One of my favourite times to go for a bike ride is right after supper. Typically that is between six and seven o’clock, as the sun dips lower towards the horizon. They call it the ‘golden hour’ for good reason because the light casts a magical warm glow over everything. The trails I love to ride are along the Vedder River, which is only a few hundred yards from our house. They stretch about ten kilometres in each direction, on both sides of the river through a heavily wooded area. The scenery is breathtaking, changing every day with the different light and through the seasons. Here’s three pics I took on this evening’s ride.
On the wheels!
It is always exciting to begin a new project! This week we began cutting and welding up the steel frames for a number of features for a nine hole indoor mini golf in the city. one of the features is a delivery truck which will act as then final hole and a photo op for our guests. Today, Matt and I finished welding up the frame and got the wheels on and began the floor of the cab. Tomorrow it will start to look like a truck.
Carving magic
I still clearly remember carving a door by hand for the first house we built back in 1981. Back then I used a mallet and chisel. I first laid it out by hand and then over the next days carved out our last name and some ivy leaves for decoration. I was proud of it and the door (with our name) is still on the house to this day, even though a Sawatzky hasn’t lived in the house for more than thirty-five years. Now, as Peter is working on the custom doors for the Hazelnut Inn things have gotten a whole lot fancier and easier too. Peter designed the 3D file on his laptop, sent it to our MultiCam CNC router and loaded the big custom made, edge grain fir door onto the router table. He chucked up a custom X-Edge tapered bit into the tool holder, then he hit the go button and watched the magic happen. A few hours later the carving was complete. It was absolutely perfect, without any roughness or splintering (unlike the door I did so long ago). We’ll still do a little sandblasting and plenty of hand finishing to make the door like no other and I can hardly wait to see the result! Stay tuned…
