BillyBones

If your home is above ground i highly suggest electric pipe heaters. Look kind of lie an extension cord but they wrap around the pipes and when plugged in keep them warm enough not to freeze. Like i said earlier, having to install insulation, heaters, and fix broken pipes, which never break in an easily accessible place, in a crawl space, has made me make sure i have a basement.

Frosty, from a discussion earlier, yes that is what we call a torpedo or salamander here.

I was raised in KY for the better part of my childhood, then we came to Ohio. I lived for a few years down south, LA, TX, and FL. i have always been a hillbilly at heart. I discovered that the south just aint for me. Love the people, the food and the culture i just never felt quite at home. I remember when i decided to turn back north and was making that drive coming up on TN. As i started into the Appalachian mountains it was like a calm, peaceful feeling came over me. I realized it was becuase i was home. Even though i was still many miles from my destination seeing those mountains again was almost spiritual. Dont get me wrong i am a proud Buckeye but i would chose another location in the state if it were up to me. Somewhere around Athens or Gallipolis but the wife says no. I do however live in the same town we moved to and spent many a year here before the military. A little north of the moraine not mountainous but we do have rolling hills. Kexel, glad to see you got your life together. It took me till 46 to finally do it and at 50 now retirement is still a long ways off.

Who plows their drive? I pay the neighbor kid to do it.

Many do not know that it was Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzman and Phil Lesh that put together the Rhythm Devils for the Apocalypse Now soundtrack. That hood is not as nice nor work as well as you think. It has been and is in the process of being changed. I am still using the 8" pipe but once we get a few warmer days, and the 8" of snow melts, it will be upgraded to at least a 10". 8" works for the most part, but if i get some green coal smoking it gets a tad smoky in the shop. Not to bad but still more than i want. Also depending on wind direction, sometimes if the wind comes in just right it will blow the smoke out of the hood.

My daughter had a dog that was a chow/rottie cross named Bear. My dog was mostly German Shepherd and Boxer. Looked like a brindle German Shepherd. Here in Ohio a butter knife could be a deadly weapon. However interpretation under this is up to the law enforcement. One officer may see it as legal while another may throw you in jail for it if concealed. The following constitutes a deadly weapon: A serrated blade, Any knife other than a basic pocket knife, Quick open blade such as an automatic or gravity knife, Razor point blade. From what i have read on the law as long as it is not concealed you are ok.

Much nicer than the old piece of porch railing i use. Very nice, anything fancy on the top? Also gives me an idea for something to do today. Got a snow day off work and a bunch of square tubing...

One winter my dad left the garden hose out. I thought it was pretty cool how if you wacked it against a post it would break. So i did. When my dad seen his garden hose broke into 3" pieces all over the yard...i still have some trouble sitting on that side of my but. Last time i did any outdoor remodeling code here said that those frost free spigots that are on the side of the house have to be installed at a slight angle so the water will drain out of them. If the water sits in them and freezes it can crack the pipe behind the stopper and a water leak in the wall, crawl space or basement can cost some serious money in damages. My memories of having a torpedo heater in the house to warm the crawl space and getting into said crawl space in the winter to thaw pipes out made me make sure that every house i have lived in has a basement.

Truth. A weapon is only as dangerous as the person using it. I know some here are LEO's or former LEO and they can attest to the ingenuity of those in jail to fabricate weapons. I once saw a bow and arrow made from newspaper and underwear. Weapons, tattoos, and toilet wine...MacGyver's of the underbelly. Paul, you can get them dog boots. I bet Frosty has seen a few pair, or would that be quads, up in his icy kingdom. I first saw them on sled dogs but now i see them around here. My dog hated having his feet touched so they were out of the question for him. If you grabbed his foot he would attack you and i mean really attack no playing. So i would of course act like i was going to grab them and get him all riled up. Now i am getting all teared up. My dog passed a couple years ago and he really was my best friend. I miss him everyday. I still have not been able to clean the fur out of my truck or his nose prints off the window.

During my time in the Army, with them and some extracurricular training, i was taught how to use some of the most mundane items as weapons. The reason that i always have an ink pen and my lighter with me.

I would never say that all teachers are bad, but as with any profession you have good and bad ones. The problem i see is the unions and not being able to get rid of bad teachers, but anyway that gets political so i will just leave it there. We pulled my daughter out of public school becuase of discrimination. Not the color of her skin but becuase of her parents not being wealthy. We got her enrolled in a charter school and from there she excelled. When i was in high school we had one of the best rated academic schools in the country. My world history teacher, well asked once what all countries she had been to she said " i have not been to Antarctica ...yet" So she could teach from first hand experience of her time in those places. By the way her trip to Antarctica was cancelled, the day before Challenger exploded. (showing my age there) Our sports teams were the joke of the state, i think we won 2 football games my entire 5 years of high school. We were that school George talks about, no trophies for sports but we had plaques for people who like one kid went on to be an astrophysicist in the air force and then went on to be an astronaut. Now a days our schools celebrate if they are rated "adequate" by the state. Good enough for government work i guess.

Bill welcome aboard. I tore a rotator about 5 years ago doing things best left to younger men. All houses here have frost proof spigots. CGL, many tricks to keep water from freezing. The easiest is to install a submersion heater if you are close enough to electricity. You can also fill a bucket with water then put it inside a larger container. Fill the space between with manure and straw. Bury or mound earth around the water trough. That will help insolate it. Then there is the age old method of a pump. Circulating water wont freeze. But again usually need electricity for a pump. Water will freeze faster in a metal container than plastic or rubber. Also a partial cover will help some. Fords were my least favorite to work on also. Especially now that the Broncos and Explorers are FWD. A note about winter driving, 4x4 does not mean you can drive like it is a nice summer day.

Definitely check the local laws. Here i can keep a gun in my truck, but my pocket knife would be a concealed weapon. Some really strange laws on the books in many places. It is fun to look them up sometimes. A couple of my favorites: It is illegal to fish for whales in Ohio, but only on Sunday. It is illegal to kill a housefly within 160 feet of a church without a permit. Women are not allowed to wear patent leather shoes.

The heater i have can run on diesel, K-1, fuel oil, and i even put jet fuel in it once. JP-8 aint much more than K-1 though. I use diesel becuase that is the cheapest right now. I dont use propane any more so it has been a while since i bought any. When i was it was a bit over $17 to fill the tank on average. Also a lot of the exchange tanks are only filled to 15#.

I aint sat in a drum circle in years. I gave my Djembe to my daughter a while back. The last time i played it i was, lets just say i was in an altered state of mind and wore a hole through the head. It took sometime but she finally found someone that knew how to replace the skin. Oh i should mention it was a traditional African Djembe with goat skin head. She took my Dumbeck years before. I actually bought the Djembe hoping she would give that back, now she just has both. We were at a show one year in Alpine valley. Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart came out and sat with us for an hour or so before they had to go on. Anywho, the shop. One of them old 1950's garages that is too small for a car. It also aint that clean and some changes have been made. Like my forge hood, but basically here it is in all its glory:

JHCC, my old torpedo is one that burns diesel, yeah it gets pretty nasty. My dad has one of the newer ones that runs propane and it is way way much cleaner. However i do not know if it is his regulator or what but it will go through a 20# tank in about 5 hours. That seems excessive to me, $16-$20 dollars in propane for 5 hours just dont seem right. I also keep a door or window open and i have an exhaust fan that is wired up so that as soon as i turn the power on in the shop it comes on. CGL, aint seen ya in a while. Hope everything has been good for ya'll down in your neck of the woods. Alexandr, well, as always...stunning. Gorgeous work.

I have 2 brushes i use. Neither are butchers block. I got them before i got my yellow belt in google-fu. One came from a welding supply, long bristles that are "carbon steel" (thats what it said) after a year in usage the bristles are still straight. The other is a short bristled painters brush. Not the long skinny type but short and wide made to take a wooden handle like for the paint roller. It has stainless steel bristles. While they have deformed some it still removes scale nicely. I got it from the local hardware store.

Love me some good liver and onions. When i was a kid, around 5 or 6 my parents and i went out to eat at some restaurant. The waitress asked what i wanted and i said liver and onions. The waitress literally stopped holding her pen and pad looking at my parents like "Uh, what? Did he really just say that?" My mom was just like yes you heard correctly. So yes i have always been odd, it is not a new thing for me. I have eaten a lot of different critters but i can honestly say i have never had moose. Chad 1 word : Torpedo. Or salamander depending on where you live. You can pick up a torpedo heater fairly inexpensively. It does not get WI cold here but it was 10* out yesterday and i was in the shop with just a t-shirt and it was around 70* in there. Bets part is the beer dont freeze.

Being an old vet i have several tattoos. My old lady actually has more. Her ex used to be a tattoo artist and me and him worked in the same tattoo shop years back. I tired branding once back many years ago. Yes we did brandings and piercing in that shop. I got my iron shaped the way i wanted, heated it up good and hot, grabbed it, took a breath, started to brand myself, paused, another breath, paused, another breath, pause... a couple minutes later stuck it on my forearm. Oh lordy, lordy, the pain, instant blister. Yeowwwww...i waited so long the brand did not take, all i did was cuased my self some pain. The iron was hot enough to hurt but not enough to be a permanent scare. I have since grown up.

2 city boys came out to the woods to do some deer hunting. After most of the day they finally bagged a huge buck with a giant rack. they each grabbed a hind leg and started dragging it out of the woods when an old hillbilly comes along. The old guy says to them "If ya'll drag it by the antlers it is easier, the antlers wont snag on the under brush." After another half hour of dragging one of the city boys looks at the other and says "That old guy was right this is much easier." to which his friend replied "Ya, but we are getting farther away from the truck." George, my family lives deep in the woods of KY. We will just sit on the front porch and wait. No, really though it will be kind of a family hunt. Of course the kill will go to whoever gets the tag. Aint none of us ever had the chance for an elk hunt so it will be pretty cool just to go along. I know deer are hard enough to get out of those hills, i could not imagine trying an elk by myself or even another person or 2.

Pnut, you are not mistaken. My cousin, and me, has been trying to get a tag for a good 5 years now. Deer are thick as thieves here. I was in the shop one day when all of a sudden there was loud knocking noise that scared the bejeebus out of me. So i went to investigate. On the corner of my roof there was a red headed wood pecker pecking away at the eves. We also have a striped (banded (?)) woodpecker that comes and hangs out.

Guess i did leave out what kind of stone. It is an "Arkansas" stone, albeit a cheap one. They call it an Arkansas stone but it is more like a block of pressed and glued sand. Arkansas stones are one solid rock, right? I use cutting oil on the stone, Northcut 410. Thanks for the suggestions guys. The stone is at work and my dishwasher, she would complain if i put it in her sink. We do have dish soap in the shop so i am thinking now maybe some soap, hot water, and a scrub brush. It being a cheap stone i am just not sure of the binders holding it all together. Sure it only cost me about $15 buck i dont want to buy another unless i have to.

Not quite sure where i should put this. I almost put it under knife polishing and finish but then figured we all use them so here it is. How does one clean a whet stone? I used my stone to grind off a projection on some parts i made. The steel was 12l14 and clogged it up something fierce. I dont want to use a chemical for fear of the bindings disintegrating, i thought maybe a wire wheel but wouldnt that just sharpen the wires? Anyway thoughts and suggestions please.

We get some good sized white tails around here. For a while the largest deer taken was killed with a bow about 1/4 mile from my grandparents house. The Beatty buck, 39 point scored a 304 6/8 (yes i had to look it up). Huge deer. There have been a couple bigger taken but this part of Ohio is known quite well for big deer.

Trust me, it is nicer than what she calls me.