Posted by Chuck Grimmett. Learn more on his About page.
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Week of May 19, 2025
Monday I cleaned and sorted through the Shopsmith parts I picked up from the estate sale two weeks ago. I found the right combination of parts to finally have a safe table saw setup and use a standard 5/8″ arbor instead of the Shopsmith 1″ arbor. I am pretty stoked about that! I also hung…
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Week of May 12, 2025
I spent M-F this week fly fishing in the Catskills. I primarily fished small streams in search of native brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis. I’m happy to report that I found some great spots and caught 61 brook trout over the course of the week, along with 7 wild brown trout and 1 rainbow. I caught…
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Week of May 5, 2025
Happy Mother’s Day! Monday I kept Charlie home from pre-k and took him to tour the Clearwater. They had a special event for 2-4 year olds! It was fun, despite the rain. Charlie got to help push the tiller, see some real catfish and hog chokers, and explore the deck. We also stopped at Rossi…
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Leather Net Holster v2
A week and a half ago I made a v1: I took it out for two days of fishing and, while I didn’t lose my net, I didn’t like how much it twisted and flopped around. Today I made a v2 with two important changes: Cut and glued to prep for hole punching and sewing:…
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Week of April 28, 2025
Good week! Monday I put the roof on Charlie’s slide play fort and finished it: That night I made a leather net holster for my fishing belt. It turned out okay for my first leather working project, but I need to make a new one out of thicker, sturdier leather because this one flops around…
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Two Rustic Ash Bowls From a Log
My friend Jon dropped off a couple ash logs from their property for turning, so I took one and turned some rustic bowls for his wife, Kristin, for her birthday. Here is the log, marked for chainsaw cuts so I can saw out the pith. After cutting: The bark has some nice bug patterns: Now…
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Adding a Slide Platform to an A-Frame Swing Set
Part one is making the basic A-frame swing set: https://cagrimmett.com/2022/08/06/building-a-swing-set-with-a-frame-brackets/ Part two is adding a climbing wall: https://cagrimmett.com/2024/03/07/adding-a-climbing-wall-to-an-a-frame-swing-set/ This is part three. Three years ago I built a simple A-frame swing set for my son. Two years ago I added a small climbing wall. This year I added a slide platform! I wrote this post…
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Walnut handle for a hook remover
Quick project from a couple weeks ago: Turning a handle out of walnut for a hook remover. Hook removers are great for quickly unhooking fish without touching them (which can harm their protective mucus layer.) You just hook them on your tippet, run them down and over the hook, and the hook usually slides right…
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Fallfish on the fly
I went blue lining today in search of brook trout in NY near the CT border. I didn’t find any brookies, but I did catch 14 fallfish. Fallfish are a large native minnow species. All of the ones I caught were 6-10in long, but there were dozens of fingerling size in the stream, too. Even…
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Leather holster for a landing net
A couple months ago my uncle made a beautiful tamo, or Japanese fish landing net, for me. And during my recent visit, I noticed that he and my cousin made leather belt holsters for their landing nets, so I resolved to make one for mine, too. Following their advice, I hit up the nearest Hobby…
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Week of April 21, 2025
Cool photo I found this week: One of our neighbors put their house up for sale, and the listing included an aerial photo of our street. You can see our house and a great view of the town and the river. We feel very grateful to live here. Three big projects occupied my time this…
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Turning smaller tenkara line spools
I turned a new set of tenkara line spools earlier this week out of a piece of mimosa wood. From the last set of spools I turned, I gifted the smaller one and kept the larger two-tiered one. After using it for a couple months, I decided that I wanted a smaller, thinner one to…
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Week of April 14, 2025
This week was spring break for most of NY, so this week was all about hanging with Charlie. Monday we traveled back from Georgia. Charlie was a great traveler, and to our surprise he slept for the whole plane ride. Tuesday Charlie and I puttered around the yard doing lots of small tasks. We repotted…
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Week of April 7, 2025
At the beginning of this week, I helped with another trout release and macroinvertebrate sampling, which I wrote about here: I also finished an oak bowl on the lathe, which I wrote about here: Puttered around in the backyard and the workshop in the rain with Charlie. He checked on the radishes, organized his workbench,…
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Oak Fruit Bowl
I turned a fruit bowl out of oak (from the same tree as the platters) as a gift for my grandfather for his 90th birthday. This was the first project where I got to use a speed reducer on the Shopsmith, so it took me some extra time to set it up and figure out…
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Trout Releases & Macroinvertebrate Sampling
Last Thursday and today I volunteered with the Croton Watershed chapter of Trout Unlimited to assist with a trout release and macroinvertebrate sampling at Cross River as part of the Trout in the Classroom program. In the fall, the New York State Department of Conservation sends trout eggs to schools. The students watch them hatch,…
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Week of March 31, 2025
On the first week of my sabbatical: The fishing was a bit slow. The water temp is still pretty cold in most places around here (mid 40s), so the trout are fairly sluggish. I did get to check out some new locations, and I landed three, hooked but lost four more, and had more strikes…
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Week of March 24, 2025
This was my week at work to wrap up and hand things off before starting my sabbatical. I ended up getting a surprise project on Wednesday. It was fun but challenging, and I worked on it for three full days, and delivered what I had at the end of the day Friday. Now I’m winding…
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Week of March 17, 2025
I took it slow at work this week, focusing on handoffs since my sabbatical starts March 31. The brain fog got better as the week went on, but my energy levels still aren’t back to normal. I even took a nap on Saturday, which is very out of the norm for me. Follow up with…
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Weeks of March 3 and 10, 2025
The big thing this week: I was in the hospital Monday through Thursday. I woke up with severe pain in my left side around 3:30am Monday, which I thought might be a kidney stone given family history. The pain escalated to the point of making me vomit and writhe, so I went to the ER.…