It snowed this weekend …
And I found this Alec Wilkinson quote: “One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it.”
Wilkinson was writing about S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon.
Andrée and the two other members of his expedition crashed and then lived on the ice for another three months, before they died in some way that’s still a mystery. It was 33 years before the bodies were found, so it’s not as bad as all of that here, I took that picture and went back inside, but still.
It kept snowing.
So I worked in the garage. And I turned my hand sander into a mounted tool. I just cut out a hole in a box and wedged the sander in there:
It worked really well. I could move a piece of wood around the belt rather than the sander over the wood. So I guess I’ll need to build a more permanent version of this one day.
It let me sand this piece into something approaching an even roundness:
I’m making a gift for someone. And I took a bit of scrap pine:
And cut, and sanded, it down to this:
Its a book holder out of a bit of scrap wood. It helps prevent hand strain and keeps the book from closing up on you. Works pretty well, but the thumb hole is too big. That’s why you make prototypes.
Al Green-Love & Happiness, Tired of Being Alone
Sam Cooke-Chain Gang
Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell-Your Precious Love pic.twitter.com/vgVizw45Jm
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) March 27, 2018
