Computer error

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

There was nothing that needed to be done, but that was not quite correct. It was rather that there was nothing I really wanted to, so I decided it would be a perfect day to fritter around my wood shop doing whatever might strike my fancy.

I unlocked the door. The scent of wood surrounded me. I opened the windows, turned on the fan and looked around. There in the corner sat several sections of old barn beams. The barn was the only structure on our land when we bought the farm. It had easily been over 100 years old, but was sadly beyond repair and after a few patch-up attempts, we had taken it down. Some of the inside wood had still been beautiful, and we’d saved some. I was glad to be able to give it new life. I’ve turned several bowls and even made little wooden men to keep me company while I work in the shop. The old wood is heavy. Its grain is dense. I wondered what else I might be able to make with it.

I picked up a four-inch square block and turned it over in my hands. As I held it and turned it, I felt certain that this wood had once stood as a tall tree here in the valley. I then thought of its years of service holding up the tobacco barn that had stood on the banks of the creek. The wood had history, and knowledge. Perhaps I could tap into that knowledge and fashion it into a wooden computer.

I cut off a half inch slice on the bandsaw, and then used the belt sander to sand not only the two cut faces, but the four sides as well. I took off my shop gloves and ran my fingers along the edges of the hard wood. I was amazed by their sharpness, so I decided it would be wise to round off all the edges on the sander. They soon felt smooth to my touch.

I then moved over to my work bench, where I found the center of one side by tracing diagonals from corner to corner. Knowing the center, I then used my compass to trace a circle that ran just inside the edges of the square board before me.

At this point in my work, I paused. I wondered just what it was that my computer should compute. I am always curious about the weather, so in one quadrant I penciled in " blue sky" and in another I penciled in "rain."

Hmm, what else would I like to know? How about the answer to all those yes/no questions that I ponder, such as should I cook dinner on a hot summer night or just make a salad, or should we go to the feed store today or maybe we have enough to wait until tomorrow. So, in the third corner I penciled in "yes" and in the last corner, I wrote "no."

I then got out my wood burner, and after a few test-runs on a piece of scrap wood, I found the perfect burning tip. I traced over my penciled lines with the burner. The dark burning stood out beautifully on the old wood.

Moving on to the brains of my computer, I decided to use an old tobacco stick, fitting after all, as the wood had come from a tobacco barn. I cut a small section of a stick in half, length wise, and then penciled in an arrow. I returned to the band saw, gloves and safety visor on, and carefully cut along my penciled lines.

All I needed now were two vintage washers and a vintage wood screw to secure the brains of my computer to its base. Greg just happened to have an old wooden chest filled with compartments, each of which held vintage screws and washers. Yes. This was, after all, a 100-year-old computer – in a new kind of way.

I rubbed tung oil into both pieces of wood, waited for them to dry, and then drilled through the arrow and into the computer's base. I secured the brainy arrow with the screw, a washer both above and below to allow it to spin freely, and voila! My computer was complete.

Now, for its test run, what should I ask? We really needed to go to the grocery store. We always have plenty of dinner fare, eggs for omelets and all kinds of beef, and we could certainly get by for a few days longer, but I decided to ask the computer. No! Don’t go! Hmm. So, we'd dine on garden vegetables and omelets once again.

Then, I wondered, what did the overnight weather hold in store for us. It is always easier to weed after a bit of rain. I spun the spinner. The computer called for rain. Hooray. I could weed tomorrow, but just to be sure, I checked the forecast on the internet. Nope. No chance of rain for the next several days. It seemed that my computer was in error.

I sat back. I suppose that I’ll need to fine tune or maybe even reprogram my computing machine. After I swept out my wood shop and closed the door, we headed on out to the grocery store. I imagined I’d spend the next day hard at work in the garden, pulling weeds set in dry cement. As we pushed our cart up and down the aisles, I mulled over the concept of computer error.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in Ohio south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com. 

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