September honey Harvest

I know it is late in the season to be taking honey from the hive but I
have been slow to harvest much at all any earlier. Due to wet and windy weather and projects elsewhere, the opportunities simply were not there.
A hindrance to harvesting this year was a degree of cross combing that needed sorting out, with most of the honey stores being spread out amongst the horizontal log shape of the colonies. Harvesting was tricky to do without blundering down into the brood nest.
My attempts at queen breeding have been postponed till next year.
However, my inspection yesterday went well. Smoker lit and fuelled with oak havings which I light up with the help of a few capfuls of methylated spirits. Despite this and being wrapped up well under my smock and veil, I was stung lightly through my sock and again on the lower right leg from a bee that ventured up my trousers!
Three of the colonies are doing quite well with no depletion in numbers as yet.
The fourth colony have not recovered in number after being shaken down from an old hive into my own Cathedral top-bar hive. The idea is to enable interchangeable bars and easier manipulation.
I shall feed from now on, till Christmas or they may not overwinter.

I prefer to use the honey without extracting from the comb and managed to gather 10lbs in all.

Wear out a Morgan gracefully

Preferring not to allow the Morgan to gather dust in the garage. Weather permitting, it's driven with enthusiasm at every opportunity, and with the hood down.

From acquisition day with less than 7,000 miles on the clock in 2011, it is now approaching 70,000 miles, but with little or no change to good performance or cosmetic good looks.

The bodywork and underlying mechanics are sound and the M.O.T. regularly passed with hardly a comment. The majority of maintenance is done by myself and I have only once suffered a breakdown when the radiator failed. The common weakness here was rectified later by fitting an all aluminium radiator.  All the fluids are regularly monitored and changed.

Particularly impressive is the way the ECU keeps the engine in tune. Starting is instantaneous and the engine has always run perfectly. This includes several trips abroad using all kinds of terrain and types of road. To get a flavour of these ventures, see elsewhere on this Blog.
As well as the radiator change I have renewed the rear brake shoes, replaced disk pads, replaced sliding pillars with hard chromed ones, sheathed the pillars in leather to keep out dirt/grit. Replaced a master cylinder, added spotlights, added triple horns, replaced washer fluid tube, added a clock and voltmeter, renewed the auxiliary ribbed belt (very simple to do), adjusted tracking, tied down all loose wiring, renewed perished parts of the cooling tubing. adjusted the handbrake cable, greased the spider universal joints to the transmission and steering. Oiled the leaf springs and hangers from time to time. Bled the brake system several times. Made a dashboard of wood and more recently a wood steering wheel and matching gear knob. Kept a log of all work carried out, together with mileage and dates on which this was done.

I have a decent hydraulic jack and axle stands for getting safely underneath.

In the garage, I normally drape a softcover dust sheet over the top.

A planned trip to Cadiz had to be postponed this year  (2019) because of a minor medical issue and lack of free time through childminding duties. However, there have been some lovely ventures and newly discovered venues closer to home in the south-west UK, including Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo.

Woodcarving of Swifts

When my daughter asked me to make her a trophy for her keep fit gymnasium, I came up with the idea of this pair of swifts in flight over the rooftops. Each swift comprises of eight separate pieces of Wenge wood glued together in such a way that the distinctive wood grain shows up a little like feathers and renders the sculpture less liable to split. Wenge is an African hardwood not previously used by me. It tends to blunt tools quickly but finishes well and is quite durable.

Two further pairs were made to be gifted to William and Matthew, I chose a slightly more swept-wing shape with a narrower chord. The bodies were also slimmed a little and set with glass bead eyes. The twin pairs each have one with wings raised and the other with wings drooped.

Each wing was chamfered and joined together with a centre section scarfed between them. The body is built up with two laminations below and one above the wings. Thin separate tail feather pieces were slotted in a saw cut made in the tail after the body was completed. Carving from one single piece would result in loss of strength and consume five times as much wood - prohibitively expensive! I finished by applying my own blend of beeswax and flax oil and mounting the pair onto a base of English Oak and Red Oak.