Chuck Grimmett

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  • Top 3 (2024)

    Last year I used this format instead of a long-form recap of the year, and I liked it, so I did it again this year. The categories changed slightly, and I have some notes as to why on the bottom.

    Happy New Year!

    • Books
      • The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
      • Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
      • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    • New blog follows
      • The Feather Bender
        • A fantastic fly tying blog by Barry Ord Clarke. I’ve learned so much from his videos!
      • Tenkara Talk
        • Getting into both tenkara and fly tying this year, I’ve had to read and learn a lot. Jason’s blog is a go-to resource for me with a big archive of useful stuff.
      • Ephemeral New York
        • Glimpses at different points of time of an ever changing city, meticulously researched. I look forward to the posts each Monday.
    • Meals
      • The Oklahoma Onion Burger at Hamburger America. The best burger I’ve had this year.
      • The Butcher at Benny’s Brown Bag. Turkey, Havarti, Dill, chips. So good.
      • Chipotle’s quesadilla kids meal with sides of pork, white rice, and cheese. This is Charlie’s favorite takeout meal, and we know he’ll eat a filling, nutritious meal whenever we get it. So it makes my top list because it is clutch.
    • Places
      • The newly rebuilt Fleischmann Pier in Peekskill. Charlie and I walk there regularly and it is always great.
      • Groton Long Point, CT
        • We vacationed here with the Wasmers this summer, and it was a beautiful, vibrant little summer community where everyone walked and kids had a ton of autonomy to ride their bike to various activities. The July 4 parade was a lot of fun!
      • Amawalk Outlet
        • I sought out some local streams since getting back into fly fishing this year. The Amawalk Outlet (Muscoot River) is my favorite spot so far. Wild brown trout fishery that is secluded and serene. Natural beauty nestled between a couple large towns, but feels like it is in the mountains.
    • Cocktails (at home)
      • Sherry Cobbler
        • low abv, uses seasonal fruit, very refreshing.
      • Elusive Dreams
        • Used our homemade banana liqueur for this. Very tasty.
      • Carbonated mai tai
        • Learning how to carbonate things from a CO2 tank was pretty cool, and carbonated mai tais are very tasty.
    • Purchases
      • Leatherman Skeletool
        • I’ve used this almost every day since buying it. Has pliers, a knife, a screwdriver, and a bottle opener, yet is slim. I like the CX version, the one with a straight blade (no serrations).
      • Dragontail Mizuchi Tenkara rod
        • I got into Tenkara-style fly fishing in the latter half of the year, and am enjoying learning to use this rod effectively. I like the different zoom lengths.
      • Pro-Grind lathe tool grinding jig
        • This seriously upped my lathe tool sharpening game. I should have gotten one five years ago.
      • Honorable mention: HOTO Precision Screwdriver Pen. Beautiful and self-containing.
    • Memories
      • Rowing on the Hudson with Charlie, from Verplank to Stony Point and back.
      • The period of twilight during the total eclipse.
      • Wading in the creek in the woods by our house with Charlie.
    • Things I’ve made
    • Accomplishments
      • Helping Charlie become potty trained. We are so proud of him for figuring it out and becoming more independent, and proud of ourselves for patiently supporting him through it.
      • Rebuilding my shop, making it a space where I can go out and make real progress instead of spending the first 30 minutes cleaning, moving stuff, and finding the tools I need.
      • Learning how to turn wooden bowls – a goal of mine for the past five years!

    What I left out:

    • I left shows and music off the list this year. I didn’t really listen to or watch anything new worth mentioning.
    • I also left Software off the list because I’m using pretty much all the same software tools as last year.
    • Sadly, I left out Articles because, even after going through my Likes and Bookmarks, nothing incredible sticks out to me this year. I just didn’t read that much good stuff online, which I am going to try to remedy in 2025.

  • 100 things that made my year (2024)

    In randomized order because the order I jotted them down clumped too many similar things together.

    1. Eating cheese at the Guggisberg cheese factory
    2. Sledding down the hill in Depew with Charlie during a snowstorm
    3. Making hot sauce from the habaneros we grew
    4. Making banana liqueur
    5. Playing in the creeks in our woods with Charlie in all weather
    6. Running into friends at the coffee shop, grocery store, on the subway, at restaurants, and at the park. In general, having a community of friends.
    7. Visiting my family in Georgia, them getting to meet Charlie for the first time
    8. Fixing the excavator toys at Depew
    9. Making house falernum
    10. Hearing the barred owls in our woods. Who cooks for you?
    11. Meeting my best and oldest friend’s 18mo son, and having our sons meet
    12. Picking and tasting wild muscadine grapes
    13. A rare date night with Amanda during Christmas break
    14. The Oklahoma Onion burger from Hamburger America
    15. Hayden and Colin’s marriage celebration party
    16. Learning how to turn bowls on the lathe, a goal of mine for five years
    17. Hosting the Crisantes for Thanksgiving
    18. Getting to see the joy on Charlie’s face as he got to steer an excavator and ride in a bulldozer
    19. Traveling to the totality path to see the full solar eclipse
    20. Many trips to the Cold Spring Tots Park
    21. Cooking and eating dinner outside as often as possible
    22. Learning how to tie flies
    23. Turning more Christmas ornaments on the lathe
    24. Going to the Bear Mountain Bridge: The First 100 Years documentary premiere
    25. Visiting Colonial Homestead in Millersburg, Ohio
    26. Rowing on the Hudson with Charlie
    27. Trunk or Treat at Charlie’s daycare
    28. Learning how to fish in the tenkara style
    29. Book club with Chris and Jordan, discussing A Perfect Spy
    30. Two solo flights with Charlie
    31. Amanda making a cardboard ambulance that Charlie payed with in the living room for a week
    32. Playing on the Peekskill soccer field with Charlie, kicking around an old ball we found
    33. A New Year’s Day walk in the woods to distribute birdseed pinecones with Amanda and Charlie
    34. The Garden Party and the Christmas Party at the Walls’
    35. Vacationing in Groton Long Point with the Wasmer family
    36. Fernando and his fiancee Gabriele visiting NYC and going to Double Chicken, Please with them.
    37. Decorating the house for Christmas as a family
    38. Looking at the moon and stars with Charlie whenever we can
    39. Pizza dates with Charlie
    40. Biking up and down the street with Charlie
    41. Expanding the garden beds for a larger garden
    42. Charlie catching his first fish, a little pumpkinseed
    43. Charlie’s train adventure to Grand Central
    44. Charlie pulling the air horn on a semi at the Touch a Truck event
    45. Listening to Charlie talk about his day at school and his spooky stories
    46. Serendipitously running into Colin at the Bleecker St subway station and commuting all the way back to Peekskill with him, two hours of nice chatting.
    47. Making a tenkara spool on the lathe
    48. Our garden’s abundance this year
    49. Kayaking up Popolopen Creek with Jay and swimming in Hell Hole
    50. Charlie serving us toy ice cream from his ice cream booth
    51. Drawing with Charlie. In particular, drawing our own map of the park.
    52. Building a sandbox in the backyard and playing in it with Charlie
    53. Charlie playing really well with his cousin Nora at Christmas
    54. Visiting the Stepping Stones Children’s Museum
    55. Making pizza sauce for our tomatoes
    56. Getting my lathe tool sharpening figured out
    57. Trick or Treating with friends in Lake Peekskill
    58. Bedtime books with Amanda and Charlie
    59. Taking Charlie on his first camping trip with Grandma and Grandpa
    60. Making rosin from pine sap I collected
    61. Sketching fly pattern ideas
    62. At work, moving into the lead role of the 51 engineering group
    63. Swimming in the Rapids at Amicalola Creek
    64. Charlie’s Hose Showers
    65. Walking in the Groton Long Point Independence Day Parade
    66. Redesigning this blog
    67. The coffee plant in our living room producing coffee cherries
    68. Charlie getting really into bath bombs (“Fancy bath”)
    69. Apple picking at Fishkill Farms
    70. Ice cream at the Blue Pig
    71. Puttering with Charlie in the workshop
    72. Cold Spring train trip with Jeremy, Miles, and Charlie
    73. Charlie’s first back porch chiminea fire
    74. Making dubbing wax blends with the rosin
    75. Checking out bugs, snakes, toads, and frogs with Charlie
    76. Laying on our backs on the porch as a family and looking at the clouds
    77. Walking around Stony Point and visiting the lighthouse
    78. Sandwich Fridays at Benny’s Brown Bag
    79. Replacing the fence
    80. Getting a Christmas tree from Emmet van Driesche in Massachusetts
    81. Roasting a duck for a dinner party with the Walls
    82. My father’s day bookmarks
    83. Building the Little Free Library for Esther Place
    84. Charlie’s backyard birthday party that turned into an inside party, but people still stuck around
    85. Walks down by the river
    86. Charlie asking to go on a bike ride in the rear seat on my bike that he wasn’t interested in before
    87. Regular lunch dates with Amanda and prioritizing getting time together
    88. Going to Jay’s reading at Stanza Books, and supporting friends in general
    89. Playing with train tracks with Charlie in nearly every room in our house and the back porch
    90. Catching wild brown trout at Amawalk and Boyd’s Corner on flies I tied myself
    91. Making pikliz
    92. Rebuilding the inside of my workshop to make it a nice, useable space. Insulated, added a heater, built a new bench, and added French cleats.
    93. Setting up Amanda’s office and craft space in the basement
    94. Building Charlie his own work bench and watching him use it
    95. Amanda and Charlie baking together
    96. Charlie wishing all of us a Merry Christmas individually
    97. Adding in a sump and radon mitigation in the basement
    98. Carbonating drinks with a CO2 tank
    99. Making a baseball bat for Charlie on the lathe and seeing him have fun hitting it off of the tee
    100. Early breakfast sandwich and coffee in Union Square Park

