Is a Homemade Face Mask Better Than Nothing?

The best thing an amateur can do in times of crisis is to follow experts, specifically the expert consensus and not the hand-picked cherries who pander to one’s preconceived ideas. Not that the consensus is automatically true, but it probably is the best that human knowledge can offer at the moment. What we are seeing right now is a consensus shift regarding the wear of facemasks, as more and more countries recommend them or even make their wearing mandatory in some places.

This is accompanied by new research, and one such research in the Czech Republic focuses on comparing various materials. The findings are not published yet, but one such preliminary finding is mentioned in the Czech article – five layers of ordinary t-shirt fabric are effective at catching nearly all particles of the size that have droplets exhaled/coughed out. That is huge since it is nearly equivalent to a surgical mask. And since the main argument for widespread use of face masks is that they should slow the spread of disease from those who have it (especially those who might be asymptomatic), then yes, even such self-made masks are better than nothing, if everybody has them.

But the article mentions another thing, which is even more interesting. One layer of t-shirt fabric was able to stop 11% of the much smaller sizes, those that are expected for the dry incoming particles. And five layers would stop nearly 46% of such incoming particles at maximum breathing speed (i.e. during intensive exertion). Slow breathing increases their efficacy.

That might be significant. There is some evidence that the initial viral dose of SARS-CoV-2 might have an influence on the severity of the illness. That seems logical – the illness has several days incubation period during which the virus grows in the body exponentially. A smaller viral dose thus might give the immune system may be a whole day or even more to develop appropriate antibodies, as is the case with influenza. But I could not find any study looking at whether there is a correlation between the incubation period and the severity of the disease.

It is a work in progress, but to me, it seems the answer to the question in the title is “very probably yes, possibly even for your own protection”.

Before you submit any argument against wearing face masks, please consider whether said argument could be used with the same weight against the universal and non-controversial recommendation of washing your hands. For example, an argument that many people are wearing masks incorrectly is not an argument against wearing them, just like the fact that most people wash their hands incorrectly and insufficiently was never an argument against hygiene. It is only an argument for making an effort to educate the public.

Like this video, which educates about both.

YouTube Video: DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION – Film and TV weapons

I found this video to be informative and interesting, as well as very painful to watch. I cannot imagine doing something like this to a knife that I have spent several days making. I would do it if I got paid and the destruction were for a purpose, as it is in this case, but even so – ouchouchouch…

Bobbin Lace – an Orchid

My next bobbin lace project was a picture of an orchid. It was inspired by the orchids that my father grows on the windowsill in our living room, but it is not, of course, intended to be an accurate representation of any specific plant/species. This time I did not use paper and pencil at all, I started rightaway drawing on my PC with my tablet and I ended up with this coloured sketch.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

From the sketch, I have made a template that could be printed out. The important thing to not forget by an assymetrical design like this is to mirror the image – the lace has a front and back. In this case not only all the knots are on the back side, but important is also the stalk of the blossoms which is in front of the right leaf.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The final step was, of course, making the actual lace. It took me circa 40 hours. you can look below the fold whether it was worth the effort.

[Read more…]

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 8 – Pests, Pets, Partners & Posterity

Previous post.

There is yet another thing that I feel needs addressing before I dive fully into describing individual taxa and how to care for them, and that thing being the beings that might share your household with you and your trees.

Let’s start with a sad anecdote about partners. I don’t have a partner, but my older brother is married. And when I started expanding my bonsai collection and some of my trees started to look really impressive, he wanted to try it too. I have him one really good indoor bonsai, Cupressus californica and one mediocre but with good potential Ficus benjamina. The trees prospered for a while and looked good, but my sister in law shuffled them around the house to places where they “look good” until she shuffled them on top of the cupboard above the kitchen counter. When I have seen this on my visit, I warned them that the trees won’t survive that, because they need a lot of sunlight in vegetation. It is possible to display trees in a hallway or some other place for a while to decorate your home, but ultimately they are living beings and their needs must be met. My sister in law made appreciative noises and pretended to care, but she only shuffled the trees into places where they were even worse off. Until they died, as I predicted.

I have begun to suspect ill intent, but I could not prove anything and I could not say anything even if I had proof. My brother was determined to have bonsai trees, he bought some, he even successfully poached some from the forest against my advice, and I bought him a healthy Pinus pentaphylla, the most iconic Japanese bonsai species, and I chose a tree with really great potential. The trees seemed to prosper for a while, and then they suddenly all died and my brother lost all enthusiasm at all that labor wasted.

For a long time – until last year, in fact – I thought he has just been unlucky. Trees die, it happens to me all the time. But recently I learned that he was a victim of a concentrated effort of his wife’s family. His father in law got bitter after he split with his mother in law, he got drunk and he babbled out what really happened to someone and it came in a roundabout way to me. They deliberately sabotaged all my brothers’ hobbies and I was deemed as persona-non-grata in the household. Their family deemed all hobbies as a waste of time, only activities that make money or are work around the house were allowed. And I came in there with my perfidious influences on my brother and their grandchildren like reading books and growing useless trees in a pot and reminding my brother of his own hobbies like making models and playing chess.

The high-end trees that I gave my brother were indeed deliberately shuffled off into places where they withered and died, under the pretense of appreciation. And when they could not do that with the outdoor trees because my brother put his foot down and claimed a piece of garden for his hobby and told them to back off, they have secretly put dish detergent into the barrel he used to collect rainwater for his trees. To my knowledge, my brother still does not know this and I won’t tell him. He is happily married. But I can’t stand his wife and his mother in law.

So before you start growing bonsai trees, make sure that people who share your household are OK with it. Do not just assume they are.

I also do not have children. And I do not currently have any pets, but I used to. For both children and pets apply the same rules as for any garden- or potted plants. Make sure that anything poisonous is out of their reach so they cannot nibble at it. Or better yet, make sure they cannot nibble at any plants at all. If you are cat-owned, you will have to make extra sure your owner does not knock any pots off the shelves to teach you a lesson.

Some plants are more poisonous to birds than they are to mammals, so if you have parrots and let them out of their cages, you too need to be extra careful. For outdoor bonsai, this does not seem to be a problem. Local birds never nibble on local flora if said flora is inedible or poisonous, and I never had them nibble on small trees when big ones are nearby either. And I have never seen local birds try eating indoor plants when I put them outside. Indeed having a bird feeder near bonsai trees has even helped a bit with pests because the birds do like to sit in the trees and they pick off any wintering eggs and pupae they find while there – especially tits are helpful in this regard.

The almost inevitable companion in your household once you start to grow any kind of plant are pest insects.

Worst of these are scale insects. They tend to attack mostly evergreen plants with hard leathery leaves, like Laurus, Ficus, Citrus, and Myrtus and once these fuckers get a foothold, it is really difficult to get rid of them. I have managed to finally destroy them by a combination of mechanical removal with concentrated water spray from a small nozzle- that allows for mechanical removal from even the least accessible nooks and crannies -but the spray must not be so strong so it would poke holes in the leaves. What also helps is to wash leaves and stalks with a cloth soaked in rubbing alcohol or cheap vodka, to destroy the eggs. Sometimes even more drastic measures are necessary, like severe pruning of the tree and trimming of all leaves. Insecticides are usually useless, they do not penetrate the hard shells very well.

Wooly aphids are similarly persistent and obnoxious and similarly difficult to get rid of. Here I did not in fact succeed and I am battling with them for years now on one pine. The problem with these is they tend to attack conifers like Pinus, Picea, and Larix and they nest themselves into the nooks and crannies around the needles, twigs and in the bark recesses, where they cannot be reached at all. Some even attack roots and those are usually a death sentence. I used to keep them at bay with a timely spray of daisy extract with a drop of detergent, but daisies disappeared around here for whatever reason and since then I am only left with washing them off mechanically either with water spray or with a toothbrush. I might need to try a commercial insecticide.

