In which it all goes sideways.

hen last we saw our hero, he had completed Phase the First of the Project That Lurks in My Nightmares, and was on his way to the second part of the project, which was removal of the garage. 

A bit of history: The garage in question started life as a happy little garage, with an ordinary peaked roof, on an ordinary concrete pad, in a totally normal residential neighborhood in This Eastern Province. Then, one of the previous owners decided to turn it into a body and fender shop. It was too small for the purpose, which might have prompted a more reflective man to open a body OR fender shop, but not him. "Go big or go home!" he cried. "In both bodies and fenders I shall deal, 'though hell should bar the way!"

And he proceeded to double the size of the garage, by adding a couple of flat-roofed sections. Now, there are ways to build truss roofs which have multiple different slopes. He, apparently, did not know any of them. Agriculture Canada (among many, many other knowledgeable outfits) has published a number of free and authoritative pamphlets, brochures, short courses and webpages on building such trusses. The information is clear, consistent, and expressed at the technical level of a music major. He bravely disregarded them all. He had his vision. He had his courage. He had no damn clue what he was doing. 

And so, a cornet player appeared on the scene with a reciprocating saw and a grim sense of being in the unfeeling grasp of cruel fate...

Now the roof, as previously established, was unsafe to walk on. Or under. Or to investigate from too short a distance. Hell, you should probably be wearing Green Patch boots and a hard hat while you read about it. So, the cornet player evolved a strategy. 

First, remove all the sheathing that's removable, leaving something like this:

 New Reality Show: The Naked Garage.

(more sheathing got cut off after that picture). Along the way, cut out this

temporary support, while there's still enough walls up that it won't kill you (you hope.)


Then, cut out about two thirds of the studs, and all the studs on the front wall, leaving this:

You're goin' down!

Recruit the resident Visiting Anglican Cleric, and begin pushing on the two back corners. It rocks, and comes back. It rocks a little farther and comes back. Continue until it lands on Canada, about seven feet west of where it started:

Yeah, you.

Strikes dramatic Big-Game-Hunter pose just like Ernest Hemingway.

Notice weapon of choice. Notice Official Smug Look. Notice the damn garage is now lying on the ground!

Come back soon to hear What The Cornet Player Did Next.

In which we take a fence...

This is the situation so far:

marks the spot where Plumbun Major lives with Number One Son And DIL, (recently joined by Plumbun Minor.) Y marks a flowing body of water which is MUCH bigger than it looks on the map. And so, there is to be a fence. And there is learning.

     The first thing to be learned is that the makers of post-hole diggers are sunny, happy optimists, who live in a different world than the rest of us - a better one. And apparently, a world populated by astonishingly large people. Do a google on John Grimek, or Magnus Samuelsson, you'll get the idea.

     There is a thing called a "One Man Post Hole Digger." It can, ideally, be used by one man. If he's a very big man. Preferably with a very large friend who just wants to hang around and help. Similarly, there is a machine called the "Two Man Post Hole Digger." It has four handles, which should tell you what you need to know.

     The next thing to learn is that This Eastern Province is a place of deep roots. Large roots. Many roots. Also rocks, some of them the size of Kanye West's ego. So, when you start the project with the placement of perfect, round holes, exactly vertical, in a perfect straight line... yeah. That's not going to happen. You also learn that, while the makers of post-hole diggers have a cheerful, indomitable outlook on life, they do not pass this attitude on to their creations. The holes are supposed to go down below the frost line. In reality, they go down to where the machine gives up, sometimes because of rocks, sometimes because of roots, and sometimes, apparently, just because of a deep, existential despair.

     So, you have your holes. You insert your fence posts. You insert the concrete mix, and the water, and hold the the post vertical, as it starts to set. There's a nifty device that shows that the post is vertical. It's called a level, which is kind of a bizarre name, if you think about it too long. Fortunately, by this time you're tired enough that you're not really thinking too deeply.

     The next day, you go looking for a fence stretcher, which, it turns out, unlike the fabled board stretcher and rail stretcher, is a thing. It's just a thing you can't find for love or money. So, you go to plan be. You insert a tension bar into the chain link, and enlist a holidaying cleric to attach the nuts and bolts, while an ordinary Presbyterian Flugelhorn Player reefs on the fence. You lose the mechanical advantage of the fence stretcher, but you gain the moral advantage over the materials, and they gradually cease to give you trouble.

     Then, there's a few trivialities of attaching gates, and negotiating corner posts, and dealing with the manufacturers assumption of a perfectly flat earth (they're hilarious, those guys) and then you have this!

Not quite as straight as it looks here.

Anyway, that's part one of the project done, after delays for rain and organization... and part two comes soon.

In which things fall to pieces.

Well, one thing anyway. The garage roof in Kentville.

The story so far: Living in a company house, as it were, we took some of the cash on hand, and bought a house in Kentville. We rented to #1 son, with DIL, and Micah.

Now I knew that this was a problem in the garage:

I knew that this summer I would have to get in there and replace a chunk of the south wall. What didn't register at the time, is that the header seems to have been put together out of 2x4's (!???!) with the 4 side down.

I cannot explain this thinking.

So, I knew that I would have to fix it, but it would be relatively straightforward: Support structure, remove bad bit, put in good bit, drink beer. Happy times...

Back in the shining, innocent, carefree days of about a week ago, I got a call from DIL, saying that the garage roof didn't look right. (Her assessment was perfectly correct.) She sent me a picture of the garage from the man door.

 

As you can see, just above the rusty old wood stove, some of the beams look... not quite right. I had to run the Local Anglican Cleric to Truro the next day, so I boogied on to Kentville afterwards, and had a look. 

Now, how to explain it? As I explored it, or as the problem arose? Let me just put on the Beeb, and I'll show you what I found, with the explanation afterwards. 

Observe that the eaves of the house in the background are as near level as no matter. The ridge of the garage roof, really is that far off level. But how bad is it, really?

...and we did. And now, on a certain level, we're kind of sorry we ever got involved.

Well... that's not good.

You can see a little more clearly that the end of one beam is completely rotted out. You can also see that at least some of the beams were apparently cobbled together by a chimpanzee with a nail gun. And not one of those smart, cigar-smoking, piano-playing chimps, either. (More about the implications of this, next time.)

From the outside:

On the outside... it doesn't look any better. So, what caused all this?

Observe the roofline: Here we have two roof lines that each can work pretty well: On the right is a sloped, straight shed roof. It has its own problems as a concept, but it'll work. It'll need some massive beams, but it'll work.  On the left is a peaked roof. It doesn't need the massive beams. What it needs are some carefully assembled trusses, but you can build them from 2x, and it'll work.

What you can't do is put the two shapes together, and hope that somehow it'll work.

First, and I say this without fear of contradiction, a flat roof is the work of the devil. Observe the roof from above:

 Observe the remaining snow: That snow is on the SOUTH side of the roof. The north (cold) side of the roof is clear; it's the flat side that has caused the problems. So, flat roof versus peaked roof, somebody had to make a decision. A decision that's about this complicated.

He made the wrong one.

Second problem:
Where you see the kink in the roof line, there are similar kinks in the trusses. The joints at the kink are pretty much just scabbed together. It looks as if, every time a beam sagged farther, somebody just nailed another board to the side of it. With some decisions, (and this is one of them) the signs were pretty clear...

There he goes again...

Then, this winter, you may have heard, we had a bit of a snow load...

 ...and that roof is toast.

Now comes the fun part: How to get the old roof off, so that I can survey the rest of the structure, and decide whether any of this can be saved. Watch this space for What the Cornet Player Did Next, and whether it involves a chainsaw.

In which territory is claimed...

or the past six months or so, I've been taking the flugelhorn round to the local brass quintet in the Wee Town, and pretending to be a french horn, a deception in which the leader and arranger fully co-operates. The regular horn player has been out of town for a year, and I've been trying to fill the french-horn-shaped gap. This has led to a few developments:

Development the first: Deep in my heart, despite all my efforts, I am still pretty much a saxophone player, but I'm starting to get over it. I still long for the days when I could blow for a couple of hours straight, and then go on with my day, secure that I had gotten better. Brass, while utterly addictive, is not so tolerant of enthusiasm. You will develop your stamina and ability in a properly, respectfully, gradual and tedious manner. That said, some progress has been made.

Development the second: I have actually played some gigs, and not stunk the joint out completely. My re-introduction to brass playing came a few years ago in a sheltered environment, among musicians who,  (God only knows why) tolerated my tendency to produce clams, and protected me from the consequences thereof.
      Landing in a quintet has put me in a very different sort of place. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in the shallow end any more.  There is no Cap'n to bail me out when my chops suddenly refuse to produce a sound. There's nobody else playing my part, to pick me up when I forget which beat comes after two. (Memo to self: three.) I'm now working off a straight lead sheet, and I don't have a full score to find my way back into the piece when I get wandered.
     Notwithstanding, I have managed to carry my end of the load, more or less, and I've continued to be invited back.

Development the third: Under pressure of a number of (for me) gruelling gigs, the latest on Easter Sunday, I've actually started to develop a better understanding of technique. I'm getting away from just trying to muscle it when I get tired, which is good because, um, oh, right IT DOESN'T WORK. I've figured that out in a mere six months. This morning, I managed to get some parts right that I never got in rehearsal. The trick consists mostly of backing off the volume, and saving something for last sixteen bars, where arrangers throw in all the nasties that they haven't found room for earlier.

     Other developments in technique have come from  several sources, including Chase Sanborn's Brass Tactics, which has been invaluable.

Development the fourth: I asked the boss when the real horn player will be back. Apparently, that is no longer a significant question. The chair is mine, for as long as I want it. This means that, finally, there's a Thing That I Do here. It's been long coming.

Development the fifth: Since it seems that I'll be a horn player for the next several years, the next question is whether I actually try to get my hands on something like a french horn. That would ease the problem of arrangements quite a bit, but it raises some further operational questions: E flat tenor horn, or french horn? Single french horn, or double? New or used? Horn or Mellophone? Kirk or Picard?

When I find the answer, gentle reader, you'll be the first to know. Meanwhile, I have a nice, velvet lined box in which to put the next clue I get about this, which will coincidentally be the first.

In which we ask, wha hoppen?

o, it's been a while since the last post, and I've actually had people check up to make sure that I haven't moved to Chechnya, or been assassinated by disaffected chipmunks, or carried off by the Bald Eagles which infest parts of the locality; none of the above has, in fact, happened.

I've been, um, adjusting to the new reality. Yeah. Adjusting. That's the ticket. I've been adjusting. The adjustment is, like many things, divided into three parts.

Part the First: I  hit town, with the grace of a polar bear falling off an iceberg. I had plenty coming up to keep my mind busy.

There was the deck in the Valley, which is now pretty much done (there's a little tweak I want to do to the blocking, and in a few years it may have to be redone completely, in which case it will be a much better deck...) but it's done.

I hit the gym, and got my weight squared away for the moment. My VO2 max would still get me a non-speaking role on The Walking Dead, but there's always next year.

The Great Tucker visited us, and discovered Swallows and Amazons, and we took a day to go to Historical Sherbrooke, and saw the blacksmith and the woodturner gave him a top, and we got caught in the fog, and rode a cable ferry, and took long enough getting home that we had to stop for junk food, and then had DONAIRS for supper, and almost hit a deer. Best. Day. Ever. (Great kid, Tucker. Miss him.)

Part the Second: It starts to sink in that I'm never going to get back to where I was. There won't even be something closely comparable to what I left behind. This fact hit around early summer. The hitting thereof was not a happy time. I continued to do stuff (woodworking, typesetting, playing cornet flugel, etc.) in a slightly bewildered way. I could still do stuff, but only if I didn't think too deeply about the situation. (Denial: the under-rated coping technique.)

Part the Third: Came the fall, I continued to play in the Brass Quintet, and joined a couple of choirs. I met nice people, and came to like them quite a lot. I have started to get back in the gym. Piano lessons in the new year are a possibility. The guy across the street has noticed my woodworking, and complimented my bench. I'm actually starting to learn some stuff about woodworking. I wrote a couple of pieces of music, and it's been hinted that more would be welcome. So, things are going better.

Except where they're not. Even now, in my "adjusted" stage, I still miss the Happy Pals at Grossman's, and regret with every fibre of my being every the 2000 Saturday afternoons that I could have gone to hear them, but did not. I miss Crusaders Rugby, and the squat sled at Iroquois Ridge Community Centre, and the John Laing Singers. I miss the hock shops on Church Street, and Niagara Falls.

I miss running up to Brampton for lunch with Ken and Ruth. I miss rep cinemas, and cramped little bookstores, and buskers in front of the Eaton Centre, and the Central Reference Library. (Need to know the engineering details of torsion boxes? Yeah, they have a book on that. They have a book on everything.) I miss the second hand stores on Queen Street; I miss Sayal's in Burlington.

More than anything else, I miss the Trafalgar band, and choir, and congregation, and everything about it.

So, it's getting better, for tightly constrained values of better. Next adjustment is realizing it'll never be the kind of better I was hoping for...

It's Christmas. I've been here about a year. Time to start carrying on.

Back to you shortly.

In which silence is broken.

obody will be surprised to hear that there are many things I don't know. Some may be gobsmacked stunned staggered  bewildered a little surprised to realize that I'm aware of how many things I don't know. This ignorance, believe it or not, exerts a braking effect on one of my favourite activities, which is running my mouth. It takes a truly colossal awareness of my own ignorance to stop me, but more often that you'd think, even I am  dumbfounded by my own lack of knowledge. 

The Things I Have the Gall Not to  Know are divided, appropriately, into three parts.


First are things that I'm learning (like woodworking and flugelhorn). On these subjects, I don't say much. Occasionally, I'll pass on what I've learned from others, like the 19/30 exercise, or the joy of knifing layout marks when sawing wood, but usually, I just keep shtum, for fear of missing what someone else is saying, or fear of making a complete fool of myself, or just awareness of the awesome extent of my ignorance.

Second come the things which I don't know, but which I'll learn if I live long enough, like Gaelic, Korean, Double Bass, counterpoint, and amplifier design. Here, the level of my ignorance will almost always keep me to a Trappist reticence, except for occasionally remarking to a bass player, "Gosh, that really is the coolest instrument in the world, isn't it?" Which remarks seldom provoke disagreement from bass players, oddly enough.

Finally, there are things of which I know as little as I can manage, and strive to know less, but which keep impinging on my life, and which provoke a response, however unqualified I am to give it. (Speaking categorically from a state of profound and perfect ignorance is an academic hobby endorsed by the past Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, so I plead in mitigation the malign influence of my elders and betters in this matter, m'Lud.) 

Today, we will consider a proposal to set off a wave of hiring by means of a miniscule reduction in fees charged by the federal government for UNemployment Insurance. What it boils down to, is that thousands of jobs are about to be created, by giving a number of employers a maximum of... wait for it... $700 each. (God forbid they should do something weird with the EI surplus, like, oh, I don't know, maybe... give it to unemployed people?)

Now, I don't have a masters in economics from the University of Calgary, a fact for which I am extremely grateful. (I find that the hard and fast realities of music theory, medieval history, theology  and brass technique are enough for me. The phantasmagorical imaginations of Milton Friedman et. al.  require a suspension of disbelief that is beyond my powers, so I try not to waste a lot of thought on them.)  

Still, even a music major can estimate the probability of success in this latest plan. So, as the sun pulls away from the shore, and the latest genius economic action plan sinks slowly in the west, may your humble correspondent suggest a little traveling music?

In which is the end of railing (Pt. 1)

ack in the spring, I put up a railing; This is how it ended up.


The first problem to be addressed was the old railing posts. They looked like they were intended for a railing, as they stuck up well above the level of the deck, but they were in the wrong places, and far too short to be useful. Also, they were in the way. I have a tool that fixes the last problem... and here they are, cut to deck level. 

This creates another problem: there is end grain sitting there, waiting to absorb the rain (and it does rain once in a while here... who saw that coming?) The plan was to cut them down level with the bottom of the deck boards, and put a cap on top. You can see the edge of a Triton router in the picture above. (The Triton is cool. It's from Australia, and works really comfortable upside down in a router table. Yep.)

This is halfway through the routing:

And here it is, nearly all done:

Very easy, and quite easy to avoid slashing up the deck boards on each side. For some reason, they feel a lot different when the bit touches them, so I could go mostly by touch.

Then, I got to this one:

As you can see, the router can't get into the corner. I needed a solution. And I had one:

I'm not sure that there is a lot of use for a two inch chisel in fine woodworking, but it's lovely for this kind of rough carpentry.  To my intense relief, it wasn't particularly hard to sharpen it by hand. Shortly, I wound up with this:

There are many people can do this without thinking about it, but it's very cool to do it for the first time.

Next up was the stairs. Doing stairs the second time will be easier; the first move should be to prepare a level, concrete pad at the bottom, so that you can get consistent height measurements... But in this case... after much frying of brain, I had the risers cut.

Now, risers should be cut out of 2x12's the biggest chunks of wood you can find... 2x10s (seen here) are not optimal, and you can see that some parts are way too thin for comfort. The solution was to scab on some 2X4s like this:

(I think the second riser from the left is now technically plywood, but it's solid.) All that remained was to put on the treads and risers. No biggy.

Next installment: Last railing, putting the deckboards back, finishing touches, and one more trip to the BORG.