Bonsai and a Chair
I don't know if I've written about my current bonsai trees, but I will in this post.
But first, I would like to comment on a chair that I just made - out of an old car seat and some scrap lumber.
I cannot take credit for this idea. John did the same thing quite some time ago - with the match to my chair in fact. He got the driver's seat and I got the passenger seat. I know it's the passenger seat because it has the little foot lever which allows the back seat passenger to get out after the front seat passenger has forgotten about him.
Car seats are great1. They're quite comfortable - think about it. On a road trip, you may find yourself sitting in a car seat for several hours straight. And while are likely to experience some discomfort as a result of being in the same position for so long, it is nothing like the discomfort you might experience from sitting in many other types of seats for so long.
The seat is out of a totaled Toyota Tercel. As with everything from Toyota, the seats are quite well designed and, as mentioned, comfortable. The car in question was the victim of a tragic accident. It survived the accident, living for some time afterwards as a field hoopie. But this life on the edge of the law lead to its eventual downfall.
Before receiving the death sentence, the car agreed to donate it's parts. The engine is sitting in a shop somewhere. The grill has been used for wall art. The seats have been used for computer chairs. Though at first, they were used unmodified - just taken out of the car and set down on the carpet. This is fine if you don't care about ruining the carpet - or sitting nearly on the floor - or falling backwards a lot.
The chairs were first used at the family farm in PA. When my parents sold the farm and moved to WY, I somehow convinced them that the chairs should go as well. Then the chairs survived another move from one corner of WY to the opposite corner - Greybull.
John lived in Greybull for a while. And while he did, he built a base on the driver's side Tercel seat for use as a computer chair. He attached a small table for the mouse. He retained the recline function, but I don't know if he retained the slide function. He took it with him when he moved.
Then I moved into Greybull. John took his car seat chair, but there was the other seat, so I decided to build a base for that one. I wanted to retain both recline and slide functions, so I had to design the base so that it doesn't get in the way of the seat components as they move. Recline is easy, but slide is a little more complicated. Also, the base must hold itself square because the seat rails can slide independently of each other.
The thing is made entirely from scrap - with the exception of the screws that hold it all together. I used wood decking screws with a wood block on each side of the seat's bolt holes to hold it onto the seat. I should take these out and replace them with 1/2 inch nuts and bolts - or maybe 3/8 inch lag screws or something. The original bolts that held it to the car floor were 1/2 inch or bigger, so there's a pretty big hole there and my current fastening job does not seem very secure - though it feels pretty solid.
Next I may make a mouse table. Though my desktop's case is just the right height - and I was using it long before building the car seat chair.
The chair is scratching the floor - I'll have to put some felt or something on there.
Now about the bonsai. The word "bonsai" literally means "potted" and could refer to any plant, but its use is almost always restricted to potted trees. I have tried to keep bonsai for nearly 6 years on/off. I've actually managed to keep a few trees alive in pots. And then killed most of them.
I started a maple bonsai from nursery stock - it died when I left it in Wyoming and nobody watered it. I bought a small juniper bonsai at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It was doing quite well until I left it in the dash of my car one day and cooked it.
I've re-used the pots from both of these trees. The maple's pot was a rather large training pot2. The juniper's pot was a rather small simple clay pot to which I have epoxied a neodymium magnet so that I can travel with the tree on my car's dash - to which another magnet has been epoxied.
In the large pot I have planted a common sagebrush which I dug up from my parents' back yard. It seems to be doing well, but I'd like to see it thicken up a bit. I chose this plant in reaction to the death of the maple. "Let them try to kill this one by not watering it."
In the smaller pot I have planted some type of evergreen - I think it's a spruce. I dug it up in the wild. It's quite small and is also doing quite well, but it will be a while before it's much to look at - if it survives that long.
The sagebrush is great because these things look seasoned and old anyhow. The spruce looks like a twig.
1. This does not hold true for all cars, but it does hold true for the cars that I choose to own. I will not even consider purchasing any car that does not have good seats - among other things.
2. A training pot is for new bonsai created from nursery stock or wild plants. It is larger than most bonsai pots to allow the tree to grow a denser root mass before trimming the roots and planting in a more traditional pot. A tree that is grown to be bonsai from a seed probably doesn't need a training pot - just progressively larger bonsai pots as it grows.
