Pruning and Lowering Tomatoes.

A surprise this morning when I walked out to the greenhouses.

Last week the wind blew the poly off the north end of house one.  Last night the wind off the poly on the south end.   It split down the middle.

Half of the poly is on the west side and the other half o the east side.

I worked on the north side of house six.  I pruned off leave and branching.  Then I lowered the tomato plants.  I lowered them to the east.

I clipped the leader to the twine.  I guess I wasn't careful enough on one of the plants and broke the leader.  The break is circles by the blue circle.  Plants have the ability to survive breaks like this.  A plant can have all their roots severed except one root branch and still survive.

I have been working on a Viking three legged stool.  I cut out the legs from and old piece of eight quartered weathered pine.   I started to carve one with a draw knife.  Progress was very slow and not very accurate.    I have a lathe that I haven't used since we left American Fork over twenty years ago.

It has been leaning against a bench for years.  I started thinking about making a special bench for it.  A month ago I made a workbench using a heavy door that I found at the dump. 

I looked all over for the motor.  There was a heavy old motor on the floor on the west side of the garage.  I could hardly lift it.  I plugged it in and it began to run, but the pully turned in the wrong direction.   I found an other old motor under the house.  But it was stiff and would not turn.  There was no wiring to plug it in.

I was under the bench all of the time.  I put the lathe on the bench.  I screwed the bottom of each end into a couple of small pieces of wood.  All I needed now was a fan belt.  I drove to Fillmore and got one from auto parts store.  I clamped the motor and both ends to the bench and put in the first leg.  The picture above shows it.  It took me a while to get it in.  I found my old lath tools that are not very sharp.  I finally got it so I was removing the chips.  I used my carving gouge which worked pretty well.

Richard, our oldest dropped in.  He is one his way to visit his daughter, Emily, in Orem.  We had a nice visit with hime.

I drilled a three quarter inch hole through a piece of 2x4.  This served as a guide to get the diameter of the top of the leg just right.  The photo above shows the leg fitting into the howl.  The hole represents the hole I will have in the seat.

I started on the second leg and it went way much faster than the first one.

Comments and questions are welcome.