Clocks

Hello, again!

    Today, I'll go into a small discourse on our clock production.  We have a wide variety of styles and sizes, ranging from very modern to classical, and from small desk-top mini clocks and executive pen sets, all the way up to grandmother curio-cabinet clocks.

   We manufacture all of the wood components ourselves, starting with the raw wood, as described in yesterday's post.  The only purchased parts are the clock motors, faces and bezels themselves, glass, mirrors and pen accessories.

  We have (or rather, my husband's family, years back) designed all of the styles ourselves.  Hubby and I do come up with our own new ideas, as well. 

   When available, we like to incorporate as much recycled material as possible.  This is usually with glass or mirror components found on our classical-styled wall clocks and our curio cabinet clocks. 

    Sometimes we are lucky enough to find used wood.  99% of the time, we prefer to use hardwoods, but now and then, an opportunity comes up that is too good to pass up.  This happened recently, when someone was replacing a fence, and we were able to salvage the old redwood fence boards.  Redwood is very soft--you can gouge it with your fingernail, but it does come up a very beautiful color, all on its own with no stain needed.

    All we have to do is go over each board VERY carefully and throughly with both a visual inspection and a magnet, to find and remove any stray nails, screws or staples that could damage the tools (or us!).  Once that is done, we proceed to run it through the planer to smooth out the boards, and restore them to 'like new' appearance....just as if we were starting with raw, new wood, as per yesterday's post.

   In the back of my mind, I am designing some new ideas that will combine our clocks with our ceramics, for a whole new approach and product.  I already have one of these in production;  you may have seen it on my Etsy store site.  (I've provided this link to the listing, because I cannot find the original photo.  I'll have to re-take it.  Curses!)

  More designs are still "cooking."  Keep your eyes peeled!
 


  
  

  

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to one and all.   For those of us who celebrate the Winter Solstice as the turning of the year, it has already been the new year for a week and 4 days.  ;-)  Nonetheless, since I closed out for 2009 in my last post, I'll start this next one on the "traditional" New Year's Day.  It is my wish that everyone is safe and well, and not suffering overly much from too much partying last night! ;-)

And now, on with the blog:


THE WOODWORKING SIDE OF THINGS:

My wonderful and uber-talented husband is a master woodworker, and loves working with wood and making things with his hands.  Together, we make hand-crafted hardwood clocks. I am hubby's apprentice, and I am learning how to make the clocks, but I am so far behind that I don't think I'll ever catch up: he's got too many years head-start because this was a family business of his late step-dad. We bought the business when his health went south, and he could no longer do the work. That is why hubby has so many years up on me...he worked in the family business since he was in his 20's!


My lack of experience notwithstanding, I do enjoy woodworking, and I love the smell of the wood as its being worked; splinters, not so much, but it happens...'occupational hazard.'   [ I remember years back, before I met my current hubby, a friend of the family worked for a cabinet maker.  He got a nasty sliver at work, and was picking it out.  The (mean, nasty) boss came by and said, "Got a sliver?  Put a circle around it, and take it out on your own time!"  How very rude!  I would have said, "Why?  I got it on company time!" ]

We will use oak, maple, walnut or cherry woods, but oak is our favorite. It has a pleasing grain and accepts stains nicely. If you look at a piece of oak furniture, and compare it to the raw wood, you might be very, very surprised to learn that the color you think of as 'oak' is actually an applied stain. The wood itself is very much lighter in color. (See photo, below.)

  Raw (Red) Oak                                   Stained Oak

On the left, above, the actual color of the wood; and on the right, the usual "oak" color most people think of.  This is a stain color called "Golden Oak" in the brand we use.  I have noted the raw wood as 'red,' because oak comes in both red and white varieties.  The white oak is even lighter, almost like maple, but we don't use it much, as it is very difficult to work with, which in turn raises our cost on the finished product.

There are certain woods that, while they are beautiful, we don't use much for any number of reasons.  First, we try very hard, when possible, to use recycled/salvaged wood to save on resources.  We absolutely avoid buying wood from clear-cutting operations, and will use only farmed woods from sustainable operations whenever possible.  This eliminates many of the exotic hardwoods like zebra or koa wood from our available stock.

When the exotic woods can be found as farmed wood, they are usually very, very expensive, so that is another 'stopper.'  Sometimes, we can find small pieces in the 'scrap' bin at our supplier's, and these we craft into either smaller items, or use as accent laminations.

Another of the main reasons for not using much in the way of some exotics such as bloodwood is simply the wear and tear on the tools.  Bloodwood is so hard, it is almost like cutting a rock, when it comes to what it does to the saw blade.  One or two passes through, and you're done:  time to have the blade sharpened!   After that, if you persist, you will be burning your way through from the friction of the blade's rotation, more than cutting.  Not only is this hard on the saw blade and its motor--it is dangerous.  The blade can easily bind and cause the wood to break and/or be thrown, or, worse, catch fire!

We like to buy raw lumber, in inch-thick sections, called '4-quarter stock' in the lumber industry.  (Don't ask me why--I've no idea why they would use the 4-quarters of an inch measure instead of just saying 1 inch!)  There is also 1-1/4 inch thick wood we can sometimes get.. called, you guessed it.... '5-quarter stock'!! (** Check out this post on another blog for that author's take on silly ways to measure things: http://straythoughtsonaleash.blogspot.com/2007/08/silly-counting.html**)  At that, it is 'nominally' those measures--meaning, they got it close, but not exact.  This raw lumber is as it came in from the original mill.  It has been cut into boards,  but is of random lengths and widths, and still rough--not planed or sanded at all. 




We select what projects we want, and from there, cut the wood into the lenghts and widths we need, then run it through our planer to pare it down to the exact thickness desired, and do a preliminary smoothing.  (Actually reverse that--it goes through the planer first--easier and safer to feed large boards than small pieces!)  This is an operation that creates a lot of shavings!  By 'a lot,' I mean that if we are running say, 20 boards through, it takes several passes on each board, as you cannot take too large a 'bite' at one pass.  One person feeds the lumber in, and another 'catches' or pulls it on the outfeed side.  Guess which end I get:  Right!  Guess on which end the shavings end up?  Right, again!  More than once, I"ve found myself nearly knee-deep in wood shavings from this proceedure! 


Tomorrow, I'll go into some of our actual crafting operations, and design inspirations.


Until then, Cheers!

Winter is Upon Us

     Yesterday (Monday the 21st), was the WInter Solstice:  the shortest day of the year.  From here on out, the days begin to lengthen again, so in a very real sense, Solstice, and not January 1st, marks the 'beginning of the New Year'. 

     I had planned a nice little Solstice celebration, complete with burning a small Yule log in our portable firepit, but the weather had other ideas:  it rained!  Fine!  So I came inside, and turned on my battery-operated, cat-safe "candle," and drank a glass of egg nog.  Gotta be flexible!

     As the year winds down, and we all reflect on where we've been and where we're going, I thought I'd finish my blogging for the year with some stray thoughts to clean up some mental 'loose ends' as it were...enjoy my rambling nonsense:

     It occurs to me that every time I think of some new trend in inventions, someone beats me to it--probably because I don't have the means (or know-how, in many cases) to design and create a prototype, and finagle my way through the legal hurdles of copyrighting said idea.  None of these things have anything to do with crafting, so I present them here simply as entertainment.

      I do follow auto circles to some extent, and I enjoy watching races.  I've also followed the development of solar, and seen the very bulky solar-powered cars that race through the Australian outback.  The biggest drawback to solar always seems to have been the inordinate weight imposed by all the battery packs required.

     My thought, going back several years, has always been, "Why not have the photo-voltaic solar cells just drive the motor directly, and eliminate any need for batteries?!"  Lo and behold, on TV yesterday, there it was!  My idea, come to fruition!  Oh, man!  (Slaps self on forehead.)

     One of my previous such frustrations includes, "If we can put men in space, and return them to earth without being 'cooked' on re-entry, then why can't we make a toaster that doesn't get hot on the outside?!"  Sure enough, a few years later, there they were:  cool-touch toasters!

     I'm going to stop voicing my ideas--someone must be stealing them!  ;-)

     Next, I'm going to actually invent something for my cats.  Purrhaps it will let me reclaim my bed at night!  Hee hee hee...oh, I forgot:  the cats allow us to share their bed!

***

     I have the solution to the country's economic mess:  just print more money, and pass it around!  Hee hee!  Our money isn't backed by the silver standard anymore.  It really is not worth much more than the paper on which it's printed.

     So, just print up a cool million for every citizen over the age of 18, and they will all go out and buy stuff, or pay off bills, and the economy will be all better!

(Well, I can dream, can't I?--I warned you, today's blog was for entertainment purposes.  Please don't take me seriously today!)

     Hmm..you know, it's not just the end of a year, but the end of a decade. We're now all 10 years older! HA! I just had to bring that up, didn't I?!  (Ducking)

     In one of my modes, I am a stand-up comic:  I used to belong to a comdey improvisation troupe.  If you have ever watched "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" on TV's Comedy Channel, you've seen the kind of thing I was into.  In fact, I'll tell you a little secret, here.  "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" actually began as my stage name!  I liked it, and decided to keep it as my online personna.

     Sadly, there is no such group where I now live, and I miss it greatly.  It was a lot of fun...and sometimes, I just run in that mode, and my online friends and acquaintances reap the "benefits."  Some of them may not realize I'm just being a wiseass...a professional wiseass, at that.  ;-)

***

     And with that, I'll close out this blog for 2009.   May you all have a very Happy Holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and a prosperous New Year!

More reasons why about yesterday's post

Yesterday I made a strong case against "Black Friday."  Today, I offer these links, the first one is within Etsy.com's "Storque" blog..and yes, you can read it without having an account...I signed myself out to check... and the second is a link to the page explaining the entire project.

This is about shopping locally, at small independent stores, instead of at big-box chains, which, in spite of people's arguments about "how many jobs they provide," actually do more harm than good to our economy.  This is about bringing production of goods back onto our own shores, and thereby saving and making thousands more jobs than would be lost by loosing the 'big box' stores. 

Read on:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/craftivism/new-rules-support-your-local-economy-6092/

http://www.newrules.org/

Cheers!

Black Friday--Please Boycott!!

Today's post is simply intended to plead with all holiday shoppers to not patronize brick-and-mortar stores on so-called 'Black Friday.'

It is an unfortunate tradition that is very disruptive to families' holiday celebrations.  If really feel you must shop that day, please shop online only!

I was just going to post a link to my Face Book page, so everyone could read what I wrote in detail, but I then realized that not everyone who may read this blog is a Face Book friend, and so would be unable to read it.  Thus, I've just copied/pasted that text here:

****************

Ok, people. Here it is: it's far past time to kill he over-hyped, over-priced, obsessive consumer shopping monster that has this country in its grip!


Here are TWO websites to help in this endeavor:

http://www.adbusters.org. and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day


I have been annoyed in the extreme with corporate 'rushing of the season' for many, many years. This year, however, came the straw that broke the camel's back--and I'm GOING TO NAME (corporate) NAMES!!


KOHL'S is REQUIRING ALL of its employees to work on so-called "Black" Friday. That's bad enough, that they (and all other brick-and-mortar retailers) are SO greedy that they cannot even allow thier employees to have the entire Thanksgiving weekend holiday in peace and quiet with THEIR families.

 No, they have to take it a step further, and open the freaking store at FOUR A.M.!! I'm sorry, but NO ONE needs to be shopping already at THAT hour! It's the middle of the danged night for pete sakes!! If anyone seriously has to shop (doubtful) on THAT day... they can surely do it just as well during the store's normal operating hours!

 This means that every single person who insists on going shopping that day is RUINING SOMEONE ELSE'S HOLIDAY!! There is no more plain and simple way to put it than that.

