Japanese saws– salvage the junk

 

One of my new favorite saws is an old piece of junk.

 

 

Found in a water filled wooden tray, out in the wilds of Hawaii, it had some unusual company. A good (albeit rusty) saw set, a pre-1917 Disston keyhole saw, a 1950-ish rip kataba Z-saw (stamped Honolulu), and a weird Swiss-army saw/multi blade thing, among other stuff.

 

 

Well, I cleaned off some of the rust and it's not so bad really.

 

 

It's no work of art, just a tool, but I'm liking it a lot more than I had expected. As a "cut down anything then forget it outside in the rain" kind of tool, it excels. I've found that it holds a good edge, and the spring and temper was well done. It had no kinks when I found it, and we haven't introduced any new ones, despite our best efforts. The saw back is taper ground to a knife edge, so much so that I can use it as a machete for thick grassy stems. It has proven itself to be deceptively capable.

 

 

As is expected, it could do with some improvement.

 

 

It has probably been sharpened a few times already, but the nib on the nose still stands proud of the teeth. It needs to be made even with the teeth. More importantly, the teeth height is uneven, one side being longer than the other. Whoever was sharpening it had a definite "strong side". I know that because I do, too. Because the teeth are longer on one side, the cut drifts to the longer side, binding the saw at about 2" deep.

 

 

And, as I was saying in the prior post, the saw teeth are still not as clean as they could be. Let's see if I can improve things a bit.

 

Scrape 'em clean.....

 

 

.....then polish 'em up a bit.

 

 

FYI, sandpaper isn't the best way to do this, but if you do, try to rub parallel to the tooth itself. If you rub back and forth, it mostly cuts up the sandpaper and rounds the tooth shape in undesirable ways. Anyways, the sandpaper method didn't totally ruin anything, and may have helped improve the teeth marginally.

 

I use the edge of a really hard oilstone instead. It's WAY better. I just do the minimum required to get the outer face of the tooth bright. No matter which method you choose, this does reduce the amount of set some (x)amount. The less you do, the better.

 

 

Sighting the length of the blade, you can see that the nib at the tail of the saw stands proud as well as a few odd teeth.

 

 

 

 

I joint the saw using a standard western mill file, running the length until I see a bright tip at each tooth.

 

 

I joint at each sharpening, because I'm training myself and my body. If I was REALLY good, I could probably get away with 1 joint/ 3 sharpenings, but what's the harm? You're only going to get better if you work on refinement, and in my head is a picture of a saw with teeth of a perfectly even height, not just "good enough".

 

 

 

 

And what do I get for all my high talk of standards?

 

 

Haha! Missed a big 'ol dip...whoops! I see a bunch of low teeth, mostly on one side, my "strong" side.

 

 

Maybe two. Jeez.....what a hack!

 

 

When I sharpened, I changed the tooth geometry a little bit, but that's for the next post. I've been thinking about and researching saw teeth for nearly two years now, but it's only recently that I've been able to test the saws so rigorously. Living this off-grid, extreme bush lifestyle, I am cutting live wood, green sticks and lumber, lumberyard "dry" Wood, and a fair bit of aged salvage lumber as well. And lots of it.

 

One of our new neighbors kindly offered to bring over his generator and a bunch of saws for me to use, after I told him that I was cutting everything by hand. You try to explain that you are actually enjoying the act of cutting the wood, and anyway, you can't easily cut much of this stuff with power saws and....you get that half perplexed, "huh.... OK, whatever" look. It's good to have such generous neighbors though.

 

 

Even though the tooth height is less than perfect, it still cuts well.

 

 

The cut through this hard (wet) Ohia went faster than you'd think, and the saw tracked straight and true, no binding anymore. I guess that I improved it some.

 

 

The wet wood shows scars easily, but it looks like a couple of teeth are set a tad more than the others. The scars look worse than they are, and I can't feel them by hand, but it's not perfect yet.

 

Because the saw is severely taper ground, it probably had very little set initially, and after a handful of sharpenings, it's probably about ready for asari/setting again. The lack of set, combined with the light weight of the saw has the saw itself riding up at times, meaning that you need to maintain downward pressure as you are using it for a ridiculously deep cut like this. What's happening is that the improved saw teeth are cutting more efficiently and are making more sawdust in the process. The problem is that the teeth are still the same size that they were before, and now the gullets are too small to hold the additional sawdust. The next step for this saw would be to give it some raker teeth and a few deeper gullets, turn it into a little madonoko saw, maybe.

 

This saw is for smaller stuff, like 2" and under, but it's good to have the capability nonetheless. I was felling a couple of 6" guava trees yesterday with this little guy, and it was a bit of a struggle. Why I don't use my chainsaw is a mystery to me. Scares the birds, I suppose.

 

What I really want to write about are teeth. Japanese saw teeth.

 

Posted with Blogsy

How to build a house in Hawaii for next to nothing

 

I'll tell you right up front, it's going to entail a lot of hard work.

 

And it will take time. Not to be coy or anything, but this is inevitably going to be a ridiculously extended series of posts. You gotta start somewhere though, right?

 

 

 

 

This side of the big island is rife with wonderful old houses that have seen better days. Since even before we moved here, it's been my dream to somehow get one of these tumbledown old shacks, dismantle it down to its roots, and salvage all of the materials that I can.

 

 

 

 

See, many of these old houses were made from some nice materials, stuff that is virtually unobtainable today, at least not without selling your child into slavery. Renee says that option is off the table however, so it looks like a-scavenging I will go.

 

 

 

 

A wonderful woman who bought a piece of property a few years back (just outside of Pahoa) had exactly that sort of place, the tumbledown shack. The house was too far gone to be salvaged, so they tore it down, saving and reusing what they could. New construction in Hawaii does not allow for the use of used or salvage materials, but at least they could use some of the old siding lumber to build a fence. They also saved the windows, and that's where I come in.

 

 

 

This is stack of old sash windows, at least 3/4 of which I should be able to make good again. For some inspirational reading, I refer back to a Shinglemaker post a while back, on rejuvenating some of his old Dutch beauties. These windows won't be too terribly different and I'll go into the details of the restoration agonies in a future post.

 

I am pretty excited to begin with the fixing, because it will be a crash course (no pun intended) in how things used to be done. Many of these windows were built the old way, by hand, lots of through tenon, wavy glass, and unfortunately, some termite damage. I'm also looking forward to using the old-school lime/linseed oil putty, something that I've never made or used before, but who's qualities I've heard worshipfull references to for ages.

 

 

So I got all of the old windows, and while I was there, I cleaned up the site a bit, picking up the leftovers that were headed for the burn pile.

 

It took a few trips with my little car, but I've got most of it home now. That's a big pile of old growth redwood siding, totally clear (no knot holes), something that I can't even imagine trying to buy now, just WAY too expensive. Expensive to buy new, but every day tons of this stuff is tossed into the dumpsters island wide. I had been looking for exactly this type of material, to use for building my traditional Japanese forge bellows, the fuigo. Tight CVG redwood was tops on my list of materials to use and.........here it is. Now I just need to pull a bazillion nails and scrape off the old paint.

 

 

 

Also while I was there, the owner brought in a crew to cut down some of the larger nuisance trees that were in the immediate area. Most notably were four smallish Albizia, generally referred to as "That G#*!!!!#%#%*{+}!!!!), and any number of less polite epithets, dependant upon present company. Smallish in size, all four are only about 24" in diameter, which ages them at about 10-15 years old or so. The owners decision to remove them now is a sound one because these trees grow incredibly fast, and though the trees themselves are beautiful, they are also weak and prone to shedding monstrous limbs at the slightest provocation. They call this the "Albizia tree epidemic", and it is a legal liability nightmare.

 

 

The owner had girdled this tree last year, so it has been seasoning for that time, loosing some of its moisture and all of its leaves.

 

 

I asked the tree crew to leave me a good sized section of the main trunk, so that I can try my hand at working with this stuff, cutting planks mostly. The Albizia wood isn't commonly used, and is generally considered to be trash, barely worth even chipping for mulch. People don't even use it for firewood. That sounds about perfect for me, with my penchant for trying to find a better use for everyone else's garbage.

 

The crew left me four trees, about 50' linear feet of 2' diameter logs. That's about the same volume of area as what my car occupies. My arms are feeling bigger already!

 

And.

 

That's just the main stems. There are huge amounts of limbs still laying everywhere. It's funny to me, seeing a 1' diameter limb, 10' long and thinking....ehh, what's the point of cutting that little crap?! And these trees aren't even particularly large. Some of these monsters are closer to 5' diameter.

 

 

Like a fool, I forgot my inkline to mark the initial cut, so I had to eyeball it and was wandering all over the place. Not pretty.

 

 

Pardon the forced perspective, they aren't really as big as they appear. Even after splitting the 12' log, I still had to shorten the lengths to 6' so that I could move them around, much less squeeze them into my poor little car.

 

 

 

Once I got home, I slapped some paint on the endgrain to slow the drying some, try to minimize the checking. I still need to strip the bark, if I hope to save the wood from the beetle larvae.

 

 

Sammy likes them.

 

 

Opening these logs up was like seeing an old friend. I realized that this is most likely the same type of wood that gets used as a lightweight core stock on some of the solid core plywood panels that I've bought in the past. The panel manufacturer rips the core into strips, glues them back together, and finally, glues down an attractive face veneer.

 

 

This log shows rather bland grain, but nothing objectionable. The color is a light tan and cream thankfully, as some of the other stuff that I've seen has a distinct greenish cast to it, green with undertones of mud.....yuck. The fuzzyness that is apparent in places seems to indicate that the grain will be slightly interlocked but again, nothing surprising.

 

My immediate impression of the wood is that it will make for some interesting furniture building, if not the house. The wood is light in weight and considered brittle. It's not rot or insect resistant either, so if we were to use it for building, it would be interior only. I look at the wood and see.....thick tabletop surfaces, or very thin panel stock. I think that this wood has good potential, and it's free for the asking. You could get a mountain of this stuff in days, if you had a loading truck and trailer. I've read technical papers that measured it's overall strength to be somewhat on par with eastern White Pine, which is what got me interested in this lumber in the first place. Let's find a use for this stuff.

 

 

 

One of the many other nuisance trees that were cut, were a handful of Cecropia. I used some of the shorter pieces as sleepers to keep the Albizia off the ground.

 

Growth rings! I haven't seen that in a while.

 

The center pith is hollow with very thin and brittle membranes that divide the length. One of the common names of this plant is "Pump-wood", and it's obvious why. It would be an easy task to push a stick through the divisions, creating a long, hollow tube. That would make for some very rustic plumbing, but sanitation might be questionable.

 

 

It has distinctively radiant, palmate leaves.

 

 

The leaves look a bit similar to the Jamaican castor bean plant, and nearly everyone that I've met has the mistaken impression that it IS the castor bean, but it's not. If you were hoping to make some Ricin, you're SOL......sorry.

 

 

Back to Cecropia obtusifolia .....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/

 

There is some very interesting reading there. Turns out its got a muriad of tradition and modern medical uses, a far more interesting character than just being on the "100 worst invasive plant species" would indicate. In retrospect, it seems like it's often the most prolific and resilient species that have the potential for having interesting qualities. I've always had a sympathy for difficult personalities.

 

The general consensus is that it is a weak and non-durable wood, opportunistic in disturbed areas and it has large, stinky blossoms too. From my limited experience, it feels pretty strong to me, so I'm looking forward to exploring it's potentials in the near future.

 

 

So what has this to do with building cheaply? I guess that it's obvious, but I'm finding that free materials abounds, if you've got the knowledge and energy to invest in the gathering.

 

Oh yeah.....time. This is a huge time element here. You can't just start building tomorrow, you know?

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Finishing up the Japanese style saw vise

 

 

It's about time to finish up this project. The rains have stopped, the rainbows are out, and I've got some saws that are in need of some sharpening. It's time to finish the vise!

 

 

 

I'm great at starting projects, lousy at the finishing stages.. I'm too enthusiastic for my own good.

 

 

 

 

From the previous post, the two halves of the vise have been shaped, now it's time to attach them. This being my first attempt at a Japanese style saw vise, combined with my choice to run the wood grain the "wrong" way, it would be wiser to attach the halves using some means that would let me adjust or separate them when I undoubtedly need to. So, of course I choose the permanent (but much cooler) means of attachment....riveting them.

 

My rivet stock will be some old bent nails that are never in short supply. For the roves, I drill the centers on another thing that is seldom in short supply, pennies.

 

I bore shallow recesses to get everything below the surface. When I do this next time, I will bore less deep or skip the recessed thing entirely. Although it gives a neater finish, when I inevitably need to grind these off later, access will be a bitch.

 

 

The nails are lightly galvanized, but a little phosphoric acid removes that quickly. Jasco Prep&Prime to the rescue!

The zinc galvanizing causes the acid to get all foamy, but the nails are under there. I give it 15 minutes.

 

 

The reason for removing the galvanized coating is that I want the nails in as soft a state as possible before peening, so I need to anneal the metal first. Burning off the galvanizing works great, but also causes the formation of nasty gasses that can cause brain damage/kill you/etc. I'm challenged enough as it is, so prudence prevails. I don't get to say that very often.

 

 

A propane torch, get 'em red hot, then let things cool, the slower the better.

I thought that the lava rock worked well as a fireproof surface. Talk about an appropriate material.

 

 

If you happen to find yourself moving out into the boondocks and haven't yet built your forge (everyone needs a forge, right?), a good propane torch and a decent sized piece of ceramic blanket insulation makes a sort of workable emergency, half-assed forge. The ceramic insulation is key though. I wish that I brought some. 20/20 hindsight.

 

You can make a small propane forge from a tin can, and using sheet rock mud/sand mix as a refractory lining. It is handy to have around for making small tools and blades, but the key word here is small. A charcoal forge is SOOO much better. Quiet, too.

 

 

Peen the nails to lock everything together.

 

 

I cut the wedge from more of than mystery ham-wood stuff that I suspect is something like Brazilian cherry.

Whatever it is, it's hard, finishes smooth as glass, and it's more than my crappy kanna blade can handle. Rather than re-sharpening every 10 minutes, I decide that it's finally time to open up my treasure chest of tools. It's time to pull out the big guns!

"Rashomon" kanna, by wholesaler company Cubs torosaburo. Our favorite luthier, Tanaka Kiyoto has a couple of these kanna and was surprised at the blade quality and toughness. He puts the steel toughness just shy of HSS and some of the "super" steels. He doesn't know how actually forged the blades, but he was impressed.

 

http://kiyond.blogspot.com/2014/11/youtube_13.html

 

I bought this kanna from my Japanese tools pusher, Junji. It had a huge crack in the main blade and generally looked like hell. I showed some of the blade repair here, but haven't gotten around to fitting the blade into the dai....until now. It feels at least 4x more durable than the plain-Jane kanna that I have been using, yet the blade is still fairly easy to sharpen. Laminated blades are awesome!

 

 

The wood that I used for the wedge is probably too hard and slippery. The vise works wonderfully, 'cept the wedge likes to pop out at inopportune moments. I'll try roughing up the surface, see if that helps.

Next step....sharpening my old kataba saws. I plan on converting this old guy into a madonoko tooth pattern but first I will see how well it works as is, with the original modified rip tooth it has now. I've been thinking real hard about the mechanics of saw tooth design, and now is my opportunity to do a fun compare/contrast project.

 

 

Ellie is using the ugly saw, but doing great work. She's making a rabbit hutch.....more pets. Ellie, the rabbit farmer.

She did her layout using the bamboo sumisashi.

 

 

Focus and intent!

 

 

If you look closely, she's spot on the line.

That's my girl!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Watching Miyazaki, and thinking about sticky stuff.

A couple of nights back, needing some visual comfort, I scoured the Internet and found a streaming, Japanese (w/English subtitles ), Miyazaki's "My neighbor Totoro". It's like my absolute favorite movie in the world, ever. Maybe it was our long deprivation, not having watched this movie for nearly a year, but the Japanese version seemed even funnier than the English dubbed version. Or maybe it was the beer, that might have contributed a bit, haha.

 

 

 

I am a slow learner, slow at working, slow at many things it seems. Also slow to take suggestions. Sebastian and I were chatting about usage streams, the cascade of materials use that is the essence of recycling. In conjunction with this concept, my particular interest was on means of food production and use, how leftovers can be stored for later use or used in different ways. I think this was when I was studying rice glue.

 

I love rice glue. Simple to make and it works tolerably well for many different things. Sure, it's not some crazy miracle glue that will fuse two materials "forever" and under all conditions. I mean, it's a starchy sugar that you can eat, for God's sake.

 

It just so happens that rice paste will give two matching surfaces just that little bit extra grip that is so desirable in woodworking. It is wood movement, that wiggling back and forth that causes built objects to fall apart. Think of your favorite chair.....It was fine for years, until that one leg started getting loose. Two years later, the thing feels like a prospect for a mean spirited April fool's gag. Anyways, glue is the material that can delay the early onset of the dread wiggle. The key is that the two surfaces need to be closely fitted.

 

 

 

My relationship with glue has been a long and troublesome one. As a thoroughly middling woodworker, I've had a great need for the stuff, but I can't say that it has been an entirely amicable relationship. Yellow PVA...use too little and the joint is dry and brittle. Use too much and you spend the next week cleaning up after yourself. The magazines (back when I read magazines, haha. Fine Woodworking was like my life preserver.) were ripe with techniques that promised ease of glue cleanup. Bury the wood in tape, then cut the joinery...or, slather everything with paste wax, then glue. Ugh.

 

My glue was everywhere, fouled up my finishes, stuck to my tools and ruined my clothes. It definitely stuck things together. Still though, if I was using solid wood, sooner or later the joints would break free from the inexorable forces of expansion and contraction. Well, I learned how to deal with that. Plywood.

 

 

In small boat building, much of the work that is currently done relies on plywood for structure, then epoxy for adhesion and isolation. This combination of materials allows a new type of design freedom, and lets novice builders create a beautiful little shell that sits lightly on the water and, more importantly, requires very little of the traditional maintenance typically required of boats. These are wooden cored composites, not actually wood boats at all, but rather a boat shaped object that LOOKS like it's made of wood.

 

I know a little about this. For nearly 15 years, I followed the "new" boat builder's evolution of obsession. From cedar wood/canvas canoes, to plywood "stitch and glue"canoes, wood"stripper" canoes and kayaks, I was obsessed with all of these. It was my vocation as well as my avocation. It was a fantastic 15 years, and a very noble way to starve, haha. I had a perpetual waiting list, but my means of production was too slow and my volume too few to be a viable business. I didn't care that my business plan/model didn't work, I just needed to build boats!

 

Day in and day out, lots of machines, lots of dust, lots of glue. This obsession that I now show for sharpening stones and strange Japanese tools? I was the same way with epoxy back then. Reams of paper dealing with relative modulus values of different brands of epoxy, personal shop experiments of temperature/time consideration on adhesion to different species of wood. Studies on how "grippy" different weaves of fabric reinforcement could be, and the relationship to flexoral stiffness.....God, I wish that I could've blogged back then, written some of it down, because I've forgotten SOOO much. A different world then, for me at least.

 

Wood and glue get along OK, but not great. As my depth of study increased (along with concerns over warrantee terms and product liability ), the natural progression was towards greater use of more specific materials and process. Towards the end of things, I was molding carbon composite elements using resin infusion and vacuum bags, Kevlar wear strips and reinforcement, and just tons and tons of stinky sticky crap. Finally I came to my senses and quit, thank god.

 

So yeah, glue. We were friends, but let's be polite and say that we decided to follow different opportunities.

 

Nowadays, I think of glue as not so much a permanent adhesive, but as something more analogous to tape. You use tape to hold things together, sure, but the connection is temporary. In woodworking, all connections are temporary, and once I started to accept that, things started to really change for me. Glue is great for giving your work that extra bit of "stick" that holds stuff together longer.

If you want your work to REALLY last, plan for the future. Plan for repair, because it will break. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by using a glue that doesn't "fix". PVA is a great example of a glue that makes future repair so difficult that most likely anything built using it will end up in the trash. Sad but true. That's a lot of wasted wood out there, furniture that was built using glue that won't handle secondary bonding. Remember that chair with the wiggly leg? Did you try to repair the joint by squirting glue in the separated joint? How long did that repair last?

What the heck was I talking about? Oh yeah, recycling I think.

So, rice glue.....and low energy lifestyles.

Before bed, you soak the rice for the next day in some water. You leave it sitting on the counter and when you get up in the morning it only requires a small energy input to cook that rice, because you were planning ahead. Eat some for lunch,eat some for dinner (still no refrigeration ), then you soak the next days rice. But what about today's rice that you didn't eat? What to do with leftovers, if you don't have refrigeration, that is ?

Rice glue is better if it is made from 2-3 day old rice, because the bacteria and enzymes are working to break down the starches, letting those protein strands really do their thing. At least that's how I understand it, and I do know that 3 day old unrefrigerated rice is insanely sticky. Your kids will never have a lack of paste, just give them a tablespoon of old rice, have them smoosh it up and start sticking stuff together. It's that simple. Rice glue. I love it.

So what I like about the rice glue example, the concept here that I am looking for, is that this is a low energy cascade of use. Start as food, turn it into something else that is also useful, then at the very least point, the remainder gets given to the animals / compost/ etc. All of this requires no refrigeration, and since I am trying to live with as little refrigeration as possible, I was bemoaning to Sebastian the lack of good ideas that I had found on the Web.

Zeer pots don't work well in areas with high humidity, you know? Maybe it would, I haven't actually tried one, but there are few real world examples of it being used in areas like this, only failures. Actually, the only good examples of no-refrigeration lifestyles are in my old sailing/cruising books. It's not refrigeration that I'm thinking of though. Again, I digress.

The idea is making a simple lifestyle change (eat more rice) that will reduce some other energy demand (driving to the store to buy some glue). It's funny, but little things like this are cumulative, have large effects ultimately, but the tricky part is to change our ways of thinking. Expectations of permanence,say, an ostensibly small thing like glue and furniture...forgoing the convenience of making rice that lasts for a week in the fridge but gaining free glue.....what I am looking for are ideas like this.

Working with hand tools exclusively is a little along the same lines. We have no plug in stuff, no expensive tools to wear out, and sure, it's slower. But SOOO much cheaper than buying a generator/gas/power tools, and though it's slower, it's not THAT slow. I don't build much ultimately anyway. Where would I put that furniture? I would need a bigger tool shed/house. I would need book for those shelves.

My friend Brandon sent me a link to a TED-talk, about the relationship between the developing new architectural paradigm and Moore's "law". Moore's law is familiar to us as the reason that our phones now have more computing power than the room full of computers I once saw as a child. Semiconductor technology has allowed the compression of ever smaller bits and bytes, squeezing more into less, so that computing power effectively doubles every two years. I can carry an entire library in a shoebox. Heck, with Internet access.....who needs a shoebox?

Our lifestyle has changed so radically from what I knew 40 years ago. Ironically for me, I am now living the dreams of my childhood, playing in the jungle, building stuff, looking at bugs and talking to animals. My daughter is designing and building a rabbit hutch out of materials scrounge from the dump, while I upload monologues that the entire world can see. I have good friends on the other side of the world who I've never met, but share my interests. Some people say that technology is causing us to become more isolated as individuals, but at least I have friends who I can talk to about this strange stuff. If my wife had to listen to all of this stuff in my head.....well...she has things tough enough as it is. 7 months in, and we are still pooping in buckets for God's sake, haha.

Holy cow! TMI!

So I was telling Sebastian about my rice glue saving the world kind of thoughts and he said, " You should read "Just enough", by Azby Brown."

And last night I found an e-book version at my local library (support your library....Borrow, don't buy!), and 4am started reading. Already, so much that I've read is familiar in a strange way. The key concepts of economy of use, avoid waste, and an appreciation of the finely made object....so familiar.

Though I am notoriously cheap, I will glad give away most anything and would actually be ecstatic if someone else could find a use for something that I would consider waste. This can be a " gift" economy, and it just makes sense for me. This is similar to a barter arrangement. Remember "Bootstrapping" from the 70's? For me, the attraction is a reduction of waste. Now when I watch those YouTube videos of old guys sharpening saws, and you see them collecting all of the steel shaving in a box....I thought that was just a way to keep things tidy, but those shavings would be useful to the neighborhood blacksmith, as one of the ingredients of welding flux. Where do you buy iron filings? You don't....the sharpening guy gives them to you for fixing his hoe/knife/whatever. Cool, but also economical.

As I read more about Azby Brown's thoughts on Edo Japan, I see his examples and what I really am seeing is Hiyao Miyazaki anime cartoons. In each of his movies, there is the appreciation for the country lifestyles and values, although he isn't explicit in any of it. He shows much of what Brown writes of, I just didn't know enough to appreciate what was there. As I read Brown, even more I want to watch my old favorites. Now if only I had a dvd player.....

Our life here is becoming something different. More simple in many ways, but also more complex. Much that I am learning now was common knowledge only a generation or two ago, but now nearly lost. With the help of many friends and their knowledge learned, I can envision an economical life of less money/tv/stuff, but more time for peace and beauty. I don't want a big truck, a big house, none of that junk, and I feel almost a pity for those that do. How insecure they must feel.

Most all of our goals in life are related to security. We need wealth, to be more secure against poverty. A big car is safer than a small one when you get in a wreck. You buy insurance to protect you house/car/health/life.....all of this is fear. I don't know.

I need to cut my Project Mayhem joinery.....part of my doing more, using less, requires me to get better at what I DO.

Posted with Blogsy

I need a truck!

 

 

Digging through some photos this morning made me realize something.

I need a truck!Awesome deals abound here, but you need to be able to grab them quickly. These were originally shade screens from some rich guys house. 12' x 16' of shade cloth all rolled up on an aluminum extrusion, $15 each. The aluminum extrusion is nearly worth that in scrap......and somewhere in there are motors to roll the shades up and down. Automatic window shades, jeez!

Even better than the shade cloth, is the roofing tin underneath. Most everyone here uses steel sheet roofing, because most people are collecting the rainwater from their roofs . There isn't a municipal water source on this side of the island, so you need to be self sufficient here.

This stuff is worth it's weight in gold ( well.....) , particularly because this is the good, thick, old stuff. The new galvanized sheet roofing material is only 1/2 the thickness and seems to rust out within 10 years or so, less if you live closer to the volcano. Common sense would dictate that you should switch to a more durable material, except that steel IS considered the more durable material, at least in the USA .

The new tin corrodes so quickly, they are pushing aluminum roofing as the "new and improved" material ( "Low maintenance and long lasting, too!") but it's so expensive that only the rich can afford it. Or you could take out a loan, I suppose. Poor people stick with steel here.

The funny /sad part is that the reason that the steel roofing corrodes so quickly? It's that the volcano is constantly spewing out sulfer dioxide. This precipitates out as "acid rain", and it's something that any builder from the east coast of the USA could fill your ear on. Rusts the steel roofs, rusts the cars, kills the landscaping......ever wonder the effects of sulfer dioxide on aluminum?

You have to wonder.....How did those people gets so rich, if they can't read? The effects of acid rain on aluminum roofs has been documented for decades.

Anywho.....26 sheets for $25. The new, thin crap stuff runs $48 EACH, so.....

It starts out small. A pile of kitchen cabinet doors.

Solid maple, 20 doors and in good shape.....except the glue that was used in their construction couldn't withstand the Hawaiian environment. Many of the joints have separated and, as is all too common in new construction, glue is the only thing holding thus stuff together. Solid maple is not a bottom shelf product. This is the good stuff, but it ends up at the dump all too soon.

$15

Stacks.....

More stacks.....

And piles.

God forbid that I actually build something. I've got the ingredients for a half decent workshop here.

Of the two tents at the Keaau trash dump and resale store, this one is my favorite, despite the other tent having all of the books (5 for $1).

Excercise equipment, beds and furniture, various and sundry items....

Luggage. Going somewhere?

See those baby cribs?

One of them is filled with children's toys, and the others are filled with clothing, children and adults. Free. Free clothing.

This place exists as part of the state of Hawaii's push to recycle everything. They are serious about recycling here, and I can't say enough about how wonderful this all is. You are responsible for recycling, there is no trash service to pay for and you don't get fined, should you decide not to participate. It's your choice, but if someone sees you tossing some good, usable stuff in the "trash" dumpster, you're going to be losing some aloha.

The resale tents are operated by a separate nonprofit entity, and this site has maybe 8 employees. The prices are completely arbitrary, and the people setting the prices value items differently. This can be a pain, particularly for the employee, because if they ask too high a price, people get pissed off. It is donated materials after all. None of the people working here want to work the price desk, haha. I know I wouldn't want to.

Ted is retired military and hates building things, did too much of that while enlisted, so he prices building materials low (sometimes too low, and the bosses get on his case. "Fire me." he says). Roy is a great guy to talk to and learn from, but he's too much like me and knows how expensive this stuff is to buy. Thankfully he doesn't work the price desk very often. Another young guy doesn't really know what ANYTHING is worth, but he really cares about pulling useful items out of the waste stream. His prices are usually very good /low.

Totes full of stone tiles?

I forget.....$12 I think........Or $6/each at Home Depot.

And my biggest score ( in more ways than one)?

Kohler cast iron, extra deep, soaking tub....hardware included. It looks like a contractor screwed up and had to pull a new install. Ouch! It appears brand new, except for the nasty gray nonskid stuff glued around the perimeter. It is so abrasive, it is easy to imagine some wealthy retiree saying" UHH, no....I don't think so!". Off to the dump it goes.

 

This thing must weigh 300#, but it still fit easily in the back of my little Scion Xa. I had nearly 1/2" of wiggle room, haha. Guys in big pickup trucks were watching, shaking their heads and saying that it would never fit. Some people took pictures ( and I wish that I had, too).

The gray crap scraped right off. $2,800 new, and I got it for $40.

 

Nearly $3,000 for a freaking tub.....who does that? And the waste....

People here want to help others, and this is a way that works. Free clothes, cheap books and furniture, not to mention building supplies. The other day, a construction contractor was cleaning out his shop and brought a truckload of interesting stuff. He also brought in landscaping stock, some shrubs and a Happu'u fern ( these are the ferns that get super tall, like trees). He didn't think it was right to throw away living things like that so.....the guys working the tent shrugged their shoulders, said "Put it over there."

Another guy came in with a truck full of old rusty lawnmowers. Said " Where can I put these? People need parts...Lots of parts here.", but the guys said that they had nowhere to keep rusty junk, put it in steel recycling. The guy who brought it actually argued, said people need this stuff. He was bummed!

The service gives jobs (that provide retirement and health care!) to the people who work there, and if I feel that occasionally I might spend more than I would prefer.....so what. I owe them, big time!

Oh yeah, they have a separate paint tent, paint goes $5/gallon. A full, unopened gallon of polyurethane varnish for $5, and if I didn't hate the stuff ( shellac is the stuff of dreams), I would buy more. Too bad I don't have hardwood floors. 4 gallons of paint for $20, and it's the same stuff that Ace Hardware sells for $100.

While I'm at the dump, Renee tries to talk the cat into scratching her face.

She's tough (Renee, that is), and will do anything for a photo-op.

Here is Ellie's May celebration performance.

I am pretty sure that this is the first time that she has worn a dress.

I love this place.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy