Scattered Thoughts . . .

A few years ago, I designed and built a Giant Jenga set for our backyard.  It still gets a lot of use today and we happened to have enjoyed it over the past week while Kenzie and Lukey were staying with us! The blocks were fairly easy to make...  I cut 2x4s to size...  each piece the same length as three pieces side-by-side so they would stack evenly.  The hard and very time-consuming part was all the sanding that was required.  I needed to ensure each piece was perfectly smooth.  After the tedious process of sanding to a 400 grit (80 to 120 to 220 to 320 to 400), I waxed every piece so it slides easily without hanging up on rough spots.  These blocks are now nice and slick. Since this giant game is to be played on lawns which are never perfectly level, I made a base for the game that provides a stable and level starting point for stacking the blocks.  I installed leveling feet on this base so I can level it anywhere on the lawn.  You can't ...

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were spending the week with us, Lukey got in plenty of time running trains on the garden railroad...  the Kenzington Gardens Railroad.  As I've mentioned in previous blog entries about this little garden railroad, we control the trains via Bluetooth and the power is supplied by a battery in each train.  There is no need for power in the rails which makes things far easier. It can get a bit complicated running multiple trains at once by yourself but Lukey is now able to control two trains at the same time using his iPhone.  And, he was even shooting photos while running both trains at one point! I don't know if I've ever shared a photo showing the entire garden railroad so I shot one photo showing almost all of it (below).  The only thing missing in the photo is the curve on the right side of the frame that brings the trains back around the bend to the train station on the front side of the garden railroad.  This is very small for a b...