What I Did on Summer Vacation 2020

On Friday I got home from my place near Rib Lake, Wisconsin. Since the autumnal equinox happened during the last few days of the trip, technically we can call it a late-summer visit to the woods. Temperatures were warm for September. A few nights were cool enough that I was comfortable inside my shack with a fire in the stove, but most nights were fine to sleep outside in the hammock.

Despite the warm temperatures, the sun was no longer high in the sky, as in July. Daylight hours are shorter, and the leaves turned color while I was there. Early on there were patchy bits of color here and there:

. . . but by the time I left we had sights like

Camera SOLD

(This camera sold at auction on ebay)

My first DSLR, used on this blog and to make videos for Highland Woodworking since 2016. Excellent shape. My new camera is a Canon T7i, I'll be excited to start sharing images made with it here.

Stacked Birch Bark Knife Handle: New Video

I recently made and posted this video to YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zDllohj-Q

The process of making the handle was quite enjoyable, and the result is wonderful. The handle is grippy, resilient, and warm in the hand. Even when wet! I will be making more.

Foot-Actuated Shutter Release: My Take

Another post, another jury-rigged photography doohickey.

(Uh, that's not my foot!)

A few months ago, I bought one of these. I did it to

Trees With Personality

I love trees. It doesn't strike me as incongruous that a woodworker would love trees, although some of my non-woodworking, tree-loving friends have commented on it, and some of my woodworking associates are at times taken aback by my enthusiasm. You see, I don't just love trees in the abstract, as most woodworkers do. Who wouldn't love the very idea of huge plants that make a material like wood to hold their leaves up in the sunlight so they can photosynthesize: a material that we can use to make furniture, utensils, tools, paper, houses? Yes, that's wonderful.

But when I say “I love trees” I also mean individual trees, as individuals. Walking in the woods of northern Wisconsin yesterday I ran into a bunch of trees with great . . . personality is really all I can say. Some of these trees I have known and loved for years; others I encountered for the first time on yesterday's walk. So I tried making a few portraits. Click through to see some of yesterday's images.

Octopus?

Metal Taps for Wood, and Studio Lighting Redux

This post is an update to this one from 2012, about jury rigging an adjustable light stand from an old tripod & hardware store parts. Since then I have discovered the wonderful photography site strobist.blogspot.com, which provides a crash course on building and using a portable studio lighting setup for still photography. The strobist site does a great job of finding and recommending affordable gear that's also easily portable. I wanted another light stand, but I hadn't run into another cheap old tripod at a garage sale, so on Strobist's advice I used one of my Christmas gift cards to buy the LumoPro LP605 portable light stand from Midwest Photo Exchange, along with a swiveling head so my stand would be capped by a cold shoe.

With the stand and cold shoe in hand, I saw that it would be easy to adapt one of the light holders I made before to be held in the cold shoe. Click through to see how I did it:

Lights! Camera!

For several years I had two borrowed photographic light stands in my shop. I used them for taking photos, holding up backdrops, and sometimes as task lighting for things like sanding or finishing where a raking light at just the right angle is necessary for the best results. Then last month I had to return the borrowed stands, and realized I didn't want to shell out the money for this. Which is just for the stand, mind you, not this too.

So, until I can afford to splurge on that kind of gear, I decided to jury rig something out of stuff I had on hand. My “jury rigs” have a way of lasting for years, so whatever I made needed to be fairly durable and it had to work well. With a bit of head scratching and a couple of false starts, I came up with this, which I'm pretty pleased with:

Keep reading to see about the process of building it. If you don't want to click through and read, here's one key nugget of information buried back in there: the screw on a standard tripod head, and the corresponding threaded hole on the bottom of your camera, is just plain old 1/4-20. (At least, here in the U.S. I can't speak for Europe or Asia)