Black dog

General

Been a while since I posted anything here. There’s been a reason.

Thyroid gland

That little git is the thyroid gland. Sits there, wrapped around your trachea, merrily pumping out two hormones that regulate your metabolism, temperature, heart rate and other important stuff. They’re called triiodothyronine and thyroxine and no, I can’t remember those names either but they’re listed as T3 and T4 on the blood test, which is easier. It doesn’t produce them at a set rate – it produces them to order, for the pituitary gland, which dumps a third hormone into the body to communicate how much T3 and T4 should be produced. That one is TSH on the blood tests, for Thyroid Stimulation Hormone, which is a bit more memorable.

Thanks to a genetic gift from my grandparents via my mom and all her sisters, mine doesn’t work.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 10 Comments

Offcut Challange Vase

WoodturningWoodworking

So when I bought the pen blanks for the fancy pens from Feinesholz, they included a block of padouk in the order. Hadn’t asked for it, they just threw it in there.

The sticker reads, if google translate can be believed, “Thank you for shopping at Feines Holz! Although this piece has one or two flaws or is just undersized, it is too good to throw away. Or not? Maybe you can still do something with it?! Padouk”. You have to love the idea of throwing in an offcut to an order with a challange on it, this is a crowd that knows its market demographics pretty well 😀

So it wasn’t a huge offcut, about 5cmx5cmx12cm (“about” because every edge was a slightly different length – it’s an offcut, not a processed blank 😀 ).… Read the rest

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Fancy Pen

PensWoodturningWoodworking

So the first of the fancy pens is done. I actually processed all three of the blanks at once this weekend, but I only got to turn and finish one of them. I also have one remaining blank from Feinesholz to use for something else, but that’ll mean buying a new pen kit to evaluate.

So the rightmost and the middle pen blank there are both hybrid pen blanks with stabilised boxelder maple burl with resin, so I picked one of the two to use, and the other is still waiting. And I also cut down the elm burr (thats second from the left) and the blue stabilised boxelder maple burl blank that’s second from the right.

Cut to length, drilled for the brass tubes, scratched up the brass on some sandpaper and epoxied the tubes into the blanks.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 6 Comments