Boring

Boring is the act of making holes. But planing can be pretty boring as well...

Planks

Started with this billet at 4 o'clock.

At 4:03 it went to plane, at 4:10 it looks like this

At 4:13 it's been cleaned up a little more with the hatchet, and back in to the planer

You know you're close when you get good long ribbons

At 4:21 it is just about done

And so the billets become boards, and soon the boards become boxes

Kitchen

Here is a good idea for the kitchen. Glass jars are a better storage option than plastic. Mason jars have a two part lid, so we cut a circle out if the original package to identify the contents.

Stools

A little further along with the stools, hit the ends of the legs with a drawknife to get them into the holes. Also two examples depicting the legs going through the slab, tables and benches. Doesn't mean they were all done this way, but some were. And as it is ridiculously easier than trying to seat the legs in closed mortises, my money is that most of this type of furniture was done this way. Christopher Schwarz will have these in his forthcoming book 'furniture of necessity', about which you can read on his blog http://Blog.lostartpress.com

Hewing

With work, these wedges
Become boards

Gardening

First seed catalog if the year arrived today from chiltern www.chilternseeds.co.uk

Also gardening leads to food which leads to cooking so here is this:
Http://medievalcookery.blogspot.com

Rocket stove

Initial experiments. Began with a stack of cinderblocks. Bottom one had a corner broken out, lit a fire there. Put fuel in through the chimney at first, got it going fairly well. Decent updraft but not a lot of heat. Added cement blocks around the base, this allowed the fire to come out of the bottom of the chimney. The updraft in the chimney did pull on the flames a bit and the pot o water got quite hot. I tightened up the blocks and that improved the draft. Kept shoveling fuel in but never got to boil.