Sedona Red 222

I began this project in November 14th, 2012 and had the first mount completed about one month later on December 13th, 2012. By January 2nd, 2013 I had nine mounted. The idea came after shooting two grouse and noticing the variation between the tails. As I collected more tails I noticed some are red (nick-named “cherry grouse” at our camp) and some are grey. There is further variation of color within red and grey as well as different banding patterns at the tips of the feathers. Some tails have two unique feather in the center while others have feathers that all look the same. I thought it would be cool to preserve some of the most interesting tails and that it would be appropriate to display them in the cabin as a tribute to Michigan wilderness and the tradition of hunting.

The hardest part was clearly going to be gathering the materials (ie, being a successful hunter). I began collecting tails a bit before November, being diligent to pin them soon after shooting. I found using scrap 6″ pine paneling and push pins to work well enough for this step. I have also heard of push pins and cardboard working. The pine secured the push pins well enough and during the dozen tails I pinned not one let loose during the drying phase.

Once the flesh on the tails dried to a leathery texture, effectively locking the feather in place I consulted the local taxidermist on the appropriate method for permanently locking the tail in the fanned position. Ken Harjala has been a taxidermist for some 30 years and I’ve seen enough of his work to know that if he says, “this is how you lock the feathers” that I should quite asking questions and start taking notes. So, on Ken’s advice this is how you lock feathers:

1. Remove the small downy feathers to expose the shafts of the tail feathers
2. Lay out wax paper
3. Lock the feathers in the desired position
4. Pour Bondo onto the feather shafts and allow to harden

After allowing 12 hours to set I found it necessary to remove the excess Bondo. After some trial and error I found a detail sander to be the most efficient way to remove the excess Bondo.

I’ve mounted a number of white-tailed deer antlers to plaques and have spent a fair amount of time wood working as a hobby. But unlike mounting antlers I really didn’t know what a plaque for a ruffed-grouse tail would look like. After a google image search or two I gave up on finding a plan and drew up my own version of what I thought a plaque should look like. Since grouse tails aren’t very large I wanted a clean, elegant, and simple mount.

On December 7th I visited Ken and spent a day in his wood shop. After about two hours I finally arrived at a general template for the plaque.

Once I had a template it was a simple task of tracing and cutting out the shape on the band saw. Then the shape was cleaned up on a spindle sander and mounted to a jig. With the plaque securely mounted to the jig I could use the band saw to cut a nice angle on the plaque. A trip to the table-top belt sander and I had a nice simple face for my plaque.

The plaques were made up of three pieces: a face, a spacer, and a hanger. Glue up was a simple task and using jaw clamps and gorilla glue.

… and repeating 19 times.

Once I had the spacer glued to the face I could drill and mount the hanger. With 19 newly milled plaques the next step was detail sanding and preparation for finishing. After some deliberation I settled on Minwax Sedona Red 222 wood finish. It enhanced the color of the cherry without looking artificial. I applied a coat and then wiped the plaques down 15 minutes later. I repurposed some old clothes hangers and recruited an electrical conduit in my basement for the finishing stage of this project.

Note that latex gloves will dissolve with oil-based finishes after about 5-10 minutes of contact – only a slight improvement over no gloves at all. Before finishing I tested Sedona Red 222 on some scrap pieces of cherry. As a precaution I always test stains and finishes before using them on my projects. I also determined that I would stain all unglued surfaces and then apply a semi-gloss polyurethane to all surfaces for at least one coat. The front of the plaque received a sanding with 220 grit and a second coat for aesthetics. Staining and finishing even the surfaces you don’t see is something I like to do in order to protect the wood from the changes in ambient humidity. This isn’t so much a concern for smaller projects like this, but for desks and cabinets it can be disastrous to have a board shrink or expand as a dwelling transitions from bone-dry winter air to heavy summer air. So, out of habit I stain and finish every bit of exposed wood I can on a project.

When it came time to mount the tails I learned another trick. If I sand the Bondo to the correct thickness I can take advantage of the solid wood construction and use the plaque to mechanically clamp the tail into the plaque. If the Bondo is too thin I can shim with rope caulk.

Here is a gallery with some of this years tails. I pinned about 1/3 of the tails shot and mounted about 3/4 of the tails I pinned. With 19 fully finished plaques I should be well prepared for the future.

Supply list:

• $5.97 :: Gorilla Glue 4 oz.
• $3.19 :: 1-5/8″ #8 coarse thread screw x165
• $9.71 :: 93-1/2 x 1/4 x .025″ 6 teeth/inch band saw blade
• $0.00 :: scrap cherry tongue and groove paneling
• $9.47 :: Minwax fast-drying polyurethane (semi-gloss), quart
• $3.97 :: Minwax Sedona Red 222 wood finish, half pint
• $3.97 :: 220 grit sand paper, 3 sheets
• $3.97 :: 150 grit sand paper, 3 sheets
• $2.52 :: 2″ foam applicators, qty 4
• $7.98 :: hand sander block
• $9.97 :: 100 pack latex gloves

Interesting stats:

• 10 hours required to make plaques
• 3 hours time needed to finish plaques
• 29 grouse shot this season
• 9 grouse tails mounted
• 19 total Plaques produced

Wood Shop Rev 1.0

4.15.2013-Monday

Almost the weekend… for me anyway. I’m kept busy Friday through Tuesday working at the pharmacy in Marquette. I have every other Tuesday off – a sort of courtesy for taking the weekend (I still get 80 hours per pay period). Aside from looking forward to the weekend I thought it was time to finally offer up some of the happenings in this neck of the woods. At the cabin, Dad traded in Great Aunt Vi’s 2003 Polaris Ranger SxS. The old 500cc four-wheel drive has been fun, but the solid rear-axle is only so useful at speed. The upgrade is 10 years newer and I’m awaiting my chance to get behind the wheel. Speaking of upgrades, our ability to get the family to the cabin has been enhanced with the purchase of 2013 Honda Pilot (AWD of coarse). William outgrew the cramped confines of rear seat of the Chevy Colorado Extended cab and now with another due in September… So, after almost 9 years and 105,000 miles I’ve parted ways with my truck. It was a good little truck and I sure got my money’s worth over the years. There were a few electrical gremlins early on but all-in-all the truck held up quite well.

So, on to the wood shop…

I’ve harbored an interest in woodworking since high school. I took all the wood shop classes I could and senior year built an 11-panel solid white ash desk. Even the drawer bottoms were solid wood. The top measured in at about 1.25 inches thick (I mention this because the top of the desk is what inspired the sides of my first real basement wood shop project). When my godfather announced his intention to sell his wood shop I new I was going to buy it. Not more than two weeks after mentioning it was for sale I took a 12 foot U-haul down and loaded it up. I spent the next week setting up my shop. Since set-up I’ve made a number of small adjustments. Here’s a short list of some of the more important revisions:

• oiled numerous cranks and nobs (motor oil)
• made fine adjustments to the table saw, drum sander, router table, mortiser, and band saw to improve precision
• replaced batteries in laser guide on compound miter saw
• made several push blocks and push sticks
• added a Carter precision roller head to bandsaw
• upgraded from metal guide blocks to cool-blocks on bandsaw and upgraded all roller bearings to high quality, high speed bearings
• purchased a Woodpeckers coping sled for the router table
• designed and assembled a bridged cross-cut sled and a bridged dado-sled for the table saw
• picked up a set of chisels and a chisel mallet
• set up a sharpening kit (whetstones in 1000, 3000, and 6000 grit, hand file set, Veritas MK-II Honing Guide)
• added two card scrapers to tool box
• added two old hand planes (put new edges on blades)
• reinforced the workbench with over 2 dozen carriage bolts and built a router table onto the work bench
• mounted a heavy duty power strip on the leg of the workbench for power and to reduce clutter
• added a forstner bit set and some high quality Rockler counter sink drill bits with collar depth-stop

There is more, but by now you get the idea. I’m adopting the philosophy that the quality of my work can be limited by the quality/precision of my tools. A little extra work to make a high-qualiy jig or cross cut sled means a better finished product. A finely adjusted bandsaw means a truer cut. I can’t exceed the quality of my tools. I can work twice as hard to conceal the mistakes of inaccuracy or spend some time tuning my set up. I’ve chosen to learn my machines and finely tune them before moving forward on projects.

Here is my collection of push blocks. The push pad style blocks have 80 grit belt-sander paper on them. They work OK but I replaced them with a set from Bench Dog. The soft rubber padding on the Bench Dogs stick better than sand paper. The rest of the blocks work very well. They have no true finish, just some Johnson’s paste wax rubbed in as a mild protectant against changes in ambient humidity.

This is the bridged crosscut-sled. The dado-sled is in the background. special detail was given to making the sled as square and straight as possible. Most edges have a small round-over and the whole sled was wiped down with Johnson’s paste wax.

Once the push blocks were made I went full-speed on the shelf. Sarah visited her parents for a week so in addition to a 50 hour work week I added an extra 50 hours in the shop to finish her book shelf. I didn’t want to be using oil-based stains and oil-based polyurethane in the house with a pregnant wife and 10-month old as occupants.

I started glueing well before the wood shop was moved in.