Aphids can also be a problem. Birds and spiders do help with their management however, and they are much more susceptible to insecticides and even ordinary mechanical removal than the previous two. They tend to attack mostly soft, freshly growing stalks and leaves of Hibiscus, Tilia, Acer, and others with similar growth patterns (probably my new persimmon would be susceptible too by the looks of it).

Since these pests prefer different plants, mixing the species on your windowsill/bench etc. does help to prevent their spread. Yes indeed, social distancing works for trees too.

Ants are not a pest in and of themselves, but they can spread all three above mentioned pests around your collection outdoors if they are present, because all three produce honeydew and ants love them.

Spiders in a bonsai tree are desired and should not be disturbed if possible. I am sure there are some people who would like to know this.

Fungal (and bacterial) diseases come in many varieties and are mostly species-specific. You must make your own research should you encounter one. Some species are more prone to them than others. The best help is prevention and fungicidal spray. If a tree catches a fungal disease that attacks wood it is usually the end of it. You might try cutting away the whole infected branch and burning it – you might catch it in time and save the tree, but most likely it will get damage that takes years to heal, even if it survives. Fungal diseases that attack leaves /needles are less threatening and can be mitigated by the removal of old fallen leaves/needles in the fall, but not always. Even these mild fungal diseases are detrimental to the tree so they should be avoided.

On the other hand, mycorrhizal fungi are desired. Even a bonsai tree starts to prosper and grow better if it manages to get mycorrhizal fungus on its roots, the effect this has on for example oaks is remarkable- I have observed nearly double growth rate in trees with fungus against those without it, but I did not conduct a proper scientific experiment, so you only have my word for it.

Lichens on roots, branches, and bark are also desired, they add the illusion of old age. They are also an indicator of health and proper care because they grow very slowly and are finicky.

Therefore any application of fungicidal sprays on bonsai trees must be done with care and deliberation and in a targeted manner and not in a “spray and pray” fashion.

One pest that I have not seen mentioned in any of my bonsaist literature are water voles. They do not get to the trees on benches, but if you take them off the benches for wintering during a tough winter, they can get in and wreak total havoc. In 2011 I have lost this way several prime trees and many others were damaged to such an extent they still did not recover. Voles also destroy a significant portion of any trees that I plant in my garden, I was unable to replace my cherry tree due to them and I have to plant new trees in my coppice two-three times before they survive long enough to be vole-proof. Having a cat helps, although they do not like to eat voles too much. But they do kill them and scare them off. The problem in my garden was also less severe when we had a dog, And it was nearly non-existent when an owl was nesting in a nearby spruce tree. However the 2011 disaster has happened when we had two outdoor cats and a dog, but the voles were safe under half a meter of snow. Voles are a mortal enemy to me. Forget capture and release traps. You can either be on the side of the trees or on the side of the rodents, not both. So killing traps, regularly checked and put safely with proper bait in order to not catch shrews or birds by accident, it is.

And lastly – it should go without saying that if your tree is visibly infected or infested, you should not display it. Especially not in an exhibition where it could infect other trees. Visible infection or infestation is an instant disqualifying criterion in competitions, and rightly so. As a beginner, look for any of these when buying a tree and do not take any that is visibly ill. You do not want to carry these unwanted guests into your household.

Kites Arrived

And they sat on an old ash tree behind my house.

But taking pictures through a closed window at an angle, near noon and to the south-east of me is difficult. I cannot open the window due to the overabundance of bonsai trees and if I tried to go outside and get them from a better angle, they surely would flee.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 7 – Styles, Sizes and Composition

Previous post.

In any endeavor, there are purists, assholes and assholish purists, i.e. snobs. No doubt in bonsai circles is no shortage of such people too. I have not met any because I am not involved in any society. I have zero contact with other bonsaists and I like it that way.

I am of the opinion that if it looks like a tree and is grown in a pot, then it is a bonsai. And if it makes the owner happy and the tree is healthy, then that is all that is necessary and it is nobody else’s business to give unsolicited advice on how the tree should look.

However, that does not mean that there are no recommendations that are pertinent for any beginner regarding the style, size, and composition of their first bonsai tree.

First, let’s talk about size. Bonsai come in sizes from just a few cms to several decimeters or even over 1 m tall. And here come in play two factors – the space you have available and your physical strength. Your tree must have enough space to grow in height and width as well, and it must get enough light to thrive. For outside trees, this is not usually a problem, but for indoor, the tree(s) container(s) should be of such a size that you can put them on your windowsill diagonally and the tree(s) should not be higher than about half of the window. That way you can turn them 90° twice a week to achieve even growth and they will get enough light.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And in regard to strength, square-cube law comes into play, I learned this the hard way. When you double the size of a tree and its pot with equal proportions, the weight increases eight-times. A pot that is visually just slightly bigger can become deceptively heavier and it can happen that the tree is unmanageable without help. Trees at circa 50 cm are a big handful for a single person and anything bigger than that might need an extra hand. But they look soooo damned good and impressive…

As for style, there is a whole Japanese terminology that I have never bothered to not forget. Sure, I have it in a book somewhere and I read up on it thoroughly, but it is not useful to me now. That is not to say that it is not useful at all. As all terminology, its purpose is descriptive, in order to allow better communication. And since I do not communicate about my trees too often, I do not need to remember it. If I need to describe my trees sometime, I can always look it up.

The word “descriptive” is key here. A bonsai is a tree in a pot by definition, so the only criterion here is it should look like a tree. My advice to a beginner would, therefore, be to try and shape the plant you have to look like a tree – any tree – and not try and shoehorn it into some specific style.

Both size and style are to a certain extent also species-dependent. Some trees can take heavy abuse and be contorted into wild shapes, some are fragile, sensitive and brittle, some have huge leaves, some tiny etc.

Regarding composition, the usual rules of art apply. For example, the tree and its pot should fill a picture with 4:3 or 16:9  ratio, the golden ratio applies etc. Most people have an adequate aesthetic feeling to do this properly in my opinion, There are, however, several bonsai-specific rules that are important to mention.

The tree is a statue that has a front and a backside, but it is three-dimensional. So branches should point in all directions, not only to the sides. But no branches should point straight forward towards the observer, it creates an unpleasant feeling when observing the tree, it actually strains the eyes a bit.

The trees are meant to be observed with approx 1/3 of the tree at eye height- for example when they are on a windowsill, you should be appreciating them when seated. In order to achieve the best result, the tree trunk should be bent ever so slightly towards the observer. It creates an optical illusion that makes the tree appear slightly bigger than it actually is. Trees that straight create an illusion of being bent backward and that, again, is not entirely pleasant to look at.

Big wounds, if they are not part of the composition, should be hidden on the back or on the sides. Wounds, like dead branches and hollows,  that are part of the composition should, of course, be visible and therefore positioned either on the front or on the sides. If wounds on the front side are not avoidable, the tree should not be displayed until they heal, but that is not a problem for me – or for a beginner.

And lastly, the pot is a part of the composition, so its shape and color should complement the tree, but it should not clash with it or compete with it. A straight-lined square pot will look strange with a tree that is all twisty-bendy, and plain brown pot will look a bit drab with a plant that has bright red leaves or flowers. When in doubt, an ordinary bowl works most of the time.

Hopefully, I have not forgotten anything important here. Next time I will maybe finally write about a concrete species and how to care for it.

 

How Czechia Flattened the Curve (Maybe, Hopefully)

Our current prime minister has been in the past often criticized as akin to Donald Trump re: conflict of interests and use of state resources to enrich himself and his family. And rightly so in my opinion, I cannot stand the man personally and politically.

However, when SARS-CoV-2 hit the Czech Republic, he, unlike Donald Trump, has done the right thing. In response to the pandemic, he has left decisions on the policy to actual epidemiology experts from the very beginning. Thus when CZ had mere 116 cases, 12 days after the first three on March 1., he declared a state of national emergency and just two days later virtually everything was put on hold except the absolute bare minimum (grocery stores, delivery services, apothecaries and some more). It was criticized by the opposition (our equivalent of US conservatives) as needless panic-making and fearmongering and the measures as needlessly draconian and a PR for himself and his party. Especially the order of mandatory face masks (home-made and improvised masks are allowed) was met with scorn.

On March 18. I have taken the data of confirmed cases so far, plotted them on a graph and calculated the best-fit exponential curve. It was at a daily increase of 39%, an effective doubling every two-three days, approsimately the same trajectory it has had all over Europe. This growth meant we should have over 140.000 cases today, but we, luckily, do not. We have less than 5.000. Howso?

Look at this graph:

The red curve is the actual cumulative cases as reported every day at midnight. The blue curve is the exponential best fit that I have calculated on March 18. And then there is the orange curve, which is also an exponential best-fit but only for the last week from March 28. to April 3. You can see that the two best-fit lines intersect on March 21.-22.

That is, in my opinion, the day when the enacted measures started to have a visible effect – eight to ten days after they were enacted. I do not know whether I am doing the right thing here mathematically – I have dabbled in statistics at work, but not in epidemiology – but it does seem right to me.

The new rate of growth is still exponential, but instead of 38% daily it is 8% daily. And although the difference between multiplying the cases daily by 1,08 instead of 1,39 does not intuitively look like much, it means the doubling of the cases is prolonged from mere 2-3 days to 10-11 days. Still not enough for an illness that can take up to 6 weeks to heal and kills 1% of infected people, but a very noticeable drop.

And AFAIK that drop is not due to insufficient testing. Testing has grown proportionally, although still not as much as it perhaps should have. But the ratio between positive/negative tests is getting lower, and that indicates that the drop in overall cases is real.

Now there is certainly much more to it than this oversimplified graph. For example, Germany took longer to enact strict active measures, relatively speaking. That is, CZ government enacted nation-wide strict measures when we had just several hundred people ill, whilst the German government did leave many decisions to individual states and instead of strict orders tried to control the situation with recommendations only at first. This has led to a bit of inconsistent reaction and different measures being enacted (and ignored by people) in different states. It worked, but not as much as was desired. Strong nation-wide measures started being implemented only when there were several thousand people ill already- at about the same time as in CZ. And at about the same weekend the curve began to break in Germany as well.

It was similar in Italy too, there the curve began to break at around March 15. (only estimated, I did not calculate the fit curves for Italy, I am doing this in OpenOffice and that is not the best program for this kind of work), about two weeks after the most-hit municipalities were put on lock-down.

Another quick analysis that can be done just by looking at the numbers – In Italy, it took 22 days for the cases to grow from about 100 to 20.000. In Germany, it took 24 days, in Spain 18 days, in UK and France 25 days and in the USA 20 days. The Czech Republic is now 24 days from its 100th case and we are nowhere near 20.000.

So even these amateurish and quick&dirty analyses show that quick reaction, regardless of what the nay-sayers say, is essential in avoiding the worst in case of an epidemic. The enacted measures work as intended. I only hope that our government and our people do not relax too soon.

Stay safe, stay at home whenever possible, and fingers crossed for you and your loved ones.

YouTube Video: I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike

I have a hate-hate relationship with all professional sports*, especially with zero-sum competitions. Apparently even that IMO shitty environment can be made even shittier for women by men who have no clue but wield a lot of power.

This video spoke to me for some reason.

*In short, they are unhealthy and they more often than not foster self-harm, tribalism, and abuse.

TNET 38 – Brooklyn 99

Previous thread.

Thanks to the wisdom of YouTube algorithm, I found out about the show Brooklyn 99 recently, and I have been watching it a lot. As far as LGBTQ representation in media goes, this is the best I have ever seen and I highly recommend it as the ultimate “woke” show. It shows that it is possble to make humor involving LGBTQ people without them being the butt of the jokes.

Open thread, talk whatever you want, just don’t be an a-hole.

