27ºF at the bench this morning

[D_W]

that's like -3 for you folks who like the C scale.

Not the rockwell one.

I like to work in the shop for an hour over lunch, and it's rare that water freezes in my shop, but we've had single digits at night a couple of times in a row and my shop - despite being halfway underground - is in frozen wood territory.

I didn't know hobby woodworkers when I was a kid, but it was popular for guys who grew up in the 50s and 60s to tinker with cars in a freestanding garage. They all had wood stoves back then. It's lunch now - I'm headed to the shop, anyway (27 is probably 30 now and that's far better than 7).

When it's this cold and i'm grinding chisels, I do pull them through my hands to mooch the heat off of them - they have to get pretty hot before pulling them through a closed hand will actually burn you (pulling them through, though, not pressing them in without moving them).

Before I posted this, I checked Regina, Sask to make sure the two sask members wouldn't make fun of me, but it was over 25F there - which means a "heat wave" is on the way at some point. I hope.

 

[Fitzroy]

Had a few sub zeros in my workshop over the years not many but a few. Biggest issue is I can't start the planer thicknesser when it's that cold as it draws too much current for too long and pops the breaker.

 

[D_W]

Had a few sub zeros in my workshop over the years not many but a few. Biggest issue is I can't start the planer thicknesser when it's that cold as it draws too much current for too long and pops the breaker.

I'm not working on anything that requires a lot of hand dimensioning right now, so an hour of time in the shop with something small is enough before fingers start to get stiff.

But in the case that there's something to do requiring hand dimensioning, temps around freezing are quite nice. No sweating on the wood.

This 12 or 14 years ago, I used waterstones that have to soak (they never froze probably due to the fact that their container was on the floor drawing some heat from the ground) - they are just plain nasty to use (putting your hands in the soak container to get them out, etc) in the winter, though.

 

[Cranhill]

Back in 1981 (I think) in UK, we had a big freeze, we working onsite in minus 14c, you couldn't pick your tools up without gloves.

 

[nickds1]

Used to live in St. John's NL back in the '80s. -40 used to happen in winter. C vs F? Doesn't matter. It's the same in both.

We'd leave long sticks stuck in the ground next to the cars so we could find them in the morning. Cars had block heaters so you left them plugged in overnight to stop the block cracking.

Cars would freeze to the road. The oil in your gearbox could freeze as you drove. It was genuinely cold.