Planes

Not the things that fly, but the better kind. These two were from that one garage sale... (are you tired of hearing about it yet?) Block plane, then No. 4 plane.

The smudges and fingerprints on the metal show up quite a bit, so I'll have to remember to wipe shiny things clean. I also had to clone out some smudges on the paper they were sitting on.

Testing the light tent

So I put some of my new tools and other stuff in the tent and shot at them with my camera a bit.

Clip clip

Me with my new cheap remote shutter button

Making a light tent

I had been meaning to make one of these for a while, but just got around to it today. It's supposed to make a nice even light on whatever you put into it. This isn't my idea, but this is how I did it.

Cut holes in the sides

Reenforce with duct tape

Put cloth or something over some of the holes

Shine lights at it

Put things inside and take pictures of the things you just put inside

 I'll put some pictures later of some of my garage sale finds photographed in here.

A few plants

The first one is a thing on the end of a pine tree branch. I had tried to photograph it before, but the focus was off, so I tried again. The second one is a flower I saw while on a walk.

Hespersis matronalis (Dame's Rocket), an invasive species, but nice looking nonetheless.

My planes

 Today I leave to Finland, and this is the first of the automatically posted posts. The ones for the next few weeks will have been written ahead of time. Hopefully this works.

Another garage sale post... this time featuring my two new Stanley planes. One is a block plane of sorts, the other is a No. 4 (smoothing) plane. The other one that I have is a No. 5 1/2 jack plane. I don't count the junky Buck Bros plane, it hardly works.
Anyways, I took them apart and cleaned them. There is still a bit to do, but at least they are clean now. I put the brass tote and knob screws in the drill press and sanded and polished the nicks out. The irons still need to be sharpened, I think I'll wait and get a extra coarse diamond stone, my other stuff doesn't quite cut it (well it goes really slowly, I spent probably an hour on one blade and it still wasn't done).

All the parts ready for cleaning

After cleaning and reassembly. The two rods are from the 5 1/2 jack plane, which was already cleaned. I just took out the brass screws and shined them up. :-)

The adjustment screw and frog adjustment screw.

 What's left to do: Sharpen the irons, flatten the soles, and maybe refinish the tote and knob on the No. 4.

One more post before I go...

I have a bit of extra time today, so I decided to put some more pictures up. My memory card came in the mail just in the nick of time, so I decided to test it out. It worked.

The peonies are opening up

The small bee was quite small, I was actually taking a picture of the flower and then noticed it was there.
Well tomorrow I leave, can't wait!

I will be leaving for 3 weeks to Finland on Friday, so I have been making a bunch of posts. I'm going to try to have them scheduled to post on their own, which should work. It will be interesting to see if it works.

Here's a few more from when I went camping.

Breakfast

My new bike

These aren't very great pictures, but I just wanted to get a few of my bike. The bike was $15 at a garage sale, and there was no rust and little grime, and the tires looked almost new! I added the speedometer, but the rest of it was from the garage sale.

Front Brakes

Rear derailleur

Some food pictures.

Today I was doing some yard work, and was stomping down some branches into a wheelbarrow when it tipped on me. I ended up landing on my chin and hurting my wrist just a bit, so I came inside and made some more posts to publish later. I'm going to test out the scheduled publishing thingy so I can have things post while I'm gone in Finland for a few weeks. I'm leaving this Friday, and am still waiting for my memory card to come in the mail.

Here's a couple food pictures. Pineapple, pizza (made on the grill), and a cake thing. Food photography is fun, but it's also hard to get the food to look just right or to transfer what you see into a picture.

Went garage saleing today...

I emptied my pocketbook today at some garage sales. I got a bike, some buckets, some books (old 1950's textbooks on physics, technical drawing, economics, Latin, and some music one). They were a steal at $0.25 each. I also got some tools, including a Stanley block plane, a Stanley No. 4 plane, screwdrivers, scissors, knives, files, and more. A good haul I think.
I guess I don't have any new pictures for today, but I'll post some that I played with in Photoshop a bit. If anyone has any tips, please share! I'm mostly clueless about Photoshop.

Lilac

Apple Blossoms

More bugs :-)

I hope you're not getting too sick of all the bugs, because here's some more. I think I'll have to start trying something a bit different with the bugs, or else find some new ones. They're starting to look a bit repetitive to me.

Bit bigger dragonfly, but still not the big one I'm chasing

Mating Flies

 The trickiest part besides getting them to stay in one place might be the focusing, because just a tiny distance will change the focal plane to the wrong place.
Here's a few I tried in the garage, the first one is with the bench grinder, the second with an angle grinder. I had the shutter open for maybe 10-20 seconds on them.

I inverted the colors just for fun

More from yesterday's adventure

 A few more from yesterday. I went out for a second try, and got some more. During the process, I slipped a bit and ended up breaking my lens cap leash thing, so I had to fashion another one. Maybe I'll make a post about making them, they save you about $1-2 and are easy to make.

 The first one here is one of the big dragonflies I've been trying to get, but they like to keep their distance. I don't really like this one, I prefer to get them when they're on a plant. I took the color out from around the dragonfly because otherwise it blended in a bit too much.

 This is a peony that hasn't opened up yet. I'll be sure to get more pictures as it starts to open.

Another dragonfly :-)

Honey Bee

Something different

Today it was actually a bit nicer out, around 75. The last two days were too hot for my liking, yesterday was a bit over 100. Anyways, I went out into the yard with my camera to take more flower pictures, but there weren't any new ones. I ended up going bug hunting.

The dragonflies were pretty small (except for the one in the third picture) but they let me get pretty close. Still, I had to crop the images a bit. 

A skinny one

This one had a nice blue color

A nice big one, but these ones flew off before I could get too close. A 100mm macro would be nice!

Fly (the focus is a bit off unfortunately)

Spider

I ended up using manual focus for these, even with the crummy focus ring on my kit lens. If the creature would stay put, I would focus to the closest distance and just move the camera back and forth. Time to go for now, going to get some more!