Bonsai for Beginners – Part 6 – Where to get your first tree

Previus post.

Where you should get your first tree, and what kind of tree should it be, depends on where you live, where you want to keep it and what experience you have. I am living in a temperate climate and therefore my personal experience is limited to the plants that grow around here plus some subtropical and tropical plants that I grow indoors. I also have very limited – and universally negative – experience with Australian flora, so, unfortunately, I cannot give too much info about that. But whatever I write here should be applicable throughout Eurasia and North America.

So first thing first – where you should get your first tree? If you have indoor plants, you should first look whether you have a suitable plant already that could perhaps be converted to bonsai. There is plenty of commonly grown indoor potted plants that are also suitable bonsai species. Two of my most impressive and valuable trees were converted from 40 years old plants that my mother grew.

If you have a garden and want to have an outdoor bonsai, then I would recommend using local species or some decorative species that you might already have. You can either try and take a twig and plant it – many species take root easily – or look around your garden for a seedling that started to grow where it should not have, perhaps too close to a hedge or similar.

Such plants have a huge advantage over anything that you buy in that you can be reasonably sure that they can prosper in the environment you can provide for them and you might already know how to care for them.

Do not buy anything that has “bonsai” in the name. Neither a good expensive tree nor one of the mass-produced cheap ones in supermarkets. In the first case, you probably would not be able to take proper care of the tree yet, and in the second case you would not be buying a bonsai but a crippled plant that can become one in a few years at the best, or will die soon no matter what you do at worst. The cheapo “bonsai” from supermarkets can be a good source of twig cuttings for your own planting though, sometimes it is the only way to get your hands on certain species. And absolutely never buy “bonsai kit”. There is no such thing as bonsai seeds. Those are ordinary tree seeds in fancy packaging and without proper care will, therefore, grow into ordinary trees – if they germinate at all.

Do not poach trees in the forest or on someone else’s property. There are environmentally friendly and IMO morally OK ways to do it – for example trees that grow near train tracks or roads and are periodically cut down for maintenance because they are a weed – but it is still illegal and you should not do it without the permission of the property owner. And then there is, of course, the morally reprehensible poaching in parks and mountain forests. In Japan poaching of trees for commerce has lead to significant environmental damage in mountainous areas for example. Yup, the Japanese are not above commercializing their heritage and destroying their environment in due course. And to poach a tree without it dying requires a lot of experience, take my word for it.

If you lack suitable species at home and cannot find anything in your garden and therefore must buy something, then buy plants of suitable species at your local gardening store. Look for plants that do not have overtly visible scars from grafting and are healthy and with a bit of luck, you can find a tree that can be converted into a bonsai within one-two years.

And here a very short and incomplete list of species/genera, in three categories. The taxa are listed in no particular order from the top of my head. I only write about species/genera that I have personal experience with or can reasonably extrapolate to from closely related taxa. And because English tree nomenclature is a complete nonsensical mess, I will only use Latin names.

  1. Ideal for a beginner:
    Indoor – Myrthus communis, Hibiscus sp., Laurus nobilis, Fuchsia sp., Crassula ovata, Serissa foetida, Adonium obesum, Punica granatum
    Outdoor – Acer sp., Betula sp., Larix sp.,  Ulmus sp., Taxus sp., Ligustrum sp., Buxus sp., Carpinus sp., Tilia sp.
  2. Not ideal, but still suitable with caveats:
    Indoor – Ficus sp., Euphorbia milli, Portulacaria afra, Olea europaea
    Outdoor – Juniperus sp., Thuja sp. Cupressus sp., Chamaecyparis sp., Thujopsis sp., Pinus sp., Fagus sp. Malus sp., Prunus sp., Illex sp. Cedrus sp., Tamarix sp., Crataegus sp.,
  3. Not suitable for a beginner at all:
    Indoor – Podocarpus sp., Eucalyptus sp., Annona sp., Citrus sp., Camelia sp., Cuphea hissopifolia
    Outdoor – Picea sp., Fraxinus sp., Salix sp., Populus sp. Vitis vinifera, Forsythia sp., Corylus sp., Visteria sp., Calluna vulgaris, Vaccinium sp., Azalea sp., Rhododendron sp., Sambucus sp., Hedera helix

Each of these taxa may get their own extra article in due course. I will start with some of the most suitable ones.

