Defining My Vice Design...

In the previous post, I discussed a vice I saw listed in next month's Live Free or Die auction that is administered by Martin J. Donnelly Antique Tools.

Before I get into discussing my design for this vice/vise, let me first point out that "vice" is the English spelling, while "vise" is the American spelling. I try to use English spelling whenever a difference comes along as, while I'm Canadian, this country was part of the English Commonwealth from it's inception through to 1982. Many of us here still tend to acknowledge our British roots wherever possible.

The renderings that I included in my previous post were just for general dimensions. While I stated in the article that accompanied them that I was thinking of having the lower screw come at things from the back of the vice, the renderings included do not reflect this.

Damien left a comment regarding my concept and felt that having the screw come at things from the rear wouldn't work as it would not keep the legs parallel. Damien has offered me his opinions a few times in the past and I tend to listen to him. Having followed his blog, Woodlooking, I have come to believe he has a far better grasp of physics than I. With respect to his knowledge, I have created this second post about this vice to explain my vision of it further, hoping Damien will return and give me the yah or nay for it. I would hate to cut up that beautiful piece of maple sitting here, only to find out it won't work.

The following render is a cut-away view of how I would like to deal with the screws...

The render shows both the screws trapped to the front upright. The main screw is trapped as it passes through the face, done so using a collar and recess so the screw is still allowed to turn freely. The second, lower screw is also trapped to the front upright in the same manner. This one, though, is trapped where it butts up against it, rather than passing through it. Both screws use female thread blocks attached to the rear upright, both centre pinned on each side to allow them to rotate vertically.

While Damien was concerned with the two uprights not remaining parallel to each other, that is exactly what I am looking for and the sole reason this vice caught my eye. I do not know if Arthur's version has a non-parallel capability, but hopefully mine will. As I want to do self-standing carvings and make odd-shaped boxes, I think having this feature on my vice would be ideal.

Note that the render shows a hole above the lower screw and below the upper. These are labeled "Pivot Capture" and are there to accept a wood pin that would pass through to them from the edge of the rear upright. Being able to fix the pivots vertically will overcome having to deal with a "sloppy" front upright when the unparalleled feature isn't necessary. I would assume that I would probably work the vice with the upper pin installed and the lower removed most of the time, as this would limit having to adjust both screws every time I use it.

I may be still all wet, but hopefully, I'm only just damp.

Peace,

Mitchell

At My Age, Any Vice Is A Good Vice...

As you grow older, you start to leave a trail of vices behind you. It is so unfair that they are wasted on youth. As I have been married longer than five minutes and am approaching retirement age, damned if I don't have any of them left. As Valdy, a folk song writer and poet from my youth now says...

Now I'm old and tired, bent and busted,

Gray and wrinkled and I can't be trusted,

I'm just a dirty old man.

A while ago, I started to look around for a new vice. I don't enjoy gambling, so that one is out. As a kid, I absorbed so much alcohol that now I can't stand the taste of it, so that one is out too. Hell, I can't even drink beer because I have an allergy to hops. Go figure. Surprisingly, though, I do think I found one today.

Martin J. Donnelly Antique Tools sends out a short list of offerings for his upcoming auctions twice a week in emails and I pour over every one I get. Their next auction is next month in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it appears they have a number of dynamite items for this one. I have been forced to dig the ol' credit card out a few times to place absentee bids for a few of the items coming up.

While I fell for one item they had listed in today's email, it is not something I would like to buy. Instead, I would prefer to make my own.

What grabbed me today was a great looking vice (see, I eventually tie my ramblings into a discussion of tools). It is from the Colonial Williamsburg Collection that the Live Free or Die Auctioneer is selling in the Indianapolis sale. It was made by a man named Arthur W. Hall of Lakewood, Ohio in 1925 and I think it is one hell of a pretty interesting vice...

What blew me away with this vice is that it works like a leg-vice, but it is only 20" high. It also appears to have far more control of the squeezing end than a leg-vice, although I bet old Arthur had some seriously banged up knees from that brass crank sticking out like it does, and the fact that the crank is bent up a tad confirms this. My thought is that the crank should come at the front leg from the rear, instead of the other way around. It would give you the same pivot control, but coming from behind it wouldn't be in the way all the time.

I have a hunk of maple sitting here that is perfect for this vice, so it looks like adding another project to the list will result in my finally getting a vice to call my own again. Life is good.

I did some dissecting to the only image I have of it tonight and came up with some basic dimensions, which I have laid out for you below. You are welcome to save that file, if you are interested, or you can download a full sized version (43" x 36") of the same drawing using this link.

Great Stuff!

Peace,

Mitchell

I See, Said The Blind Man...

As I have mentioned here before, I have a little eyesight problem that keeps me out of the pool halls. I can see pretty well from about 4” to 10”, a little blurred from 10” to about 30”, and progressively on to a melding of colours from there, but often, I can recognize something from its blurred shape.

When I’m playing navigator for my wife, I can’t read the writing on a sign, but I can see the shape of it and by judging their length and calculating whether or not the street’s name would fit in that length of sign, I can tell my wife it is the one we are looking for so she will drive accordingly. I’m silently proud of myself for being right most of the time, although she gives me shit every time I miss one.

When it comes to people, I have learned to pay special attention to their body language as it helps me recognize someone at a distance. I can't see who they are, but I can see who they act like, which allows me to react to them "normally".

When this first came up, back in 1988, my wife and I were sitting at a stoplight and a blind guy was being lead across the road. Of course, this got my wife all choked up, as she is prone to overreactions. For me, I was just upset about how this guy was dressed as he was wearing a plaid pair of pants and a stripped shirt, both in the gaudiest colours you could ever imagine. I looked at my wife and said, “If you ever dress me like that when I can’t see any more I’ll kill you.” She answered me with, “Ya, and how will you know?”

All in all, it is one of those – deal the hand your dealt - sort of things, and as I won’t lay down and play dead, I insist it is absolutely no issue for me at all. I am not trying to pretend I can see normally, I just don't think about it much.  Sometimes, though, not thinking gets me into trouble, like what happened a few months ago. I needed paint to paint my office so one evening I went off by bus and subway to the paint store. By the time I got to the street it was on, it was well into dusk, and by the time I got out with my purchases, it was night. I found myself on the darkest street I could ever imagine, and given I can't see squat in the dark, that was a problem. As I headed back to the subway, I walked into two A-frame signs on the sidewalk and tripped and fell on two unexpected curbs. It scared me so badly, I now make a mental note of where things are on any street I walk on, just in case I find myself on it after dark.

