Saturday

After months of delaying, I finally started taking care of some little projects, projects that can hardly be said to matter in the grand scheme of things, but projects I've wanted to tackle and this week I finally did.

Epoxied Ax Handle

I glued my broken ax handle with epoxy. No, I do not suppose this will fix it, but I plan on putting an eight inch long screw down the axis of the handle. Will it hold? Will it hold for more than a dozen strokes? We shall see. I bought this ax years ago. There were some logs lying at the bottom of the hill in the backyard, on the verge of being in the swamp. It might be nice if they are cut up, but that area turns to mush in the winter, so it's not like it's going to make any difference. Still, it would be nice if they were cut up. I could do it with an ax. It would be slow going, but I'm not in any hurry, and I could use the exercise. So I bought an ax and chopped. I don't know how much I did, it was years ago, but I was a middle aged suburban home owner, I wasn't a 20 something lumberjack going at it ten hours a day. And the ax broke. Nuisance. Bought a replacement handle (back then you could buy them at Home Depot), fitted it up and went back to my sporadic chopping. And then it broke again.

I drove around with it in the trunk of my car for years. Eventually I remembered it while I was in the ACE Hardware store in St. Johns and I checked and they had a handle so I bought it. $8 I think. Turns out it was for a double bitted ax, not a single bit like mine, and it wasn't going to work. I still have it. Let me know if you need it, maybe I could ship it to you, though the shipping would probably be more that the original cost. But with inflation the way it is, that still might be a bargain compared to how much a new ax handle would cost, if you could find one.

Earlier this year we took out the plum tree in John's backyard in St, Johns. We have any number of power saws at our beck and call, but the boys wanted to use axes. Shit, I've got an ax, but it's busted, so we went to Home Depot to see if they had an ax handle. They didn't. They did have new axes with plastic handles for $35 and since we were on a mission from God, we didn't quibble, we bought it and carried on.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've still got this broken ax. I've got a new handle, but it won't work. There is an ACE Hardware not too far from here, but I don't relish calling them, even less driving over there. I guess I feel like I should just be able to go over there, they will have what I need and I can buy it and go on. That's the way it used to work, I didn't need to call ahead, I was confident that the store would have what I wanted. But then I was dealing with stuff that everyone dealt with, so of course they had what I needed. Now is 20 years and times have changed. You want an ax handle? It's kind of niche item. I did drive to the store once and it didn't work out so well, so I don't want a repeat. Logic does not apply here, feel me?

So now I have this great idea to try and fix it. Will it work? I think it might, for a bit anyway. It's an experiment in any case. The part that bothers me is that I broke the handle. I'm, not a lumberjack swinging an ax all day long. I'm just puttering about in my back yard. What the heck? Are ax handles that fragile? Was replacing them a daily occurrence with people who were really using them? Or was I just not in the swing of things? Inquiring minds want to know,

All this talk about axes reminds me that my dad had a double bitted ax. He bought some land in Renton (south of Seattle) and we would go out there occasionally and he would hack away at the brush. I'm not sure what the point was (I was pretty little), but now I wonder if it wasn't just a chance to get away from the corporate bullshit that was going on at Boeing.

Chopping through logs

We can't let this topic go without mentioning the scoutmaster who gave us a lesson on how to use a hatchet to cut through a six inch log. You strike one blow at 45 degrees, then move the log's diameter along the trunk and strike another blow, 45 degrees the other way, back towards your first blow. If you are lucky that will knock loose a chip. Stop and pull it off. No sense cutting through stuff that isn't holding the log together. Now you repeat this two more times, each time rotating your angle of attack 45 degrees around the axis of the log. It was a great lesson, and I used that wisdom whenever I have used an ax, but it's basically useless. The only reason I have ever swung an ax was for entertainment purposes.

Bent & Broken Spade Connectors

Okay, enough about axes. On to air conditioners. John bought a cheap room air conditioner. It worked fine for a while, but then it got dropped while it was being moved and it quit working. We figured it couldn't be too badly broken, there was no damage to the case. Some electrical component got jarred and just needs to be reconnected. Today I opened it up and found that the power cord connections had gotten ripped away from the switch. Shoot, this should be an easy fix, just slide the connectors back over the tabs protruding from the switch. Except. One of the tabs has been broken off. Okay, fine, order a new switch. Look on the web and the only thing I find is a used on for $60. I don't think so. Take the switch apart. Looks like we can drill a hole and use a screw to connect the power line to the switch. Just need to find the right electrical connector bits.

Since I am on a role I decided to tackle the drill bit packaging problem. I went a little crazy and bought too many drill bits a while back, so I decided to break up the smaller package and distribute them to my friends. It cost me almost nothing and if they use drill bits like I do, it should make them very happy. I've been stewing on how to package them for weeks. Small envelopes would have worked, but then I would have to buy envelopes, and they come in packages of a thousand. I don't need a thousand. I need five. I finally decided to use masking tape to tape them to a sheet of cardboard. Masking tape is cheap, cardboard is free. The only expense will be the postage which shouldn't be too much since the envelopes only weigh a couple of ounces.