But first, I would like to comment on a chair that I just made - out of an old car seat and some scrap lumber.
I cannot take credit for this idea. John did the same thing quite some time ago - with the match to my chair in fact. He got the driver's seat and I got the passenger seat. I know it's the passenger seat because it has the little foot lever which allows the back seat passenger to get out after the front seat passenger has forgotten about him.
Car seats are great1. They're quite comfortable - think about it. On a road trip, you may find yourself sitting in a car seat for several hours straight. And while are likely to experience some discomfort as a result of being in the same position for so long, it is nothing like the discomfort you might experience from sitting in many other types of seats for so long.
The seat is out of a totaled Toyota Tercel. As with everything from Toyota, the seats are quite well designed and, as mentioned, comfortable. The car in question was the victim of a tragic accident. It survived the accident, living for some time afterwards as a field hoopie. But this life on the edge of the law lead to its eventual downfall.
Before receiving the death sentence, the car agreed to donate it's parts. The engine is sitting in a shop somewhere. The grill has been used for wall art. The seats have been used for computer chairs. Though at first, they were used unmodified - just taken out of the car and set down on the carpet. This is fine if you don't care about ruining the carpet - or sitting nearly on the floor - or falling backwards a lot.
The chairs were first used at the family farm in PA. When my parents sold the farm and moved to WY, I somehow convinced them that the chairs should go as well. Then the chairs survived another move from one corner of WY to the opposite corner - Greybull.
John lived in Greybull for a while. And while he did, he built a base on the driver's side Tercel seat for use as a computer chair. He attached a small table for the mouse. He retained the recline function, but I don't know if he retained the slide function. He took it with him when he moved.
Then I moved into Greybull. John took his car seat chair, but there was the other seat, so I decided to build a base for that one. I wanted to retain both recline and slide functions, so I had to design the base so that it doesn't get in the way of the seat components as they move. Recline is easy, but slide is a little more complicated. Also, the base must hold itself square because the seat rails can slide independently of each other.
The thing is made entirely from scrap - with the exception of the screws that hold it all together. I used wood decking screws with a wood block on each side of the seat's bolt holes to hold it onto the seat. I should take these out and replace them with 1/2 inch nuts and bolts - or maybe 3/8 inch lag screws or something. The original bolts that held it to the car floor were 1/2 inch or bigger, so there's a pretty big hole there and my current fastening job does not seem very secure - though it feels pretty solid.
Next I may make a mouse table. Though my desktop's case is just the right height - and I was using it long before building the car seat chair.
The chair is scratching the floor - I'll have to put some felt or something on there.
Now about the bonsai. The word "bonsai" literally means "potted" and could refer to any plant, but its use is almost always restricted to potted trees. I have tried to keep bonsai for nearly 6 years on/off. I've actually managed to keep a few trees alive in pots. And then killed most of them.
I started a maple bonsai from nursery stock - it died when I left it in Wyoming and nobody watered it. I bought a small juniper bonsai at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It was doing quite well until I left it in the dash of my car one day and cooked it.
I've re-used the pots from both of these trees. The maple's pot was a rather large training pot2. The juniper's pot was a rather small simple clay pot to which I have epoxied a neodymium magnet so that I can travel with the tree on my car's dash - to which another magnet has been epoxied.
In the large pot I have planted a common sagebrush which I dug up from my parents' back yard. It seems to be doing well, but I'd like to see it thicken up a bit. I chose this plant in reaction to the death of the maple. "Let them try to kill this one by not watering it."
In the smaller pot I have planted some type of evergreen - I think it's a spruce. I dug it up in the wild. It's quite small and is also doing quite well, but it will be a while before it's much to look at - if it survives that long.
The sagebrush is great because these things look seasoned and old anyhow. The spruce looks like a twig.
1. This does not hold true for all cars, but it does hold true for the cars that I choose to own. I will not even consider purchasing any car that does not have good seats - among other things.
2. A training pot is for new bonsai created from nursery stock or wild plants. It is larger than most bonsai pots to allow the tree to grow a denser root mass before trimming the roots and planting in a more traditional pot. A tree that is grown to be bonsai from a seed probably doesn't need a training pot - just progressively larger bonsai pots as it grows.
Labels: bonsai, car seat chair
posted by phil at 7:44 PM
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