Gaye Goes to Sydney and Geoff Buys More Tools

Gaye went to Sydney to catch up with Vic John and Maddie giving me a chance to buy yet more tools. This one was essential (well thats my story) it is to replace the random orbital attachment on my 4 inch angle grinder which had died. The attachments are not made anymore, so I was 'forced' to buy a 'real' random orbital sander. I decided on the Bosch GEX 125 1 AE. What ever that means. Here is a pic of it waiting to bite into the latest box.

This is similar to the one that Ratty and I made, but with a couple of 'enhancements'. The body is made out of the cedar skirting, but

for the top, I used Victorian Ash. You can see the fiddle back which makes this timber so attractive. It will come up even more after Gaye gets to it with polish and varnish and oil.

Madeleine's First Words

Turn the sound on. Cheeky little sod, could have said "Moma, I Wov u" first.....

Owen Escapes

Owen finally escaped hospital and arrived home on Sunday. Here are a couple of pics showing how jubilant he is to be out of that place and how much he adores his Gran.

Crockadiles and Boxes in the Making

RDO today. It had its ups and downs. To start the day I spent 50 minutes on the treadmill and Gaye on the exercise bike watching 'The Plan' from Battlestar Galactic. This was good and bad. The good - a great episode. The bad - it was the last episode. Gaye and I are hoping that the tele-series 'Rome' will take its place as a motivator to exercise.

All this achieved before 9:30am. A quick cup of tea an then off to Miter 10 to see if they were able to do anything for me about replacing the blade guide on my Triton Scroll Saw, which had worn out. And YES, they generously took a guide of a machine on the floor. Cool - this is 'good'. Especially because Triton had gone out of business and were not manufacturing any more.

Feeling especially elated by this act of generosity, I purchased a Rockwell planner/thicknesser, from them.

But before we were off to home to install the P/L, we stopped the surf for a coffee, and pie on the beach. Can't believe the temperature for early May. It was 22 deg. It should be winter.

OK, coffee and pies behind us, off to RipCurl to have my wetsuit replaced on warranty. The seams had given out. But, here was a 'bad', they wouldn't honor their warranty. Jury out as to the next steps here.

Not to get too upset, there was the planer/ thicknesser to get out of the box and set up and start making wood shavings.

More bad - This wasn't to be. Well the set up was, but it would not make wood shavings. A closer inspection revealed that the table was broken. It must have been dropped ( I think in China) because we had earlier noted a score mark on the table as we were removing it from the packing. So here was another 'bad'.

By now it was 4:45pm and we were into the car and back to Miter 10 to see what they could do. Gratefully they refunded our money.

Back home, consoled myself with a bit of sanding to bring out the figure in the Victorian Ash box I was making for Gaye so she would have somewhere to put her tea. his was a good. It has come up really well.

Oh, the crocodile? A lovely piece of Cyprus Pine I had cut down and slabbed 20 years ago in Bacchus Marsh. Never knew it had a crocodile inside. The last pic is the timber before we found the crocodile.

Finally a pic of a bowl I made out of a 7 inch diameter piece of 3/4 inch thick Radiata Pine. Very efficient use of the wood. I like the result.

Gift for Meredith

Taurus the Bull is is a zodiac puzzle and present for Meredith (Regan's sister) who had her 18th birthday today. The eye of Taurus is the star Aldebaran, one of the brightest stars that can be see from Earth and is a diamond (probably glass, but Meredith could be lucky) I found on the back seat of a taxi in Beijing a couple of years ago.

Two star clusters are present in the Taurus constellation - Pleiades (the Seven Sisters), is represented by the 3 crystals close together on the bulls back, and Hyades, which form the closest open star cluster to earth, is represented by the two crystals on Taurus's chest. Other crystals are the remaining stars in the Taurus constellation, but with a couple missing.

The dolphin is a puzzle we just thought would be nice and remains on our mantle piece.

More on Taurus from here: http://www.redorbit.com/education/reference_library/constellations/taurus_the_bull_constellation/326/index.html

Taurus (the bull) Constellation -- Location: Zodiac constellation, visible in both Hemispheres; Coordinates: Right Ascension: 04h; Declination: +15�; Source:

Bull legends from various ancient civilizations, also Greek mythology, Egyptian, Arab, other The constellations that are included in the Zodiac - the 12 constellations recognized by Babylonian astronomers through which our Sun, moon, and planets appeared to travel during the course of a year - are considered to be among the oldest sky patterns recognized by human civilizations.

They were thought to have more significance because they were touched by the Sun. Taurus is among the very oldest. At the time that the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East civilizations were at their heights, the Sun would have entered Taurus in the spring. For many of these herding and agricultural civilizations, the spring season - planting and births of animals - signaled the start of a new year.

The bull figured as a symbol of strength and fertility in many of these ancient cultures, and is prominent in the mythology of almost all early civilizations. Not only is Taurus associated with myths from Egypt (Apis), Greece (the Minotaur, and several involving Zeus in disguise), and the Druids, but many of the celestial objects in Taurus that are visible to the naked eye were also given significance. Among them are the star clusters Hyades and Pleiades. The rising of the Hyades was associated with rain from ancient Greece to ancient China. The Pleiades were said to be visible in good weather, a sign that the ancient seamen could undertake a sea voyage. The Pleiades are also associated with a myth about Orion, and a Polynesian myth. Some Arab names for the stars in Taurus refer to the bull's horns and the bull's eye.