, light body, and dry finish.
Prost!!
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