Springtime on Kent Island: 4/12 - 4/15

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Monday, April 12

When we went to sleep last night the outside temperature was in the mid 60's but when we got up this morning, it was slightly under 50 degrees--quite a change!  The sky was overcast and we expected some rain later in the day.  I moved my planned daily tasks around so that I wasn't doing work outside in the rain today.

I've been varnishing a piece of plywood that
I intend to use as a work surface
on an upcoming project.

The piece of plywood is intended to be a work surface for a little project I've started making handles for knives.  The first knife I will be attempting to make a new handle for is a kitchen knife whose plastic handle broke into pieces.  

I purchased two different kinds of wood to make the new knife handle, goncalo alves and tong gu wood.  I haven't decided which one to use yet but I'm leaning toward the tong gu wood which has a zebra-like pattern in the grain.  (I plan to use an oil finish on the knife handle when I'm done with all the woodwork and fastening. I'll document my progress on this blog,)

Tong gu wood blanks for use in knife handles.  
I'm leaning toward this one!

After my daily radiation treatment we went out for lunch at Lemongrass II--I had KaPow with beef and it was absolutely delicious!  We also shared our favorite appetizer, crispy asparagus.  We ran some errands including some grocery shopping at Fresh Market in Annapolis before returning to Kent Island and calling it a day.

Tuesday, April 13

The sky was still overcast this morning and it was cool (low 50's) when we woke up. The tide was the highest that I've seen so far here on Kent Island.  We had to step down about 12 to 14" onto the dock.  Normally, at high tide the deck of our boat and the dock are approximately even.

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I've noticed that I've been feeling much better lately and my longer stride has returned.  I feel like I'm almost back to normal, even though I have a little more than 2 weeks left in my radiation treatments.

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With rain expected tomorrow, I decided to cut the knife blanks to shape using my jigsaw.  Since they were too small to handle and cut with my jigsaw, I used double-sided tape and fastened them to a larger this piece of plywood.  This worked great and saved me from retrieving the final pieces from the water afterward too.

Wednesday, April 14

The day started out beautiful and sunny but the clouds arrived around noon.  The light rain started shortly thereafter.  

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Today was the day I met with the oncologist after my radiation treatment.  He believes that my “feeling more normal lately” was due to the hormone shot finally wearing off, which is good news—it’s been about six months since I had the hormone shot.

We went out for lunch (pizza) at Italian Market which is always a nice treat.  After running a couple small errands in Annapolis we returned to the boat on Kent Island.  It was still raining lightly and it was expected to continue through the remainder of the day.

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Working in our enclosed cockpit, I started shaping the handles that I’m making for an old kitchen knife.  I used a flap sander bit in my Dremel tool—it worked nicely but it was slow going. (I bolted everything together as a temporary means of fastening just for rough shaping.)

Using the flap sander bit in my Dremel tool
to shape the new knife handle.

The (tong wu) exotic wood blanks I used for the knife handle were 3/8” thick.  With two thicknesses of wood plus the full length spine of the knife, the handle’s total thickness is about 13/16”, which is quite thick.  I worked about 3 hours this afternoon on the rough shaping—I would take a (wild ass) guess that I have at least 10 more hours of shaping and sanding to go.  (The elapsed time will be much longer since I will be working on the knife handle only on rainy days.)

I am happy with the contour and the grain
of the knife handle but it is way too
thick.  (Again, the bolts are
simply temporary.)

The two wooden sections of the knife handle are way too thick and must be ground down to about 1/4" or less.  I decided to use my belt sander for this task.  I'll be picking up my belt sander from our storage unit on Friday--so, until then, this little project is on hold. 

Thursday, April 15

While the sun was shining brightly this morning, there was still a chill in the air as we drove to my radiation appointment in Annapolis.  We came back to the boat afterward to have lunch on board.

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On my agenda for the afternoon was finishing up the dinghy cleaning (and complete the taping for bottom painting) and doing some maintenance on the self tailing winch on the forward port cabintop (it has been difficult to turn by hand lately).  Both of these tasks were postponed due to my fatigue (a byproduct of the radiation treatments--they usually catch up to me by Thursday afternoon!).

We went to the Pour House (adjacent to the marina) for a Happy Hour.  While it was very convenient, we are reminded that we make a much better Happy Hour on the boat.

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In our next blogpost, I will be tearing apart and cleaning our Barient #19 two-speed self-tailing winch and doing more work on the knife handle I'm constructing.  Stay tuned...and thanks for following our blog!