This story concerns war and death, if you want to avoid those kinds of things.
I was 18 years old. I was an Infantryman in the US Army and had been in Afghanistan for a few months, when my platoon responded to an IED strike on another platoon in my company, while they were doing a dismounted patrol.
A guy riding a donkey laden with explosives made his way to the center of their staggered column formation (effectively two spaced out lines on opposite sides of the street), before detonating the explosives. It was particularly effective, because walls on either side forced the column in tighter than normal.
This point begins my memories, which are mostly a disjointed collection of visual snapshots.
The first thing I remember is the smell, which I can't accurately describe, but burned meat, chemicals, and some kind of feces is the closest I can get. It is easily the clearest part of the memory.
The next thing I remember is seeing the severed foot of the man responsible laying in the middle of the road and my immediate and overwhelming impulse was to kick it, since it was the only tangible evidence of a 'responsible' party. There were also two generally recognizable bodies in the ditch, as well as several casualties receiving medical care.
From this point it is a series of vignettes. One, I was setting down my radio pack and very clearly telling the lieutenant where it was, since the medics needed extra hands. Another is seeing one of the casualties smoking a cigarette. The last, and clearest visual memory was holding the hand of one of the casualties as we waited for the medevac bird, and trying to keep the mood light be telling him "hey, at least you don't have to walk back to base". I have no clue if he responded.
I have absolutely no memories following that day, for probably months, until another, somewhat less traumatic situation took place.
But yeah, that is the day that pretty much all of my emotions died. On my wedding day, I felt just a flicker of happiness. The only emotion I feel with any intensity whatsoever is occasionally anger.
That's about all, I'm willing to answer questions of anyone is curious.
I've been waiting so patiently all year, hoping the plant in my backyard was butterfly weed. It probably isn't, but I found this little guy in my front yard a couple days ago!
I love The Oatmeal, but yeah, this one's a miss
I've got my work cut out for me, there's a decent amount of flattening needed on a few strips, and the planer I have access to is abut rough around the edges, so not all the joints are perfect, but it's alright overall.
Once it's flattened and cleaned up, the remaining aesthetic flourishes are to use walnut/sapele to put an edge around it or just cap the ends, then ease the edges and router handles into the ends. I was looking at the boos block website, and they offer the option to put the finger grooves in the middle or in the bottom edge and I really like the functionality of having them on the bottom
First off, boy did I underestimate how much wood a butcher block cutting board this size (approx. 15×20×2) would end up using.
The joints also aren't perfect, but I don't have the time or energy for perfection at the moment, this one is kind of a functional proof of concept. I'm going to give it to a friend of mine, but I've been upfront that it will not be perfect.
The next one, that will be made from the same beam, but MUCH cleaner, straighter-grained wood, will be more precise, more consistent color, probably marginally stronger because of the grain, just better in every way
But this only took two days and like three hours of work to go from a massive, rough-cut hunk of maple to this, so I'm pleased with it
I don't think I'm describing my question clearly. I'm imagining a 2" thick cutting board made up of 4, 6"×12" end grain slices from the beam.
Every end grain cutting board I've ever seen is comprised of many individual pieces from like .5"×.5" up to like 2"×2" at the largest.
Is checking the only risk from using very large pieces, like I want to?
So I just picked up this 12"×6"×10' maple beam at an auction today and had to chop off two feet of it to fit it in my car. I'm thinking of making a couple end-grain carving boards for friends with what was cut off.
I'm tentatively thinking of just slicing it into 2" cookies and gluing them together, but I've never seen a cutting board like this that wasn't a collection of like 1" pieces glued together. Is there any reason not to use larger pieces when gluing up a cutting board? Thanks in advance
Ohhhhhh the bernoulli effect?
Why so far from the window?
Another point of pride I forgot to mention, this was an impulse project, so I didn't have a plan, just kinda fumbled my way through it, making decisions as necessary. I'm especially pleased with the taper on the legs, think that adds a bit of grace to an otherwise chunky table
This is my first piece of furniture with hand-cut mortise-and-tenon joinery. It's far from perfect, but I managed to hide most of the imperfections inside the frame.
I finished it with 50/50 beeswax and mineral oil.
I think the table top and long aprons are cherry, with two strips of what may be oak in the table top? It was in the miscellaneous pile at my community workshop, so your guys is as good as mine. The legs and short apron are sapele, which is probably my favorite wood when it's finished, it's unbelievably lustrous in person.
Happy to answer an questions, otherwise, I just wanted to share the first thing I've ever made that I didn't finish and immediately tear apart all the mistakes I made, I'm genuinely pleased with this one!
A little carpet adhesive, a few staples, a handful of small brackets, and it's almost complete! Overall, it's solid as a rock and has enough mass to keep it stable without anchoring it to any walls.
Only things left are a ramp from ground level to the second story across the front and potentially a hammock somewhere(I'm struggling to see where i could put one without compromising some other useful part of the tree).
Thoughts are welcome!
Dr. Disrespect, there was a couple year period where the insane, over-the-top masculinity shtick was entertaining to me. Eventually I drifted away from the games that brought me to him in the first place.
Very recently, news broke that he had sexually explicit conversations with a minor on twitch.
I didn't really plan it, so sequencing building the frame vs attaching the carpet was a little annoying, but overall not bad at all.
This isn't the first one I've made for them, but I used spray adhesive on the first, which wasn't nearly effective enough. This time I used carpet adhesive, which was more cost effective and seems to be much more effective. Downside to that, though is that I had to wait 24 hours after carpeting a piece to attach it
None of our numerous store-bought cat trees were ever large enough for our 16lb boy, so I grabbed an old area rug and plywood scraps I had and took matters into my own hands.
It's about 70% compete, I'm gonna add at least a platform on top of the post, and my partner wanted a cat hammock, so I gotta figure out where/how to incorporate that.
Lemmy know what you think!
I've been hoping all year that this plant was going to be a huge, beautiful butterfly weed bunch, but after seeing actual butterfly weed on a field trip for my field botany class, this doesn't appear to be butterfly weed after all.
Any ideas what it is?
I posted a couple days ago, but in the interim my yarrow, black-eyed susans, and wild bergamot went wild!
The excess allowed me to make a bouquet for my wife with some stragglers.
I got pollinator seed packs from the Tennessee Environmental Council a while back, they seem to be doing the trick now.
I need to figure out how to trim them effectively, to keep them from toppling over, but aside from that I think this is a great first year!
Not many wood bridges around these days, happy to see this one in small town USA
The withdrawal from Afghanistan is the the most genuine "the buck stops here", that I can remember. He ripped off the bandaid and it was the right call