Latest Haul: My New Hobby, Woodworking (Product Reviews)

 So, the last haul that I brought in stirred up some trouble, in the form of a reddening skin condition on my leg. That blog article ended up dovetailing in to the context of this latest haul of mine, the woodworking tools and gear haul for the LED Backlit Sparrow Spiritual Mini Meditation Woodcut Panel project, essentially a reimagined take on a throwback decorative piece that I had in my old apartment and loft.

The original backlit spiritual woodcut panel art piece, which I custom outfitted with a base, glass panel backing, with LED strip lights inside, with stuff from IKEA. The woodcut panel came from Marco Polo Imports, in Santa Monica, now closed. (2011)

My 2026 contextually upcycled new take on a spiritual-themed and decorative meditation backlit wall panel, this time, in miniature form, so that I could accommodate doing the project from within my assisted care living group home housing environment situation. 

The project represents a change of pace, from “whatever” I was doing, previously… I guess it was a bunch of other product hauls and pigeon feeding, for the most part. Anyways, I gave the sparrows a feature part in this concept, as well as the medicinal flower inclusion, symbolizing a transition in to a different hobby, and perhaps some products in development, in the works, along those lines. 

So, I initially imagined the mini sparrow woodcut panel, as part of a conceptualized product marketing campaign and branding mockup of ideas and imagery, through consulting heavily with Google Gemini artificial intelligence. I floated the idea of the original woodcut panel, from its origins in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, perhaps), and I wanted the theme to be representative of my friends, the birds, along the way, with a different flower that I’d been heavily researching and studying, over the past several months, leading up to today (early April 2026), the new flower being Michelia alba, a highly fragrant subtropical tree in the Magnolia family, that was found in my mother’s first home country of Hong Kong (Great Britain, China). 

My mother and I were both in to gardening, back in my teen years, growing up, and it was my retreat in to a change of pace, and it was something to work on, in between my school studies and getting in to trouble, here and there, myself. Eventually we purchased a Michelia alba tree, after seeing them available at San Gabriel Nursery. The trees were on the higher end of the price range for trees of that size, ostensibly due to the rarity that it was, here in Southern California, and for its prized fragrant flowering blooms, which appear throughout several months out of the year, in the scarce gardening regions 10 and 11, which is basically Southern California, Florida, and perhaps a few other small, scattered locations around America. Prior to purchasing one of the trees, I would commonly visit the trees at the gardening center to smell the flowers.

Here is what Gemini and I came up with, for a reconstitution formulation (a highly valuable feature):

### 10-Gram Trial Batch (Weights)

Since you're ready to mix, here are the weights for a **10-gram sample**. This is the safest way to test the balance without wasting your precious Orris or Lilytol.

| Ingredient | Amount for 10g Batch |

|---|---|

| **Linalool** | 5.30 g |

| **Lilytol** | 0.80 g |

| **Phenylethyl Alcohol (PEA)** | 0.70 g |

| **Benzyl Alcohol** | 0.60 g |

| **Benzyl Acetate** | 0.40 g |

| **Beta-Ionone** | 0.30 g |

| **Ocimene** | 0.25 g |

| **Geranyl Acetate** | 0.20 g |

| **Ethyl 2-methylbutyrate** | 0.15 g |

| **Indole (10% in DPG)** | 0.15 g |

| **Alpha-Terpineol** | 0.15 g |

| **Jasminlactone** | 0.12 g |

| **Beta-Caryophyllene** | 0.10 g |

| **Heliotropin Replacer (10% dil.)** | 0.30 g (This is 3 parts) |

| **Orris Butter (10% dil.)** | 0.10 g (This is 1 part) |

| **Methyl Benzoate (10% dil.)** | 0.05 g |

| **DPG (to finish weight)** | 0.33 g |

| **Total** | **10.00 g** |

Perhaps this gives readers a sense of the smell of the flower. It’s described as very sweet and fruity, while having some facets of other white flowers. 

So, I set out in trying to recreate my favorite visual piece in my loft and in my apartment, in a renewed form, a miniature woodcut panel featuring sparrows and Michelia alba flowers. 

To do this, I had to investigate the tools I would use, in order to complete the job. My search happened around the time of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, and I found some great deals on tools and parts. 

———————

Break. Taking a break. Here’s some stuff to look at, in the meantime. 

A forlorn project haul, upon attempting to figure out Gamma Linolenic Acids (GLAs) ex Blackcurrant Seed Oil.

Warning: as an update, I should mention to my readers that it’s possible that something I had applied to my skin, of which pertains to the products I had detailed below, in the blog post, had given me a pretty intense superficial blood vessel rupture skin condition, yet only on my leg(s) - mostly one leg. The condition is exacerbated when I take a hot shower, I’ve learned. The condition is temporary, and I feel that it may go away fully within a week or two, at least that’s what my consultations with Google Gemini have come up with. It’s not painful or itchy. Although I’ve also applied the same formulas to my face and arms, those areas are not affected, only my lower legs, where I did apply the formula, and so, I might think that applying it eventually caused this condition to happen, but I haven’t narrowed down the specific culprit, just yet. 

An alarming superficial blood vessel rupture, potentially, had surfaced after I took a hot shower, after I had applied some of the products below, in a formulation, in days prior to me noticing it had shown up, after the shower. 

What started off serene and quietly turned frenzied on my iPad, and I’ve spend nearly a whole day’s worth of time on my device, today being Wednesday, out of the week.

I had just received a small haul of materials, from Bulk Apothecary, which I was eager to receive, since it took about a week to receive the shipment, here in LA, coming from Illinois. I purchased 5 pounds of Himalayan pink salt, because I felt like I needed a mineral supplementation of some sort, and I wanted to try out the salt, as an alternative to liquid trace mineral supplements. I’d also been on the fringes of a deep dive product research stint, having become obsessed with formulating a skin care product that contained γ-Linolenic acid as its primary feature. I had, just the prior week, spent 50 hours on my device, 

upon settling with blackcurrant seed oil. I figured that, for having such small seeds, the brambles (berry) plants must produce a precious oil. Gamma linolenic acids are one of the necessary fatty acids that belong in our diet, and the body’s production and usage of the product declines with age, so, being age 44 now, I’d felt that my energy was in decline, and that I was putting on a lot of weight, possibly due to medications. The thing was, though, was that I didn’t want to sacrifice either my meals or my energy supply - I had to somehow find a way to burn those calories, given that I now started exercising again, all while maintaining eating three or more regular meals a day. When isn’t the lack of available fatty acids a primary contributor to less-than-optimal health, and I felt that supplementing the skin could potentially produce viable results in the greater body-at-large, with the concentrated ingredients I purchased from Bulk Apothecary.

Five pounds of Himalayan pink salt, which, like the blackcurrant seed oil, I’m trying to absorb externally. The salt is reputed to contain trace amounts of a full spectrum of minerals.

The problem was, upon receiving the oil, the salt, and some polysorbate 20, for solubilizing the oils in to a water based solution, for the skin care product, was that I found that the blackcurrant seed oil had what Gemini referred to as an “earthy” scent. I fancied, moreso, that it was a fishy smell. It reminded me of sea buckthorn oil, another oil high in fatty acids, which I had sampled in previous years. Upon consulting with Gemini about the issue, we settled upon that the smell was an inevitable product of the virgin blackcurrant seed oil, which, (virgin) would feature the highest amount of fatty acids, compared to a refined version of the oil.

So I went on a product research deep dive on Amazon, and alternately, consulting with Gemini, and it was determined that I could potentially appreciable halt the smell of earthiness or fishiness, by absorbing the smell, in vitro, making use of coconut activated charcoal powder. I was supposed to let it sit in the oil for a couple or a few days. So, I ordered several more products, including a Büchner flask-based hand pumped vacuum chamber that had a draining ceramic container at its top, which would hold the liquid and the charcoal powder, as it was vacuumed in to the flask, with a paper membrane in between the liquid mixture and the drainage holes of the upper receptacle.

Unfortunately, I never received the packages that went with this second haul, on a subsequent week that had started. It was disappointing, to say the least, largely because I had formulated a poor-smelling fragrance cover-up for my first trial at masking the blackcurrant seed oil’s scent. It was a rosy scent, which, all in all, ought not be the vibe I should be going for, so I was worried that production and development time would be lost, and I’d have to order the items again, or something, but I chatted with Amazon about the boxes being delivered somewhere else, and they promptly issued a refund, at my request. 

The delivery driver’s photo “proof” of that my packages were delivered, whereas I have no idea where this picture was taken - it obviously, to me, isn’t my home, where I’d sent the packages to.

I started hearing things, in my head, about that the whole deodorizing concept was a majorly tweaked out topic to consider, and that I should feel lucky that the packages never arrived, and that I had to get on chat support with Amazon to get a refund, which was painless, by the way. After all, I was about to spend nearly $100 to deodorize a $17 bottle of oil. My rationale, during all of that though, was that I could establish a workflow, and an edge, over competitors, for going the extra mile, by deodorizing the oil that had started to oxidize, for however long it had been sitting out. 

Meanwhile, for this week’s screen time, I did some more consulting with Gemini, and I conceived of that the scent of earthy-fishiness could be better covered up by a sweet tropical type of scent, with coconut, tonka bean, benzoin, and some of my Eau Pigeonoid-recent formulation of a men’s fragrance that I’m currently wearing and chiseling away at, aesthetically speaking. It turned out that tropical was the ticket, and the second formulation ends up smelling quite mild and pleasant - here, I had highlighted a more relatable earthy scent combination, yet the oxidized aroma as the skin care product I fixed up ages, on the skin, still has reminisces of oxidized blackcurrant seed oil, but not so much that I couldn’t forget about it, for a while; so I moved on to the next thing… figuring out what to do, since I had all of that Amazon gift card money that was returned to me, and I settled upon getting back to a project that would have the subject headers as being “LED-backlit mini Indonesian-style wood panel carving decorative art pieces,” a throwback to my old loft apartment, in which I had purchased a lotus woodcut panel set, and I’d set up back lighting for it. 

I felt like going with the sparrows, for this project, because I felt that they suited the floral decoration aspect more neatly than pigeons would. Now I’m considering various options, after having mega-shopped Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, going between a handheld woodworking tool, and laser cutting CNC machines. Whilst in the process of attempting to create assets for the CNC automated cutting of the wood panels, I spent some money on a 2D to 3D model app, for credits for rendering the 3D images. The app didn’t work, now, by this point (I’d used it previously, and it worked quite well), so I settled upon planning to do a 3D print of the model, yet, I had to come up with the 3D model file, in any case - that, or produce a physical model of the woodcut decoration, somehow, by rote, etc. So that’s where I’m at, in all of this. I think I’m going to end up going with a handheld woodworking tool project workflow. I’ll make sure that readers get updated on the progress.

Update: early a.m., the morning subsequent to this last night’s blog. I ended up going with the hand tool, although I had settled upon getting a rotary tooling setup, rather than the smaller engraving pen options I’d been considering. Apparently, things just aren’t done that way, in such a situation as mine - the engraving pen path, that is. So I ordered some woodworking and carbine burr bits, a Big Spring Sale deal of a $69 rotary tool, that was purportedly 77% off ~$299, supposedly. I thought I’d give it a try - it looked alright, and bargain-y, while being thick enough to hold a reasonably-sized motor inside, for the job, and I ordered some square birch wood panels and some sanding scrubbers. I’ll worry about doing the 3D print a little later on, and I’ll tinker with this woodworking setup, in the meantime.