Really I've only been jumping on this project for about 20 minute spurts one or two nights a week. Today I did a good 3-4 hour burst and made some good headway. Neverheless, its oak and relatively uncomprimising. Spoke a little too soon about not annoying Gina with chopping noise from the basement but the upside is that she's retreated to the farthest upper corner of our house, stumbled upon and restarted a quilt project. We're both contemplating submitting these to the Durham Fair. Theres $6 to be made and a sweet-ass blue ribbon.

Being snowed in is a perfect excuse to do more bowl carving. After  smoothing the exterior with a draw knife I decided to take a whack (pun intended) at the bowl interior. This is about 15 minutes of hewing with an adze.  Bowl carving is done  with super green (freshly cut) wood and the block is stored in a sealed plastic bag to avoid too much water loss prior to the finished shape. I try to work symmetrically so that between sessions the bowl will perspire evenly and hopefully avoid warpage. The work is usually done on a tree stump to avoid tool damage.

I got a beautiful old French clamp at a yard sale for 10 bucks and Jerry rigged it to my workbench (it's supposed to be plumb but doesn't matter much for my purpose. Unlike the now ubiquitous parallel jaw bench vice, this has a pinned connection at bottom allowing one to clamp oblong objects as one would do with a Jorgenson clamp. Using a razor sharp draw knife to smooth (that's paint on my chair, not blood); along the grain is easy; across the end grains is not so easy.

Right now I only have a curved adze. Its hooked inward and elliptical in cross-section and typically it would be used for hollowing out an interior (a hooked adze with a flat crossection seems to be typically use for bowl exteriors but what do I know…I’m a beginner and I only have one tool.) I seem to be spending 1-2 hours to rough out each side and it seems like another hour to smooth.

Beginning : As a sort of regression therapy I've decided to try my hand at stone age (updated to iron age) technology and do some wood bowl carving with an adze. Got a great deal from a fellow in Bulgaria that calls his company "Happy Tools" on Etsy. He sells really nice quality hand forged adzes and my experience so far (on oak which is a surly wood)  is that it holds it razor edge well. Sculptor Susan Clinard kind enough to donate a green stump to me and I roughed it out in my backyard with a chainsaw (so far my only 20th century indulgence).

How we think about and experience transportation is likely to undergo radical change in the coming years. Right now cities like New Haven are trying to anticipate the infrastructure that will be needed in the next few decades. Because of the rapid change of technology those predictions are difficult, yet new technologies also hold tremendous possibility for improving city life.