Overall, there is only one minus with the whole thing, that being that I can’t drive, which I truly miss as I have always loved getting behind the wheel. There is, however, one very strong item on the plus side. Since my vision went down the tubes, I have noticed that there is a hell of a lot more beautiful women in the world than there used to be.

For many, sight follows waistline as we get older, both dropping to shocking levels, so with this theme in mind, I’d like to give those of you a quick run-down on how I have started to do cuts, such as making mortises for my never-ending plant shelf unit project.

Here is a quick render of how I made up the crown moulding that I am using as the top rail for the lower cabinet’s face frame…

Because of the weight this thing will carry, the top requires multiple cross-braces, so the rail was made extra deep to allow those braces to be tied into it.

Lighting is a major necessity of life in a shop and it angers me when I view someone else’s workshop that has less than adequate lighting. If yours is like that, skip the next project or tool purchase and buy yourself some damned lights.

I have two lights on my bench; one that is movable and low, and another that has it’s swing arm clamped to the edge of the bench. I use the swing arm for general lighting and when I am working on something small and critical, I bring the little table lamp into play. I bought these both from Lee Valley when they were on sale. Looking this morning I found they do not have the swing arm listed, but this little guy is still available. Because you will constantly whack these things, I would suggest spending too much money on them.

Back when I wrote about creating dovetails, many of you were kind enough to give me advice and by combining what all of you suggested and modifying things slightly to fit my situation, I came up with a fairly solid way to cut some pretty good dovetails and I thank you for it. If any of you have any more suggestions to offer on this process, believe me, I’m all ears and eager to hear what you have to say.

Mike Siemsen commented about the scribe line when that dovetail article was posted. He told me to trust it, letting the chisel grab and hold it, as it will, “lock in there like a screwdriver in a slot”. I have been following his advice ever since.

Following Mike’s advice over the course of time, I have tried a number of different marking knives to try to improve my scribe lines. Frankly, I found them all a waste of time and money. For me, the cheap, basic, blade-replaceable box-cutter knives are the way to go. I have knives in my cutlery drawer that I sharpen often and I have become so accustomed to sharpening knives, my wife won’t use them because they are too sharp. I will do the same with a marking knife, and while they cut well, they don’t cut deep enough for me as their blades are always too thick and wood, unlike a good prime rib, won’t fold away to give the blade room.

I need a good, strong guideline to start. Once I have it, I run a pencil along it so I can see it easier. A pencil seems, for some reason, to follow the deeper cut made with a box-cutter better than it will a shallower cut made by a marking knife. I use a soft graphite black pencil for lighter woods, and a white or light coloured Derwent 

ColourSoft pencil for darker.

Once I have the deep scribe line marked to stand out more, I then use a chisel to chop away a V-groove inside it, keeping the outer walls square to the top surface. This is an expansion of a concept explained by Chris Schwarz when he was on the Woodwright Shop last year. The deeper scribe line makes registering that chisel easier and holds it there better. With a shallow cut, the chisel is sitting on the wood and the blow to it has to immediately be transferred to the wood. With a deeper cut, the chisel sits above the bottom of the cut, so the blow tends to allow the chisel to follow the cut’s wall, minimizing its deflection. This is a very small benefit, but I will take all I can get.

My issue is a bit extreme as I was born with lousy eyes to begin with, and angle-closure glaucoma, retina tears and detachments, scar tissue from operations and injuries incurred when I was young have all served to make things go as they have gone, leaving me with a pretty narrow angle of view. The result of all of this is, when I focus on the closest edge of even a ½” chisel, I can’t register the furthest edge. I bring this point up because while I hate to be the barer of bad news, I have to tell you that as you age, you will find this issue will rear its ugly head with your vision as well, although definitely not in this extreme.

Ready to make the cuts with a couple of the
marking knives I have collected over time.

That is what this V-groove is for; to allow me a better chance at following the line. When I am drawing the saw, I can only check if it is following the line one end of the cut at a time. By adding these grooves, the saw blade is less likely to move off the line as its blade runs against the flat outside wall while the angle tends to make the blade slope towards that wall. Since I watched Chris explain this in that movie, I have improved my cuts 200% as I can now get them started properly, and that is half the battle.

After cutting the outside edges of the mortise, I then make cuts between them, every ¼” or so. Because I have the heavy pencil lines on both sides of the stock, I tend to see when to stop better, finding it best to shoot for stopping just above the lines.

Using a ½” chisel, I then knock out the narrow strips…

With a wider chisel, the one shown below being 1¼”, I then clean up the bottom of the mortise, checking it with a little square every so often to ensure it is staying square with the edges and consistent in depth…

Using this process, I end up with some pretty tight mortises that require very little clean up afterwards…

Where there is a will, there is a way, and while many of those ways redefine the word “patience”, workin’ wood is still a blast and something I never want to give up.

Peace,

Mitchell

P.S.: The title of this post is from one of my old man's favourite expressions...

"I see", said the blind man.
"Bullshit" said the deaf-mute.
And the man with no legs walked away in disgust.

Unlike My Wife—I’m Running Out Of Things To Buy…

The problem with tool collection is that it doesn't stay constant.

Over the last four or five years I have been searching out tools that I wanted, nothing fancy, just the normal stuff that you would find in a cabinet shop around 1900. Because of the availability of these things, they were easy to find, so I was buying one or two pieces a month. That ain’t happening anymore.

At first, the hobby is not only easy, but it is damned cheap. A trip through the “Collectables > Tools & Hardware > Tools > Carpentry/ Woodworking” category on eBay can see you scoring one little item or another on an almost daily basis, if you, your wife or your bank manager let you. There are so many little bits and pieces made to do specific processes in woodworking; you could go nuts collecting them all.

Eventually, though, you locate, buy, receive, clean, sharpen and polish about all the little guys you think you will ever need, and then some, so you start looking for the more expensive, larger items.

The larger items aren’t as readily available as the little guys. There are a lot of listings, but most are junk and not worth the shipping costs, so your purchases tend to slow down rather quickly. While I restrict my choices to a narrow timeframe, from 1880 to 1910, while not an everyday event, it is not that difficult to come up with excellent examples. When I say “excellent”, I mean examples that I won’t mind using. I shoot for the high end of the “User” category. With these, I don’t feel my neck when I have to sharpen a blade, shortening it up in the process, or see a scuff show up on the tote or something.