A Walnut Collecting Thingamajig

Collecting walnuts is a really unpleasant chore each fall. For a week or so we have to pick up several hundred walnuts each day from the ground and put them into a bucket, putting a big strain on back and legs. Two years ago I have improvised a little thingy that makes this work a lot easier, and this year I have perfected the design and made two pieces.

It © Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

It is nothing complicated, just a ladle with a very, very long handle. The handle should be so long that when you hold it against the ground at a comfortable angle where you can scoop up the walnut, it should be almost balanced at the point where you hold it, just a few cm before your hand. That way it requires almost no strength to manipulate and you can pick up the walnuts from the ground and put them into a bucket with minimal effort. It works so well that even my mother was able to do it even though she cannot walk around without a cane anymore.

The first prototype was made from a tin can and an aluminum pipe for window curtains, the second prototype was an old soup ladle with an old broom handle.

For the final version, I bought two cheap stainless steel ladles with flat handles. Then I took two willow branches, stripped them from bark and let them dry for a few days indoors over the radiator. When they were sufficiently dry, I have scraped and sandpapered them to a smooth surface finish so there are no splinters anywhere.

There are several options on how to fix the ladle to the end of the stick. I have simply cut about 15 cm slit into the thinner end of the sticks it and I also cut a piece of pipe that fits snugly around it. Then I inserted the ladle handle into the pipe, then into the cut in the stick and I hammered the pipe over the stick as a bolster. It does not need to be super strong, just strong enough to hold the ladle in place. Should it ever get loose, it should be possible to fasten it either by hammering the pipe further up the stick or by inserting a wedge.

As a final touch, I have screwed two steel hooks on the end so I can hang it in the shed, and I covered it with linseed oil to protect against moisture.

I have chosen willow, because it is extremely light and porous, dries up quickly and is for me relatively easy to get at appropriate size. But you could also buy shovel handles for this if you decide to make your own. They will be slightly heavier, but they will work. Broom handles would work too, but they are straight, and that is not optimal.

As you can see, these sticks are not straight, they have a slight bend to them, just as a shovel handle does. This helps a bit because the ladle naturally balances to a position where the nut stays in it. So you only need to exert force when picking up something, or tipping it out, not to keep it in. But one of the sticks was not only bent but downright crooked in all kinds of directions. And I did not guess the balance correctly when cutting the groove for the ladle handle on that one. That one tended to twist in the hand, causing it to not function comfortably.

So I had to re-shape it.

In case you ever need to correct a bend in a piece of wood, here is the most minimalist way:

1) Fix the piece of wood to your table or in a vice near the portion where you want to bend it, with one end freely accessible.

2) Hang some weight on the end of the stick and make any adjustments so it bends the stick in the desired direction. Here you can see me using a bucked and two bricks with a rope. That also allows me to regulate the extent to which the wood will bend – when the bucket rests on the ground, bending stops.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

3) Wrap the area where you want to bend the stick with a towel – paper or cloth, does not matter – soaked in water. Really soaked, water should drip from it. Then wrap the towel tightly with tinfoil, but do not squeeze the water out of it.

4) Try and build something around the tinfoil that will help to keep hot air to hold in place there for a bit. Here you can see me improvising with fireclay bricks and a piece of aluminum profile.

5) Heat carefully the tinfoil with either heat gun or propane torch at least until hot water starts boiling and dripping out of it around the edges and then some more. With a heat gun at 550°C it took me about two minutes. The wood gets soft and pliable under the foil and as long as it is hot, it can be bent a lot more than it would normally be without cracking.

6) You can either let it cool wrapped or if you are in a hurry, remove the foil and wet towels without burning yourself. The wood cools quickly and when it does, it will retain most of its new shape.

