80 degrees in the shop today

Spent the better part of Sunday helping my dad replace all four sets of pads on my mom's car.  It was such a nice day we didn't let the fact that the last mechanic to go at the car had successfully stripped about half of the lugs with an impact driver making them borderline impossible to get off bother us.

I ran out of 3/8 inch dowel and did not feel like running to the store to buy warped to crap dowels.  I found an article on woodgears.ca about making your own dowels with a simple wooden jig and an old yet sharp chisel.  I had some extra oak for the jig and an old chisel, it took me about 30 mins. to make and adjust the chisel just right and then I had some 3/8 inch dowel.  I'm planning on making one's for 1/4 inch dowel and 1/2 dowel and never buying box store dowels again.

Making the dowel cut, the jig works a lot like an old school pencil sharpener shaving off the excess wood and is quite mesmerizing to watch.

Working on a new design for a marble machine for kids.  This is the beginning of a fairly simple camshaft that will move a marble up a set of stairs (pistons).  These are going to be a modified version of a design I found on www.scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com for a machine that moves marbles.  It was a good starting out point for my design.

Camshaft in place with the pistons for moving the marble set on top.  This still needs some tweaking to get it working exactly how I want it.

After the first washing there was still some unpleasant smells coming from all three deer skulls for my chandelier, which means there's still some organic material on them that needs to go.  One of my least favorite things to do is clean skulls.  1.)  The smell is worse than roadkill and unavoidable.  2.)  It is a ton of work and once you boil them your still only a little over half way done.  I've only ever cleaned a couple skulls before but I have a new found respect for taxidermist's or anyone who does it themselves.  Because besides my interest in anatomy there is zero fun in cleaning these things

Two skulls in the pot.  Nothing like your parents having a ten year old turkey fryer they only used once and never plan on using again, because they are perfect for simmering deer skulls.

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