BillyBones

Gov't Mule, Widespread Panic, and Blackberry Smoke are the only bands now that i will go and see. I used to go to a lot of live shows when i was younger, maybe 3 a month on average, as i have gotten older i no longer want to deal with the crowd, getting clean and sober helped with that really, or the driving there and back, or the standing, or the... you get my point. So i decided if i want to go and see a show it will be a good one and close to me. If it is one of those 3 i always try and make it. On a side note me and my dad went to a local bar last weekend. For pizza and a couple beers*. I made a comment to him and said that coming to a bar makes me realize why i no longer like hanging out in bars. We drank our beers, ate our pizza and had a good time laughing at all the "kids" doing what we used to do in bars. *Alcohol was not my problem. I do not mind talking about my past and my mistakes, i have spoke at NA meetings and have helped some. If you have a loved one or if you yourself want some advice, please ask.

Those 3 little kittens in my watermelons are now residing in my house. The TNR ladies never showed up to get them and now that it is getting colder out the wife says we need to keep them inside. May be a good thing though. They are getting house broke and more domesticated. They do have appointments coming up at the vet to get their shots and if old enough neutered. My mom says she wants one of the kittens, finally talked my dad into it, and if i know her, her logic is going to be she cant take one becuase it will miss its sibling and if she takes 2 then the one that is left will miss its siblings so the only answer will be take all 3. The mother cat, Betsy, looks like she is with kittens again. However if the kittens are born in the barn in late November i dont give them good odds of surviving the winter. Dont get me wrong, it is a barn and there is nooks and crannies with plenty of straw where they can find shelter. Paul, good on ya helping out an injured little guy.

I have never used one nor know any one who has but you can get helper fans to push air up and out of a chimney. You can get some that go inside the pipe, on top of the pipe, or inline with the pipe. I use 8" pipe as well. The only times i have a problem with it drawing is when i first light my fire and if i have the windows in the shop open on a windy day sometimes it hits just right to blow the smoke out of the hood. I have an exhaust fan up near the peak of the roof in my shop that helps with excess smoke so it does not get out of hand. Even if you have a hood that draws all the smoke out i would still use an exhaust fan just to keep air flow through the shop anyway. If you do go with an exhaust fan get some kind of filter for the motor. I learned the hard way that soot will build up and cause it to quit working. A cheap furnace filter cut to size works rather well with a rubberband to hold it in place over the back of the motor. Make sure you get a good rain cap. Those elbows will rust out in no time when water mixes with the smoke and soot inside the stack. I am no scientist or chemist but i believe it has something to do with the sulfur in coal mixing with the water, acid rain kinda. Which may be one of the reason i do not know anyone to use a helper fan as well. An inline fan, which if i was to use one seems the way to go, costs around $150 US. Not something i would want to replace often. A note about roof penetration. I used a 3' piece of triple wall pipe through the roof. The rest is single wall pipe. Code where i live says that is fine to do. IIRC code says 18" from flammable material for single wall, 3" for triple wall. Having 18" inches above and below, and 8" side to side from the rafters i was well with in code. Maybe an overabundance of caution but i also put heat sheilds on the roof and rafters.

Southern rock, still alive and well. One of my favorite newer bands. First time i heard them was when they played with Gov't Mule a few years back. I have since seen them a few times again and they never fail to put on a great show.

Chi is what we called it when i studied Tai-chi. You summon it by quit trying to do something and just do it.

Brian Brazeal did a youtube video a few years back on how to forge a mushroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr4H6RxwXQ

It is all about how you hold your tongue. I have always called it over thinking or trying to hard. Almost like your brain knows what it wants your hands to do but your conscious mind interferes with the connection between your brain and your hand. When you quit thinking about it your brain just makes your hand do what it wants it to do.

Pretty cool. I was talking with a smith at a period re-enactment and he was working on the hinges for the gates of a colonial period fort that is being built somewhere around here. A few years back there was a documentary made called "The Devil's Blacksmith" about the smiths who re-made the hinges on the North door of Notre Dame. Some of the colleges have some really nice iron work as well. I was commenting to someone the other day about the gates of Harvard. They are worth taking a gander at.

This song actually hits quite close to home for me. It was a rainy Sat. in Dec. my dog, Ziggy, got up and could not use his back legs. I laid with him in the living room floor and just before he passed he had a moment of lucidity turned and put his head in may hand. I told him i loved him, he was a good dog, and everything would be ok. He gave little gruff "umph" and took his last breath. I cried like a kid. Absolutely tore me up, i am getting all teary eyed thinking about it now. He was my best freind i have ever had. Always by my side. Smart as a whip, never had a leash on, he would not even go past the property line unless i told him it was ok to do so. The kids on the street loved to play with and he loved playing with them. That was 5 years ago this Dec. He was just an old mutt. The vet said by looking at him he was German Shepherd, Boxer, and Lab. Imagine a brindle strip GSD and that is what he looked like.

I would suggest a couple tissues for this.

"one more thing i gotta say, I need a miracle everyday." TW, if they were drinking Coor's light, i cant blame them for passing on to the next world.

Goods, Nice knives. Frosty, yes it is free machine steel and from my understanding it having the "L" means that yes it does contain lead. it is pretty much the most common material you will find in the shop i work. I turn ether 12L14 or half hard brass usually with a smattering of 303 thrown in.

Getting ready for Halloween and the festivities. Made a couple coffee scoops and a serving fork. Got some 3/8" round from work that was left over from another job. Not much 5 bars about 20" long or so. Tried making and S hook from a piece. It is 12L14 steel. Was not sure how it would forge being machine steel. Soft, moved like butter. And to attract attention to my wares i started a new sign bracket to set in the front yard. Beats the piece of wood and a hunk of carboard. Got one rivet done, my minion did not come over and i could not get all 4 set with out a hand.

Kind of looks like the frog gigs we used when i was a kid.

Jennifer, thanks for that explanation. As for that FIF show i quit watching it as well becuase it got repetitive. I got tired of watching every thing be canister damscus. I started watching becuase they did things like here is a 1972 Buick, or here is a pile of old tools, pick some steel and make a knife. I did like the episodes they did during covid where the judges made the blades at home. I would also watch again if they did the armed forces challenges again. If for no other reason than to support our military. I do wonder if a show that is like FIF but with blacksmiths and not blade smiths would be as popular. Doing stuff like recreating decorative elements, or Viking style cooking chains, or what ever the judges and producers could dream up for that week.

We are involved with a local cat rescue. There was 10 or so that like to hang out around here and in the barn. Most have been "fixed" but there are still 2 females that i know of that are not. Today the ladies from the rescue are coming to get one of them, we call her Betsy, an get her fixed. One of our other rescues, Friar Tuck, is her brother. They were born in our barn. She was the only one of the litter that did not get taken to be adopted. Not that nobody would take her we just could not catch her at that time. She is now a freindly thing that likes coming up on the porch for head rubs. They will also be taking her 3 new kittens to get them adopted. One of which we did not think was going to make it and spent a night in the house getting bottle fed. Much stronger now and is doing good it seems. This is her 3 new kittens in the water melon patch. The one is actually much whiter but they were in my shop and they got a bit of coal dust and soot on them.

Our new rescue seems to have made himself quite at home. He came around early this summer and is quite an affectionate guy. Pretty sure someone abandoned him. Sometimes i hate people. Anyway this is Henry.

Frosty, when they were making the billet itself from what i assume was a bloom of iron they were using some kind of slurry that looked like soupy clay. I was assuming that is what they were using for flux. Hence the reason i assumed that the straw or rice was there to add carbon. I will be the first to admit i have limited knowledge of blade smithing much less Japanese sword smithing. maybe some one can answer this, why did they wet their anvil and hammer? Even when welding the smith would pour water on the anvil and then dip his hammer into his slack tank.

I saw Dylan with The Dead in 2007...maybe 8,9,6... those were some of my not so better days shall we say, but it was everyone but Jerry playin. I do have a bootleg of the show on CD somewhere. I will have to dig it up to see what the dates were. Good show though sound system was excellent but Dylan's voice was bad. I agree with George however. Dylan never could sing. But like Frosty says there was a feeling in his voice that made it good. Same as Janis Joplin, she could not sing either but had a feeling in her voice that made her great. And that is art and singing is art. It stirs a feeling. I saw Arlo Guthrie at a Hookahville at Buckeye lake bake in the late 90's. I cant remember but it was i think either Bob Weir or Willie Nelson played that same year there. So anyway one of my favorites

Did our edit window shorten? I tried to edit my post not a minute after i posted and when i hit save edit it said i had timed out. Anyway what i wanted to add. I watched a Japanese smith make a sword today. He had 2 strikers. They started by lighting the fire by beating a small piece of steel until the friction made it hot enough to ignite a piece of paper. The smith had a box bellows and a side draft charcoal forge. It looked like he started with a bloom of iron which he beat, and stacked, and welded until he got a billet. Then they burnt what looked like straw but i suspect rice stalks and took the "charcoal" from that and coated the billet with it as they welded it. I assume this was to add carbon to the iron. Then drew out the blade and hardened it. I would post a link but it was all in Japanese and i have no idea how to find it again.

No they are not. When i was working in a trans shop about 4 years ago they were about $800. I learned today about a neat little gadget. A microwave kiln. it is a little kiln made from aluminum oxide that focuses the heat of the micro wave inside of it. It is capable of melting glass. Pop your glass inside of it, put it in the microwave for 10 minutes and the glass melts. I would suggest not doing this when the wife is home though. That would seem the most dangerous aspect of the whole thing.

I have been a Bob Dylan fan for as long as i can remember. Sadly the last time i saw him live his voice was about done for. How about something fun

I never in my life thought i would hear the words classic and Chevy Cavalier in the same sentence. But i still kind of see them as "new models". I am getting old. Looks like you have taken quite good care of it. Animal scratches can usually get buffed out with out to much trouble. With in reason of course. Bear claw marks may need a bit of touch up paint. I am already getting fat, i would have to re-enforce the floors if i quit smoking. Thought i had a couple pics of the Monte but i can not seem to find them. I will try and get a couple next time i am over at my dad's.

When i was in high school, back in the Cambrian age i believe, in health class i remember our teacher telling us that it is quite common that when people quit smoking they gain weight. He said it was becuase smoking takes away our taste and when you quit you start to taste things again so you want to eat more. Now how true that is i do not know but that is what we were taught.

Is it just me or is there no acorn on the bottom of the post?