Beautiful as always Alex. The pattern of the iron is very reminiscent of

Atlantis eh Billy? What do you think of the ruins in and near, Doñana National Park, in Spain? When it was first posited the findings were kind of iffy but more is emerging and it appears to bear a pretty good resemblance to Plato's Atlantis. Bearing in mind Plato was writing about a lost civilization when he wrote. 

The entire valley was a large oceanic feature with islands, farm land, etc. Some of the structures appear to have sunk into the mud due to liquefaction caused by earthquakes. Digging is really hard to get okayed being a Spanish national park. 

Still it fits better than anything else I've seen or read. Ever wonder what they actually called their country? IIRC it was strongly Minoan related but . . . ?

I have "Wonderful Life," it was my introduction to the Burgess shale and Cambrian life forms! I drag it out and re-read it now and then. I've read Stephan Gould's books and articles but can't put a name to them, his name I remember. The Tully Monster is one of those fossils that make me wonder how much else we've missed but heck is it unlikely a soft bodied animal fossilizes let alone preserves detail. 

Of course now folks know what to look for more similar sites are being found and explored. Marble Canyon site maybe 26 miles from the Burgess promises to be spectacular for preserved details. 

I need to write down the term for the type of formation where living things were suddenly buried by submarine mudslides. Landessdratta or something like that, I can never remember the word, I'll have to write it down next time I run across it. 

Ah, the boiler guy is done with the "regular" tune up on the system. A system that politely reminded us by going on strike. <sigh>

Gotta go, more later.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Frosty, that is the first i have heard of that one in Spain. But again i have been more interested in my local "pre-history" (for lack of  better term) and the people who lived here. My interests will soon sway and i will keep that one in mind. 

My list of things i want to read about keeps getting longer and longer. 

Natkova, got me as well. I do however call my wife a "monkey but coconut duck" sometimes though. 

Alexandr, i really like that. It does not seem your usual style or at least not to me. 

Started making these 2 little candle holders. I discovered i do not have a piece of sheet that ready to use to make wax catchers. So i figured i would just run up to the local hardware store and grab small piece. I decided to pass and clean up a bit of what i have. For a 6"x9" piece of 16G they wanted $18 for.  

Going to use duplex nails for a spke and rivet to hold the wax catchers on with. 

On 8/2/2024 at 9:52 AM, JHCC said:

This is, of course, nonsense.

  I sometimes just invent words and things to suit my own porpoises's.

Ever see the memes or whatever they are where they jumble up the words and say only some people can read it? I can read that pretty easily. Probably most can as well. 

  Not to mention the ones that tell you, you are a genious if you can see the tiger in under a half hour and then re-direct you to an ad to buy car insurance.

That's one of my favorite things about English, it is perfectly legitimate to make your own words, the rules are simple and pretty vague. Unfortunately too many folks tack fixes (pre or suff) on words as an affectation. Legitimate or not it's annoying.

Word jumble is a really old game, I suppose if the audience thinks they're special if they figure it out it increased circulation. I have to admit I've gotten better at them when I play. An English teacher in jr. high (middle school) used to post a daily jumble (though the name was different) on the blackboard. They were usually at least 8 and sometimes 12 letters and we were supposed to solve them by end of class. When I couldn't unscramble them in my head I graphed them, slow but always got them. Scrambles is what he called them! Funny how memory works eh?

Oh BILLY, if I called Deb a "monkey butt coconut duck," you guys probably wouldn't hear from me until I healed enough, IF she didn't unsub and block IFI. 

I like human history, paleoanthropologists are writing it from before Lucy to now. Though technically I suppose to be "history" it needs to be written by the people living it which is sad so I reject the concept and call human happenings history no matter who wrote it. "Atlantis" is a perfect example, a myth based on oral history a few thousand years before being written down. 

Unfortunately there isn't as much local ancient history available, Native Alaskans have only recently started trying to compile a written record of the oral traditions and there is still a lot of national and tribal prejudices so it's really hard to follow. Some is cool but it's really uncertain and excavating on native land is rare, sometimes falsified. Sad, but it's their land and traditions.

