Steve Turns Eight!

Steve turned 8 on Wednesday 7 Nov.
As usual on Wednesdays he had a half day of school and the NL rellys came around to celebrate.He's getting to be a big boy!
And of course the BD cake(s)! With some birthday Lego in the background (under construction)

More autumn

These shots are from our first long Sunday afternoon autumn walk last Sunday (4 Nov) . This was the purple route around the Cartierheide just out behind Eersel. We were out for about 1.5 hr and rather weary by the time we got home.

You can see how motivated Chris was by the whole prospect.

Autumn in the garden

Another burst of uploads - this time some shots from last weekend (3 & 4 Nov). The hornbeam hedges at the back of the garden are turning all kinds of lovely colours.

More Venice Shots

My uploads a week or so ago had to be interrupted for technical reasons so here are a few more. Some shots of a rainy St. Marks square with the ubiquitous 1) pigeons 2) tourists.
The bright yellow terrace chairs in the square caught my eye. The waiters kept darting out in the drizzle to wipe off the pigeon crap.
Some weary travellers sitting at the back end of a vaporetto - the Venetian water busses that chug back and forth around the city and through the central canal all day long (and through the night). The public transport is well organized I must say.
More weary travellers. In dire need of some Italian gelato.

Cheap fun in Venice

A couple of things that were REALLY good value in Venice were:
Feeding pigeons in St Marks square. 1 EUR each for a small pack of cornfeed kept the guys amused for ages.

The Naval historical Museum was also really cheap to get into at EUR 1.55 each for 4 of us - Steve was free. This was an anchor of a warship sunk by the Italian Navy in WW1

A few shots from our holiday in Venice.
We flew down on Sun 21 Oct (had a long delay on flight due to a passenger not turning up - so they had to unload their checked in baggage). We got in to the appt at about 0200 on Monday morning
We were there Mon-Wed and then flew back on Thursday during the day.
Weather was overcast with a bit of drizzle now and then.
A few shots from here and there. The appt was rented from www.veniceapartments.org and was located in the Santa Croce neighbourhood about a 5 min walk from the Rialto bridge.






On Wed we went up the bell tower shown in the distance to enjoy the view out over Venice and the lagune.

The bridge of sighs just down from St. Marks square.

More Skimboard Sanding

A beautiful autumn morning on Sunday - no better time to work on the skimboard.
Robin lending a hand - mainly sanding the top radius on the rails.
The surform was also very useful in roughing out.
Plane less so on the poplar ply.

Handy, that!

Thought I'd do a quick set of uploads of some photos from my mobile phone from recent business trips. The images have a kind of hazy, lo-fi quality to them. Nothing wrong with that! This one is in Tel Aviv from the Rennaissance, looking back at the Sheraton. Took this when I was there in June this year.












The next one is from my room in Nice, France last week. 21 degrees and not too bad.

A couple of days later, another meeting, another hotel room, this time a few km away in Juan Les Pins. All very South of France at end of season. Mind you, don't usually get to go to such glamourous places. But who takes photos of giant car parks in Gothenburg, Sweden?

Template board - thanks Victoria!

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. So I borrowed the basic shape from Robins Vic skimbo. Retro-engineering is a nicer way to describe it.

Skimboard Test # 2

The top & bottom skins & rails were done during an afternoon. Not bad! Then laid it up on the rocker table and glued & clamped it.
The rocker table was a simple effort from reclaimed 2x4 and some IKEA fasteners.
You see that the poplar ply stringers are also flat and being bent on the table. A previous testpiece helped me learn that the glued laminate construction (and shear) helps keep the rocker intact.
Advice that you can never have enough clamps.
Gluing on the top skin several days later. By the way I am using the Bison (Konstructielijm - D4) - standard single component marine quality PU glue as far as I can tell.
I did put a bit of extra padding to avoid any marking of the top skin
Sanding up. Just need to work on this a bit and she'll be ready for glassing.
Still stuffing around looking for a good venting solution (for such a thin board)

Skimboard test exercise

Basically a series of photos of my first attempt at building some kind of wood based surf object. I chose a skimboard to start with for several reasons (in no particular order):

1. Ease of construction.
2. My #2 son Robin is really into skimboarding, as are my other two (Chris & Steven) so we are starting to amass a quiver of skimbos.
3. Um, did I mention ease of construction?

Here are the top & bottom skims (3mm hardwood ply) cut to shape templated from a Victoria foamie skimboard.
Adding the centre and rail stringers - cutting to shape. For this design I thought transverse stringers might not be needed - we'll see.











Yep - two trusty tools - a surform and a belt sander
Hmmm. My first mistake already - (both!) rail stringers were cropper by 20 mm to allow for the 200 mm centre stringer...Doh! But the joys of wood are such that I can fill that one up with some extra wood & glue!!!

First venture into the blogosphere

About to pop my first post off into the blogosphere - this is more of a test firing to check how it all going to look.
I think the thing here is for me to find a way to get some thoughts and pctures out there to read for the friends and family in the big wide world.