    What I noticed about this list is that I am happiest when I’m making things or doing things with the people I love. More of that in 2025.

    Other years: 2023, 2022, 2017

  • Week of December 16, 2024

    I worked in Manhattan on Monday to host a WordPress community event at our offices after work. I got in some last-minute shopping and had lunch at Hamburger America, and caught up with some coworkers I hadn’t seen in a while. The event itself was kind of a bust, but while waiting on the subway platform on my way home, I ran into one of our friends from Lake Peekskill, also on his way home, and we got to chat for the next two hours on the train north. Serendipitous fortune!

    We got some snow this week on Monday, Friday, and Saturday. Chilling temperatures this weekend, too. 11F out right now, and it will be 7F when we wake up in the morning.

    Charlie and I had some fun out in the snow.

    I turned a scoop on the lathe over two late evenings this week. It was a good learning experience, but the final product doesn’t quite match what I had in mind. It needs a longer handle, thinner walls on the scoop, and spent way too much time hollowing out a larger section than needed. The next one will be better.

    I don’t mean to brag, but I have a cleaning crew come vacuum up the woodchips after I use my lathe.

    I tied more flies this week. Some eggs, bead head nymphs, and leeches.

    I really like the look of the grey ones.

    Speaking of tying flies, it has been about three months since I first got a vise and gave it a go, so let’s check in:

    I’ve tied 226 flies so far. About a quarter are crap. Bad proportions, bad execution. Another quarter are pretty good. The remaining half are somewhere in the middle: They’ll catch fish and stay together, but have room for improvement.

    I’ve given some of the better ones away to friends and either tossed the bad ones or cut the thread off with a razor to reuse the hooks.

    I’ve tied:

    • Tenkara flies
    • Wet flies
    • Dry flies
    • Streamers
    • Nymphs

    I’m slowly chipping away at the basic skills. The nymphs above all have dubbed bodies, and that was a first for me. Previously I really only dubbed thoraxes/collars.

    I’m getting more confident in figuring out the order of what gets tied on when I see a pattern recipe. I’m also getting better at getting the proportions right.

    I still have a lot to learn, though I imagine that this is something I’ll do for years to come, though not at the same rate. Once I feel good about having reached a decent competency level, I’ll probably just tie enough to keep my fly boxes full and gift some to friends. I have no interest in trying to sell them or tie things just because. I have too many other things I want to do.

    What’s next?

    The local Trout Unlimited chapter has a tying class in April I’ll probably attend to learn some new skills and meet some local tyers.

    I’m done until the new year, but once the holidays are over I plan to tie more tenkara flies, pheasant tail patterns, fox squirrel patterns, then some dry flies.

    I’m sketching more ideas for patterns. This is for a standard winter box:

    It is challenging trying to learn two new skills at the same time (fly tying and bowl turning) that take blocks of focused time to make progress on. I try to spend at least one night (post kid bedtime) each week on each one, but I make better progress when I can do two nights in a row on the same thing, which I usually don’t have time for.

    January and February are a bit slower than the last two months have been, so we’ll see what I can accomplish then.

    The other thing that is tough is that I have other woodworking ideas I want to work on besides bowl turning, which limits the learning time even further.

    I think I just need to be more patient with myself. I am making a lot more progress this year than I did last year. I also need to remember that the folks I am drawing inspiration from in the fly tying and bowl turning communities are folks that have been doing it for decades and spend most of their time on it.

    This week was a whirlwind of finishing things up at work before the holiday, various holiday get togethers, a friend’s birthday party, last minute shopping, and travel prep.

    Winding down for the holiday and family time. I probably won’t write a weekly update next week, though I have some year-end reflection posts in the drafts. 👋

  • Wool vs Dubbing vs Yarn for Egg Patterns

    I wanted to tie some egg patterns to fish myself and to gift to some friends, so I stopped by a fly shop in Manhattan to see if they had any materials. They had yellow and orange, so I picked some up. They didn’t have pink though, so I thought I’d get creative and try out some materials I already had to see how they’d work: wool yarn and dubbing.

    Top left to right: Shetland Spindrift 301 wool yarn, pink ice dub, a blend of the orange dubbings I have, Orvis egg yarn. Bottom: Orange EZ Egg yarn.

    When I got home, I tried out the EZ egg yarn and found it very easy to tie, and it produces a nice looking egg! I used an orange bead instead of a hotspot. The EZ yarn is essentially a chenille base with other materials spun onto it.

    I also picked up some old stock Orvis yarn, which you have to tie in, then cut to shape. I found that more difficult to work with and don’t like the look of as much. They are the yellow eggs in the photo below.

    The other problem with the other yarns is that they seem to work better on larger hooks, like size 10 or 12. Great for big trout and steelhead, but for some of the smaller wild trout near me, I’ve been using size 14 and 16 hooks most of the time. These larger yarns aren’t ideal for that. So I decided to see how the wool yarn and dubbing would work!

    Top, L-R: Pink Wool yarn, pink dubbing blend, pink ice dub only
    Middle, L-R: Orange dubbing blend, orange EZ Yarn
    Bottom: Orvis yellow egg yarn

    For the pink dubbing egg, I decided to use a size 16 jig hook, because I had pink slotted beads that would fit. Plus, wild trout eggs would be a bit smaller.

    The dubbing eggs have a great shape!

    Especially with the dubbing flies, I dabbed UV resin on the head and tail to lock everything in place.

    The EZ Egg Yarn was a winner in when I consider the combo of speed and looks.

    Dubbing eggs were second because they look great, though they take a while to tie.

    Wool yarn eggs are okay, but aren’t as fast to tie as the EZ Egg yarn, and don’t look as good.

    The yellow yarn was the worst. It is kind of ugly and take almost as long as the dubbing eggs to tie and shape.

    Good experiment. Going forward, I’ll probably buy a couple packs of the EZ Egg yarn in different colors and sizes and use that for egg patterns. If I had an endless supply of dubbing I’d just use that, but dubbing is about the same price as the EZ Egg yarn, but faster and easier to tie. It also leaves my dubbing available for other flies.

