I Made A Table!

Yes, my title is a reference to that awful Lou Reed/ Metallica song.

But no, I actually built a small altar table.  I was given a piece of oak that was pretty much a throwaway slab.  The cut of wood was near the outside of the trunk so it had not only sapwood, but part of the bark.  Here's how it started out.

Next, I cut it into an oval shape.  Here's the top.

And here is the bottom.

The edge of the slab, where the bark was, had a lot of wormholes.

I thought, "That's great!  It will make it more authentic."

Now that it was an oval shape, it was time to plain/grind/sand it into a table top.  In these photos I'm fast-forwarding past a lot of the boring sanding work.  So here's the top after all of that.

And here's the bottom.

Here are the final measurements.

29 inches long.

19 and a half inches wide.

And 2 3/4 inches thick.

And honestly it feels like it's about 50 pounds... at least.

Next, I had the help of my Father who turned small wooden legs on his lathe.  Again, we're fast-forwarding in the photos.  Here are the legs being glued into the table.

So once the glue had dried and set up, it was time to perform the fine sanding.  The table was already pretty smooth considering.  However, with the help of my electric hand sander the table became as smooth as glass.

Next came the finish work.  I've never been great at finish work.  In fact, I've been downright awful.  However, my Dad showed me a way to combine tung oil with a catalyst to give the table a beautiful finish.  Here's the photos after four coats of finish.

The tung oil finish really delivered what I wanted.  I didn't want a glossy finish, but I didn't want it to look bare either.  The tung oil gave me that perfect "in the middle" finish I was after.

I'm going to give the finish on the table plenty of time to completely harden.  After that it is going up for sale in a local shop.  I hope it'll be exactly what someone has always wanted.  Right now, it's off to the next table.  So I might be posting another blog about a table next month.

Make a Little Birdhouse In my ... Backyard? Part 2

This is a continuation of a post I wrote four months ago.  Here's part 1:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2017/10/make-little-birdhouse-in-my-backyard.html

So I've had my birdhouse up for about four months now.  My plan back then was to make sure the birdhouse was up a few months before spring.  Spring, of course, being the time the birds will nest, and lay eggs.

My sister, who is the gardener, was the one to actually notice a pair of birds had moved in.  They were, in fact, a pair of Carolina Chickadees.  Here is a photo of the birdhouse I put up.

Here's a photo that my sister took of the inside of the nest.

And here are two video clips of the Carolina Chickadee screaming at my sister.

Apparently it didn't like her near it's new house.  So a screaming match ensued.  The chickadee may have won the screaming match part, but my sister still managed to take some great photos.

And here is a great photo my sister took of the Chickadee with nesting material in its beak.

So it seems like my plan worked.  I now have some tenets in my birdhouse, and they are busy nesting.  I'm glad I decided to take down the old, unused feeder, and put up the birdhouse.  So to celebrate, here's the song.

Titus Andromedon Vs. The Ramones: Who Ya Got?

I haven't written one of these types of posts in a while.  Since I've been a better musician I have been able to pick out songs that at first may seen different, but are actually very similar.  That's a nice way of saying someone used the base chords and rhythm of one song to write another.

One night I was feeling crappy and just couldn't take watching another gritty movie or TV show.  I had heard things about Netflix's "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt."  So I started watching it, and found myself really liking it.

In one episode, (minimum spoilers) Titus Andromeda sings a song called "Boobs in California."  Here's Titus singing the song:

And here's the video from the show:

It's so darn catchy that I had it stuck in my head for a few days.  That's when it occurred to me that it sounded very close to another song I knew.  "Indian Giver" by The Ramones.

Now it's not a perfect match.  I checked the Circle of Fifths and "Boobs in California" is in the key of G.  While "Indian Giver" is just one over in the key of D.

In other words, "Boobs in California's" main chords are, D G, and A minor."  "Indian Giver" uses chords of D, A, and G.  If you are confused, please use this handy guide to the Circle of Fifths.

https://letsmakemusictogether.blogspot.com/2012/02/cool-way-to-memorize-circle-of-fifths.html

But it's not just the chords, it's also overall rhythm of the song.  Either way, I like them both.  I'll admit, they are both earworms.  I'll also admit, I can't wait until "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's" fourth season.

Bringing Home The Spoils .... Of Rock!

I attended the Orlando Guitar Expo this weekend.  Before I went I had a few goals in mind.  The first was not to spend any extra money.  I realize this doesn't make sense.  Why go to a guitar show if I'm not going to buy anything?  Well, I didn't say I wouldn't buy anything.  I said I wouldn't spend any extra money.

That leads me to my second goal.  I wanted to sell or trade a Fender Mexican Strat and a Schecter Damien 4 bass.  I would use the sale/trade of those to purchase other things.  So I made a promise to myself if I didn't sell or trade those I wouldn't buy anything.

Luckily, I was able to find a buyer for the Strat pretty quickly.  I realize a lot of folks might be saying, "Duh!" right now.  But there was a bit of a problem at this year's Expo.  The dealers were only dealing in high end expensive vintage items.  A Mexican Strat is none of those things. 

The other problem was a lot of attendees were also selling and trading.  In other words, the market was flooded.  It came down to the dealers not wanting to take home more product than they brought.  So I count myself lucky that I sold the Strat pretty quickly.

My third goal was to only buy parts, and not bring home another guitar.  Now that I had a bit of spending money from selling the Strat I could do that.  One of the first dealers I came across had a bin full of parts.  I looked through all the pickups and bought two of them.

The first was a Gibson Dirty Fingers pickup.  I realize players either love or hate them.  Of course, that's true of a lot of equipment, but the Dirty Fingers is really polarizing.  I always kind of dug them so I bought one.

I also bought a Gibson T-Top pickup that looked to be rewound.  This year I was smart and brought my multi-meter with me.  Last year I was burnt on some pickups I bought.  So I wanted to make sure that didn't happen again.  The T-Top checked out, but I noticed something when I brought it home.  It had no bar magnet in it.  That's okay because I have a number of magnets.  That includes an old Dimarzio Alnico 5 short bar magnet that was perfect for this pickup.

The next dealer I bought from was a tube dealer.  The gentlemen running the booth had thousands of old tubes.  The bad news was that they were used so there was no way a person could tell if they were in working order or not.  The good news was that the tubes were $1 a piece.  So I took a chance on them.

I took the advice from our great local electronics technician Mike J.  He told me how to look through the glass and make sure it wasn't smokey or burnt.  I also made sure that none of the little legs were broke off.

I was looking specifically for 12AY7's but they didn't have any.  However I did grab a few 12AT7's, 12AU7's, and some really nice looking 12AX7's.

I had great luck at a dealer who was near the end of my rounds.  He had quite a large booth.  The good news was that he not only had a lot of guitars, but a lot of guitar parts.  I was able to buy three pickups for a dang good price.

I bought a matched set of TV Jones SuperTron's in black.  These were universal mount full humbucker sized pickups.  In other words, they can be installed in any standard humbucker routing unlike the Filtertron sized pickups.

Anyone who knows TV Jones pickups knows they are expensive.  I bought these at an awesome price at less than 1/3 of what they cost new.  Heck, even if I don't use them I can sell them for a really good price and make back a good chunk of change.

Due to my experience in the guitar world I spotted a pickup that was simply marked, "Dimarzio Strat 70's."  I took one look at it, and recognized it to be a Dimarzio SDS-1.  Now, I'm not sure if this pickup was from the 70's, but it is possible.  The SDS-1 was introduced in 1978.  But after reading about it in the forums I knew it was a pickup I should have bought long ago.  So I was glad to buy a used one for a dang good price.

So that shot all the money I had from selling the Strat.  Okay, and a few dollars more.  Now, the tricky part was trying to sell or trade the Schecter Damien 4 bass.  Again, the dealers didn't want to take on anything, and if they did if had better be a vintage guitar.  Since this was a modern bass, they really didn't want to deal with it.

I went to every table in the expo hall that said they bought or traded.  I was turned down by all.  Actually I was down to talking to the folks at Guitar Center, but they were busy with a sale.  They said to give them five minutes.  I said I totally understood, and I'd just wander for a bit and be back.

I visited a dealer who mostly dealt with guitar pedals.  I spotted a boutique pedal I had heard about in several of my guitar magazines.  It was the famous, "Red Witch" Distortion.  I asked if he would be interested in a straight up trade of the bass for the pedal, and he said yes.  He didn't have much in the way of guitars or basses, but had plenty of pedals.  So we made the trade.

Now that my money, guitar and bass were gone, it was time to go home.  But I could say I really accomplished what I set out to do.  I was able to bring my instrument collection down by two, and bring home more parts.  And if I don't like the parts I've found it's easier to sell pickups than it is guitars.

But the story doesn't end there.  Yesterday I installed the Gibson T-Top and Dirty Fingers in a Les Paul of mine.  I have to say I was really surprised by the sound of the T-Top.  The EQ matches a Seymour Duncan 59 spot on.  The only difference was that the overall contour was a little brighter which is a good thing.  I've always found the 59's to be a tad dark.

The T-Top was strong, expressive and very open (meaning no compression.)  I think it fit a perfect balance between a 59 and a Schaller Golden 50.  I have in it the neck, but it would make a great bridge pickup too.  But since I play in the neck position a lot, I prefer to have it there anyway.

I had read a number of reviews on the Gibson Dirty Fingers.  It was strange in that, no one could seem to agree on how it sounded.  I had to agree that it was a big sounding pickup.  Some argued that it was big and wooly sounding, while others said it was big and clear.  Right now, I am leaning toward big and clear due to it not having a huge amount of mids like a lot of other distortion pickups.  I'm going to have to play it more before I made any final decisions.  

Without question, this year's guitar show was pretty good to me.  It wasn't easy, but I made the moves I wanted to, and picked up the parts I wanted to.  Now that I own those black TV Jones pickups I should buy a black hollowbody to put them in?  No.  No more guitars for a while.  I have plenty at the moment.  But at least I have enough parts to keep me busy for a while.  Hopefully?

Fish Fight In The Parking Lot!!!

The story of my life is I'm always trying to do the right thing, and it backfires on me.  Here's the latest incident.  I was browsing Craigslist (no, not that section.)  I was looking at the free section.  I saw an ad giving away a pair of mated angelfish.  I looked at the included photo, and saw they were pretty good size.  It seems they had outgrown their tank, and needed to be rehomed.

I thought, "perfect!"  Since I had two angelfish pass away a few months ago I could use two angelfish to restock the tank.  Long story short, I brought them home.

As you can probably guess, that's when the trouble began.  The big male (the marble colored one) and the male that was already in my tank decided to have a fish fight.

I mean, they really went at it.  I'd never seen anything like it.  They would actually bite each other's lips and hold on.  Then there was posturing and maneuvering.  Despite my attempts to break up the fight they went at it for a couple hours until they were both worn out.

Since it was near the beginning of the month I decided to so something I had heard about.  Generally fish like their own territory, so if I were to rearrange the tank with natural breaks in it, I believed they would leave each other alone.

So I gave the tank a great scrubbing, and performed my first of the month cleaning/water change.  Next, I moved my rocks and plants around to create natural barriers.  It ended up looking like this.

It seems to have worked.  They are somewhat passive aggressive and engaged in what I would call a "fin measuring" contest.  But at least they aren't attacking each other.  The two males have claimed their own parts of the tank.  However, the loaches have no idea what's going on.  But in all honesty, they don't care.  Neither do the giant danios.

The new fish (the male and female pair) hang out together.

While the three fish (one male and two females) I originally had hang out together.

But every now and then the two males give each other dirty glances.

So my plan has somewhat worked out.  It's strange because I never had any problems with angelfish before this.  They had always gotten along.  But now that I think about it, they tended to be very young when I brought them home.  Hopefully after a week they'll figure out some sort of rhythm to the fish tank.

Destruction For Forty Cents A Pound

It's been a while since I had a "Destruction" post.  The original intent of this blog was for me to write about destruction for fun and profit.  This particular post actually fits both.  Let me explain.

We had an old john boat in the backyard that hadn't been used in almost two decades.  It was aluminum and a lot of the pop rivets had come loose.  The boat also had scrapes and cuts that made it unseaworthy.  So I was given the greenlight to cut up the boat and recycle it for scrap aluminum.  It sounds a lot easier than it is.

So this is the boat:

I ended up destroying two grinders cutting up this boat.  Not grinding wheels, actual angle grinders.

I found out the best tool for this job, besides a grinder, was a sledgehammer.

I made sure to wear gloves with all this sharp aluminum, but the one time I didn't...

I found out what look the longest was removing anything that wasn't aluminum.  That ended up being Styrofoam and steel bolts.  On a side note, when recycling you don't want to mix metals.  The scrap metal recyclers want the metals as pure as possible when they melt it down.

It's hard to believe that the Styrofoam was in as good a condition as it was after forty years.

After burning up the two angle grinders, Dad came up with an idea that he had heard about.  I won't post it here since it's not exactly OSHA approved or safe in any way.  But with the use of multiple tools I managed to cut the boat in half.

I used the sledgehammer to knock out the seats.  It was actually the easiest way to do it.

I spent most of my time going around the boat smashing off bits that contained steel.  There were bolts that gave extra strength to the back of the boat where the motor sat.  I had to take every one of them out.  There were rings used to tie the ship to the dock.  All of those had to go.  But in the end I managed to free it of any other metals.

Oh, the reason I cut the boat up into pieces to begin with?  So it would fit in the back of my short-bed truck.

Don't worry, I made sure to strap it down.

When it was all said and done, I received forty cents a pound for the boat.  I ended up with 120 pounds of scrap aluminum from it.  That, along with all the aluminum cans I turned in netted me a grand total of $52.05.  Hmm, I guess no one said that destruction pays well?

The Juggernaut

I'd been looking for a jazz bass guitar for years.  So I can say I was excited when Dean Guitars came out with the Juggernaut model.  No, not this Juggernaut.

What I am referring to is their copy of the Fender Jazz Bass.  Here's the link:

http://www.deanguitars.com/query?upc=814064021587

Dean wanted something on par with the Fender Mexican Jazz Bass.  The Juggernaut is made in one of the Korean factories, but I'd have to say I find them pretty much even in terms of quality and playability.

About six months ago I wandered into a guitar shop that will remain anonymous.  They had a few Juggernauts in stock.  I tried to trade a Schecter bass plus cash to purchase one of the Juggernauts.  However, I was given a pretty insulting offer for the Schecter.  Let's just say I could have sold the Schecter's pickups for what they offered me for it.  So needless to say I walked out.  I hated to because the Juggernaut was on sale for $349.

Fast forward to about a week ago.  I was in the area of the unnamed guitar shop, so I decided to drop in on a whim.  They had one Dean Juggernaut left, and it was marked down to $205.  I played it and talked to the bass salesman. 

I found him to be a very kind and knowledgeable person, and told him I would like to flat out buy it.  He said as far as basses go, he found them to be a hidden gem in the shop.  I know folks would point out that a salesman would of course say something like that.  But at that price he wasn't making any commission on it.  It was a blow out price.  He would have made more money selling me a pack of bass strings.

He recognized me, and I told him about the last time I was in the store.  He then recalled what happened.  I told him there was no hard feelings about the offer on the Schecter since the price came from his boss, and not him.  Although I did mention they would have actually made a profit if they would have accepted the trade plus cash offer the first time I was in the store.

So I bought the bass home, and set it up.  I honestly think it would have sold faster if it has been set up properly.  I'm sure a lot of players would have tried to play it, and found the strings way too high.  It just needed a good set-up.  I am very happy with it.  Of course, I'm sure I will change the pickups since I can't help but chasing sound.

This also means I have to sell an instrument since I've purchased one.  I actually have a guitar and a bass for sale on Craigslist right now.  Once I sell either one I'll recoup the money I spent on the Juggernaut.

So onto the photos: