Did your Traditional knife get a workout today? -Part II

🤣🤣
I was awake and out of the house when it went off. My daughter called in a panic about it and I rushed home. It looked like a malfunction because the beeps and lights were more or less random, but I didn’t know if the battery might have drained from having gone off properly earlier when I wasn’t home.

I checked that the water heater was drafting properly (it was), and the furnace will shut itself off if there is a backdraft I think, but for peace of mind I offered to stay up and go to the hardware store when it opened at 6.

Luckily my daughter used her google-fu to determine that our local 24-hour pharmacy had CO detectors, so I got one there (for just $10 more than the hardware store price - not bad!).

The unit had a sealed non-replaceable “10 year” lithium battery 😒
J Just Tom.

Hope the detector hasn’t been sitting on the shelf for 9 1/2 years 🤣

Our smoke detector goes off every time my daughter takes a hot shower and leaves the door cracked open to let the steam clear up.

My wife or I usually stand under it with a towel to fan the steam away lol.
 
Since my neighbor cut down all his trees for some reason, I now have plenty of sun for a small garden. My daughter and I dug it yesterday. This afternoon, the Opinel sliced through plastic mesh and anti-weed fabric with almost no resistance.

Hopefully the deer and squirrels take pity on me and don’t eat absolutely everything.
 
More gardening today. I cut a bunch of sticks into pegs to hold down the anti-weed fabric before covering it in mulch, cut a few small tree roots, cut the plastic wrap off the roll of fencing, and some other stuff. It’s a terrible knife but I don’t mind getting dirt and grit all in it, and I can just wash it in the sink when I am done.
 
😁

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I did a little impromptu weeding with the awl. I'll be better prepared tomorrow.
[thumb stud]
Greensleeves did some pizza work recently. I'll be better prepared for the church meeting tonight.
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Farmhouse trapper unpacked my new multi-function crutch today. The stick/stool might go back. I don't like the way the seat flexes.
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The stick/stool went back. It was also too short to reach the ground as a stick, and as a seat it was a pretty small and distant target for somebody who bought it because of dizzy spells.
I used the wharnie on a dumpster load of cardboard and the clip on apple tree suckers. Quite the Renaissance guy.
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“Broke down” a cardboard box with my latest acquisition today - something which seems to be a popular activity around here but which I rarely do, for a variety of reasons:
  • I don’t often buy things that come in big boxes.
  • I have a huge recycling bin, so I can usually just mash boxes flat with my foot and jam them in.
  • I remember my dad telling me probably 45 years ago to avoid using my pocket knife to cut cardboard, because it would make it dull.

Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t have done better in life if I had listened to what my mother always used to say instead.
When I have to 'break down boxes' I want to use a Modern with a lock, beater work for ugly tools :D But stomping usually does the trick;)

The paradox is that cardboard does dull carbon knives in particular, fast but a small piece of it is a EXCELLENT strop to get it back in shape, fast.
 
Punched a bunch of starter holes in the corrugated plastic sheets I lined the inside of my awning with, and trimmed bits off the plastic as needed.

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Not the prettiest effort, but no amount of paint was going to make the corroded sheet metal look good, and I am not ready to build a whole new porch just yet. A little paint over the screws and on the remaining exposed portions of the awning should help distract from the shoddy workmanship.

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I made the roof racks Friday night. Used a drawknife, plane, and some chisels, but alas could find no need for my pocket knife.

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Edit to add:
The awning is 8x16 feet, so this was no small task. It also bowed out 3” or so in the middle which made getting everything to line up a nightmare :mad:
 
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