Eventually, you pretty much end up owning more series' and sets that you will ever find a use for, so you raise your sites a little higher, and start to shoot for real specifics. That’s when the blissful life of tool collecting really starts to drag. The more specific your quests; the higher the prices. The higher the prices; the fussier you become. The fussier you become; the less choices you have. The less choices you have; the less you buy. The less you buy; the less number of “buzzes” you get. It’s a bummer.

My Stanley plane collection, at this point, is missing an No.1, which I doubt I will buy—ever, a No.6, which I am looking for now, and a No.9, which I’m still up in the air about as I think buying one and using it would seriously make me nervous. From what I have seen available, these things are pretty vulnerable to damage.

I now have two complete sets of Stanley No.40 chisels; one for fine work and one for wailing on. I still look for better examples of the four patent dates, but if I don’t find any, it is no big deal.

I have more saws than I have room to store, so while I am still searching out a pair of excellent dovetails, I spend more time trying to figure out which maker to shoot for than I do looking for the damned saws. While I spent about a year and a half finding a matched pair of Jackson 12” saws, I have now come to realize they are a tad thick for cutting dovetails, and while they work, and work well, thinner blades would be better. As Disston made the Jackson blade in the same thickness as their own brand, buying a pair of old Disstons would be a waste of money. I would like to buy a pair of Two Lawyer saws, but at over 700-bucks for the pair, I would dust them, but I bloody well wouldn’t use them.

The only thing that seems to keep me going with this is my quest for more examples of H. E. Mitchell’s tools. I had an opportunity to buy an ultimate brace of his about eight months ago when The Tool Bazaar had one listed, but I felt he was charging way too much for it at 195₤. Since then, I have been royally kicking myself in the ass, to the point that I emailed Andy last month and asked if he would broker a deal between the guy who bought it and myself, but he declined. While I still search daily for Mitchell examples, it is pretty rare that one turns up, so even this quest has lost the luster it once held.

When I do score, though, it is like 27 Christmas’ and 42 birthdays all rolled into one, and score I did just a few weeks ago.

I have a saved search on eBay for anything listed in the tool collectable section that has the name “Mitchell”. I get emails from eBay regarding this search about twice a week. Rarely do they include the tools I am looking for, but on this particular day, I scored, and scored big.

Mateusz1979 had a ½” Ovolo plane by Mitchell up for sale. I immediately emailed him and asked if he had a “Buy it Now” price. We went back and forth a bit, feeling each other out, and eventually he emailed me a price that was beyond being fair—it was incredible. I quickly agreed, paid the bill, and a week later the plane arrived.

The plane is probably one of the better examples that I have of cousin Henry’s. I don’t know if Mateusz bought it as clean as it was, or he spent some time on it to clean it up himself, but either way, it didn’t need the coat of wax I gave it upon receiving it.

On top of that, the plane is a perfect addition to the set. I picked up a 5/8” Ovolo off of eBay a couple of years ago; a number two. Last year, Hyperkitten.com had a 5/8” Ovolo Number one that I was able to grab. This one is a ½” number two, the finishing plane, so if fits into the set well.

As the buzzes come less frequently now, when you get one, you savor it longer. As scoring a Mitchell plane has always given me the biggest buzz, the image above shows you what has been sitting on my bench since the day this last one arrived. I pulled everyone one of them from the drawer, brought the plow down from the shelf, and even added the counterstamp coin to the display and each time I walk in the room, I have a look and enjoy a smile. The collection is growing—its slow—but its growing.

Peace,

Mitchell

Bien sûr, il est difficile ... c'est français ...

Today was a big day for me. The mailman knocked on my door twice this morning, the first time to deliver a part for my modification of the Delta Sharpening machine, and the second, to deliver a saw blade that was just sharpened by Matt Cianci. Ya, I know. Small things amuse small minds.

First the sharpener machine part. A few weeks ago I posted the render of the part I needed to turn this Delta machine into something that is actually usable for sharpening. The parts I want to use on it are from the Veritas Mk II Sharpening machine. I had already purchased the majority of what was needed so the last piece of the puzzle was this custom-turned adapter.

Before I did anything in regards to that one missing part, I checked out what the Veritas machine uses to see if it might be adaptable. From the images I have, I figured it might be a good bet, so I sent off an email to Lee Valley customer service to order one.

Naturally, they questioned what I was going to do with a drive pulley for a machine I didn’t own. In the end, I had to speak to a member of management about it, a person named John who was very good at what he does. I was straight with him, and after a tiny bit of convincing, they put the order in motion. That was yesterday, and the pulley arrived this morning.

Now I have another problem. This is such a beautifully turned piece of metal, I don’t know if I have the heart to hack it up. John had mentioned that there was a short shaft pressed into a hole for it on the bottom. This is what the pulley turns on as it is not connected to the drive shaft, but instead, is driven by a belt. I need the hole back and I think getting that short-shaft out is going to tear up the pulley a bit. I looked at it after taking it out of the box and I immediately knew why these machines are $400 a pop. Gorgeous stuff, but then again, it is a Veritas product, and that is what has kept me coming back year after year for thirty years. There will definitely be a Mk II in my future, but not before this old Delta fries itself, and we all know it will, probably the day after I get it back together.

Here is a shot of the drive pulley…

Only Veritas would create a part with this level of quality.

Now for the second shipment; my Trim Saw. I have written about this saw a fair amount since purchasing it about 10-months ago. It is a cool saw, but man, is it a royal pain the arse. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the title of this posts suggests; “Of course it is difficult…it’s French…”.

This is the saw that all the dealers were selling as a “Veneer Saw”, and some are still listing them as that today. This is the saw that I had Daryl Weir refile with traditional French veneer saw teeth. This is the saw that I found out after having it retoothed that it isn’t a veneer saw at all. This is the saw that has three times the purchase price invested in it because this is the saw that I have had jointed and retoothed twice, and never used it.

Today was the day. I made my first cut with this saw and thankfully, the damned thing works, and works well. It is a bit awkward getting used to moving your arms back and forth, rather than up and down, but as golf proves, any unnatural motion can become second nature...

Matt Cianci can be reached at matt@thesawblog.com,
and you can follow his blog at thesawblog.com

Lets just say Daryl wasn’t exactly pleased with me when I emailed him to admit that I was wrong to insist he retooth the thing as a veneer saw. He kept suggesting I was full of it and I kept ignoring what he was saying. Every student makes a mistake or two…or three or thirty…so why should I be any different. I really wasn’t surprised when Daryl told me he didn’t want another go-round with this thing, so I contacted Matt Cianci about it. Matt hasn’t been sharpening commercially for long, but he has really made a name for himself over that short period of time. He is obsessed with saws, and that obsession shows in his work. One top of that, Matt is just a hell of a nice guy.

I removed the blade from the handle to ship it to Matt as I felt it wasn't necessary to pay postage on a 20" hunk of mahogany that Matt was only going to remove once he started work on it. When it arrived back, before I put it back together, I waxed everything three or four times and put a couple of coats of Waxilit, a wax that is far slicker than normal wax, made to reduce friction and sold by Lee Valley. I use it for everything, including the top of my computer station as it makes the mouse slide freely. After waxing, I put the thing together and gave it a whirl on some oak trim for the never-ending plant unit project. In about two minutes flat I was through the wood and cleaning up the sawdust. My hat is off to Matt, as he really did a nice job on this unusual sharpening job...ok...bizarre sharpening job...

The aftermath, a fairly clean cut with a saw that
followed the mitre jack like it was on rails.

When I first spoke to Matt about this job, and ever since, I kept my mouth shut in regards to how I think the saw should be configured. In truth, I don’t know much about saw sharpening, mainly because I don’t want to know, but after wasting my money and Daryl's time with the last go-round, I'm not about to make the same mistake again.

There is a reason I don't know much about, nor want to know much about sharpening saws. I remember, as a kid, watching my old man, once each month, working in the garage in the summer and the basement in the winter, sitting for a fiver while sharpening all his blades and saws. As a kid, I thought it was the most boring thing anyone could do, and, sorry Matt, I still think of it as such. I’m sure many of you would think much of what I do for kicks is boring as well, but I can assure you, nothing I do is as repetitive as sharpening saw teeth. Oh, and if you are wondering what I meant by, “sitting for fiver”, the old man used to go through a beer every thirty to forty-five minutes. In my world, “sitting for fiver” means a time frame of 2½ to 3-hours, the length of time it would take him to sharpen all his blades. Of course, I would sit there with him while he sharpened his three saws, about six to eight table saw blades; rip, cross and ply, touch up his dado blades and tune up the knives for the molding head for his table saw, a set-up he used often for kitchen cabinet trim. I can tell you, for a 5 to 9 year old kid, those few hours took forever, but I had to sit with him as it was my job to replenish the beer.

Mentioning those molding heads caused me to stop and look them up. I am truly surprised to see they still sell those things. If noise is a factor of danger, these things are the most lethal of all. I can never forget the noise they make…scared the bejeebers out of me. His old Beaver table saw took an 8” blade. It was, after all, probably made in the late 1940’s. If you have never had the honour of meeting one of these molding heads, they came  with different blades; three little ones to a set. These little buggers mount at right-angles to the head, which is a healthy hunk of metal at about ¾ of a inch thick. When those things were turning, cor blimey, they whined. While I was looking up those heads, I ran across a listing for old Beaver table saws on vintagemachinery.org. While there were a number of them listed, none were the same as his, as they were all a little newer. I scooped a photo of this one that is close, one from the early ‘50’s…

A Beaver 2200, early 1950's, listed on vintagemachinery.org.
These old Beavers were manufactured by
The Callander Foundry & Mfg. Co. Ltd.,
located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada until they were
bought out by Rockwell in 1953.

I had a love/hate relationship with this saw. He kept it in the trunk of his cars; a beat up old 40 Dodge, then he went to a 49’ Merc that the story goes, was tuned up by a bank robber who got caught, went to jail and gave it to his priest, who in turn, sold it to the old man. That was one fast machine, considering it was a boat anchor. Towards the end of his carpentry days, he picked up a beautiful two-door 56’ Plymouth wagon, the first year for the push button automatic. When he had a job to do at home, I was always his helper and the first order of business was to haul that old saw out of the car and set it up wherever we were working. While I noticed some of the guys on vintagemachine.org stated their saws were cast aluminum, I can assure you his wasn’t. His old Beaver was cast iron all the way; bed, body and fence. It must have weighed 100-pounds, if it was an ounce, especially with the old ½-horse motor hanging off the back. Every time I picked that damned thing up I got a cuff because every time I did, I would grab the fence guides, the easiest part to lift it by and the only handhold I saw when I went to lift it. Every time; “How many G_d-damned times do I have to tell you not to lift it by those”…smack! (I know he sounds like a royal dick, but really, he wasn’t) He would then grab the thing from my hands and walk away with it like it was his lunch bucket.

A quick story, I hope, about this old saw…I had a big, old outboard motor that I was going to build a boat for, but along came my son and ate up all my money, so I knew there wasn’t going to be a fast runabout in my near future. I asked the old man if I could store it in his basement, which he agreed to. I lugged it down the stairs, we built a stand for it, and I put it in the corner. The next spring, again when I was visiting, he asked me to drag it up again. He suggested I put it out on the front lawn and he would sell it for me. I thought that was a great idea as I could have used the money back then, so I hauled it up, set it up on the stand in the front yard and even ran out and got a “for sale” sign for it. The next time I was over, he beamed at me while he told me he sold my outboard. Great! Then he told me to go downstairs and see what I contributed the money to. Not so great. (ok, he was a bit of a dick, but I loved him anyhow) He took the cash he got for my outboard and bought a new Rockwell with it. I went down and had a look at it, but I have to tell you, I hated that saw from the first time I laid eyes on it. In truth, it had nothing to do with the saw, and more to do with the fact that every time I looked at it, all I saw was the clothes for my kid that should have been purchased with that money, but, what the hell, that was my old man.

As a follow-up, as my livelyhood improved and I was ready to set up a shop for myself, the old Beaver was still in the corner where the old man had thrown it when the new saw came in. I told him that I thought it only right that he keep the Rockwell for now, and I’d take the old Beaver. I just didn’t have the heart to tell him how much I hated that saw or why. I used that old Beaver forever (keep your comments to yourself), until the top finally warped after we had a flood in the basement.

So there is my trip down memory lane for this year, and a long involved explanation as to why I don’t sharpen saws, or at least that is what this long ramble started out as, remember?

Just a quick one on a subject near and dear to me…I check out this blog’s stats every once and a while, just to see what is up. It always amazes me how many of you actually read this drivel, but that is not what I wanted to write about here. Recently, I noticed a big change in the countries where the hits are coming from; the change, of course, is that Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer included on the list. That is because the boys - and girls - have come home. No matter which flag you served under, I thank you for your service and I thank you for a job well done. We are thrilled you came home safe and we will remember those that didn’t come home with you. My wish for you is that your return home is exactly as you hoped it would be.

And with that…

Peace,

Mitchell

Some Assembly Yet To Acquire...

Given our new pets that our neighbour inadvertently gave us, I was forced to put my wife's plant unit together before it was ready to be assembled. With pest control people steaming and spraying their way around the place to kill these almost indestructible little buggers, I didn't think having its parts stored all over the place was a good idea, so the night before their first treatment, I rattled the thing together with the parts I had.

As an aside, these damned bedbugs are killing us. We spent two months with everything we owned packed away in sealed bags and boxes while we went through three treatments of steam and spray. The steam kills the shitty little things and the spray contains any new bugs that hatch. The first treatment saw dozens drop like flies, resulting in only three being found at the beginning of the second treatment. At the start of the third, the exterminator only found one. We figured we had it beat, so he told us to unpack everything. It was like Christmas came a week early around here.

To make sure we had gotten rid of them, I had them do a "canine check". They arrived with a mutt that was taken from a pound in Florida and trained to search out bedbugs. Supposedly, it can't be sidetracked by flies, mosquitoes and spiders, and when he/she/it sniffs out a bedbug, it sits down and stares at the spot he smelled it in. Things went great at first. The trainer/exterminator let the dog out of its cage and off they went with the dog poking its nose here, there and everywhere. I was pleased to see it didn't stop anywhere, especially in my office and our bedroom. When it hit the last bedroom, however...it sniffed...it freaked...and it sat down and stared at the headboard. The trainer/exterminator tore the bed apart and came up with two, hopefully both males or both females. It looks like we still have them, so it looks like we will be having a few more rounds of treatments. Damn!

Anyway, the plant stand went together pretty easily, and I wired up the lights, hooking each up to a digital timer. Once I got it together, I rolled it into the dining room and my wife loaded up its shelves with her plants. As you can see from the photo below, they were being put on shelves with grow lights none too soon.

The first photo is a close-up of one end and shows the basic design is working, although I think it needs a solid rail around the top, about an inch back from the edge, to give the top some weight...

The wiring you see all gets hidden behind the pilasters, which I am currently working on. I did change my mind with these. They originally were to be flat stock with multiple beads running their full length, but I just didn't think they would add the weight I think the unit needs. I have the new design glued up, and they are now 2" half rounds glued to 2.5" flat stock, which is a reverse of the existing beads. I might be able to knock them off this week.

I haven't finished the cabinet area at the bottom yet, so I didn't include a shot of it because it looks like hell. The following photo is a shot of the entire upper area, showing two of the three display shelves, and because it is missing the pilasters, it looks bad enough. Hopefully, you can see that the bones are working, though...

I have been at this project for a full year now and I must say, it is seriously getting on my nerves.

Peace,

Mitchell

P.S.: I didn't get one person emailing to tell me they are interested in a new pizza wheel for their old Stanley marking gauge so I assume I am the only one that has a gauge that requires a new blade. As I only need 1, not 500 of them, I guess I'll pass on the order with the machine shop.

Mother-In-Laws...You Gotta' Love 'Em (don't you?)...

Take every mother-in-law joke you ever heard, the good, the bad and the ugly, and wrap them all up in a 4’ 2” package, throw a piece of ribbon around it and you will have my mother-in-law.

My mother-in-law is one tough cookie. She survived loosing her mother at 6-years of age, being orphaned at 10-years of age, loosing all her brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, as well as aunts, uncles and cousins after being transported to Auschwitz at 16-years of age in a cattle car, jumping off of trains getting out of Europe after the war to ensure her future sons wouldn’t become part of the Russian Army at 20-years of age and she survived raising my wife for the rest of her life. God bless her for it and I love her to death because of it, but damn, she can become one angry bull when anyone doesn’t do what she wants.

My father-in-law was the family’s forth generation to enter the painting profession, his family’s business doing everything from fresco ceilings to exterior house painting. In Europe, to become a painter back then meant a five-year apprenticeship learning to do everything from making your own paint to graining. Having lost all but one brother and his sister to the camps, his family home and business destroyed, he didn’t argue when his new wife told him she wanted to leave for places yet decided. When he finally hit Canada, he had a second shock; the profession he held near and dear wasn’t respected here the way it was in Europe, something he still doesn’t understand to this day. Past destroyed and pride wounded, he picked up his brushes and rollers and went to work with the rest of the painters. While he never gained the same stature he had at home, he worked himself up the chain and started to earn a fair living for his family.

By their tenth anniversary of arriving in Canada, the old man was making enough money to allow his wife to start decorating…well…everything.

Now I’m not saying she did it single-handedly, but if you ask any of the old fabric hawkers, they will tell you that there was a worldwide shortage of green velvet material back in the mid-1960’s, and it caused quite a commotion. That was the same year my mother-in-law started decorating her home.

In her livingroom sits a couch that, she proudly likes to tell anyone who will listen, is the first king-sized pullout bed ever made. Now a king-sized mattress is roughly 80” square. You then have to have room for the mechanism and then the arms are added outside of that. So while she is proud as punch of that couch, the reality is, the damned thing is 2” shy of 8’. It has to be the biggest couch I have ever seen. As with all manufactured products built prior to the late 70’s, this manufacturer didn’t skimp on the gauge of the steel, so the damn thing is as heavy as it is long, probably weighing in at 250-pounds, if it weighs an ounce.

Added to the 3 ½-square miles of green velvet fabric that covers this thing is a low-back easy chair, a matching love seat and six diningroom chairs, all, you guessed it, covered in green velvet. But it doesn’t stop there.

When I first came on the scene, the walls were covered with embossed wallpaper that reminded me of the doilies that my grandmother had on all the arms and backs of her chairs. If the design wasn’t bad enough, it was done in some sort of short, green fuzz that, to my mother-in-law’s eyes, looked like green velvet. This, of course, using those same eyes, made this paper a perfect match for the furniture. I’ll tell you, I am lucky I suddenly became comatose during that first visit, because if I hadn’t, I would have run screaming from the place and would have never got to marry my wife, who, I will mention, hates anything made of velvet  - in any colour - with a passion – thank bloody God!

Married to a painter, my mother-in-law wasn’t shy about serving him up a busman’s holiday, insisting that he repaint often. The first time around for the “green” rooms, off they went to order more of the same paper. The old girl was dashed when they told her that the paper was no longer in production. My father-in-law, bless his heart, took it on himself to carefully steam the paper from the walls, cleaned all the glue off the back of each piece, rolled each one up and when the painting was done, re-hung it. He did this, not once for her, but twice. The second time he damaged enough paper that there wasn’t enough to do both rooms and hallway, so the hallway got painted an “almost matching” green. He still says the paper was getting brittle with age, but I think the crafty old bugger tore the stuff on purpose because he was tired of looking at it.

The beloved paper might be gone, but the sea of green velvet still exists. When they moved into their new abode she drove me nuts pushing me to try and arrange that furniture in the in the same arrangement that they had been living with for these last forty-three years. Because the layout of the new wasn’t anywhere near the layout of the old, it was impossible to do exactly, but I got it as close as I could.

Now you would think she would be happy, wouldn’t you. Here she is, 70-years older than she ever expected to be, living in a nice condo high over the city, in reasonably good health and surrounded by her furniture and nick-knacks. Nope.

The other day I noticed that her livingroom drapes were closed all the time so I asked her about it. She told me she couldn’t open them. I thought there was something wrong with the rod, so I went to look and found nothing, the drapes moved, as they should, and as I’m a glutton for punishment, I went back to her and reported this. She told me that she could open and close them herself, just fine thank you very much, but she couldn’t open them because then she would see the drapery rod.

Now this took me off guard, seriously off guard. The rod was new, and was an exact match to the old one in the old place. I know this because I had purchased and hung it myself; taking this upon myself because I felt the 40-odd year old one was yellowed and worn. I then honestly thought she was joking, and even chuckled. Oh, boy. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong thing to do. Her eyes flashed black and this small, frail, four-foot nothing woman suddenly appeared to tower over me.

Seeing that I had royally pissed her off, I tried logic, asking why, after forty-odd years she suddenly didn’t like the look of the rod. I think you can categorize that as mistake number two. I spent the next ten minutes trying to convince her I didn’t think she was crazy as it was obvious, now that I took a second look at it, that this new rod was completely different than the old. It wasn’t. It was the same style and worked exactly the same way, but I had a much better chance of convincing her that it was my mistake than I did convincing her they were the same. I left shortly afterwards defeated.

For the rest of that afternoon I thought about what I could do for the old bird so she would open her drapes again and get some sunshine in their lives. Whatever it was, it had to be something I could make as, if I did that, I knew all would be forgiven.

I did get an idea, but there was a catch. It involved bending some small pieces of wood.

I had steamed a lot of wood when I replaced the bottom of my boat; so bending wood wasn’t new to me. My problem is that I didn’t have a steam box or a place to use it if I did, so just before dinner than night, I tried something else; something I had read about, but never tried.

I filled my wife’s stockpot almost to the top with water, added a little rock salt and set it on the stove to come to a boil. I went into the office and dug out some scraps of oak; 3/8” by 1 5/8” by 12”. When I had trimmed them equal, I threw them into the pot. I then returned to the office to make a mold.

I let the wood cook for about an hour, pulled them both out, and with my wife doing the deed with the clamps; we clamped them both together around the mold.

Once I had devised a mount that would take my mother-in-law’s abuse, here’s what I came up with…

I have them finished with four coats of varnish, ready to install tomorrow. They will mount under the windowsill and will allow the two panels of drapes to be connected in the middle and be “swaged” to each side.

This is how it will mount and work…

I know this isn’t a faithful reproduction of George Washington’s potty-chair to you guys, but to me, it is huge. If there is one thing I hate more than green velvet, it’s “swaged” anything, especially drapes. After these get installed, every time I walk into that room I’ll have to face those droopy drapes and know that I did it, with protest, but I still swaged those damned drapes.

Awe, well. Its Christmas, and these just might bring a smile, and hopefully a little sunshine, onto the old girl’s face.

And with that, I wish all of you nothing but health, happiness and good fortune throughout this coming new year.

Peace,

Mitchell

Trying To Be Sharper Than I Appear To Be…

I finally tore apart the Delta Sharpening Centre I bought through Martin J. Donnelly Auctions a few months ago.

To bring you up to speed, these machines were expensive and notorious for being useless for sharpening, which is the reason it had such a short run. It is kind of hard to sell a machine called a “Sharpening Centre” if it is useless for sharpening things.

When the Delta arrived, it was obvious the Post Office had beat it up pretty good.

In reality, though, I could only find one issue that made the machine junk – its horizontal 1200 grit wet wheel; the reason why everyone bought the machine in the first place. Paying close to $300 for a machine and discovering that it isn’t worth a shit when it comes to the job you bought it for can be a very quick turn-off indeed.

The reason behind this problem is something that plagues many of Delta’s machines. To reduce their production costs, Delta under-engineers some of the most critical parts, resulting in a machine that doesn’t work worth a damn. In this particular case, one of their well-paid engineers miscalculated the weight and centrifugal force an 8-inch wet wheel can produce. That mistake lead to them using only a 2¼-inch collar faced to the arbor that drives the horizontal wet wheel. Because of this, that wheel is difficult to balance, and if you do get it balanced, it is impossible to keep it that way.

The Delta machine was designed to fail.

While the imbalanced sharpening wheel made it useless as a sharpening machine, I think the bones for a machine designed for that purpose are all there. It turns at 650 rpm, it has the second vertical wheel station that accepts the usual assortment of grinder additions and its motor and casing are beefy and reliable. As a result, I bought it.

So now that I have it, what am I going to do with it?

Enter the Veritas Mk. II Sharpening System.

This sharpening machine that is sold by Lee Valley makes the most sense to me, but I find its $400 price tag way out of line for my sharpening requirements. It has an 8-inch turntable that turns at 650 rpm, so it and Delta are the same when it comes to the basics. Where the Veritas machine pulls away and leaves the Delta in the dust is its unique turntable and platter system.

The Veritas machine has an 8-inch well cast aluminum turntable that mounts to a 1¾-inch spindle that is belt driven. The turntable has a collar cast into it that registers it on the spindle and it is fixed in place using two machine screws. This is a pretty well engineered mount, especially when compared to the way Delta attached their wheel support. On this machine the arbor is machined with a face on its side with a matching face on the 2¼-inch collar. The collar just slides over the end of the arbor, the wheel lays on top, and a small, brass 5/8-inch nut buried in the centre of a 2-inch plastic cap holds the lot of it down.

In this image you can see the Veritas turntable and how it
compares to the useless collar the Delta uses.

The Delta only has the 1200 grit wet wheel available, although other manufacturers produce wheels of other grits that will fit, but it is a bit of a pain to change them. The Veritas, on the other hand, has seven different grits available in self-sticking discs. These stick to a platter, available in 3mm for the finer grits and a 4mm platter for the heavier grits, with the platters being held down by a small centre-located brass thumbscrew. The result is an assortment of grits that are quick to change.

The Veritas machine has two tool guides, one for honing the primary bevel and the other for lapping the back. The Delta has one tool guide for working both surfaces. My machine will use the Delta system as the base, but instead of riding the tool on it, I’ll mount the tool in the Veritas Mk. II Honing Guide, and ride this guide on the tool guide. This will give me all the advantages of the honing guide that I love with the speed and quick-change ability of the modified Delta.

To make these modifications, I need a single part turned by a machinist; a collar that fits the cup cast into the bottom of the turntable that is bored and threaded to screw down on the Delta’s arbor. I have been in contact with the machinist that rebuilt my old man’s Stanley No.6 that I thought was a 7, but he has yet to reply. If I don’t hear from him by the end of this week, I will put the feelers out for another machinist.

Modifying the Delta to fit the Veritas parts is really pretty simple.

As you can see from the rendering below, it will also require three threaded holes on the top-side; two for the machine screws to fix the turntable to it, and one for the thumbscrew that holds the platters in place. The result uses the Delta collar to support the machined collar, the Delta’s arbor thread to hold the machined collar in place, and the rest of the assembly matches that of the Veritas machine.

All I need to make this work is a simple collar.

Because the Veritas turntable is beefy, well cast and balanced, and because it is only supporting lightweight platters and discs, instead of heavy stones, the wobble should be history and a versatile sharpening centre that also seconds as a grinder and polisher should rise from the Delta disaster.

Now I think that is pretty cool.

Peace,

Mitchell

NEED A NEW STANLEY PIZZA WHEEL?

On another note, I have found a machine shop here in Toronto that will I can contract with to produce new pizza wheels (roller cutters) for the Stanley Metal Bar Gauges. I believe the same wheel was used on the Stanley No’s 90, 91, 97, 98, 197 and 198. I haven’t finalized the price as yet, but I am assuming they will be offered at somewhere between $12 and $18 Canadian. If you would be interested in purchasing one that is within this price-range, let me know and if there are enough responses, I will finalize the deal.

If you are interested in purchasing a new pizza wheel for your Stanley gauge, let me know.

Bed Bugs Make Lousy Carpenter Ants...

The pluses and minuses of condominium living differ from individual to individual, as does the relevance of each item on both lists. For me, never having to cut the lawn is way, way up there, followed closely by the fact I never have to clear the driveway of snow.

My reason for hating having to cut the lawn is simple; I have a huge allergy to grass; an allergy that isn’t activated until the grass is cut. Whether living in a house or in a condo, I know when the landscapers’ gang is busy cutting the lawn during the summer, even if I can’t hear them. My nose stuffing up and my breathing becoming labored is a dead giveaway. The difference between the house and condo is that in the condo, I don’t have to sign that bloody humongous cheque every month.

During the winter, every time I hear the weather forecast calling for snow, my appreciation for condominium living goes up a notch. Each forecast brings back memories of when we lived in the house and how much time I wasted clearing its driveway of snow. The wasted time wasn’t a result of the driveway's size as it wasn’t that big, although the layout did offer independent access to three parking spots. What consumed so much time was my inability to leave it without making sure the wall of snow around its perimeter perfectly followed the driveway’s footprint, as well as being perfectly square and plumb for its entire length. The reality is, I’m just way too anal to hire someone to do this job and way too anal to do it myself without wasting half a day in the process. Ya, I know. I’m a nut.

The benefits of not having to deal with these grass and snow are so great, the obvious minus of not having room for a dedicated shop pales in their comparison. Another reality is that what I used to pay a landscaper over the course of a summer to maintain the lawn was more than what my condo’s maintenance fees are for an entire year.

My wife is also not without her own obsessions. Her main one is maintaining a spic and span home. In truth, she drives me nuts with it, cleaning things around me before I even have a chance to make them dirty. She absolutely hates clutter, but sadly, she doesn’t put things away, she just removes things from view. This, of course, means I can never find anything at any time, a problem that she is no help with at all. As the only thing on her mind while cleaning is not having something out, she doesn’t have a clue where she puts it.

Up until now we have both been happy with our condo; my wife because, compared to the house, it has minimal floor space to fuss over, and me, because cutting lawns and removing snow aren’t on my to-do lists. We are, however, right in the middle of a minus that has such an impact on our lifestyles, neither of us ever imagined it could happen. It is such a minus, we might start looking for a house again.

What’s the issue now, you ask? Bedbugs!!!

I started out itching first, but as my wife wasn’t, I wrote it off to another allergy developing. When she started to display hives, my last thought was bugs and my first was the cause being an issue with air quality. Because I have a dog, I knew I had to rule out bugs before anyone would talk to me about testing the air, so I called in an exterminator.

The bug-guy arrived; white shirt, tie and uniform; one that had the company’s name blazing out from its left pocket. I swear the thing lit up as he walked. He nosed around, checking on, in and under everything. Fifteen minutes later and with us 50-bucks poorer, he came back to us and the first thing I noticed was his smile. It reminded me of smiles I had seen in photos of lottery winners. He announced we were “live”. My wife and I looked at each other because we were both thinking the same thing; what the hell is he talking about. That is when he said the magic words; “Live means you have bedbugs”.

Now I’m not big on bugs. I never pulled their wings off them when I was a kid because to do that, I would have to catch them and possibly touch them. I’ve camped a lot over my lifetime, but never without a couple of cases of “Off“ insect repellent. When he told us that we were proud owners of bedbugs, my skin just started to crawl. My wife, of course, took this news as a sign she wasn’t cleaning things enough, so God help me when we finally get through all of this. She will be scrubbing the varnish off the wood tables.

After doing a lot of research, I approached others in the building, as well as the building’s management, and starting asking questions. It didn’t take long to discover where these disgusting little buggers came from. Thinking it would make my wife feel better about her cleaning skills, I ran up to tell her what I learned. It didn’t make a lick of difference.

Bedbugs are vagabonds and hitchhikers who don’t give a hoot where they go or who they ride there with. They are an equal opportunity parasite that don’t give a damn how much money you make, how clean your house is, or whether or not you shower at night or bathe in the morning. As long as you have human blood running through your veins, they are happy. We, as things turned out, had done nothing wrong that would entice these things to sleep with us, other than being dumb enough to move next store to the morons we now live beside.

If you don’t do your research or use a professional exterminator, neither of which our neighbors did, you usually don’t end up killing the buggers, but instead, you send them away. I just hope these damned bugs appreciate that they didn’t have to walk far to join us. What I discovered was that our neighbors sprayed enough Raid around their place daily to kill the cast of “Them!” (a 1954 movie about giant ants). I learned this from the owner’s friends as afterwards, he bragged about how he got rid of them. It would appear that he didn’t give a second’s thought to why there was no dead bugs lying around his apartment.

My first thought was to react in kind; start spraying the place like a maniac and, hopefully, send the buggers back were they came from. I had met the guy a few times before all of this and during both conversations, I remember thinking that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I made up my mind to stop the bugs here by killing them, assuming that we would probably end up playing musical bugs until one of us moved if I didn’t.

After more research and more information from the exterminator, we ended up “cooking” just about everything we own. We put “soft” items; meaning linens and clothes, in the dryer, even those that couldn’t be washed first due to the material they were made from. The “hard” items; smaller pieces of furniture or parts of larger pieces, shoes, books, area carpets, pictures, paper files, and of course, all my tools were placed in a Styrofoam box I made up using duct tape. The drying had its own source of heat, and I heated the hotbox with a hotplate I bought a while ago for heating my hide glue. Adult bedbugs survive for about 10 minutes in temperatures above 120°F (49°C). With the dryer set on high and the hotbox kept at 140°F, we left everything we placed in both for a minimum of 40 minutes. As bedbugs have some pretty specific nesting habits, we could pretty much count on these items not containing eggs, which is something to keep in mind as the heat kills the adults, but it doesn’t have any effect on the eggs. When the items came out of the dryer or hotbox, they were immediately placed in garbage bags or cardboard boxes, both which were quickly sealed with packing tape. The idea behind this method is to kill any adult bugs present and by sealing the items up, it removes as many hiding places as possible for the next generation, once they hatch.

This exercise took five days and our livingroom/diningroom looks like some bizarre, alien warehouse.

After we finished up yesterday afternoon, the bug-guy returned and he dry-steamed all of the furniture and beds which killed the adults that were present. Between his steam and our heat, we pretty much eradicated the entire colony which the bug-guy believes was divided into three nests. He then sprayed some chemical around the circumference of each room to try and contain the next generation to those areas. That is the bugger in all of this, as the new crop of bugs will slowly increase in numbers over the next 10 days, which is the gestation period for these things. To allow for slow learners, he will be back in 14 days to do the same process all over again. We, thankfully, will not have to do ours, but we have to keep everything in the bags and boxes until the end, which is a real bummer. That means no normal life for the two weeks between treatments, plus another two weeks until he inspects to ensure they are all pushing daisies. It is possible we could have failed and have to do the regiment all over again, but I'm trying not to think of that scenario.

It is easy to get bedbugs into your home, moderately difficult to force them to leave, and beyond a royal pain in the ass to kill them.

The one highlight for me in all of this was that I had to pack up all of my tools, going through 8 large plastic storage containers in the process. If you haven’t done this recently, I highly recommend it, sans the bugs, of course, It brings your collection into perspective as you have to handle each tool as you pack, it gives you little surprises because you come across the odd one you forgot you bought, and I can vouch for it being a great activity to take your mind off your bedbugs.

Peace,

Oh, ya…and don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Mitchell


Added Sunday, Nov. 27

So what's the dilly-oh with this post? Other than one short paragraph, it hasn't anything to do with tools or woodworking, so what's up?

While I tried to make light of this situation with our new house-pets, I am a tad ticked by this whole thing. Naw, that's not true...I'm pissed!

Bed bug infestation is at epidemic levels across North America and has been for more than five years. These little shits infest more households than all the other bugs combined, yet every year the epidemic grows by 7 to 10 percent.

The reason for this is because my neighbour is not alone. By some estimates, almost half of those infected with bed bugs react irresponsibly because they either want to save a buck, or they are embarrassed. Whatever the reason, they only serve to make this situation even worse.

Yesterday, I found out one of my wife's relatives had them. He is part of the wealthy side of the family, lives in a 17,000 square foot home worth about $21-million and has a staff of three that spend their lives taking care of the house and grounds. I would think it would be a safe bet to say his kitchen garbage can gets emptied at least four times a day, as is usual for the ladida crowd. If his house can become infested, anyone's can. So how did he react? He packed up his wife and kids and took them to a hotel for the month while the staff and the exterminators dealt with the infestation. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Absolutely not!

In all probability, he took a few bugs with him to the hotel, allowing them to establish yet another colony. Instead of packing the family's bags and making a run for it, he should have taken the necessary steps to make sure any live bugs weren't included before they walked out the door. Simply throwing the clothes in the dryer and packing them in clean plastic bags would have been the right thing to do, but emotions (or just not giving a shit) over-rode common sense.

The reason for this article is to bring some attention to this problem, however small the audience.

Even if you think you don't have bed bugs, check the following once a week...

• Check out the seams, creases and folds of your mattress and box spring weekly.
• Check the joints in your headboard as well as the bed frames, even if they are metal.
• Check the underside of chairs and couches, as well as beneath and between their cushions.
• Inspect the perimeter of each room, especially in any gaps in the baseboards.
• Inspect telephones, radios, clocks and other electronic equipment.

Remember to make these checks once a week.

If you discover you have them, there is only one responsible way to react...

• Call in a professional exterminator and follow his directives to ensure you eradicate your colony.

Don't spread them - kill them.

Ok, I feel better now...

Peace,

Mitchell