Plane Rehab, Plus A Few Links

A Millers Falls plane, cleaned up and ready to smooth.

Planes (the woodworking kind, not the other kind)
Dad found a few planes at a thrift store and handed them off to me to see if I could do something with them (thanks, Dad!) I started with the most promising one, a Millers Falls model 14B, which is very similar to the more common Stanley #5 smoothing plane.

I took it apart, cleaned up the rust, polished the metal parts, stripped the red stain off the handles, and restained and them. After a few coats of clear finish, the handles (also known as the tote and the knob) were back on, and it was almost ready to go. A little honing on what was already a pretty sharp blade, and I was in business.

There are two more planes in the set, and I am not sure if one of them can be saved - it has a lot of rust on the sole. But I'll give it a try and see what I can do.

"Family" Fun Night
M and I went to his school's Family Fun Night last night from 6:00 - 8:00. It is so named because family members of students are invited. Whether the middle-schooler has any desire to actually spend time with his or her family at the Family Fun Night is an entirely different matter. When we got there, we bought a slice of pizza for dinner, and I asked M what the plan was. His answer: "I'll meet you at the front door at 7:55." OK, then. I wandered around, talked to some other parents, introduced myself to some volunteer moms and dads that I didn't know, talked to one of M's teachers, and played basketball with a few sixth-graders I know from Lawton. I'm not sure if I avoided embarrassing M by being there, you'll have to ask him.

Soccer season for K has ended. He had a good year, and scored a goal in a game a few weeks ago. His team played very well again this year, winning all but one game, and most of the wins were of the lopsided ilk.

Links
The only reason I wouldn't buy an Electric DeLorean is, well, actually, I guess if I had the money, I'd buy one. They're cool!

David Malki, creator of Wondermark, provides a brief but important flowchart for internet users.

Jim Gaffigan asks his friends who are so eager to spend their days off work camping and hiking: "If it's so great outside, why are all the bugs trying to get into my house?"

Providing tools and materials to people who need them, and teaching them how to use them, is better than standing around wondering why they're not being productive.

I read this book, Banker to the Poor, by Muhammad Yunus, several years ago. It's about microloans in developing countries, and its concepts can apply in countries like the US as well. The idea that loaning even ten or twenty dollars to someone in a developing country can help pull them out of poverty doesn't make much sense to us, but it's real, and it works.

---