We belong to the Thunder

Today at Six o'clock in the morning there were two tremendous lighting and thunder blasts. It practically bounced us out of bed. It was so loud it felt like it hit our house. What was more ominous was that the second blast had a sound that continue after the initial sound. It really sounded like the aftermath of a bomb explosion. I actually thought that it might have been a nuclear blast that I heard. 

It that fucked up or what?

The same sound was heard in NYC. From the New York Post:

"The reason for the figuratively “super charged” thunder was a temperature inversion sat over New York City. To those on the ground, the temperature was 51 degrees but up around 900 feet, the temperature had warmed to 54 degrees, instead of the usual cooling with height.

That inversion can trap sound waves near the surface, according to FOX Weather Meteorologist and Data Weather Specialist Shane Brown."

I guess we are all getting jumpy with the situation of having a senile dumpster fire as President and an ego maniac in Russia who is losing the plot.

Not the way you want to start the day.

The story of a white oak tree

Back in 2015 a friend told me she had some oak pieces in her back yard and asked if I wanted any. "Red oak, right?" "Nope, white oak - it was struck by lightning the other night." "Did that wake you up?" "Yep, it was only 30 feet from the house."

So I went and investigated - by the time I got there most of the good pieces had been split for firewood, but I did manage to get a couple of nice pieces:

I rough turned it, coated it, set it aside to dry and this week set about finish turning it. Here's what it looked like after drying for three years:

I took the picture at that angle to show how much the piece had distorted while drying. It was a real struggle to turn - I used the Jumbo Jaws (tm) to hold it while I turned the foot round - it had ovalized to the point that it was close to a half inch longer than it was wide:

The bowl also had a hole clean through it:

You can see daylight through it!

At this stage the piece weighed 5.15 pounds - heavy!

So I put it on my lathe, used a grinder to turn down the foot, and once that was done, reversed it and gripped the foot with the 4 jaw chuck. Then I used my 7" Makita body grinder to smooth it out enough so that I could begin turning it. The piece was so out-of-round that even a tool as benign as a scraper would cause it to fly off the lathe - can't have that.

After hours of grinding I was finally able to use my bowl gouge and get it to near net shape. Rough deal, I'll tell ya what!

But I persisted and this is what I got:

Top view:

Finished weight 3.75 pounds - still not light, but at least there is over a pound of white oak sawdust in my shop now.

All because lightning struck a white oak tree back in 2015.

I can handle it.