Final June Update: The 2nd half of the month flew by quick, and while i feel like i have made real progress on stuff, there is still a lot left to do. I'm fairly encouraged by the results from my 2nd aircrete test, though the initial 2 batches i used too little xanthan gum and the whole thing collapsed(they are still stuck in the buckets as well - did not release). As for the remainder, i have some ideas to potentially improve results, and i have some theories about some noticeable variance between some of the later batches(probably from error with measuring my ingredients). I'm hoping to find some time very soon to make some more. i bought a few more materials including some very nice thick plastic 16 gallon buckets from Tractor Supply, which i think might be more resistant to getting destroyed by the paddle-mixer. I was also thinking these big 16 gal buckets might be the perfect size for scouring wool fleece. they are a little smaller than my 27 gal bins i got from Walmart, however they are made of thicker material, which should resist the hot water better, and i think i was only filling the big square bins about halfway to fit a full large fleece for my suint test, so hopefully 16 gal will be big enough. I have decided i think i am going to move away from suint soaking, and so i bought myself a big 25 gal propane-fired cook-pot to heat scouring-water, however at the moment i am still waiting for it to arrive from Amazon. The basic plan is to fill my big buckets with near-boiling water and soak the wool before removing still hot wool to dry on the racks i built. Here are some curated resources i found helpful in coming to this plan. it's not totally figured out yet, however i think i am getting closer: Scouring Raw Sheep fleece, Common Mistakes to Avoid! A few questions remain, like should i use salt or not, but overall i think i have a plan to get all the wool cleaned and ready for the next step, as well as hopefully collecting some lanolin for a beeswax project. BTW, i like the new racks i made from wire-metal shelving. They are smaller than my chickenwire skirting tables but much more robust. I still plan to used the chickenwire tables for skirting, and perhaps drying fleece, however i decided i needed something stronger and more resistant to moisture damage for handling the wet wool coming out the the scouring baths.
Note, the mason-jars in the suint were because i couldn't find an appropriate weight to keep the wool submerged. i think i will make some some weights out of rebar if i plan to do this again. The big test will be to see if the smell goes away after a dip in boiling water; if i can get the smell out perhaps suint soaking might be a useful part of the process going forward. as for now, i think i will do the next batch straight into the hot water, with maybe a cold wash as a later step. Also note, i had the opportunity to try out the organ at church this month. it was my first time as an accompanist since high-school, and i'm proud to say it wasn't a complete disaster, however i can't claim to be any sort of virtuoso. Sadly, the reason for this great opportunity is that our longtime organist has finally gotten to the point where her health no longer allows her to make it to church anymore. I am nowhere near the musician she was, however it is nice to have music at church, and hopefully my playing is adequate until we find someone better. Finally i realize my solar melters for beeswax were catching the rain, and developing some rot problems. I'm hoping to make a protector out some some aluminum roof-flashing material soon, so these are the before shots. some further reading: also, this was pretty detailed video on the suint soak method for wool: Suint Method | The Science Behind Fermentation to Clean Raw Wool p.s. expect a post sometime early next month about the honey harvest.
I drove past my bees and noticed some of them bearding (again)during this hot weather this week, and i decided it was finally time to figure out making some top entrances for all my hives. My solution was quick and crude, and perhaps also overly complex. I had some old custom slatted-landing-boards from some hive experiments i have made over the years, and so I simply placed one over top of each inner cover and replaced the lids. This made top-entrances for all the hives, though it has occurred to me that this setup will require some modification to make it reducible for fall; it was a long hot day and it's all i could think of in the moment. It's also probably true that my special entrance reducers i have on the bottoms are too good, and the bees aren't able to regulate them enough themselves to produce sufficient airflow to make a draft within the hives. At the same time, the one hive with the old chewed-up boxes seems very happy with a lot of bee activity. Anyway, i guess i will have to figure something out and make some changes when i go to do the honey harvest next month. Ideally i would like to make some new components in the shop - not sure i will have time. Here is the latest bee-shed map and notes(also some pics):
June/12th/2026
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current map:
west
• - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - •
| _ |
| [2]b2 |
| | | |
• [2]b1 •
s | | | empty[2] | n
o | [2]b1* _ | o
u • c1*[2] • r
t | | | | t
h | c1[2] | h
| | | |
• _ c2[2] •
| [1]empty |
| | | empty[1] |
• [2]a2 •
| | | |
| [2]a1 [2]a1* |
| |
• - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - •
east
a,b,c = lineages from last year
1,2 = hive numbers from early splits(march/25th)
* = new boxes from last splits(may/19th)
empty = empty box
[number] ~= approximate height of each stack in deep hive-bodies
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes: It was pretty simple work, and i wore a minimum of hat+gloves, which seemed good
enough(no stings). All-in-all, i found 2 failed hives, 1 still-empty catch-box, and 9
seemingly healthy hives. The moth larva hadn't seemed to have gotten too far on the failed
hives, and i took boxes away to save the wax(i will probably post about that soon, though i
need to do some repairs on my solar-melters where they are catching the rain and rotting.
