The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey February 7, 2016

7 February 2016

I see that I missed y'all last week. No particular reason, at first, I was just busy. But as I broke into the last week, a strong cold hit me like a tonne of bricks, then morphed into the flu. Today was my first properly upright day since Tuesday last. I'm gonna have to talk to the doc about this shizzle at my next physical (a couple of months 0ff). After a good couple of years, I've been running into a bad stretch of health, and I can't figure why. Oh, well. Life goes on, until it doesn't. * *…

Brian Bilbrey January 25, 2016

25 Jan 2016

Snowzilla, revisited. Here's the "view" of the mailbox on sunny Sunday morning at 10° F, 12 hours after the storm ended. The driveway and sidewalk I'd cleared out had refilled pretty well: After Snowzilla

Brian Bilbrey January 24, 2016

24 Jan 2016

"Snowzilla" - that's the name some of the local weather liars gave to this storm, and it was a doozy! The closest local airport to us, BWI, had record snowfall of 29+". I'd say that here, we got a total of 22", probably a bit more. Hard to tell more precisely than that because of drifts and wind. Here's the view out our garage door Saturday morning around 0900 EST: I measured 14" accumulated in the middle of the driveway. That drift next to the door was about 3' high. I cleared the driveway and the sidewalks once on Saturday.

Brian Bilbrey January 17, 2016

17 Jan 2016

The hickory gel stain was curing on the yet-to-be-assembled pieces of Marcia's new quilt ladder at the end of last week's cliff hanger episode. (Vendor and product names property of their respective owners, duh!) Here's the rest of the story, in pictures: The glue-up was straighforward. A dollop of glue (Titebond III) in each dowel socket, a bit of assembly, and a bunch of clamps. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to back up the glue with a #6 x 1-5/8" finish trim screw through the rail into the end of each dowel. Some fastening is good,…

Brian Bilbrey January 10, 2016

10 Jan 2016

A full work week to start the new year, and things are going well. I've lots on my plate, which is a good thing. Interesting new projects combine with ongoing operations to make my working days exactly as I like them. * * * On the home front, I've been working on building Marcia a quilt ladder, which she's been wanting for years now. I'm fabricating it out of shop scraps and 1-1/8" dowels. Here's the fit assembly, before I started on the finishing: All of the material is pine, so after the fit assembly looked fine, I took it…