Wooden Activity

 One  the activities we enjoy during our winters in Arizona is working with wood in our workshop. When we were staying at Valle del Oro in Mesa, we took the training to use the woodshop.  We each made a picture frame, then moved on to intarsia--making scenes with pieces of wood that are cut, shaped and made into pictures.

After we moved to Superstition Views, we added a workshop to our winter home and I learned to use the lathe, making bowls.  Later, we both took a class in turning pens.  

Since then, John has made lots of pens, I have turned a large number of bowls and we have both made intarsia projects.

This year I found a book on making boxes using the band saw.  This is the first one I completed.

 

 John has been using the scroll saw to make scenes like I showed in a previous post.  This past couple of weeks, he make this beautiful poinsettia door  topper.

This work has been fun, it has kept us busy, and it gives us something to do in the air conditioned shop when the temperature hits 100+.  I think we will continue with more projects, even when it cools down.

At Last!

Five weeks ago today, we signed the papers and took possession of our new 5th wheel trailer. Since then, we have moved everything from the old RV to the new one; driven 1,719 miles from Chanute, Kansas, to Mesa, Arizona; found where we stored most of our possessions in the new RV; bought a new truck and transferred all the extra equipment to it from the almost new old truck, and tried to get settled in our winter home.

Finally in the past few days, we feel we have been able to slow down and enjoy the life we have here in Arizona in the winter. Twice this week, we have spent time in the woodshop, getting started on our intarsia projects. Last night was the annual Welcome Home dinner for the returning snowbirds here at Valle Del Oro. They said 1,700 people were in attendance. The service was amazingly fast. We all went through 2 or 3 serving lines in less than 15 minutes. This shows just a small part of the crowd.



We had a great sunset.



Some of the folks line-danced to the three bands providing music around the area.



We had a good time. We also have taken time to enjoy the rose garden here in the resort. Fall and winter in Arizona are amazing.

Wrapping Up

We only have two more weeks here in Mesa before we head out for the summer. We will have been parked in one place for almost 6 months, the longest we have every spent in one place in the RV, and we are beginning to get hitch itch. We will spend the month of April traveling around northern Arizona and New Mexico, seeking higher elevations to get our bodies adjusted to altitude. For 5 months this summer we will be volunteering at 9,000 ft.

In 6 months, we take more and more items out of storage in the RV, we buy new things, we move stuff around. Now it is time to find the place where everything belongs. We had the rig washed and we washed the truck. John is going to flush the hot water heater. And we had to finish up all our various craft projects. Here are the last three things we made.



The "Love" and the pig were woodshop intarsia projects we each made. For the necklace, I made the beads in pottery shop, then strung the necklace. That was fun. John has some partially created carving projects he will continue to work on over the summer.

We have one more week to tie up loose ends here, then our grandchildren Kylie and John will bring their parents Eric and Liz to Phoenix for Spring Break. We are looking forward to seeing them. We will also be busy with Holy Week services of Palm Sunday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Then we will be "On the Road Again."

Recent Activities

I don't know what happened to our warm Arizona weather, but it is cold outside in Mesa. At noon, the temperature was 44 and right now, my phone says it is 39. Brrrr. Not wanting any outside activity this morning, we packed up all our intarsia wood and went to the woodshop. According to Wikipedia, "Intarsia is a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry." We spread out on one of the work benches.



We intend to take a class in March, but we bought a book with instructions and patterns and are practicing now. We may have to unlearn some bad habits, but we will have developed some skills, as well. Today, we used various sanders to smooth out the parts we cut last week. I also did some work with John's Dremel. It is a really neat tool.





We have many boxes of old photographs in storage in Colorado. We want to select the important ones and copy them to our computer, then get rid of the rest. I brought one box with us in October and have finally gotten around to working with them. At first, I used our scanner. When I scan at 800dpi, it takes 2 minutes per picture. I had read about using my camera to copy old photos in a post by Geeks on Tour. I found the article and started using that method. It is much faster.





Last week, we had beautiful weather, so we decided to finally try out bocce ball.





In past years, I have posted pictures of two figures that one of the residents here put out to depict snowbird life in Arizona. Since we haven't been here in February, we hadn't seen this pose.



Whatever the weather, we seem to find plenty to do.

Something New

Who would have believed I could start with a board like this:



And end up with something like this?





Yesterday, I attended the certification classes for the woodshop in our resort. John went with me to the first session in the morning, even though he was certified two years ago. The second session was in the afternoon and requires participants to make the picture frame because of the many different tools we would use in its construction.

Nine people took part in the afternoon session. We used the oscillating drum sander



a couple of different table saws



the router



a cut-off saw



and the planer, jointer, drill press, band saw and scroll saw.

Most of these tools were new to me, but it was fun. And I felt so good about what I accomplished.

This is what it looked like at the end of the class. I had glued it together and strapped in place to dry.



Today, John and I went back to the shop and I sanded the finished frame. We also started work on a small foot rest.

It is really amazing what can be accomplished when you have the right tools and a little instruction.