also, i have some new theories about why some of my salvaged foundation-less frames are not
working the way i want - hint, it's a bee psychology thing.).
...also, the swarm i saw in the tree last month never came back and never found the box
i put out for them either. oh well. i have 9 hives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
note to self: i need to take care of the weeds growing along my electric fence.
It was pretty hot the last couple days! I read 98°F on my deck yesterday afternoon(before the storm). I managed to construct some skirting-tables / drying-racks i have been meaning to make for processing wool fleece, and the previous night i went and bought some 27 gallon black plastic bins from Walmart. I think i got less than 1/4 of the big bag of fleeces skirted and in the bins soaking now. hopefully we get some more hot days soon, since i am counting on the heat to get good separation of the lanolin from the fleece[1-5] as well as dissolving any poop and other crud i didn't get while skirting. the plan is to skim the (dirty)lanolin off the water surface for further processing for a lanolin+beeswax project, then after that, a lot of rinsing the wool before sun-drying. Sorry, a few images got blurry: i got lanolin on my lens.
I'm thinking i might get a few more plastic bins so i can get going on soaking more of the wool now. i think the soaking plus rinsing process will take longer than the sun-drying process - perhaps i will build more drying racks too. I was a little unsure the ideal size for the drying racks, but in the end i went with an approximate 6'(-) x 2'(+) design; my arms are long enough to handle it and at that size it's beg enough to fit a full fleece in a single rack. perhaps i can make a special tool out of rebar if i expect people with shorter arms will be handling the racks. also, I'm happy i went with chicken-wire; i think a tighter mesh would not allow sufficient debris to fall through while skirting. ...it's maybe good i ran out of bins to soak the wool in. i ended up hiving some time and doing a little thing with the bees after(i will post that next). lanolin tabs: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
I found some time last week to work more on some of my experiments with aircrete. Overall, i think the results were encouraging. my first 2 batches in 5gal buckets collapsed, though after increasing my proportion of xanthan gum, later batches seemed more stable. i did however have some issues replicating the amount of rise in the mixed-concrete-foam that i was able to get on the first batches, however i did get results close to that level on one subsequent batch(which happily did not collapse). All batches with increased xanthan did still foam significantly, and were also more stable during cure. i think if i play around with ratios i should be able to find a recipe which is light-weight, and stable enough to hold it's shape during curing. Currently the all batches are still sitting in the buckets/bins with water filled enough to submerge everything. i plan to let them soak for a few more days before dumping them out and doing some testing. I did manage to gouge a hole in one of my bins - the paddle mixer i got came with some sharp edges(maybe i can fix that). here are some links to my notes relating to this project i put on the other blog(it was easier to type it up and post it there): ...and the pics:
There are a unrelated few pics at the end. i had the chance to cook some more chestnuts and incorporate them into a stew. I'm saving a pic here as a note to it's location in my camera roll. also, the chestnut trees on the top of the hill seem to have dodged the frost, and are now full of catkins(there will be many chestnuts come fall). also i included some dog pics - he likes to hide in the bushes and go swimming.
Another interesting development in the news today: 404 Media - FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers’ IDs HN comments: Not that it affects me directly since i have a phone already. I am however still experiencing significant spam on a day2day basis. i'm kind of pessimistic something like this will help me though, and i would rather see more concrete plan targeted specifically at stopping spammers. Perhaps Kyocera will come out with a spam-block feature. or maybe i'll write and apk some time(I got a lot of stuff on my plate i need to finish before i can get on to that sadly).
June/9th/2026 1.281.503.4218 1.603.333.3392 1.202.987.9873 1.631.483.8694 1.231.734.8244 1.251.216.6386 23456 - it looks like i missed a couple texts from this one last time 1.903.459.1561 May/continued 1.602.428.4952 1.512.222.4947 1.202.864.2035 1.984.465.1586 1.771.202.5948 1.757.276.8470 1.512.648.2137 1.771.243.0437 1.737.702.6446 1.301.783.0812 1.804.331.0875 1.920.335.3767 1.646.664.4612 1.231.265.0081 1.313.263.5364 1.770.299.2942 1.301.783.0792 1.771.243.2177
Note, there were some multiple offenders again. it always seems to be that way. the highest multiple this period was 3x. Previous spammers list:
I thought i should save some notes related to the SpaceX IPO. Sadly a bunch of websites seem to have forgotten how to write HTML, and so i didn't include them. instead here are some mostly reddit links: "Ive read many people say that even if spacex crashes, it would only affect qqq by 1-3%. But its just the principle of it. If the Nasdaq changed their own rules specifically for a single company, what other rules will they change for other companies in the future? What they did sent a really bad precedent" "The big issue is that they are applying a 5x multiplier to the float after changing the rules. So the index will treat it like they are floating 15-25% when it comes to weights." """ Kind of, that was NASDAQ 100, which in the past didn't adjust for float at all, they just banned companies that didn't have enough available float. But they've now changed their rules, to allow low float at a 5x rate. So the details of how that actually affects the fund ratio is complicated, because yes SpaceX will be overrepresented based on their float, but so is every company in that index. That means it's only a 5x adjustment in the sense that the number they use is 5x what VTI or VOO would use, but it's ¼ of what they would typically use. How much of a comparative benefit that gives SpaceX is math that I'd need a spreadsheet of every company's float percentage to work out... Without doing that math and just going by vibes, my guess is that it's probably an unfair advantage for spaceX, but probably not nearly as big as the 5x headlines make it seem to be. Regardless, that's still just for QQQ/Nasdaq 100 indexes. VT and VTI are still using the same float calculations that they always have, which will keep SpaceX at 5% """ google(QQQ alternatives): """ For the Same Holdings (Cheaper Fee): QQQM offers the exact same Nasdaq-100 exposure as QQQ but at a lower expense ratio (0.15% vs 0.20%). For Pure Tech Exposure: VGT (Vanguard Information Technology ETF) excludes financial and consumer discretionary stocks to focus strictly on tech, historically delivering strong returns. For Reduced Concentration: QQEW (First Trust Nasdaq-100 Equal Weight ETF) holds the exact same stocks as QQQ but weights them all equally (about 1% each) to prevent mega-caps from dominating. For Monthly Income: JEPQ (JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income ETF) tracks a Nasdaq-focused portfolio while utilizing an options strategy to generate high, consistent monthly distributions. """ "QQQM, SCHG, VGT, XLK, QQQM, VUG, VTI, IYW..." "QQQM, QQEW, JEPQ, VUG, ONEQ" So, long story short, perhaps it is not worth the time thinking about this given the size of my portfolio, and also the fact that the end result will probably comprise maybe only 3% of the total value of funds like QQQ(which is only part of my portfolio). At the same time, everything coming out of Big Tech these days seems nuts(AI, Quantum, etc), and i wonder if it could maybe all implode some time. maybe i will switch to more small-caps? i already have a lot of small-caps. maybe i should do nothing. i don't have enough for this to be worth my time. it would be nice if small-caps made a comeback - i think society would be better off.
It appears the Dems in NY are now trying to outlaw open-source design and manufacturing: @rossmanngroup - New York's 3D printer law is NOT gun control; it's just.... control. It seems America is a fully bipolar society at this point. Reps are all Trump-nuts now. And the Dems aren't much better. p.s. worth including: Lawmakers in NY are clueless. i hope we don't get this kind of madness here in VA. ...i got to run off and work more on aircrete now.