7) Repeat on different parts of the stick as many times as it takes to get it right.

Making Kitchen Knives – Interlude 2 – Picklin’ Scales

Today I took a bit of time and I have chosen and cut to size some wood for the handle scales. Among the species that I have chosen for this experiment are: Black locust, Cherry, Jatoba, Black elder, Larch, Oak and some unknown semi-rotten wood, probably birch.

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Because the purpose of this project is to gather information, I have taken all these various pieces of wood and I have given them into a jar with a mixture of ammonia and alcohol. I have written about this process before as “ammonia fuming”. The ammonia reacts with acidic lignin compounds in the wood and thus artificially ages it. In some woods the effect is really subtle – and I already know that using it for maple is a waste of resources – but on some woods, it can be really profound by giving the wood significantly darker and richer color. Oak should get almost ebony black after a few days. The rule of thumb is that if the wood has differently colored heartwood, then it is worth a try.

Some color will leech out into the solution, as you can see already (it was not a fresh solution), but that should not be a problem, it will not seep into the wood itself any more than any other pigment would. What is important here is the chemical reaction, if the wood does not react with the ammonia, it won’t change color significantly no matter what.

Ideally, only ammonia fumes would be used, with the sitting wood above the solution. But I cannot do that comfortably yet, for that I will have to make a grit of sorts that I can put into the jar. If I will ever bother, because whilst that process is a bit safer, it is a lot slower.

That is why I have added alcohol to the solution. It reduces the swelling of the wood during the soaking and subsequently reduces shrinkage and risk of cracks when drying. Plus it makes the subsequent drying a bit faster. That is something that I have tested already on two pieces of fresh birch which I have subsequently put away somewhere in my wood stash and now I cannot find them.

I will take the pieces out of the solution after a few days and let them dry outside for a bit (they stink like hell as you can probably imagine). Then we shall see what has happened to which wood. Some effects can already be seen after a few hours.

Bonsai Tree – Well, Thats Officialy Weird…

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Today, the terminal bud started definitively growing. There is no longer any doubt that it is alive and that last years’ growth did not go down the drain. Persimmon seeds are rare, so I am a bit fussier about this tree than I am for example about pomegranates or hibiscuses. So these last two weeks I was worried that the terminal bud is dead.

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However, I did not worry that the tree itself is dead. Because it did, in fact, begin to grow just one day after my last post. Only it did not start to grow at the tip. It sprouted a second trunk near the base. Which grows slowly, but steadily, ever since. This week the leaves started to get bigger and I have started to turn the plant 90° clockwise daily in order to achieve straight growth.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

However, this is not something that I expected. From pictures on the internet I have assumed that Diospyros kaki are small to medium-sized trees with strong apical dominance, akin to apples or pear trees. But this type of growth, where new suckers start growing at the root base and outpace in growth the main stem is usually the domain of shrubs and bushes, like the common hazel Corylus avellana. And even there it usually does not happen during the second year already, it usually takes a few years to establish the main stem first.

I can only speculate about the cause, so here goes: The root-trimming stopped the inhibition of one of the two buds at the base of cotyledons. Those remained underground in this plant, unlike for example in apple, where they rise above the ground. And since cotyledons are modified leaves, they have buds at their base, only those are usually extremely inhibited and do not start growing unless the main stem is damaged.

This gives me some information about the plant.

First, I will see next year what the root system looks like, but this might mean I will get multiple plants out of this, or one plant with multiple stems. Or that it will be very difficult to get bonsai out of this plant at all because the plant has insufficient apical dominance for that.

Second and more important – it means this species should be strong enough to handle even severe trimming and should be able to start growing even from older wood from extremely inhibited buds. That is, in fact, a very good property in a bonsai tree, because those might need to be scaled back occasionally by trimming several years old branches.

So while this was really unexpected and it is a bit weird, It is not bad news and it makes me hopeful that it will go well. We’ll see how the growth pattern develops from now on, I won’t interfere with the trees shape for at least a year at all.