Vacation Wrap-up

Well, vacation is over.  this post covers some of the things that happened during the last week of 2016 and the first week of 2017.

Chili 

Enjoyed making some chili with ALL home preserved or harvested ingredients!

My own venison from my recently harvested buck!

Beans that I canned last January.  I used Adzuki beans and Kidney beans. They canned great!

The final pot of chili!  It tasted great!!

Workbench top build

I decided to "frame" the 22" wide hickory section of my workbench top with oak so that I didn't have to mill up any more of my "finished" hickory boards/planks.  Remember that this project started when I took a look at the hickory mill ends and decided that it would be such a waste to just burn them (I didn't want to chip them up for mulch because I am not sure if hickory would should be used for mulch - hickory is in the walnut family which produces chemicals that retard the growth and germination of other plants!)  So anyway, I decided to recycle some of the old oak boards that I had laying around the place.  I have already recycled a number of these old oak boards for a canning shelf and for the base of the workbench.  As I started milling the old oak boards I noticed quite a bit of powderpost beetle damage.  I remember seeing lots of damage to the canning shelf lumber too.  I sealed the canning shelf with polyurethane as a finish and that seemed to stop most of the beetle activity.  However, the legs of the workbench have on-going powder post beetle damage (I see piles of dust under the legs!)   Therefore, for this workbench top, I was extra-picky to try to remove any damaged sections of the oak that had powderpost beetle damage.  I went through A LOT of the old oak boards to get the wood that I needed, and even then I still have some with powderpost damage.  I will finish the workbench with some kind of oil treatment and hope for the best!

This is one of the last hickory glue-ups.  I did 3 of them. one 11 inches and two 5.5 inches.

A total of  5 glue-ups were done - this is the last - an oak glue up, about 5-6 inches wide..

After the 5 laminated pieces were complete, I had to carry them out to the shop to plane them!  The 5 inch  wide ones weren't too bad, but the 11" one was quite a challenge!  

First step was to cut the 11" section in half to fit it through the planer!

My re-saw bandsaw did this task quite well!  I put up my roller tables to handle this heavy beast.

After cutting the 11" incher in half I then proceeded to plane the laminates (6 now) so that I had "good wood" and even edges to do the final glueup

Again, I used the roller tables to support the pieces 

They planed up quite nicely!  

I really should have put one edge through the jointer to make sure they were all square, but there was no way to handle these things through the jointer!

All laid out on the floor - ready to move to the workbench top for final glue up!

The final glue up!  I laid all of the laminate sections on top of the workbench and arranged them as best I could to get them square and aligned.

The workbench without a top.  It sags significantly in the center!

Glue up underway.  Clamps in place.

It was pretty cold that night so i placed this space heater on top.  I don't know if it helped or not, but the glue-up worked!

The next step, after allowing the glue to set and removing the clamps, was to "plane" the table top smooth, level, and flat.  I did this using a router sled on some wooden rails.  While making the router sled I discovered that my jointer blades were a problem for flattening boards over 3 inches wide - there was a nick in the blades from last years projects that caused the center of the jointer blades to not cut.  Therefore, when I ran a wide board though the jointer it would wobble significantly!  I burned a day of time learning this lesson!  Since I couldn't flatten a board using the jointer I just found a piece of OSB that was pretty flat and used that.  I made a couple of side pieces edge-straight (the jointer did work for edges) and then glued and nailed the sled together.

Router sled.  OSB with jointed oak sides

I made a couple of rails from old oak(?) I found and jointed.  I aligned them using the "cross string method"

The router sled runs on these rails.  The router bit height is adjusted to the lowest part of the table top and then moved across the table until the whole surface is routed to the same height.

Here shows after the first couple of passes

it works!

DONE!  I had to use some hand tools to get the edges, but that was easy.

Level and flat!  (actually, its mostly flat - if you look close there is a slight "sag" in the center that I think was caused by the sled sagging when the router was furthest from the edges.)

Sweet!

After flattening it, I sanded it a bit and patched a few mistakes and some glue-gaps.  Then I used some Watco Danish oil to finish it.  I only had time to put on one coat of oil so far.  I will do another the next time I am at the farm.

Before danish oil

After danish oil!

Pretty!

I also trimmed off the rough edges.  I used the hand held circular saw and then a hand saw to finish up.

At the upper right of this picture you can see the boo-boo I did.  Just at the end of routing it flat the router sled slipped off the rails and the router gouged out a section!  GRRR  I used some wood filler on it.  

Whew!  After doing all of this, I am thinking that maybe I should redo the base of this workbench! 300lbs is a lot for these legs.  The table does move (wobble) when you force it....  and I am not done adding weight yet.  I need to added the vices yet!  There is only 4 "board based" legs on this bench. Thinking I might replace these with 6 solid wood legs.

Faucet Replacement - sink repair

The kitchen faucet went out at the Silver Spring house.  The under counter part that held the faucet in place rusted out.  So i went shopping for a replace faucet.  I got one that had the long gooseneck with a sprayer built in.  This seemed ideal until we realized that we have a portable dishwaser and needed a ordinary faucet nozzle to fit the dishwasher adapter to!  I thought about it awhile and decided to add another simple faucet to the same sink - this simple faucet would then server as the dishwasher adapter faucet.  Instead of using the base plate to cover the old faucet holes I just used some plugs.  I think it turned out pretty nice!  The only problem now is tat the hot water feed line leaks a bit under the sink,  We have a bucket there now.  I am hoping that it self-seals; they often do.

Dishwasher adapter on left, fancy sprayer on right.

We put the dishwasher one on the left to keep it from splashing the clean dishes in the rak to the right of the sink.  However, the gooseneck makes the splashing so bad that even  on the left the splashes reach the clean dishes!  We will have to figure out something..

Miscellaneous

I finally got around to making some elderberry liqueur.  Well, I started it anyway.  It needs to sit for about 6 months.  I haven't added the sugar or lemon yet.    I made about 2 quarts.  I followed a recipe on the internet that called for 1 quart vodka, 1 pint elderberries, the peel of one lemon (with white stuff removed) and 1/4-1/3C sugar.  

It looks really pretty!

I also made a couple pies.  I am trying to "eat out" the freezer a bit so that I can fit my venison in (its in mom's freezer now).  While going through my freezer i found a container of blueberries that I picked the year before, so I grabbed them and a couple pints of canned apples (I am also trying to use my older canned goods) and made these pies.  They were quite good!

Apple-blueberry pies. 

More trees coming for the new year!

I went ahead and submitted an order with "Cold Tree Farms" for the following:

(placed on January 4, 2017 9:39:35 PM EST)

Item	Sku	Qty	Subtotal
Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) - 1-2'	WABL12	25	$27.50
Northern Pecan (Carya illinoinensis) - 6-12"	PECA612	4	$18.60
Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) - 1-2'	GINK12	25	$37.00
Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) - 1-2'	CHOK12	30	$51.30
Choke Cherry (Prunus virginiana) - 1-2'	CHCH12	25	$51.25
I saw that the Fulton County Conservation District has also put put their tree order sheet for next year so I need to put that order together too.  I really should plan out where I am going to put all of these trees!

Workbench top progress & odds and ends

I picked up some of my deer from the butcher!

I got a call from the butcher Thursday telling me that the bulk of my deer was ready for pickup!  I stopped by the butcher on Friday afternoon and got my meat!  The bologna will take a bit longer he said.  Processing was $55 which seemed a bit high compared to what my neighbors told me, but they might get discounts and I don't know if how I had mine processed was the same as what neighbors had done.

Doesn't look like much

I had a lot of it ground up - since that's how I use it most often.

"cubed" or "canning" type - good for canning (duh) and for stews I figure!

I got a few steaks done too

Closeup of canning 

I repacked the canning meat into vacuum sealed 2 lbs packs for convience

Of course, I had to do a taste test!  Delicious!

Moonshine recipe

A friend of mine at work gave me a sample of his friends "Apple Pie Moonshine" drink.  It was so good!  I decided to make my own!  I found a recipe that got good ratings on Allrecipies "apple pie moonshine "  I had to go buy the ingredients Friday night because they were calling for bad weather overnight at the farm.   They didn't have any cloves and I only had ground cloves - so that would have to do.  I brought all the stuff to a boil and found that the cider had enough solids in it that I would have to filter through a cheesecloth anyway, so the cheesecloth caught all the clove powder as well.

Its good stuff, but it doesnt have the buttery flavor of my friends blend

Winter is here

Well, its been cold for a while - on and off, but the typical wintery "ugh" is here now.  

Workbench top progress

The weather was bad fr doing stuff outside, but it was ok to be doing stuff in the shop!  So I got around to jointing the hickory slats that I cut last weekend.  Once jointed I then thickness planed them.    I measured their thickness and marked the pieces, but I did not get a chance to do the "final" planing for glue up purposes.  When i plane for the glue-up I match the thickness of all the slats in a row and mark them so that I know to glue matched slats in the same row.  I could see that I need more slats - there is not enough to make an 11 inch wide glue-up.  I am scrounging around for more hickory.

I also got some oak slats ready for the center oak bench top glue-up.  I examined the slats and found many were infested with "powderpost beetles".  I was going to toss those slats but there were so many and I don't want to waste all of that wood!  So I thought about whether the finish for the workbench may kill the bugs.  I looked it up and there is some indication that it will!  So I am going to use the buggy oak boards anyway.  I will be sure to soak the finish into the wood good and deep to kill the bugs!.  Technically i could have done this with the buggy hickory too, however, the bugs in the hickory made much bigger holes - like .25-.5 inch in diameter, whereas the powderpost beetles only drill about 0.03125-.125 inches.  I still may have to toss some of the oak if the infestation is too bad.  I didn't get around to jointing the oak yet.  In fact i know I will need more oak slats so I might as well wait until I am on vacation and can dedicate some time to it.

Another buck?

While I was looking at the game camera collection for the week I saw some interesting things!

7!  Seven deer right there where I got my buck just 4 days earlier!  I can't discern a buck in this group but...

This one sure looks like it has antlers!  I compared it to other pictures and that is NOT a tree branch!  Also, the timing is just about right.  Bucks usually come out a bit earlier (or later - depending how you look at it).

workbench-top glue-up # 1

The glue-up

I decided to do the entire glue up in one shot.  Big mistake.  Spreading that much glue over that many pieces of wood and fitting them together is practically impossible to do before the glue sets!  What a mess!    I fit the pieces with one side flat on the floor because I couldn't think of another way to make sure that one side remained flat.  Its not ideal since it will make one side of the glue-up dry faster than the other but it seemed to be ok.

Layed them out to see how the fit was.

I didn't show any of the actual glue up process since it was painful and I was sore and pissed!  Here it is partially dried 

Here it is after drying  (mostly)  This was several days after the initial glue-up.  The bottom showed some glue was still wet!

I let it sit like this for a couple of weeks to assure the glue was nice and cured.

I got a BUCK!!!

I know!  I can't believe it either!  On the last day of regular hunting season.

I went out early and was in blind by 5am.   I have a new scope on the crossbow, but turns out I didn't need it, the old one would have been fine.  Anyway, I sat there until just after 7am before I heard some scuffling around.  Then I saw several does walking by.  I raised by crossbow to take aim.  Then out of the corner of my eye I see a BUCK!  He comes right into view - into range - nice shooting position.  I fire. The herd of deer take off!  Sounded like a herd.  Lots of thunderous hooves.  I freaked out a bit when I saw the light on the lighted-nock laying on the ground where the buck had been.  I tried to remain calm and packed up the crossbow and other items that I had brought with me into the blind. Then I went to look at the nock.  The bolt actually broke!  Carbon fiber bolt shaft - broke!   The light was on just fine, but the broadhead portion of the bolt was gone.  I left the lighted portion on the ground for a point of reference for when I would track the animal.

I went inside to thaw out.  It was 24F this morning.  Snow started just as I was heading back to the house.  I was trying not to freak out!  Adrenaline was pumping!  Trying to prepare myself for a long tracking job.  I was trying to brace myself for the worst - that maybe the shot wasn't fatal and the deer would simply be horribly wounded and suffering and that I would never find it.  My mind was going to all kinds of places!   I ate breakfast while I was waiting to warm up.  Had a couple warm cups of tea.  About 30-40 mins after the taking shot I was back outside on the UTV looking for the deer.

Snowing quite heavily!

I drove the UTV to where I had left the lighted-nock. I picked up the nock and turned it off - placing an old no-trespassing sign to mark the location instead.  Then I hopped in the UTV and headed out across the field where I thought I saw the deer run off.  I didn't go far at all before I saw the white belly of the buck on the ground - maybe a total of 50-60 yards from the point of impact.  I confirmed he was dead. Whew. Was so happy that I found it so easy an that the kill was humane.  I was sad too. The great buck was dead by my hand.  I knelt by his dead body placed my hand on him and gave thanks and promised to not waste his body and to appreciate his sacrifice to my fullest.

I tried to load the beast into my UTV and quickly determined that wasn't going to happen.  I'm too out of shape for one thing, but also the deer's body was just to limp and it wouldn't cooperate!  So I went back and got the tractor and put the front loader bucket on it.  Then I came back to the deer and easily loaded him into the frontloader!