I’m in this photo only to show scale. The shelf is about 200 lbs, well over 6′ tall, and features walnut plugs, high density felt feet, and a whole lot of wood and glue.

Also from the shop: I made the window sills for the basement windows. The router table is an amazingly powerful tool. Each window sill is made from 3-5 boards glued up with a glue-joint router bit edge – which makes for a super strong glue joint and makes for easy alignment when glueing. Once cleaned up on the drum sander and squared on the jointer and table saw the window sills (solid ash and pine) are better than anything a reasonable person would consider buying or paying someone to make. There will be many other touches like this in the cabin now that I have wood shop.

I’m continuing to acquire new tools when the opportunity arises. I’m on the hunt for a good rabbiting plane. My most recent fixer-upper plane was picked up for about $18. Not bad considering new medium quality one will go for $100 to $125.

Another fixer-upper were the five-roller stands that I used extensively in the milling of my large shelf pieces. The screw-clamp was cheap and the threads stripped out shortly after I acquired them. Luckily I know a master machinist (Sarah’s grandfather). Grandpa Rich supplied me with a heavily overhauled assembly. Note that instead of welding a bar to a bolt he threaded a metal dowel, polished it, rounded over the end, and bent it to the correct angle. And while the nut is welded to the stand, the stand was also drilled and tapped – which adds up to about 5x the threads (surface area) than the original assembly, which also benefits from the use of higher-strength steel.

Northern Sky at Night

I’ve been collecting time lapses this winter. This more or less amounts to between 2-4 hours of a tripod mounted camera snapping photos on its own every 30 seconds. I recommend going fullscreen and viewing it in 720p or higher. I’m still looking for a sunrise and the aurora borealis… so for now, here’s the first draft.

battery checkup late-2012

11.14.2012-Wednesday

It has been a little, while but I’ve collected enough data to assemble another battery update post. The first topic I’d like to cover is battery capacity and changes in temperature. I’ve seen theoretical charts for capacity vs. temperature, but due to variables in battery composition, size, manufacture process, etc… I needed to experimentally find the relationship with our batteries and temperature. I have collected only three samples of capacity and temperature but I consider these to be very good samples given how much trouble I endured to start from a fully charged, rested battery, with a reasonably stable 20-30amp draw (TV and a few lights with the occasional power spike from the well-pump). I used to battery monitor to record how much power was used (Ah) and then took corresponding specific gravity readings to get an estimate. I used specific gravity before and after discharging to determine the change in state of charge.

What’s very interesting about this chart (other than dropping to 50% rated capacity at about 30°F) is how quickly capacity drops off when temperature drops below 60°F. I now consider “Summer” as the season when the batteries are >60°F and “Winter” to be anything below that. It would have been nice to keep the batteries in the basement, but in our situation an insulated garage works. I simply adjust the battery monitor to 850Ah in winter and then back to 1540Ah in summer.

I’ve begun to track the to amount of water I add to the batteries. I had a brief scare a while back when the plates were just barely exposed on a few batteries. The PV charger was running a bit high for voltage – I thought the low capacity of the batteries in the cold was due to not getting enough charge to the batteries so I jacked up the charger set-points. While this did not risk harm to the batteries directly it cooked off the water pretty quick when the weather got warm. Combine a particularly busy time in my life (graduation, first child, moving, new job…) and we were close to doing some real damage to the batteries. Luckily I had a weekend in June to give the batteries the once over. I also recently started tracking equalization dates. The new plan for maintenance is:

• Water as needed,
• Visually inspect every 4 months
• Equalize every 4 months
• Take S.G. of every cell yearly (once before, once after equalization)

The most recent battery health assessment was interesting. It’s been a long time since the last equalization. I may have record of it somewhere but it’s not in either of my two core battery spreadsheets. Here is the S.G. before equalization. Note that the batteries were at 87% charge.

How to read my tables:

• Each battery is 6V and has 3 cells
• One temperature reading is taken for each battery
• Top table is actual readings
• Bottom chart is the variance from average S.G. and standard temperature
• My algorithms flag variances: white is normal, brown is OK, red is greater than ±0.007 from average – which is generally considered an indication to equalize

Here are the effects of equalization (before watering batteries)

I’m happy with this. One cell is just outside of factory specification. I’m not going to worry much since the batteries were cold and the quality of an equalization could be considered questionable because of that. I’m fairly sure a summer equalization would do the trick and leave my tables with all white cells (maybe a few brown ones).

It looks like at 3 years our battery bank is still fairly healthy and that having a maintenance plan is going to pay off long-term. Also, I’m almost ready to declare the off-grid system a success, and stop referring to it as an experiment. I’ll decide that at the five year mark (early 2015). It also looks like the batteries require about 1L water each month and that anything over 5L puts the batteries at risk for exposed plates. This will probably drop to 1/2L water each month in winter due to temperature drop.

Downloads: Battery Analysis, Battery Records

off-grid system :: settings

11.19.2012-Monday

Some fine-tuning has been going on. The battery monitor has been super accurate the past few weeks. I have marked the changes with an asterisk. The charge efficiency factor (CEF) has been adjusted and through trial and error 85% has been reached as the appropriate charger efficiency. This is after trying 74%, 80%, and 95% before arriving at 85%. Current threshold (Ith) was increased to cancel out noise from the 12V timer, garage sensor, and two outside LEDs – we need at least a 1.2A load to register anything other than zero current on the battery monitor. Only when the timer is “ON” and the kitchen lights are on will the current draw register on the battery monitor. Tail current (It) has been increased from 0.5% and should now be about 12A as cut off for charged (when charge current <12A and >13.5V has been achieved monitor registers batteries as “charged”). Charged detection time (Tcd) has been adjusted so the battery monitor more easily registers a charged battery bank as 100% full sooner. Time to go (Tdt) has also been lengthened to 1 minute to more conviently show time remaining to 50% at a one-minute average load. Battery capacity (Cd) has been adjusted for winter – the batteries are cold (25-40°F).

Victron BMV-600s

• *85%-  CEF (charge efficiency factor)
• *1.20A – Ith (current threshold)
• 1.25 – PC (Peukert exponent)
• 13.5V – Vc (charged voltage)
• *850Ah – Cb (battery capacity)
• 50% – DF (discharge floor)
• *0.8% – It (tail current)
• *4 min – Tcd (charged detection time)
• *1 – Tdt (time to go)

3.9.2012 – Friday <PREVIOUS SET POINTS>

The off-grid system is now approaching the two year mark (sine the install date of the solar panels). With a second winter on the way out I’ve had a chance to learn some of the subtleties of our particular battery/inverter set up and have now arrived at a reasonably set list of device settings. A common question I’ve observed from those wanting to install their own system is, “what settings should I use for my charge controller?” From this many more device settings questions arise. The finer points of choosing device settings will rely on manufacturer specifications, particularly those from the battery manufacturer. With that in mind, here is a complete list of the settings I’m using:

 Xantrex C60

• 13.8V – FLOAT (CHG)
• 14.7V – BULK (CHG)

Xantrex MS3000

•  20A – Power Share
• 100% – Max Charge Rate
• 10.5V – Lo DC Volt
• FLA – Batt Type
• 1540Ah – Batt Size
• 85W – Sense Below
• 8s – Sense Interval
• 3 – # Chg Stages
• 15.5V – Egz Volts
• On – Force Charge
• 85V – Lo AC Volt
• 45Hz – Lo AC Freq
• 135V – Hi AC Volt
• 65Hz – Hi AC Freq

Victron BMV-600s

• 74%-  CEF (charge efficiency factor)
• 0.10A – Ith (current threshold)
• 1.25 – PC (Peukert exponent)
• 13.5V – Vc (charged voltage)
• 1500Ah – Cb (battery capacity)
• 50% – DF (discharge floor)
• 0.5% – It (tail current)
• 45 min – Tcd (charged detection time)
• 0 – Tdt (time to go)

CEF (Victron BMV-600s) is a particularly tricky setting. I may return to this post and edit that value from time to time. So far I’ve only been able to determine that 90% is too high, 50% is too low, and 74% is my best guess at this time.

Neighbors

11.14.2012 – Wednesday

The day before opening day of the Michigan gun-deer season.

We try to be good neighbors at the cabin. Before deer season begins the Ol’ man will make the round and talk to the neighbors and see who is hunting where. We also keep a consistent supply of hoppy beverages for thirsty woodsmen (and woods-women if we could find any) who stop over. However, if you choose to accept our generosity and drink our beverages, please know how to operate the machine that carried you to our doorstep so we can go hunting. Basically, don’t be Greg:

 

Enjoy while you can, if Greg requests it I’m taking down the video…maybe.

Oh, and it’s in Full HD.

Cabin :: tour #3

I thought it would be a good time to revisit the cabin via a photo gallery. I’ve assembled my 25 top photos of the cabin (so far) into this album. Some projects on the drawing board for now, that may make a future album, include a paving stone patio with stone fire circle and possibly another home built shooting bench for sighting in rifles. The basement is a work in progress so of coarse I’ll photograph that as the paneling, flooring, and furnishing progresses. So for now, here’s the tour: