u/Frozen-Chips-401802

What am I looking at here? I took the unused brick chimney out of my 1950’s home in the northeast US this week as part of a remodel. House has a basement, one ground level floor & a short attic, so nothing really unusual for the area. The bottom 3-4’ of the chimney was filled with packed sand, and the last tier of brick looks like it sits 1/2” in the slab & is filled with concrete.

I opted to stop removing material since I wasn’t sure if it would compromise the slab. Planning on just leaving this as-is, might skim it with hydraulic cement later just to make sure it’s sealed but that’s probably overkill. Thoughts from those who do this more than once in a lifetime?

You all were not kidding about the impact of finding a route with a hill. Big difference, and it’s not even that steep after the first 1/4 mile!

70 minutes, 4.1 miles, and thinking about gradually working a weighted backpack in.

From a maple slab, barn-aged but not truly dry. Needs some touch up sanding still, so maybe tomorrow after work. Danish Oil or Tried & True I think.

A nice long walk in the morning and then an unexpectedly busy day… oof.

Interesting result from a windfall maple branch. A bit more rotten / spalted than I thought, and I got a bit too greedy on the inside of the rim. Ended up 5” across the top, 3.5” tall.

Mixed hardwood, not really sure what all of it was, but it was perfectly spalted and made these nice 18” by 1.5” turntables. Used a 1/4” roundover on one and a 1/4” chamfer for the other. Can feel the difference but cannot really see it.

Not the best piece ever, but I like the shape. Still working on the “light finish cuts, keep sharpening” part as evidenced by the toolmarks. Still a keepable piece and a long way from where I salvaged it from an old sugarbush .

Reclaimed spruce, I think, maybe fir. Couple of dings from its first life didn’t work all the way out, but that true for most of us, right?

Edit: video uploaded blurry, added a photo in the comments. Sorry about that.

We put a rectangular Kona in about 5 years ago and noticed a depression forming at one end. Figured it was settling or something from an admittedly less than ideal ground prep. Kept an eye on it since the Kona is a pretty flexible & resilient setup. This year it was bigger, as expected, when pulled the cover so I drained it and pulled back the liner and ground cover thinking I’d set 50-75 lbs of sand in the low spot. I found this.

Big intertwined voids in my “low spot” with channels/tunnels running the length of the pool about 3’ in from the sides. 450+ lbs of sand later, it’s leveled and filled in and good to go for this season.

Has to be chipmunks or moles or something right? Could it be runoff going under the pool? I’m thinking rodents but where did the original sand go?

A little 4” or so end-turned trinket dish from a Damson Plum tree. The rest is processed, sealed and aging in the shop but I just couldn’t stop looking at the “waste” pieces. I like to get a feel for new material before going for big projects, and I enjoy seeing how different material warps and twists and cracks as it ages. And it was taunting me from the bin. So there’s that.

I spent years either running or lifting weights, and always fighting off a feeling of impending injury or recovering from something. I’ve only just barely started walking, but I have to say this feels like something I could actually do every day!

Admittedly a small victory, but still, a victory. I’ve been lifting weights 4x a week for the last few years but zero (ZERO) cardio. I’m over 50, overweight but told myself muscle is heavy, and had my second cardiac event in January. Today, 4 months post cardiac cath, is the first time in at least 2 years I walked for more than 45 minutes at a stretch. Thank you to everyone on this sub for giving me the motivation to keep after it.

Invested sawdust and anchor seal into some Damson plum & lilac cuttings today. A quick test turn of the plum did not disappoint.

I usually do the bag o’ shavings for a week or three, but this is all so wet (spring felled maple) that the shavings from yesterday already have visible mold and fuzz today. Which isn’t all bad, because my blanks are spalting in the garage as we speak. I just need to dump my paper lawn/leaf shavings bag before it spawns a civilization.

One of the very experienced turners in my guild explained that cross-clamping can lessen or eliminate splitting in green turns, and I figured I’d give it a trial run this week. Here’s the experiment: end-turned soaking wet green maple dish, fairly even thickness of about 1/4” to 1/2” throughout, a little thicker at the edge, trending thinner at the base, cross clamped, sitting on the bench in 40-45% humidity, 65-70F.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. My money is on mega-split by morning. Will post results next week.

Had this piece of pretty badly cracked black walnut on my pile of rescues. The pins I set into it didn’t all span the crack, but it came out ok in the end.

Not exactly a cutting board, this is a “tailor’s clapper” made with offcuts from a couple boards I made. It’s used as a block to hold seams flat after ironing them down during quiltwork, tailoring and so on. Felt like a good use of the leftovers.