FURTHERMORE--there is a ripple effect...for many families, this means curtailing or cutting short their own holiday plans to accomodate the outrageous, obscene work schedule of the retail employee in the family. My own plans have been affected, even though my kids are adults with their own families. However, my husband and I are spending the holiday with HIS mother this year--3.5 hours from home. We won't be home till Sunday. Ergo, I need someone to care for my pets, and administer meds ON SCHEDULE to one of them.



Thanks to KOHL's extreme family UN-friendly policies, my daughter will now NOT be available at the appropriate times to do this....forcing us to seriously impinge on and alter our own plans. She is the best (and really only) option for this; she lives near, our animals know her, and she knows their routine. (And no, I cannot afford to have them boarded, so don't even go there! )
You'd better believe I just sent a scathing e-mail letter off to KOHL's corporate! I even told them that I was struggling to maintain civility as in truth, I had NOTHING ladylike to say about the matter.



WHY NOT just start the shopping season on Monday? Let FAMILIES have thier 4-day Thanksgiving weekend. In my opinion, anyone who thinks it is that necessary to go shopping that early should be taken out to a field and horse-whipped! That is unbridled consumerism at its very worst, and about as necessary as watering the lawn in a rainstorm!


GET A GRIP, people! STAY HOME!! BOYCOTT BLACK FRIDAY!! HAVE SOME RESPECT FOR THE STORE'S EMPLOYEES! LET'S KILL THIS MONSTROUS TRADITION THIS YEAR!

PLEASE RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE AND EVERYWEHRE YOU CAN--BLOGS, YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE, TWITTER, CHAT ROOMS YOU ATTEND...WHERE EVER! LET'S PUT A STOP TO THIS CRAZY NONSENSE FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL!!
 
Thank you!!

A Not Altogether Wasted Monday...

I finally finished my kitty cat coasters, and by the skin of my teeth, at that.  I ran out of sealer spray just as I finished the backside of the last one!  WHEW!

Here's how they came out: 

     As you can see, I went ahead and did mixed sets.  Even though my poll is not expired, it was running 50-50 between all one color and mixed sets.  I am on the hunt for more of this thin pine, and when I find some, I'll add some single-color sets to the offerings.

    If anyone of my readers KNOWS of a source for this very thin knotty pine (originally used as packing material), within a20-mile radius of my location in the far eastern side of Contra Costa County, California, please let me know!

    I'm fairly pleased, but there were a few minor issues with the paint and the wood grain.  It happens.  Not a lot can be done about it, but, after all...minor imperfections are all part of  100% hand-made items.  It proves no robots or other fancy machinery went into the manufacture!

    Next, I have to spray the new mousie ornaments I've finished...but that will involve going and buying more sealer first.  Ahh... interruptions..gotta love 'em! Good excuse to stop by Peet's for a mocha???  (hee hee hee.)  Actually, had to go out anyway--stop by P.O. and ship out an order; go to bank; might as well pick up the spray while I'm out and about.  And in reality, I guess I don't really get to go to Peet's, as it's 3 miles in the opposite direction from my main errands.  Oh, well, was fun thinking about it.  LOL

    That's that for today.  Back to work and off to errands!

Cheers!

  

Finishing up

Good Morning. 


   At least I think it still qualifies as morning...that's an unusual phrase for me to use.  LOL  Actually, it is 10:30, I just got up about 45 minutes ago from a delightful Sunday sleep-in, and I'm still in 'waking up and becoming functional' mode. 


   I worked out in the studio until after 10 last night, finishing up several of my mouse ornaments.  They will be ready for their photographs today.  I also finished 3 sets of the kitty-cat coasters, and they will receive their sealer coats today, then be photographed.


    As of this moment, I have made 3 sets of 4 in assorted kitty colors...and am now all out of the recycled wood I was using.  So far, I have had no luck in tracking down a new source of this same kind of wood.  It seems that things are now packed exclusively in cardboard or wrapped in paper, and not protected by thin wood.  The hunt goes on.

***************************

  Okay--started post this a.m., put it on hold ... it is now 3:30 p.m., and I've finally finished all I can do for today out in the studio.  The mice are finished...got the antiquing done.. now they must dry 24 hrs. before I can spray the sealer, and THEN, several hours later, they will finally be ready for photos...so, I was considerably ahead of myself this morning.  (Overeager to be done?)  See?  Told you I'm not a morning person.  Brain does not work well before noon.  LOL

   While there is much more that I could be working on out there, I've had to quit for the day, as the antiquing process involves some pretty heavy fumes, (from the solvent used to wipe back the antiquing...sort of like a paint thinner kind of smell), and I was getting a headache.  So I picked up all my paints, to get ready for tomorrow, when our 'regular' business partners will be here to work, and I can't have my painting stuff in the way.

   In fact, I still smell it, so some must have gotten onto my sweatshirt...I must conclude this blog and go put the shirt outside to air out! 

   However, my new mice and coasters should be up sometime this week, so keep watching!

Cheers!
 

The Year is Flying By...

Holey Smokes! Can you believe it's already November???? Every year about this time, I ask, "WHO put grease on the calendar?!" No one ever 'fesses up, though. Sigh.  Must be that "Murphy" guy!  LOL




.......and here we are, already into the second week of November!  Yow!  Well, folks, I've finally found my missing stencils, so I can now get back to work making more of my recycled wood coasters.  Woo Hoo!


   Here are a couple of photos of ones already  made:
                                                 

These are square, irregular thickness pieces of knotty pine, salvaged from packing material.  Go green!  ;-)

I also plan to offer some with kitty-cats.  The one pictured below is but a single one that is a prototype. 

 Please visit the poll in the sidebar at top right, and help me choose which color kitties would be most popular for the new coasters!  ;-)  I'm sure I'll do at least a few of each, but having an idea of which color should be the highest quantity would be helpful.  Thank you!

Halloween and Fall Thoughts

     Happy Halloween, or Happy Samhain, whichever it may be for you!

     While I am not so fond of the end of summer and the coming of cold weather, I have always liked Halloween.  It is and always has been my favorite holiday, as it sparks my creativity, and I can let my imagination run wild to create whatever quirky ideas may come forth.  I'm not into the Hollywood version of guts and gore, but I do enjoy the creation of  spooky and mildly to moderately scary scenes.  I was for a few years, involved in the production of a Haunted Theater back in the day. 

    We members of the  Pacifica Spindrift Players  had decided that "everyone and his brother" does a haunted house theme...but we...well, we are a theater group, and we have a perfectly good theater...so what else to do  but created a haunted theater?!  I was involved for the first three years of this production, prior to moving from the area.  It ranked among the most fun things I've done in my life. (While I've provided a link to that group, sadly, it does not seem that the haunted theater is being done anymore.)

      Carving pumpkins, painting my Halloween ceramics, helping my daughter decorate her house for Halloween  (no kids on our street), all are things that occupy my thoughts at this time of year.  Baking?  Eh...not so much.   I did more than my share back when my kids were young, and cooking is not one of my favorite things to do.   That said, I do have a good stock of holiday recipes upon which I can rely when the budget gets too tight to shop for gifts...definitely the case this season!

     Holiday cards...I'm going to 'mail' all my holiday greetings via e-mail this year.  That will be both budget-friendly and eco-friendly,  saving both postage and paper!  Only a few people who either do not have internet access, or whose e-mail addresses I do not have, will be sent paper greetings through the Postal Service.

    Gift wrapping this year?   Use up any leftovers of purchased wrap I already have.  When that runs out, I'll go to plain white tissue paper, and/or recycled brown paper bags.  Gift tags?  Handmade from holiday cards received in prior years. 

    Although I am a California native, my parents were New Englanders.  They also lived through the Great Depression of 1929.   Hence, I was raised with the frugal Yankee values of, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."  This was instilled in me from childhood, and explains why, when I was home sick from school one day, I shed oceans of tears over the 'terrible waste of food,' when my mom had gone to the store for cough medicine for me, and a few small grocery items. 

     Mom did not drive, and the little store was only a block away.  However, it was pouring rain that day, and by the time she got a few doors from home on her return, the paper sack had become so waterlogged that it broke.  All the groceries fell out onto the sidewalk.  The bottle of orange juice smashed, as did the bottle of cough syrup.  Mom scooped up as much as she could, and ran to put it on our front steps, which were sheltered from the weather.  Then she ran back, and got as much of the rest as she could.  As it happened, the loaf of bread ended up on the step below the broken bottle of cough syrup.  Given that the medicine was inside a box, the broken glass was contained, but the liquid seeped out of the box, and dripped down onto the bread.  You must realize this was before bread was packed in plastic bags--the packaging was cellophane--easily torn, and not liquid-tight by any means.

     Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the cough syrup that was branded as "Pertussin";  that's what she had purchased.  If you don't know what it is, the smell is something on the order of turkey stuffing, as it has a good deal of the herb thyme as part of the ingredients.  There sat the loaf of bread, soaking up 'eau du thyme,'  while my 10-year-old self wailed from the top of the stairs about the waste, the terrible waste. 

     Mother, needless to say, was annoyed on a number of levels.  She salvaged what she could, grabbed a broom to sweep the broken orange juice bottle from in front of the neighbor's house, and prepared to return to the store to replace what had been lost.  (I think maybe she waited for a break in the weather...that part of the story is less strong in my memory.)

    That was a bit of a long-way-around of stating that I am no stranger to 'green' and 'eco-friendly' habits.  It's always been just something I do.  Only nowadays, it seems to have evolved into a fad and a buzz-word.  That concerns me, as fads are all too often passing fancies that do not stay around.  With many fads, that is just as well.  But when it comes to responsible husbandry of this rock on which we all live, a 'passing fancy' is not okay.

    Cheers and may you all have a bountiful, wonderful and safe holiday season.

Winter Is A-Cumin' In....

   The first signs of cold weather are here.  While we have mostly either evergreen trees, or those that loose their leaves without first turning color, there are other signs that the season is turning.  For one thing, we've had our first big rainstorm, and then this week, two days in a row of howling winds, with gusts strong enough to do serious damage to trees, and even to the landmark San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

   Cooler weather, however, severely impacts the ceramics business.  For one thing, the ceramic clay itself is much slower to 'set up' in the molds, and when it has set up and the excess dumped out, it takes much longer for the piece to become solid enough to remove from the molds.

  On the painting end, the paint is much slower to dry, and glaze, especially, takes 'forever' to dry in cool weather.  I've had to resort to turning on the space heater in my studio today, and I hate doing that, because they make the electric meter spin like a doggoned helicopter!

    The pumpkins have been out in the stores for a week or two now;  Halloween costumes, too.  Another sign of Fall is the ripening of the pomegranates on our tree.  Now, I am 'sure' there is something useful to do with pomegranates besides eating them.  (Funny, don't you think, how things you loved as a kid don't seem so appealing to your adult self?)  I used to love pomegranates.  Now, not so much. 

  Perhaps something to do with getting sick on the undiluted juice that was just sicky-sweet?    So much for attempting juice-making with them.  I think maybe they used to also be used as dye for yarn or fabric, but since I neither spin yarn nor do weaving, that option is out. 

   A whole treefull of beautiful red fruits, threatened with the green waste bin.  No, no!  My Yankee-bred conscience won't allow that!  Think!   Aha!  Solution:  pick them, and donate to the after-school program at the karate school.  Problem solved!  (And they were very grateful!)

   My thoughts turn belatedly to crafting Fall decor for Halloween and Thanksgiving.   Something inside me just refuses to experience or prepare for a season months ahead of time...doing that finds me burned out by the time the actual holiday arrives. 

  I get disgusted beyond polite words at seeing Christmas items out on display in the stores already!  It is just not right!  Let Halloween and Thanksgiving have their fair share of time on the calendar, please.  October is for Halloween; November is for Thanksgiving.  I do not care to see Christmas displays prior to December 1st.  (Okay, okay, the day after Thanksgiving if you must!)  Who's with me?
  

    And now, I must return to my studio to finish that stubborn slow-drying glaze!  Cheerio!