Glued up some boards to make a case for my slick—the huge chisel—and had a go at cutting and polishing a small piece of jet. First attempt was with grades of wet and dry but, after getting the feel for it, I was confident to try a quicker method: the bandsaw did a reasonable job of cutting, though a water-cooled diamond tile saw I have somewhere would do better; the belt sander took out the saw marks; the Tormek grindstone took out the sanding scratches and its strop created a first polish from that. The only glitch occurred when I tried to grind out a slate inclusion: broke the piece in half.
Mallows are still alive. I’ve decided to make extra potting benches with trestles and pallets, where the growing volume of seedlings can be accommodated until next spring. Where to put them is the next question: almost everywhere is scheduled for projects sometime in that period and they’ll need to be sheltered.
Today is road-repair day, when I have the joy of working very hard with our neighbours to achieve a very temporary solution to the problem. Still, the exercise will be fun as long as no injury arises.