  • Week of December 9, 2024

    The big thing this week was that we unexpectedly replaced our washer and dryer. The washer started leaking on Monday, so I took the front off and laid on the floor watching it run a load. The leak was coming from where the shaft goes into the wash basin, and my Dad, who repaired appliances for 30 years and knows pretty much everything there is to know about appliances, thought it wasn’t worth trying to replace the basin on an old washer that came with the house. I already replaced parts on the dryer last year, so we decided it was time for a new set.

    That saga took:

    • Monday evening (diagnosing, ordering a new set)
    • Tuesday evening (disconnecting the old ones and getting them out of the basement)
    • Wednesday afternoon and evening (delivery and self installation)
    • Sunday morning (Craigslist dryer pickup)

    That ate into a lot of the time I had hoped to spend in the workshop making some gifts. Such is home ownership. Still better than renting, IMO. I’m glad we were able to replace them so quickly.

    I feel like I’m making progress on fly tying. I learned a couple new techniques this week for dubbing and I’m feeling more confident about basic techniques. I still have a lot more to learn, and I think the next step is learning how to tie in wings for dry and wet flies. I’ll probably start with a couple of traditional wet flies with mallard wings and some mosquitos for small dry flies.

    I tied some green caddis larvae, ping bead Frenchies, and leeches this week. I also sketched out some ideas with colored pencils.

    I wanted to try tying some leech patterns tonight, but I didn’t have any simi seal, so I made my own blend from different colors of hare’s mask dubbing and ice dub. It kind of worked and had nice color, but the hare’s mask is too short and fine. The simi seal is made from longer, coarser fibers. I also don’t want to use all of my dubbing just for leeches (they take a lot!) so I ordered some simi seal.

    Good experiment, though! I learned about blending dubbing, how to use a dubbing loop, and three different techniques for tying leeches.

    I’m thinking about expanding my patterns so I can make some seasonal boxes and expand my repertoire. I feel pretty good about my winter list, and will start tying them after the new year. Short list, mostly basics that are suggestive rather than trying to imitate a specific insect.

    I got out into the workshop Sunday evening, which is why this post is going out on Monday. I’m writing it on the train into Manhattan.

    I finished another bowl and made a darning ball for a friend who posted a photo of an old beat up one they picked up at a garage sale. I had a piece of cherry from a tree that fell in their yard, so I used that.

    Some holiday festivities this week:

    Amanda and I buckled down and finished writing our Christmas cards. Charlie helped us mail them.

    Saturday we went to the Wall Holiday Party, which always includes live music and singing. Amanda played her flute!

    Sunday we went to the train display at the Lasdon Arboretum. Charlie loved it.

    Strange mushrooms popped up in our yard!

    Maybe a hygroscopic earthstar?

    I love soup season. This is some pasta e fagioli with white beans.

    We woke up to a couple inches of snow this morning!

    My train ride is coming to an end. Time to go 👋

  • Week of December 2, 2024

    Christmas decorating is a process. We dehydrate grapefruits each year, put cloves in oranges, and string cranberries. We got that done this week.

    I really like that all of the wooden ornaments for the tree are ones I’ve turned over the last four years.

    We also got a train for around the tree and Charlie loves playing with it. It captures his attention!

    Speaking of Charlie, he has his first imaginary friend. His name is Fire and he is a dragon who lives on top of the castle on the playground at his school, scaring away all the knights. Fire flies alongside the car with us wherever we go. He eats mulch.

    Always up for exploring new playgrounds.

    I did a lot of woodworking in the evenings this week.

    I turned a second bowl and four Christmas ornaments, and made a fly tying tool caddy. I have a third bowl half done, but had to stop halfway through hollowing.

    Finished the bowls with a thin coat of a blend of raw linseed oil and beeswax, buffed with 0000 steel wool after 24 hours. Linseed dries. The ornaments are finished with a jojoba oil and beeswax blend, which doesn’t dry.

    I opened up the Shopsmith headstock to oil it this week. Still running nicely.

    I want to turn a couple more bowls with this practice pine before trying some maple, cherry, or oak. Then I want to break down a couple big pine rounds I have in the backyard into blanks from a tree that was taken down a couple years ago.

    I also need to make a dust collector for the lathe. I think I’ll go with something like this.

    I also tied some flies. I am trying to improve my dubbing skills, so focusing on dubbing bodies right now. I’ve found Barry Ord Clarke’s videos very helpful. Next will probably be some Walt’s Worms.

    I picked up my sketch book for the first time in months (remember that resolution? yeah…) and sketched a bunch of ideas for flies and ornaments.

    We finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers with a turkey pot pie this week, and we used some of the stock we made for chicken and wild rice soup.

    Amanda and I got ourselves an air fryer on Black Friday. What are your favorite air fryer recipes?

    This time last year: https://cagrimmett.com/2023/12/11/week-of-december-4-2023/

    I had just gotten back into the workshop after a 2 and a half year hiatus after some nudging by my friend Jon. That sparked the rebuild I started a month later. Big difference now a year later!

    Two updates I want to make to my blog:

    1. Adopt Jeremy Felt’s “This week also appears in [year]” feature.
    2. Change category and tag archive pages to titles and dates only, no content.

    Two updates I want to make to my digital garden:

    1. Add bookmarks to more top-level pages, maybe in the sidebar? If a bookmark tag matches the slug of the page, it should show up.
    2. Cleaner archive pages

    That’s all I’ve got. Good night.

  • Christmas Bell Ornament

    On Instagram, Richard Findley posted his 2024 Festive Turning Challenge:

    This is the first year I’ve done the challenge, and it comes at a good time because I’ve just turned a couple of bowls, so this was good hollowing practice.

    Here is the bell I turned out of a piece of cherry:

  • Fly Tying Tool Caddy

    ,

    Since I set up a dedicated fly tying desk, I needed something to hold my tying tools. Over the last two nights after Charlie went to bed, I made one out of a small slab of oak that I split and planed down two years ago.

    I cut the bevels on the bandsaw, drilled the holes on the drill press with Forstner bits, sanded it down, then finished it with a 2:1 jojoba oil to beeswax blend.

    I like that I was able to make it fit my specific tools and supplies. I left room for growth, in particular for more UV resins of different viscosities.

    In progress and dry fit:

  • Week of November 25, 2024

    Thanksgiving itself is probably my third favorite holiday, but I always get a lot done on personal projects and a lot of quality family and friend time during the week, which bump it up in my overall admiration.

    Thanksgiving Day we hosted another couple who are NY transplants and also have a 3yo who gets along very well with Charlie. We cooked a turkey from Hemlock Hill Farm (local), our guests made some of the sides (their sausage stuffing was particularly good), and we all had a great time. The kids played together most of the afternoon and evening, so the adults got to hang out and chat.

    Amanda decorated the table with a flower arrangement of her own design in a vase by our friend Natalie at Resist Ceramics and a table runner by our friend Erin at Red Cottage Fiber Studio. Amanda also made the apple pie.

    For 11 years Amanda has been slowly chipping away at my Grinchy heart and inching back the Christmas decorating from December 15. This year we started decorating on December 1.

    We drove up to Ashfield, MA, to get a coppiced balsam fir from my friend Emmet van Driesche at Pieropan Christmas Tree Farm. It might be the only coppiced Christmas tree farm in the US! Amanda and I drove up there in 2020, pre-Charlie, and this is the first year that nap schedules allowed us to visit as a family of three. Charlie loved it.

    I tied some soft hackle flies this week. Sizes 16 and 18.

    I like the look of those orange body/brown hackle ones with the cahill thorax. I don’t know what they are called, but I saw some in a friend’s fly box and had to tie some.

    I really like the look of those slightly angled hooks, too. They are Gamakatsu R18-B. I’m going to get some in more sizes. R17-B and R19-B have similar profiles with different wire weighs. R18 is a heavy hook, R19 is a standard hook, and R17 is a fine hook.

    I also tied some Thanksgiving-appropriate flies.

    Happy Thanksgiving

    All the setup and tear down time required to tie flies at the dining room table was getting to me, so I set up a small fly tying station in the corner of my office with a desk we were going to get rid of.

    Nice to have the thread, yarn, and wire out so I can draw inspiration from it and not have to dig.

    The desk is small, but definitely workable. It is in front of a door we never use (really, opened maybe 4 times since we moved in 5 years ago), so I don’t mind blocking it.

    Charlie and I fixed the broken excavator toys at the playground near our house today. They are Charlie’s favorite things to play with there and they’ve been broken for a month, so we got some bolts and fixed them.

    I wrote last week about getting serious about sharpening my lathe tools. I made that happen this week. I got a slow speed grinder, CBN wheels with 80 and 160 grit, and a pro-grind jig. I reground the profiles on all of my lathe tools this week so I can sharpen them in a repeatable way with the jig, and it made a world of difference when I used them.

    This helped me realize a goal I’ve had for the past 5 years: Turn a wooden bowl on the lathe. I’ve been chipping away at it for the past two weeks and finished my first one tonight. I turned it out of pine from a 2×6, and I have 4 more of these dimensional blanks to turn as practice before I turn a nicer piece of wood.

    I’m sure there is more, but that is all I can remember 👋

  • Happy Thanksgiving

    When I went to pick up our turkey from Hemlock Hill Farm this year, I noticed a turkey feather on the ground. I couldn’t resist tying a couple flies with it. The barbs and afterfeathers provided nice bodies and tails for these dry flies and midges. Sizes 16 and 18.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

  • Turning Tenkara Line Spools

    I turned some tenkara line spools out of spalted maple on the lathe.

    Tenkara spools are something you can wrap your line around while in transit. Tenkara rods are longer than standard fly rods, collapsable, and have a fixed length of line tied to the end instead of a reel. When you move around, a spool makes it convenient to wrap up your line and collapse your rod. I prefer spools to the line keepers that attach to your rod because wrapping and unwrapping the spool is about 10x faster.

    One is slim and the other is a little larger with a smaller secondary spool in the middle for locking the line. Both have magnets for storing/drying out flies. Each spot can comfortably hold 3 flies each. They have small notches cut out for wedging in your line.

    I finished them with a 2:1 jojoba oil and beeswax blend, the same thing I put on spoons and other carvings.

    Compared with a Nirvana plastic and foam line spool:

    I first tried making them out of cherry, but I made a critical early mistake. I drilled the center hole about 1/8″ too large and it wouldn’t stay in place on the rod. I had to treat those as a learning prototype and try again. I ended up making the next batch smaller anyway.

    Drilling out the magnet holes on the drill press:

    One of these is a gift and I’m keeping the other. I don’t intend to mass produce and sell them. The design was heavily inspired by the ones Dennis Vander Houwen makes at Tenkara Path and if you want one, you should buy one from him.

  • Week of November 18, 2024

    The cold weather is here, and I am happy to have it. It snowed on Friday, but melted overnight.

    Given the weather, I’m in full hearty meal mode.

    • I made my first lentil soup of the season, my favorite.
    • Beef roast with tomatoes and garlic, served over orzo.
    • Shepherd’s pie with the leftover beef roast.

    Charlie was home sick on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That made for a challenging work week. He was vomiting, but had full energy and was bouncing off the walls, which is a recipe for chaos.

    On the project front: I’ve been trying to work on something for an hour or two each night after Charlie goes to bed.

    One night this week it was finishing a lathe project I’ll post about soon.

    Another night I tied a bunch of Ishigaki kebari in different colors and sizes 14 and 16 hooks.

    Another night I cut a bunch of bowl blanks out of glued together pieces of 2x6s. I’ve only done spindle turning and I want to learn how to turn bowls, so I’m taking the turnawoodbowl.com course and need a bunch of blanks to practice on.

    I completely rebuilt the inside of my workshop at the beginning of this year and I thought the next phase was going to be making upgrades to my old Shopsmith, but I’ve decided to get serious about sharpening instead.

    The goal of the workshop upgrades was to be able to walk out to the workshop and immediately get to work on something instead of wasting 20 minutes moving things around, finding the right tools, and getting by set up. Big progress on that goal so far!

    Upgrading the Shopsmith to make it safer and more capable would be very useful, but that isn’t really my bottleneck right now. It is still very functional and I did upgrade the bandsaw table already, which has been helpful.

    Right now the main bottleneck is keeping my tools sharp, particularly my lathe tools. I have a couple jigs to sharpen on the Shopsmith itself with the disc sander, but changing tools to sharpen is a pain and eats into the already limited workshop time I have.

    I think it is time for a semi-permanent sharpening station with some higher quality equipment so I can sharpen what I am using in a minute instead of twenty, and without frustration. This investment will save me time in sharpening and save work time, too. Sharper lathe tools cut cleaner and faster.

    My current plans will allow my to sharpen other tools quickly, too. Bench chisels, hand gouges, hand planes, and maybe even my planer knives. I’m hoping to get everything set up this week.

    I’m also becoming increasingly convinced that lathe work is mostly easy when tools are sharp, but they dull faster than you think and the sharpness to difficulty cliff is steep.

    I don’t know why I didn’t think of this 5 years ago. This planer was essentially dead space when not in use, but now I can put a router table, miter saw, or bench grinder on here.

    I got Charlie outside a decent amount this weekend. We walked some of the carriage trails at Rockefeller State Park (and he climbed some big rocks) in part because I wanted to take a look at the Pocantico River, which is a potential fishing spot. It is stocked, and while some local forums say that it gets fished out every year, I simply don’t believe that. The river doesn’t show signs of being heavily fished beyond a few spots without tree cover. Most of it is narrow pocket water and it is still flowing despite the drought. I bet there are holdovers in spots that aren’t on the path and don’t suit themselves to using a standard fly line, and I bet I can fish them with my tenkara rod.

    We also spent a couple hours at the playground and park on Sunday, and Charlie had a great time.

    I went to the premier of a documentary about the 100 year anniversary of the Bear Mountain Bridge today, which included some interesting notes about how they maintain it.

    Afterward, there was a panel discussion and someone asked why the Bear Mountain Bridge is still in good shape after 100 years while the Tappan Zee Bridge, the bridge just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge, had to be replaced after 62 years because it was in bad condition.

    The panelists leaned into their mics at the same time and said, “Leadership” and pointed at one old guy off to the side, Harry Stanton. He led the NY Bridge Authority starting in the 1980s and decided to double down on maintenance of the historic bridges and do it all in-house. They still follow the philosophy he set today. By comparison, the Tappan Zee is run by the NY Thruway Authority.

    I love how the subtitle of the film is “The First 100 Years.” They intend to keep maintaining and using the bridge as long as possible.

  • Week of November 11, 2024

    I’ve been working on other people’s blogs at work all day, time to post on mine.

    Downtown Peekskill with Amanda and Charlie on Monday evening. We went to dinner at the Irish place, and we also checked on the Little Free Library and exchanged some books.

    We had another tough weekend with Charlie, so I’m trying to remind myself of the high points this week:

    • Lots of time playing trains, Hi Ho Cherry-O, and Mancala
      • Charlie won every round for three nights in a row. Incredible beginner’s luck.
    • Grocery shopping together and Charlie requesting a Pomelo, so we got it and tasted it together at home.
    • Planting garlic
    • Cutting up a 2×6
    • Pumping gas
    • Learning how to use a chalk line
    • Reading books together
    • Going for a 3 mile bike rode together (he sat in the seat attached to my bike for the first time this year).

    Charlie, while in the bathtub:
    “Daddy, are you finkin what I’m finkin?”
    “What are you thinking, bud?”
    “We take the garbage and flush it down the toilet!!!”

    I’m suddenly pretty glad I preemptively bought that toilet auger two weeks ago.

    The rhetoric about non-natural fibers in clothing being “endocrine disrupting” smells like nonsense to me and I can’t find actual proof of it being a problem. It is okay to just say you prefer the feel of cotton or flax. You don’t need to make nonsense claims to position it as morally superior.

    I only see hypocrisy, false promises, and contradictions so far from Trump’s cabinet picks and statements. It is amazing how short of a memory the American electorate has. If you are optimistic about Trump’s reelection, I guarantee you will be disappointed. If you are upset about Trump’s reelection, you will continue being disappointed. More of the same.

    Sometimes I question whether or not the AI doomers truly believe that AI will kill every human within our lifetimes. If they did, I’d expect more radical (read: forceful) action than talking about it on podcasts.

    If you truly believe we are all going to be wiped out anyway, what is the downside? Certainly the EA folks have done a Bentham-esque calculation on this.

    It is hard to take people seriously if they have a fundamentally asymmetry between their beliefs and actions.

    I am very organized, but I have such disdain for tax and insurance paperwork that I just throw it all in a physical box and forget it. Amanda thinks this is crazy, but it works. When I need one of those papers, I open the box and rummage through it. I always find what I need.

    We refer to it as “The Box”, and it is roughly stratified by year. There is at least five years worth of paperwork in the current Box. I hate The Box, but it is an unfortunate necessary part of life.

    This came to mind because I rummaged through The Box to find FSA-related paperwork. I found it in about 30 seconds. No need for folders, binders, labels, etc. The Box works.

    Dudes talk a lot about how much hair loss sucks (and it does!) but no one prepared me for how horrifying it was when the lady cutting my hair asked me if she could trim my eyebrows.

    I forgot to post this a couple weeks ago, but I made an angled cover for Charlie’s sandbox to keep the rain from pooling up in the tarp that was on there.

    In the first meeting of a new book club last night we discussed Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy. Next month is Updike’s Pigeon Feathers. We are essentially using this book club for accountability to read books we’ve wanted to read but haven’t made the time for. By knowing we will talk about it together we’ll actually read them. We are a small group and meet virtually, let me know if you are interested!

    I tied some flies this week.

    • Soft hackle pheasant tails, size 14
    • Killer Kebari, size 14
    • Zebra midge, size 16
    • Yarn worms, size 14

    The worms are an experiment to see if the wool yarn will work if I seal the ends with resin. I don’t really like chenille.

    I know midges are usually tied smaller, but size 16 are the smallest hooks I have right now. I need to get some 18-24. Tried some different beads on those.

    I like the look of the partridge feathers more, but find the hen feathers much easier to work with.

    What’s next:

    • Back to tying tenkara flies, both sakasa and jun kebari style.
    • I want to tie some streamers with yellow marabou. I have a pack of white marabou, which is more than I’ll use in a couple years, so I’m going to try dying some of it. I got a book on natural dyes, and I think I might use some plants from the yard to dye it.

    Here are the flies I took out fishing on Friday and Saturday, all tied by me.

    I fished the Amawalk outlet on Friday, and explored more of the section below the Wood St Bridge. I hiked a long ways to explore, but I didn’t catch anything. Bummer. I found another scrape, though.

    Saturday morning I went to Boyds Corner outlet, the first stream in the West Branch section of the Croton River. Much better day! I didn’t lose any flies despite lots of low tree limbs, the light soft hackle fly landed where I wanted it to most of the time, and I read the water better and found a lot more feeding fish than I did before. I was able to use a single fly the whole time (a size 14 soft hackle pheasant tail that I tied myself).

    The stream I fished was super low because of drought, so it was mostly pocket water. The Dragontail Mizuchi triple zoom rod I have is perfect for this situation. I was able to pick apart the pockets quickly and change the rod length based on the surroundings.

    I’m feeling pretty good about getting noticeably better, especially on the casting, but I need some help: I had a lot of takes and some of the fish even jumped out of the water taking my line with them, but I wasn’t able to land any of the takes. They jumped off the hook before I got them in. So, I have something to research more and improve upon. I think it might be either how I’m trying to set the hook, or not keeping tension with the rod after hook set.

    Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to see them jump and to get to watch as a fish takes a fly I tied. I still had a great day, but I’d really like to get them in the net.

    I’ll be back to Boyds Corner for sure.

    I finally bottled that hot sauce I made.

    A nice Thursday morning walk in the woods.

    Until next week, I hope for more time to make things and blog about it. I usually do that after Charlie goes to bed, but tonight I had to go back online at 8pm to fix a problem. I’ll try to make up the time in the workshop one afternoon.

  • Week of November 4, 2024

    Short post this week. I need to get some sleep. It has been a long week and I am tired. This work week was stressful and parenting was difficult. Optimistic that next week will be better.

    I made my own rosin and fly tying wax this week.

    Making Rosin and Fly Tying Wax

    I tied a few flies this week, too. Four different kinds of nymphs.

    I picked up my first bobbin on September 12. In under two months, I’ve tied 111 flies, made a bunch of my own tools, gathered some of my own materials, and learned a ton. Mostly in the evenings after my son goes to bed.

    I plan to tie more nymphs this week. Probably some with soft hackle, and probably more of the Dave Whitlock Red Squirrel Nymph.

    It occurred to me that “get a rise out of” is a phrase from fly fishing! Trying to get the trout to rise to the surface to take a fly.

    I don’t look at my blog’s traffic stats much. I checked tonight for the first time in a while and the top post for the past six months is about building a climbing wall for my son. That brings me so much joy. I hope that post has led to climbing walls getting built for kids.

    Adding a Climbing Wall to an A-frame Swing Set

    My friend Jeremy Wall did a public reading of some of his recent writing at Stanza Books in Beacon on Thursday. I went out to support him and hung out with some of the other writers afterward. Half of them were young parents like Amanda and me, and we had a great conversation about making space for your art and hobbies as a parent.

    I spend Saturday at the WordPress NYC meetup, which was hosted at Automattic’s office. I was the staff rep for the day. The organizers are trying to reboot the meetup again. We hosted a helpdesk, and had 10 people show up with a wide variety of WordPress questions.

    Being in Manhattan gave me the chance to pick up some things for Amanda’s birthday (a cake from Milk Bar and a gift from Charlie).

    Birthdays look a little different with a toddler. Amanda and I coordinated ahead of time to get her out of the house for a few hours so Charlie and I could decorate and he could do the surprise. It was precious to see him show Amanda the decorations and give her a gift.

    Our tradition used to be going to one of the NY steakhouses for a birthday, and we are keeping that somewhat alive by cooking a classic steakhouse dinner at home.

    Sitters are hard to come by. We had a nursing student who was great, but she got a job as a full time nurse. The high school student who was also great is now at college out of state. Another high school student who we liked is at college a couple hours away.

    Some limited thoughts on the election:

    • I was surprised by the results, which I guess means that I need to update my priors.
    • My prediction: It won’t be as bad as the left thinks, but it will be worse than the right thinks. That was my prediction in 2016, and I think it held. I’m sticking with it.
    • I hope this breaks the two party system.

    If you are a longtime reader, my political beliefs haven’t changed much, I’m just less outspoken and radical about them. My focus is elsewhere after wasting too much of my 20s on that. I’m more pragmatic and less idealistic now, which I think is mostly a symptom of being older and having more life experience.

    I’m listening to the rain while writing this. It is the first rain in two months, and it is very welcome.

  • Making Rosin and Fly Tying Wax

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    Two weeks ago I scraped some pine resin off of a pine tree. This week I turned it into rosin, then blended it into fly tying wax.

    What is rosin?

    Rosin is the stuff musicians rub on violin bows to help them grip the strings better and produce better vibrations. Baseball pitchers use it to grip the baseball better, too. It is also in the core of some solders as flux. When added to wax, it provides tackiness.

    Rosin is a brittle substance made from pine resin, essentially heated until the natural turpentines boil off. Rosin made this way is darker. The lighter clear stuff you see for sale in music shops is made by chemically separating and distilling out the turpentines and pine oils.

    Collecting pine resin

    I took a walk in the woods at the end of my street and found the pine resin I needed on the third pine tree I found.

    Filtering

    Some guides I found tell you to just burn the pine resin and it will turn into rosin. The problem is that most resin contains lots of bark, leaf pieces, bugs, etc. This stuff all turns into carbon when burned, so you have carbon + resin, which is essentially pitch. Useful stuff too, but I wanted just rosin, so I decided to separate it out. The best way I found to filter it is to dissolve the resin with acetone, then strain it through a coffee filter.

    Refining

    Once you have filtered acetone+resin, it is time to boil the acetone off. Acetone has a low boiling point (~132F), so I used a crock pot with oil in a double boiler setup and the acetone mixture in a small metal cup lined with aluminum foil. It took about an hour to boil off.

    I recommend not using an open flame, as acetone is pretty flammable. This small crock pot lives in my workshop for tasks like this.

    Next the natural turpentines need to be boiled off. They have a much higher boiling point, around ~350F, so I used a propane burner in a double boiler setup for that. With the acetone gone, I was much less concerned about it catching fire.

    This took another hour, and after it cooled I got ~10g of brittle, crumbly rosin. Exactly what I wanted.

    Fly tying wax blends

    I wanted to make three different blends of wax for fly tying:

    • Dubbing wax – A medium-soft sticky blend to apply directly to thread in advance of adding dubbing
      • Rosin: 70%
      • Beeswax :10%
      • Oil: 20%
    • Hard wax – A hard sticky wax that needs to be slightly warmed and softened before use, used for adhesion/sticking things in place to keep them from moving when you are tying them on. You can also wax your thread with this to keep it from unwinding if you don’t have a bobbin to keep tension. Sometimes called Cobbler’s wax or tying wax.
      • Rosin: 50%
      • Beeswax: 40%
      • Oil: 10%
    • Soft wax – A soft sticky wax made for a quick swipe of the finger to make your fingers a bit tackier for dubbing material. Not made for applying to the thread directly, just your thumb and index finger.
      • Rosin: 20%
      • Beeswax: 30%
      • Oil 50%

    I used these two resources for ratio inspiration:

    For the oil I used castor oil. I was going to use something like generic vegetable oil or grapeseed oil, but when I looked it up I learned that castor is thicker, tackier, and more viscous than cooking oils. I found some at the drug store, where it is sold as a laxative and as a hair product. Who knew?!

    I thought about using duck fat for the soft wax, but the only duck fat I had on hand was saved from dinner, tinted red and smelled like paprika and garlic, so that was out.

    I did a bit of math to figure out the allocation of rosin to each blend, then calculate the other ingredients based on the amount of rosin in each. I weighed them out with a sensitive scale.

    I set up a double boiler again on the propane burner, this time with water instead of oil, and melted down each set of ingredients. It took me 3x as long as I expected to melt this stuff down. The rosin took a long time to soften to the point where I could blend it in with the beeswax and castor oil.

    Once liquified and blended, I poured each into the appropriate vessel or mold.

    • The dubbing wax went into a small twist-up stick I salvaged from some old sunscreen we had for Charlie when he was a baby.
    • The soft wax went into a small jar, salvaged from some cosmetic samples Amanda was done with.
    • The hard wax I poured into a silicone ice cube mold.

    I let the wax set and cool for 24 hours, then tested it out. They are all appropriately sticky, which was the goal of making the rosin.

    Both the dubbing wax and the soft wax allowed me to make a dubbing noodle on regular thread with no problem after applying this wax. Pre-wax it wouldn’t stay.

    The first is a green hot butt nymph with a green dubbing body. The second is a Dave Whitlock Red Fox Squirrel Nymph. Tail is fox squirrel guard hair, dubbing is the squirrel’s under fur and a bit of ice dub. I hunted the squirrel myself. Size 12 fly.

    I’m pretty happy with the outcome, even though working with the small quantities of rosin was a pain. Even this small amount is likely to last me a couple years, so not much need to make a larger batch unless someone else I know gets into tying and wants some.

    I might melt and transfer the dubbing wax from the twist-up stick to an old Burt’s Bees chapstick container for the smaller size. We’ll see.

  • Wool Yarn Body Frenchie Nymphs

    Trying out some jig hook Frenchie nymphs with Shetland Spindrift wool yarn bodies instead of traditional pheasant tail bodies.

    This is my first time using the pheasant tail feather my Dad found, and my second time using dubbing. I’m getting better at the dubbing, but still inconsistent.

    I’m going to sleep on it, then pick a body color to tie more of. The darker Grouse (235) is closer to what the pheasant tail bodies look like, but the lighter Autumn (998) has some lovely reds and greens, and looks a bit like hare’s ear. The yarn looks buggy! I’ll probably try some traditional pheasant tail bodies, too.

    Hook: Moonlit TOGATTA ML502 barbless jig hooks
    Thread: Wapsi Ultra 140, red
    Bead: 3.0mm slotted tungsten, gold
    Thorax: Hareline Ice Dub, UV pink
    Body: Shetland Spindrift wool yarn, Moorit & Shaela, Grouse, or Autumn
    Rib: Wapsi Ultra brassie wire, copper
    Tail: Pheasant tail

  • Week of October 28, 2024

    Charlie worked with me in the shop on Monday night and I got down the hand drill and bit brace for him to check out. I was surprised by how quickly he grokked them. It was cool to see. He drilled decent holes by himself much safer than with a battery drill. I’ll have to find some his size.

    This weekend I showed him how to fix his stuck loader bucket by oiling the joints. He did it himself on his workbench.

    We spent some time in the woods on Saturday. It was a beautiful day.

    We also raked leaves.

    I got some time in the workshop this week, mostly in the evenings.

    • I successfully turned the pine resin into rosin! Full length post with more details coming soon.
    • I got back on the lathe and turned some prototypes of things I don’t want to post about yet because the next version will be a Christmas gift.
      • Next on the lathe I’d like to learn bowl turning.
    • I started making a net for fly fishing from a nice branch I found in the woods. It is currently wrapped around a form to dry.
    • I made a French cleat tool holder for some of my lathe accessories.
    • I put a magnet on a piece of wood for taking better photos of flies.
    • I made a small gadget for cutting zonker strips for tying zonker streamers. Essentially a few razor blades bolted together and separated by nuts to cut 1/8″ wide strips.

    Charlie and I cleaned out the gardens and put away a bunch of outdoor furniture today. Then we we and picked up some wood to make a better cover for his sandbox that won’t let water pool up in the center.

    We did a Trunk or Treat at Charlie’s daycare on Halloween (kudos to Amanda for the decorations!) and then trick or treated with friends in Lake Peekskill that evening.

    Not much to say about work other than I’ve gotta keep my nose to the grindstone.

    Hoping to tie some flies tonight. Probably just some killer bugs, maybe some zebra midges. Just something simple. I’m tired but need a mental break.

  • Week of October 21, 2024

    Charlie and me at Home Depot:

    “Daddy, what’s this?”
    “An eye bolt”
    “Daddy look!”

    Charlie made a bus out of clay.

    I worked at the Automattic office in Manhattan on Wednesday.

    It was a beautiful day, so I had breakfast in Union Square before a phone call.

    For lunch I went to Thai Diner. Short rib in pad thai is not something I would have expected but pretty good.

    After work I went to Paradise Lost with some coworkers.

    Then off to Neal Stephenson’s book reading and signing for the launch of Polostan at The Strand.

    We kicked off a slew of Halloween events this weekend. Charlie asked to be a Bucket Truck two months ago and has been consistent, so Amanda created an awesome ConEd bucket truck for Charlie (his arm is the bucket!) and helmets for us.

    Sunday we met up with Meg, Jeremy, and Miles at the library for a haunted house that our friend Colin helped put together. The boys are eating popcorn.

    More festivities later this week!

    I processed the end-of-season habaneros and jalapenos into hot sauce.

    Bottles are on their way, so I’ll bottle this up later this week. Let me know if you want a bottle! The orange habanero has a great bite, but also lots of garlic, onion, and carrot. The green jalapeno has onion and garlic, too. Both have vinegar.

