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If you have not made the trip to MLK to try Champy’s fried chicken do yourself a favor and do so. Hands down the best fried chicken in Chattanooga. Sorry Bea’s, the blue hairs and lazy susan’s are not enough to keep the crown. Champy’s chicken is crispy, made fresh to order and the sides are all out of this world. As an appetizer we got the tamales and although they do not compare to true tamales from Mexico or Central America they were mighty tasty. They also serve fourty ounce beers which if I was a younger man I would be all over.

Just returned from a weeks vacation at Pawleys Island, SC and what a great time we had. One of the best vacation beach house locations I have ever been to. Long white sandy beaches, moderate sized waves good for body surfing and pleasant fall weather. Add on lots of Bloodies, Mojito’s and ice cold beer and you have the makings of a stress free week.

We started the vacation with a night of camping at Huntington Beach state park. The park was the former home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband who donated the land to the state of South Carolina after their home was destroyed by a hurricane. On our final day before we drove home we stopped at Brookgreen Gardens, adjacent to Huntington Beach State Park to check out their famous sculpture gardens containing many of Anna Hyatt Huntington sculptures. It might be catnip for old people and tourists but it was plenty beautiful.

Before leaving we ran through Murrel’s Inlet for some lunch on the water at Spud’s Waterfront Dining where I got a lunch seafood platter consisting of some perfectly poached flounder and scallops.

If you know me you know that I spend a lot of time working on restoring my old home in historic North Chattanooga. The past week Nik and I have been restoring the double hung windows in our master bedroom. While working on 2 of them that had water damage it became clear that the water damage was so bad in one of them that I would have to completely rebuild the bottom rail of the upper window sash. This was no small job and took most of a day and a host of my woodworking tools to complete but I am proud to announce the window is restored. On the other window the sill plate was completely rotten so this had to be removed and replaced as well. 2 down, 3 to go and the windows in this room are repaired. These were the worst of the lot so I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary with the other 3 but you never know in in this old crackers house.

Great metal show last night at JJ’s. Actually the first of several good shows over the next 3 days. Last night Black Cobra w/ Night of the Wolf and Bison BC. Black Cobra roared and as usual local metal gods Night of the Wolf were on fire. They played a new song as well. Opening was another band that I had never heard and am not sure where they are from, Bison BC. All three acts were great.

Today is Mustache Friday and the fun gets started at 8:00 at JJ’s for a Fat Tire mustache fest. Playing for Mustache Friday at JJ’s is local rockers Up with the Jonses which should be a good time but I will be down at Discoteca for Reigning Sound. See all you mustachios out and about tonight.

Tomorrow Lord T and Eloise return to our fair city for a show at Rythm and Brews. I hate that venue but I will still get out to support those guys.

Finally, Sunday night is the return of Shellshag to JJ’s. If you don’t get out this weekend to enjoy some music then you are an idiot and I don’t want to know you. The quality of the music going on in this town is amazing.

Looks like the opening band last night was not Bison BC. Not sure who they were.

Recently my local PBS station started carrying the show The Woodsmith Shop which is hosted by the editors of Woodsmith Magazine. This is a great show for beginning and advanced woodworkers alike. For me, a beginner, the show is great because it is mostly about techniques and not about building a specific project. As much as I love the New Yankee Workshop Norm is a master and makes it look easy as I can attest to by purchasing some of his plans and trying to tackle them.

Anyway, they do actually build stuff on the show and so far it have mostly been things used around the shop like a workbench and a rolling shop cart. I have now built both of these and I wanted to show off some pictures of my handy work.

Below are several pictures of my rolling shop cart. It is made out of birch plywood, glue and cabinet screws and rides on some locking and swiveling casters. These pictures do not include the drawer box that goes in the bottom as I don’t have the hardboard bottom yet.

Shop Cart 1

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Shop Cart

I am working on building an outfeed table for my table saw. This provides support for long peices of stock that I am ripping and crosscutting on my saw so they don’t drop on the floor and create an unsafe working environment. This outfeed table will extend back an additional 3 feet from the saw making for a nice long area for the stock to rest. Longer stock will extend out past this but my workbench and some shop roller stands should keep it in control. I will take photos of the step by step process I followed to construct this and show you the fininshed product when comeplete.

Nik and I have been digging in the dirt in our never ending quest to do away with grass and replace it with something that we can eat or is pretty to look at. Last month we planted radishes, mustard greens, red leaf lettuce and kale. The mustard greens and the lettuce are doing fine although we needed to plant more lettuce. The kale seems to be a delicious snack for something. The one saving grace is the radishes, they produced tons. Last week we planted a second round of radishes, carrots, brocolli, green onions, more kale, spinach and cucumbers. We have hot and bell peppers seedlings in the sun room and starter tomatoes as well that are going in next week. I’ll try and post some pics.

I have been really thinking a lot about woodworking again and with the Spring in full effect and the arrival of a Woodcraft store in Chattanooga I am pumped to really start building some things. I started a month ago building a workbench which I will upload a gallery of the project as it progressed up until the finished product.

My next project is a row of cabinets and drawers to store all of my woodworking equipment. I have been designing the project in Google Sketchup a very easy to use free 3D modeling program developed by Google. If you are interested in 3D modeling this product is excellent. When the design is complete and I will capture a photo of it and publish it here.

Back to making some sawdust.

Gilligan and I met at 9:30 this freezing AM for 2 hours of riding at racoon mountain. The trails were a bit obscured with the freshly fallen leaves but overall it was very enjoyable. Well almost everything was. My feet got pretty cold even though the rest of me stayed nice and toasty.

After a long hiatus I have decided to start making homebrew again. My first 2 batches are kitsI got from Homebrew Heaven, a Red Ale and a Belgian White Ale. Both of these kits are very well put together with superb instructions that even a beginner could follow. Since I am not a beginner but I did need to refresh my skills and memory I followed them to the letter.

I will publish more video and pictures as the process continues.

Here is some video of fermentation 12 hours after adding  the yeast.