27 May 09
A Huntsman Spider
Have been doing simple, peaceful things, like driving the van backwards and forwards over a screwed-up sheet of galvo and some magnificent, heavy, deeply rusted mesh. Used an angle grinder for the very first time in my life to smooth over the cuts. Discovered that using them is a great deal less scary than watching someone else showering sparks everywhere.
Also got my table saw properly set up and ran two fence posts through it, to slice them down the middle. Had to do two passes, as they were quite wide and inside all the beautiful soft grey of them was a deep burgundy redgum. These are to go with my stolen sign.
Went right across Adelaide to a salvage yard that advertised chain and bought a LOT. This is particularly for the other post (from the same source as the Post, Wire and Flowers) and a beautiful fragment of hollowed-out branch that I brought home from the Flinders.
Am currently searching the internet plus logging questions onto forums, to try and find the means of ‘finishing’ all this wonderful soft grey timber without changing the colour.
Everywhere they say, use this varnish or that wax to enhance the colour which, on old weathered timber, simply makes it a darker grey and very patchy. As well as questioning why I’d want to add a layer of ‘finish’. The only reason to do anything to it is to make sure that, should the construction be sold and get very dirty, it can be washed.
Also went to Cheap as Chips and found a pair of werewolf gloves.
It will be apparent that the two Glove constructions that had been marked as ‘Not yet for sale’ have been sold.
15 May 09
4WDs lining up to take photos
Spent a few days staying at Rawnsley Park in the Flinders Ranges and filled a lot of plastic tubs with different shades of red dirt to mix with Epoxy and turn into mud. Plus some kangaroo bones, bits of timber and fragments of rock. Also a sign, which was illegal.
Starting on the oil drums tomorrow, having bought one from a salvage yard to replace the drumful of sump oil. Also a beautiful length of towing chain, too good to cut up and turn into ‘art’.
07 May 09
A good knot
More things got made and more rubbish collected. Spent a beautiful sunlit Sunday afternoon pottering through the dirt roads in the van with a friend and, having already filled the van to the brim with a lot of fence posts and wire, (this is illegal, picking up wood from the roadside) came across two white steel marker posts that someone had smashed into – one is twisted in a way that would be impossible to duplicate.
Filled a scarlet PVC glove with plaster of Paris yesterday and got it everywhere, all down me, all over the floor and workbench, but it worked! It will look better once it’s been drenched with hydrochloric acid. It attaches to the wall and is grasping a wire-covered rotten post.
The current problem is how to cut an oildrum in two. The steel shears proved to be only useful for cutting sheet steel in a straight line, so I’ve been using a hacksaw blade in my jigsaw, and Ken assures me it can’t possibly cut an oildrum. Tried to shift the oildrum I really wanted to use down to my shed, only to find it’s full of the previous owner’s sump oil, so we put the cap back on and will ignore it again, probably forever.