Coming soon

Just a short note.  I have the project video all done and edited and ready to go.  It is a present that will be delivered tomorrow.  I don't want to chance spoiling the surprise so I will be posting it after it is delivered.  It came out long, so it is in 2 parts.  I will try to have both up sometime tomorrow or the day after so stay tuned for the first project that comes out of the new shop.

I will be making a new one soon too, not a build, just a bit of maintenance on one of my acoustic guitars.  I have a bit of clean up to do in the shop first and then going to get on that.

Thanks for dropping by!

Getting ready

I seems as if summer has slipped by.  As always, the rhythm of the seasons progress as we do our dance around the sun.

Most of the days are filled with getting things ready for winter.  We have the pool drained, cleaned, and packed away now.  A job that takes about 3 days to do to our satisfaction.  Sally has been getting her flower gardens prepared and cleaned up too.  I have been picking away on this little project here and there, and getting some footage of it.  I hope I can make a decent video out of all the clips.

Battery life is a big restraint.  Seems that I just get going and they go dead and need recharging.  The few times I have been able to get out to do anything eats them up in no time.  I keep looking at proper cameras, but I just can not justify the expense with so many other priorities.

The new shop is a joy to be in.  I must admit that most of the time I am confused in there though.  I don't know where everything is and I hesitate trying to think it out.  It is almost like working with your non-dominant hand.  I am also really rusty.  I have not done any real wood working projects for almost a year and my meagre skills have withered.  Still, it is time I enjoy and it is only a matter of time before I get things sorted out and start moving around the shop in a more natural feeling way.

 You can tell in the footage I have that there is a lot of hesitation and stopping to try and think things through.  I am not one of those folks that take to the camera naturally.  There is so much to getting a shot right, but I am learning as I go along.  Perhaps it is skill in editing that makes it look good.  All the folks that influence me seem to either have a knack for the camera, or have the resources to do multiple takes.  Of course, they could have outside help too.  A good producer/camera person could make a difference.  I will continue on though and learn as I go.  The inspiration I get from all the You Tube channels I watch is still keeping me going.  Speaking of which.  If you go to my channel on You Tube (just look up "Jim Dockrell") and click on the little tab marked "channels", you can find links to all the folks I watch.  Most are folks who are creating something.  Not all are on a schedule, but all put out stuff I find interesting and entertaining.

I still have not got the new cord for the shop yet.  I just have not gotten around to making the trip yet.  I do, however, need to get a big storage unit built in one corner soon.  The window air conditioner in the house needs to come out and I need a place to put it, along with a bunch of other stuff already in the shop.  So that is coming up soon.  I am going to insulate the wall first and this build I plan on doing some pictures for this blog.  So stay tuned for that.

I have been a bit slack in posting here lately.  There was a week of extreme humidity that made me feel a bit under the weather and there was not much going on to speak of, so not much to write about.  Now that it has cooled a bit I hope to get at it a bit more.  I am not sure what the dead of winter is going to be like in an uninsulated shop.  I have my eyes open and looking around for some sort of kerosene or propane heater for while I am in there.  It also means I have to gather up all my finishing material and drag them into the house again this year.

I did meet up with a guy interested in doing some of the electrical work I need done.  He is working with the neighbour I hired to do the roof.  The two of them also know a heating/gas guy they may be able to connect me with to get a permanent heating solution in there.  They also handed me some nice boards.  2 of ash, and one of cherry.  All of them are about 10' long and 6 to 8 inches wide and just over 1/2" thick.  I already have some plans for some of it.  We found a nice piece of art work that needs a frame, I thought a cherry one would look nice.  The wood is sitting on my shop floor in the way right now.  I need to find a spot for it.  Another reason to get that storage unit built.

Well, I guess I have blathered on enough for now.  I am hoping things are going well for you all and that you are doing things you like with people you love.  Until next time...

Thanks for dropping by.

It's not that easy

to make a video.

I have been tinkering around in the shop, working on a project I have in mind.  

I thought I should get footage of it to make a build video for my You Tube channel.  Sounds easy, just put the camera on the tripod and hit record.

No.

First of all, the ash that I had originally planned to use, left over from my guitar build, is so dry and hard my hand planes will hardly touch it.  So I put it through the planer and got it to the thickness I wanted.  Then my inexpensive hand saw just skipped over the face of it and marred it badly.  So I tried to cut a bit more off and then true it up with the hand plane......no success again.  Not being the kind of guy who gives up, I am changing the wood selection to pine...easy right?

Well, there is more to this process than just choosing the wood and banging it together.

Other technical difficulties have been battery life in the camera, and the size of the memory card.  I just discovered that when you take the battery out of the camera and charge it, the camera reverts back to a high definition mode that eats up space on the card like mad.  So I lost a whole bunch of footage, or rather, the camera filled up and stopped recording.

There are other pitfalls I am discovering too.  Like when you hit the tripod with your elbow you get lots of footage of a floor and only the sounds of work in the background.  I guess I wasn't paying attention.

  I am currently running the shop on an extension cord (as shown in the previous video) and I must unplug the lights to run the table saw.  The limiting factor here is the cord itself.  Despite being a decent outdoor cord, it cannot handle the power requirements of it all at the same time.  

Good news is that the cord is plugged into a 20A circuit, so there is enough power there to do it.  I am going to replace it with a 10 gauge cord meant to hook up a recreational vehicle to park supplied power.  It is rated at 30 amps so I won't have the worry of overloading the cord and have it burn through the insulation on the cord.  Once that is in I ought to have enough power to have the lights and table saw going at the same time.  Which will be good for the videos.  While there is enough light naturally in the shop, it looks very dark on video without the lights.

A step at a time.  The only way to find out how things work out is by doing and improving as I go along.  But for now, I am waiting for batteries to charge so I can get back to it.  Here is some raw video showing what I mean about the light situation.....this is not going on You Tube, so it is kind of a blog exclusive.

About all I can do right now is sit back and chuckle at the situation and keep trying.  I hope I can grow the channel a bit and provide some useful video for people to enjoy.  It is not exactly instructional, but a lot of what I watch on You Tube is just folks being creative and making things.  I am not making any money off it, that is not part of the plan right now.  I hope to provide some free, entertaining video with an extremely low budget, in hopes that others will be inspired to do the same. 

 I would also like to keep it so that the average child can watch it without parents needing to worry about what their children  are exposed to.  Coming from a background of factories, mines and shops, I have frequently used and have been exposed to all kinds of profanity.  It is something that I have worked on changing for several years and you will not hear it on my channel.  It is tough to change a lifetime of habits, but it is important to me to have respect for my viewers.

  

Oh, another pitfall....the bandwidth on my internet connection means it takes a long time to upload things.  I could get a better connection speed, but that is not in the budget and that would go against what my purpose is here.  If I can do it, so can anyone else.  I am not very proficient with computers and editing video and such, but I have a bit of a stubborn streak that I am relying on to get this done.  So, until next time....

Thanks for dropping by!

Edit:  Upon my reviewing of this entry I noticed that the You Tube logo is on the video, so it may not be so exclusive after all.