Snowy Day At The Off Grid Homestead
We got more snow the other day. It snowed most of the morning, dropping 4 inches of wet snow and then turned to rain. I worked inside the tiny house on the computer and spent some time in the off grid wood shop on wheels.
Since it was slushing out - snowing and raining - I did not spend much time outside on this day. I worked on my recycled pallet wood website for most of the time. Melanie and I are building up a business where we are going to be selling pallet and barn wood products that we make ourselves in our off grid wood shop.
Wet and snowy day at the off grid homestead
We are taking discarded pallets and old barn wood and turning them into beautiful and useful products for sale. This is saving the wood from going to a landfill and is recycling at its finest. When you open up some old pallet or barn wood, you expose the grain and color inside.
You can find our recycled pallet and barn wood products here: Recycled Pallet Products.com
The next day was mostly sunny but the snow was still holding on the ground. It was quite cold out. The wind turbine connected to the off grid battery shed was spinning happily. Many people are asking me about the wind turbines. I have one connected to a heater in the battery shed. When the wind is blowing, the heater is pumping, which is beneficial because this is when I need the heat more.
The solar battery banks were finally topping off nicely in the sun. It was mostly sunny so the batteries were getting some badly needed energy. It has been dark and cloudy most of the time recently.
I spent some time in the wood shop on wheels working on coffee coasters. I have a bunch of coffee coaster blanks that I have already cut out of pallet wood. But the blanks curled a little bit when they were drying out. This is not acceptable for a coffee coaster. You do not want to spill your coffee.
So I tried running the pieces through the planer with horrible results. The piece jumps around inside and gets torn up. I had to find a way because sanding them flat takes forever.
I came up with an idea using some longer but thinner boards and some wood clamps. I set up the longer boards to hold the coffee coaster blank in the middle. This will hold it steady while I use the hand planer to flatten out the blanks.
Planing small pieces of wood
It is working for me quite well. I had to get the feel for the planer one handed because I have to hold the frame I made with the other hand. But I got it in a few minutes and flattened out a bunch of coffee coaster blanks.
We are selling hand made recycled pallet wood coffee coasters on the website listed above.
I plan to get my new power inverter installed in the off grid battery shed but I have to find some larger boards that are not under snow and ice. We have had a lot of snow recently that did not go away. I hope to get it installed tomorrow.
You can watch the video for todays work here: Snowy Homestead ~ Wood Working ~ Web Work & More
While you are over there please subscribe to YouTube channel and follow our daily videos as we strive to become self sufficient and off the grid on a budget.
About the Author
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Troy Reid |