    Charlie and I walked down to the park and went to the playground, then walked to the track and found an abandoned soccer ball, and had a lot of fun kicking it around.

    I went fishing at the Amawalk outlet on Saturday. I caught two wild brown trout on my tenkara rod with a size 14 killer bug that I tied.

    I didn’t get a photo of the ~6″ one because I fumbled with my net and didn’t keep tension on my line, so it hopped off the barbless hook at my feet. Here is the tiny 3.5″ one:

    Still a beauty, very gratifying to catch on a fly I tied.

    It was a nice day and I’m glad I got the chance to get on the water. The flow was very high despite our lack of rain. Lots of water getting let out of the reservoir. The water was almost a foot higher in some spots than last month.

    While walking between spots, I spotted a scrape! The rut is starting.

    I can’t wait for the election to be over. The robo calls, spam texts, and flyers in the mail are so annoying.

    I made a couple things this week. Here are the posts in case you missed them:

    Wading staff
    Prototyping fly rod spoons

    I also tied a few flies, but didn’t take good photos.

    • Two size 14 Grave Digger kebari
    • One black wool sakasa kebari
    • Two bead head black futsu kebari

    This was my first try with dubbing, and it confirmed to me that I definitely need to make some dubbing wax. Getting the dubbing to stick to the thread was kind of tough.

    I like the bead head futsu, I think I’ll tie more.

    I’m off to read more of the new Neal Stephenson book before bed. Good night! 👋 📖

  • Prototyping fly rod spoons

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    I read Tenkara Bum’s post about fly rod spoons, which aren’t really available anymore. If you are lucky you can find a brand from Japan like Rodio, but the shipping is killer and they are hard to find. It is easy to find larger spoons, but for throwing them with a fly rod you want a weight of 0.5g (roughly 1/60oz)or less. That’s tiny!

    I was intrigued, so I decided to make some of my own.

    The closest thing I could think of is the spinners on rooster tails. They are the same basic shape and some are quite small. I spent a couple hours doing research and found a company that sells fishing lure components and ordered a sample of their smallest spinner blade sizes and split rings.

    Dime for scale so you san see how small some of these are.

    Next step: adding a hole on the bottom of each one. I thought I’d use a drill press, but they are so small that holding them in place is kind of a pain. What ended up working the best was a small (1/16″) jewelry metal punch, available in every craft store. I assume they are used for earrings. Works great.

    According to Tenkara Bum, the best fish catcher was the Daiwa Presso Vega in the Nightmare color scheme:

    I did my best to replicate that with the polished brass spoons, glossy black spray paint, and orange glossy enamel paint.

    Next I added some size 0 split rings and size 14 hooks. These split ring pliers were very useful.

    In my most recent fly fishing outing, I threw one of the spoons a few times to see how it works. It wobbles and flutters pretty well when swung across the current. I didn’t catch anything with them on this outing, but I’ll try them again soon. I think they’ll do better in bigger, slower moving water than the shallow, fast water I was fishing today. I expect them to do well for bass and panfish, too.

    Ongoing challenges:

    • Size 0 split rings are still to large. I need to find some 00. Brass ones would look better than stainless steel.
    • The paint comes off when putting the split rings on. Perhaps I need to cover them in UV resin first for an extra layer of protection.

    Why am I doing this?

    • It is fun to make things.
    • Flies are so easy to lose in a tree or an unreachable snag, and the Japanese versions of these are expensive. I want to be able to cast these without worrying about losing them since I can make a batch of them for cheap.

  • Wading staff

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    Quick project this week: A wading staff for fly fishing. Features depth marks, a T-handle with catches carved in to free snags, and magnets to dry out flies. The paracord clips to my waders so I can drop it without worrying about it floating downstream while I’m trying to land a fish.

    Made from a cherry branch from our yard, peeled and roughed with the draw knife (with Charlie’s help!), then refined with a rotary tool. The T-handle is pegged and glued, then lashed on with waxed string. Finished with oil and wax.

    I used it today at Amawalk outlet and am happy with how it turned out. It definitely helps with stability, both in the water and going down steep banks. I used it to free a couple snags successfully. The magnets held flies even when the staff was submerged.

    I love the way cherry ages, so looking forward to a rich color on this in the coming years.

  • Week of October 14, 2024

    Charlie and I were on our own until Wednesday, when Amanda came back from London. We played outside, got pizza at Baci, went grocery shopping, did dishes, and read books. We also worked through the meltdowns together and took 3x as long to get out the door each morning, because even though I only post smiling photos here, my son is still a three year old.

    Later that week we had to pick peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos in the dark ahead of a frost. For now we set them out on the porch in the sun each day to ripen, and Charlie helps me sort out the ripened ones. We freeze them until I have time to make hot sauce.

    Amanda peeled her luffa plants and plans to make sponges out of them.

    Charlie carved one of the pumpkins we grew!

    We found a leaf bug!

    Friday Charlie was home from daycare with a stomach bug. He bounced back the next day, and we visited a school open house (It is wild that it is already time for that!), played in the backyard and workshop for a couple hours, then went to Miles’s birthday.

    Then Sunday Amanda and I both woke up with the stomach bug. It hit us hard. It felt like a repeat of the time we got food poisoning from some place in NJ (the worst state in the union, by far), but this time we at least had two bathrooms on two floors instead of one tiny apartment. Charlie was fine, had full energy, and very much wanted attention. It was a challenging day.

    Charlie is picking up the very basics of phonics. He has surprised us this week by telling us what letter various words start with after we say them. We recognized a few from ABC books we’ve read, but then threw some curveballs out and he gets 75% of them. Time to break out the phonics book.

    Our street got repaved this week. Looking forward to getting Charlie out there on his bike and scooter. Much better for cruising.

    Last week was one of the toughest weeks at work in the past couple years. So many things changing so quickly with short turnarounds. Many late evenings. I have a feeling there are more of these weeks to come, so I need to plan ahead to stay flexible and take time off to recharge.

    I have a few small projects in the works.

    First is a wading staff so I don’t fall when I slip on rocks in the river. Charlie helped me strip the bark off a piece of cherry with the draw knife. I’m making it a T-handle so it is comfortable to hold on to and so I can use the handle to release snags. I’m thinking of adding some depth marks so I know how deep the water is (inspired by my uncle Kevin) and some holes with magnets for drying flies, inspired by Tenkara Path’s beautiful spools.

    Second is some fly tying wax. I already make my own wood finish wax, so why not fly tying wax? I found an old timer’s recipe, which included rosin. After some research, I learned you can make rosin out of pine resin, so I scraped some pine resin off of a pine tree on a walk.

    My general plan is to dissolve it with acetone, strain it, boil the acetone off, then cook off the natural turpentine and water at a higher temp. Then I’ll mix it with wax and a little grapeseed oil. The rosin is the sticky component, the wax and oil make it pliable. Apparently you can just boil it down and burn off the bark, woodchips, and bugs, but that added carbon will turn it more into a pitch and make the color darker. I’m looking for a nice amber colored rosin, hence the acetone step.

    Third is fly rod spoons. I read Tenkara Bum’s post about fly rod spoons, which aren’t really available anymore. If you are lucky you can find a brand from Japan like Rodio, but the shipping is killer and they are hard to find. It is easy to find larger spoons, but for throwing them with a fly rod you want a weight of 0.5g (roughly 1/60oz)or less. That’s tiny!

    The closest thing I could think of is the spinners on rooster tails. They are the same basic shape and some are quite small. I spent a couple hours doing research and found a company that sells fishing lure components and ordered a sample of their smallest spinner blade sizes and split rings. I think I can drill an extra hole and add a barbless hook, then paint them to my liking. Send me a message if you want a couple to try out.

    Dime for scale so you san see how small some of these are.

  • Tying deer and squirrel hair flies

    I mentioned last week that I brought back some deer and squirrel hair from animals I bagged 16 or 17 years ago. I tried tying some flies with them tonight.

    I tied five streamers with squirrel tail and varies bodies and throats, all on size 12 barbless streamer hooks:

    • Bodies
      • Brass wire, full length of the shank
      • Red thread + silver tinsel rib
    • Throats
      • Partridge
      • Deer hair
      • Hen pheasant soft hackle barbs
      • Grizzly hackle

    Then I tied two deer hair flies, a sedge and an emerger with a tail. Both used some greyish brown yarn for the body instead of hare dubbing. Both were on size 14 barbless hooks.

    Overall good experimentation, even if I only tied seven flies. What I learned:

    • Hair is harder to work with than feathers. Messier, too.
    • Order of tying matters. The throat has to come after the wings or else the wings will pull the throat material up in while you are wrapping. In general, I think the bigger material has to go first.
    • I like the look of ribbing and should do more of it.
    • Wool yarn is a pretty good substitute for dubbing.
    • I like the look of all three feather throats I tied, but tying barbs instead of full feathers worked better and had nicer proportions.
    • Waiting for super glue to dry is annoying, but accelerant smells. I’ll buy some UV cure glue.

    What’s next?

    • I ordered some dubbing so I can learn how to do that.
    • I need some dubbing wax, but I think it might be fun to make my own since I already make spoon finishing wax. I need to go out in the woods and collect some pine resin and cook it down to rosin to blend in. This will make it tacky.
    • More soft hackle and dry hackle flies. Perhaps some of Tom from Teton Tenkara‘s patterns.
    • Some bead head nymphs for the winter. Probably some using pheasant tail barbs.
    • A bunch of color combinations of Ishigaki Kebari and killer bugs in sizes 14 and 16.

  • Recapturing the magic of the early blogging days

    At work today someone asked today about how we recapture the magic of the early days of blogging. I have some ideas.

    First, I don’t think that magic is gone! Sure, a lot of people moved to social platforms. The dopamine hit is just too addicting. Fortunately a lot of cool people are still blogging, and doing interesting things with it. Check out the People and Blogs series, and more importantly the blogs referenced in them, for inspiration. I maintain a feed of the referenced feeds here: https://peopleandblogs.feedland.cloud/

    What else can you do? Reclaim your stuff from social media and do more with your own site. Make it deep. Make it you.That’s where the magic is.

    • Lean into IndieWeb trends, such as /now, /meta, /uses, /ideas https://aboutideasnow.com/
    • Post statuses/short notes on your own domain. I like the IndieBlocks plugin, but Jetpack also has the Social Notes feature.
    • Post what you’d post to GoodReads on a page on your own site. You can use a tool, or just a simple page with bullet points.
    • Post bookmarks and likes to your own site instead of keeping them silo’d in a tool. Even better if it has its own feed.
    • Lower the linkblogging barrier. The faster and easier it is to post a link, the more you’ll do it. I use an Apple Shortcut that posts to a micropub endpoint. Easy peasy.
    • Post a blogroll! Keep it updated!
    • Join a webring!
    • Join a blog carnival!
    • Just blog more. The exciting blogging days were not as polished. A lot of people think blog posts need to be these polished complete pieces, but it takes time and effort. It is more fun when you just type something and hit post. That is where the short notes shine for me.
    • It doesn’t matter if people want your posts to come via email. Email is a pain. Just post and they’ll check your blog.
    • Do regular updates. I like weekly. Every week I’m not sure I have something to post about and every week I get out at least 1000 words and some photos.

    Yeah, I need to take my own advice. That’s why I’m posting this. Next I need to revamp my blogroll and respond to this month’s IndieWeb Carnival prompt.

    Hit post.

  • Week of October 7, 2024

    It feels like fall here. Charlie and I returned home from a trip to cold, windy weather, and a yard covered in leaves. We had to turn the heater on in the house for the first time this season. I’m sipping some cognac while I write this. Nothing fancy, Gilles Brisson VS. Good sipper.

    There isn’t much to report from the beginning of the week. Lots of packing for our respective trips and hoping our colds go away.

    Amanda went to London for Kat and Nate’s wedding and Charlie and I went to Ohio to go camping with Grandma and Grandpa. All three of us flew out of JFK around the same time on Thursday, so we were able to go the airport together.

    Charlie is a really good flier. There and back we played with cars and magnatiles, made up stories about the safety instruction card illustrations, and had snacks. Turbulence didn’t bother him at all.

    One of the helpful things for long car rides to and from the airport was the Thomas & Friends Storytime podcast. Charlie loves it. He’ll quietly sit and listen to it with his headphones for a while.

    We went camping at East Harbor State Park, near Marblehead. Charlie settled in to camping pretty quickly. He helped us start a fire, slept well in the camper, dug into breakfast, and rode his bike.

    We spent most of Friday exploring. We went to the lake at East Harbor, Marblehead Lighthouse, and Castalia Fish Hatchery. We all enjoyed finding fossils in the rocks at Marblehead and feeding the rainbow trout at the hatchery.

    Saturday was Trick or Treat at the campground. We made a makeshift explorer costume (backpack, lantern, binoculars) for Charlie and hit the pavement. He ended up with a huge bag full of candy and some spooky tattoos! Some campsites had more decorations than most houses our city. They must have brought a separate trailer just for their decorations. Some people really love halloween. Not for me.

    Saturday night brought a huge thunderstorm that Charlie slept through, but none of the adults did. Sunday was rainy and we headed back to my parents’ house. Charlie, always the helper, pitched in on packing up. He particularly liked pushing the buttons for the retractable awning and slide outs.

    It was a nice trip. I was 100% offline from work, which was much needed after the last couple weeks.

    While at my parents’ house, my Dad helped me get some deer hair from a hide, some squirrel tails, and a pheasant tail. I shot that particular deer and the squirrels about 15 years ago, and the pheasant tail feathers my Dad found while walking in the woods. Now I have some more fly tying ideas! Bookmarks are collected here. I’m excited to use materials the have some extra meaning and history.

    After Charlie and I landed at JFK, we drove back to Peekskill, went grocery shopping, had dinner at Chipotle, and started getting ready for the week. Amanda comes back Wednesday.

  • Little Free Library at Esther Place

    ,

    Early this summer the founder of Peekskill Walks reached out and asked if I’d be interested in building a Little Free Library for Esther Place, a former street that has been shut down and turned into a much needed outdoor community hangout spot.

    Sure! I love woodworking, books, and hanging out at Esther Place drinking my coffee while Charlie plays with the blocks and chalk, so I was in.

    I didn’t use a set of plans, but I did look at a bunch to get an idea. I sized it to fit the space, and went with roughly 28″ tall x 16″ wide x 15″ deep. This is tall enough for two shelves, with the bottom being tall enough for big children’s books. This was important to me, and I borrowed some of Charlie’s books to make sure they’d fit.

    It was going in a covered nook, so it didn’t need shingles or a wide overhang on the roof.

    I made it out of 3/4″ exterior grade plywood. I started with the box. I made a little corner clamping jig to help me hold the pieces together for screwing. I had to shave down a couple parts with the block plane so the angled roof would sit flat.

    Next was the door. I wanted the middle to have plexiglass, so I built it like a frame. I used L brackets on the back side. Everything fit pretty nicely on the first try. I was pleased.

    I used a little bit of everything to make various cuts. Some were on on the table saw, some bandsaw, others were with a mini circular saw, and the door miters were on the miter saw.

    I gave everything a nice sanding and then handed it off to another volunteer to paint it. Then it came back to me so Charlie and I could caulk the inside and add weather stripping.

    It is sturdy and bolted in place on metal brackets.

    It was on private property so we didn’t have to deal with city permits. I was wary of drilling into someone’s wall without knowing what was on the other side, so the building owner connected me with his maintenance guy to help me hang it. That was a good move because there was a pipe exactly where I wanted to drill, and the wall was thinner than I expected.

    We debuted it on September 22 with a little celebration at Esther Place.

    Since then I’ve checked on it a couple times and it is definitely getting some use and has book turnover!

    It has been registered with Little Free Library, charter . It should be on the official map soon.