Broken bolt!

Here is how i found him.  He is missing the right side antlers.  Upon closer inspection the right side antlers seem to have been missing for awhile.  

6 pointer!  8 points if you count the brow tine!

Thank you for dieing in an easy to access area!  The frontloader made this job a lot easier.

Before I cleaned him up I logged into the pgc.pa.gov website and reported the harvest online.

I called a couple of neighbors to assist me with the dressing but one was out hunting and the other didn't answer.  So, I tackled the job as best I could!  It wasn't the prettiest dressing, but I got it done. Took me about and hour!  Maybe a bit more.  I took the guts and the upper vital organs out.  I thought about keeping the heart but I decided against it.  I nicked upper stomach (actually I think I poked through it with a finger) and some nasty smelling stuff came out.  I cleaned it up with a paper towel and it didnt seem to leak more than a tablespoon.  I did see some corn in his stomach contents though! He was somewhere eating corn!  I don't think there is any corn left in the fields, but I could be wrong. He definitely had some fat on him though.

After I field dressed him I put the tag on his ear with a safety pin and loaded him into the car.  In the back of my SUV I put down a old dog blanket, some feed bags and finally a couple of garbage bags to keep the blood off of the car surfaces.  Then I manhandled him into the car - quite a bit lighter without the guts and organs, but still pretty heavy.  He was starting to stiffen up by this point too.

I called Strait Butcher Shop and they said to bring him on over. Strait's processes most peoples deer around here.  Their address is:

Stairts Butcher Shop
419 Possum Hollow Rd
Harrisonville PA 17228


I filled a desired products sheet and asked for the antlers.  They said the meat should be ready by next week or week after.  My deer was tagged #342 (they don't give receipts, which seems odd - but they are reputable so I guess that's fine).  On the form I indicated the desired products:  1/4 hind quarter into steaks, 1/4 ground, 1 hind quarter canning/cubed.  I forget the rest - I did indicate some bologna should be made.  The loin is to be cut up into medallions.   Mostly I want ground meat since that is what I like to eat.

The gentleman there said he would call me next week or week after with everything except the bologna. The bologna gets sent out for processing and can take a month or two.

Family Thanksgiving and workbench progress

Family Thanksgiving

We had our family thanksgiving on Dec 3.  I had taken the prior week off to hunt ad help Katherine prep.  I did a lot of house-cleaning!  Katherine did great things in the kitchen (as usual).  

Homemade bread for the dressing - made from home made flour right from the wheat grain

Veggies ready for roasting!  All grown by me, except the celery (and the carrots - although I have grown carrots these aren't ours).  Butternut squash, sweet potatoes, onions, and white potatoes, all from our farm this year.

Sister Connie, her hubby Ben to her right.  Her dog Lucy in front.

Ben checking his phone

My brother Tom.  Katherine in the back there.

Workbench top progress

I got to run the cured hickory boards through the jointer and then plane them flat again.  Then I had the fun of  piecing them together as best I could, matching boards to length, planing to consistent thicknesses and putting them together to prepare for the glue-up.  It was a LOT of work!  I decided to make three 11 inch wide laminates, all about 3 inches thick and 8 feet long.  These will be bolted together to for the workbench top.   i am not sure if I have enough hickory  for the entire workbench top so i think I will make the center laminate out of oak (I have TONS of oak - literally -lol).  This will allow me to save some of the hickory for tool handles, as I originally intended.

Mixing and matching boards to get the required length and width

A lot of fiddly work

A bit wider than 11 inches and a bit longer than 8 feet so that I have some adjustment room!

Not much adjustment room!  Just an inch over 8 feet

Now to cut the pieces to match the lengths, mark them, take them inside and figure out how to glue them all together!

Deer hunting

I did go out deer hunting each of my days off (when it wasn't raining).  I took some pictures while I was out, but they don't look too interesting so i am not posting any (I assume everyone has seen leaves and trees?).  I found some nice areas to hunt from and even saw some deer scat, tracks, scrapes and rubs, etc.  But no actual deer!  The woods were full of hunters and I am sure the deer are far from here.  I only had one deer on my trail cam - a doe (which are legal to take now).  Deer season ends Dec 10 in PA.  I have taken next Thursday and Friday off and will try to get some hunting in.  If I don't get anything this week there is still the late bow season starting Dec 26 and running through Jan 14th.