Building a Sculpture Garden in my Back Yard:

Enchanted Evening at Smitty's Berry Farm

Enchanted evening at Farm-to-School's evening picnic at Smitty's Berry Farm in North Derby. Hope loved playing with the fallen apples. I loved the great vegetable and meatball soup.

New Puppy - New Hope

I have a new puppy ( 8 weeks and four days old )
I am calling her "Hope". She is a Walker Hound, also known as a "coon hound". She walked me for two miles yesterday and a mile and a half this morning and wants to go out again! Either this is going to very healthy for me or someone will find me dead on the boardwalk or the South Bay railroad tracks...

A tutorial of how I make my clocks:

A tutorial of how I make my clocks:
By Manfred Rieder

People often ask me how to make a small clock. Well, let us build one: First I select a piece of lumber like this plank of long leaf yellow pine and square it up on the  table saw:

Next, I select the size I wish the clock body to be and trim it:

When this is done, I also cut the side columns:

Now I also have cut a base and a top and we will trial assemble the clock:

Next step is crucial. Carefully measure and center where you wish the movement to be placed:

Now we have to bore a hole. For this you need the correct Fostner bit;

Voila - a clock body is born:

Now everything gets sanded on all sides. I use a combination disk and belt sander for this.

I like to add decorative cuts on the clock front:

Time to glue up the columns, top

and base:

Now, after everything dries, I soak the wood with a combination of beeswax and orange oil, let it dry for an hour and the polish it with a lint free cloth. This brings out the natural beauty of the grain.

Now all that remains is to add a movement with a new battery installed and to put it on the shelf with all the other projects in progress: