This is the time of year when the mallards drop by the pond to eat our goldfish. Sometimes they stay for a while and build a nest. One year they even raised little ducklings. We’ll see what happens this year, it’s early days yet.
Author Archives: admin
Barkwhistle Livestock
A collection of all my YouTube videos that feature the animals of Barkwhistle, from a baby bunny who was only with us for a couple of days, to the dogs who share (or shared) our lives, to the fish who barely know what’s going on, because they’re fish.
Tough guy:
Little guy:
Fuzzy little guys:
Spoiled guys:
More mallards:
Feeding the Fowl:
Courting Cornelia:
Baby bunny:
Rowdy robin:
Pileated peckerhead:
Gorgeous George:
Feeding Fishies:
Herding Hounds:
Me and DeWalt Bunnykins
Lacewood and Bubinga Box
Here’s a new, small-ish box I made from lacewood and figured bubinga, of which I only have a small bit, and it’s not cheap, so I’ll be using it sparingly like this.
The box is about 4″ x 7″ by 5″ tall, and is finished with Danish Oil Finish and some paste wax, which is my go-to finish these days.
This box is pretty similar in size to the canarywood box I made a while back.
Tiny Wee Box
I made a tiny little box today, just for kicks. It’s quite small. I measured it, and it’s about the right size to hold a tape measure.
The box is 3 inches by 4 inches by about 3 and half inches tall. Lacewood sides, Zebrawood on top. Tiniest hinges I’ve ever seen, but they seem fine.
I really like the look of Lacewood’s endgrain, so I left the end grain showing on the front and back, as a feature, rather than mitre the corners like I might normally do.
Cheese Plane and Board
Recently I made a couple of Cheese Boards, and then I discovered I had one kit left for a Cheese Plane, so I thought I should get to it. The wood on the Cheese Plane is called Pau Ferro.
Octagonal Cheese Board
Octagonal Cheese Board, originally uploaded by rgdaniel.
This cutting board is billed as a cheese board here, if only because that’s how it was requested, and because it’s a good compact size for that, about 8″x12″. It’s an inch-and-a-quarter thick, so the finger recesses leave ample room for even my giant fingers to slip underneath and lift it easily.
The wood species (from the outside edges) are maple, purpleheart, cherry, and walnut. For food-safe reasons, it’s finished with mineral oil, just the kind from the drugstore.
This one is spoken for but there’s another exactly like it, except it’s 14″ long, that is available. As always, just holler.
Hardtop Footstool
A while ago I built a footstool with an upholstered top. This time around it was pretty much the same design, except this time a hardwood top was requested. The lid is made of bookmatched walnut with a zebrawood feature stripe. The top opens on two brass hinges, with room inside for a few magazines or a pair of slippers.
Canarywood Box
A small elegant box, the sides are canarywood and the top is purpleheart. First time I’ve built anything with the canarywood, I was quite impressed, I must get more of this. The box is about 5″x7″ and about 4″ tall.
Canarywood Box – closed
Canarywood Box – open
Another Swivel Clock
I made a couple of these just over a year ago, and then realized the other day I still had one clock mechanism left. It wasn’t doing anyone any good sitting in a drawer, so I made the clock to go around it. This one is purpleheart with curly maple.
This is one of the older ones I did. Pretty much identical except for the wood choice (wenge and curly maple).
From a design by The Wood Whisperer.
R.I.P. Silver, 2002-2012
A few weeks ago, our boxer, Silver, suffered a cardiac incident. After a couple of days of moving kind of slow, he seemed almost fully recovered. We tried to minimize the full-throttle sprinting from the back 40, something that he loved to do, but otherwise it was business as usual.
Today I took Silver and Bell out back for the noon feeding of the pheasants, where Silver barked at George through the cage one last time, had one last poop way at the back where nobody will see it before spring, and then on the way back, he sort of leaned into me and slid down my leg, never to stand up again. A half hour later, he died in Lynda’s arms.
Silver was just coming up on his 10th birthday. He came to us as a puppy, but soon went away with Claire to California. He came back as a full grown doggy a year or two later. And I have to say, I did not care for him at first. Of course that soon changed. He had been through a lot of change early in life, but he soon settled into our more routine lifestyle in Mississauga and later here in Owen Sound, where he had an even bigger yard to run around.
We grew to love him exuberantly, as he deserved and as he loved us.
His only flaw was an excess of personality.
He had so much personality that he became the subject of his own meme: “Signed the Dog” status updates eventually became his own Twitter account. While drawing from our interactions with all four of our doggies, it was his memorable mug that was the visible face of “Signed The Dog” and his boyish charm and uncorkable personality that inspired the lion’s share of those posts.
To say we will miss him is laughably inadequate. There’s a giant Silver-sized hole in the world now. We’re both gutted.
But we still have dear sweet Bell, who is in line for some serious centre-of-attention spoiling…