Frosty The Lucky.

20 hours ago, BillyBones said:

I do however call my wife a "monkey but coconut duck" sometimes though. 

Oh man Billy, I like the sounds in that phrase, but that you got away with it and lived is most impressive!

--Larry

It all started a few years back when she called me a punk in jest and i responded with calling her a coconut duck. Then it morphed into turkey duck, then i added the monkey but. It is all in good fun, we have a pretty odd relationship at times. 

A couple weeks ago me and a freind were sitting on the porch when she called needing a ride home from work. I answered with "hello" of course then "please quit calling, i have told you people i do not want an extended car warranty." She said "come get me" i said "no, i do not need a warranty on this old truck". it went on for a minute when i said, to my frends surprise "Ok i will be there in a minute" My freind was shocked that i answered like that when she called. We get along quite well and she is used to my sense of humor now. 

My wife's most endearing name for me is "chicken lips". I can't repeat hers in mixed company.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

Alexandr, That's an interesting pattern for a stair rail.  It screams to me for some different colored glass to be installed.

Today I had to cut the grass out to the Goldfish pond, and around the barn. It was getting snakey.

Then I built a new forge to evenly heat the length of the latest blade. Here It is with the blade in it heating. The quench tank is in the foreground.

 The quenchant is water, with about an inch and half of oil on top. Used peanut oil, it smells like deep fried turkey when the hot steel makes contact.

Here's the hardened blade

I agree Larry, "Monkey Butt coconut Duck" is downright poetic. 

Deb and I don't usually use pet names though sometimes something will cause one. When we were first together the subject of suggestion came up, in reference to a crime the news or something and she insisted it was a stupid excuse. Sooooo, I told her I could make her blush at any time or place with a simple suggestion. Not knowing me very well yet she said "prove it."

Sooooo, I told her any time I asked "x" question she would think of something "personal and private" and blush. I could ask the question and she'd turn red immediately and if I carried it further she'd REALLY get red, partly in anger. It'd work when she called on the phone even. It was fun listening to her trying to explain why she was blushing. It also gave me a chance to make up crazy reasons when others asked me later. One of my favorites was to tell them it's because she feels so horrible about what she did to the last person who teased her while she was on the phone. That was 27 years ago and now I'm wondering if it'll still work without reinforcement. Hmmmm. "If I dood it I get a whippin! . . . I DOOD IT!" Red Skelton.

I have a high school friend I talk to occasionally and we can crack each other up with one of our old catch phrases or silly inventions. "Super Gripparoo" was a spray that would give you traction on any surface. "Super Slipparoo," was the opposite of course, it's so slippery you'll slide uphill!

Or quotes from the movie Mash, we must've seen it 10 times.

You know you have a good friend, spouse, etc. if you throw friendly insults back and forth.

Bluerooster: Did the quench impart the curve in the blade? It's a pleasing arch, I like it. 

I got used peanut oil from the local supermarket bakery deli and REALLY tried to catch them pretty early in the morning before they started frying lunch stuff. I'd really rather the shop smelled like donuts than fish filet, burritos and who knows what. I tried the donut shop but someone who used it for fuel in his diesel bought theirs. ON further thought I realized I'd much rather be behind a truck that smelled like a donut shop than old combo fish, chicken, french fry, fried bean curd, etc.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

I was trying to work cool today by working on a knife handle,  deer antler,  but I made a mistake on lining up the pin hole.  Because I don't have alot of deer antler I'm going to try and do an inlay to hide the mistake.   I still ended up firing up the forge.  I wanted to straighten a couple of the rounds I cut off the garage spring steel to find out how long it is.  I stated running a cutting wheel down it.  Each coil is 19 1/2 inches. I started doing a couple scribes then got distracted by the saber and heat treated that.   Unfortunately it took a bend towards the tip.  I'm going to normalize it in vermiculite and fix the bend before requenching it.  It didn't warp,  I think I bumped something while trying to get to the quench tank.

What I have done sometimes with garage door spring is get as much of it hot as I can, put it on a piece of pipe or round stock placed horizontally in a vice, grab the end with a vice grip and pull it straight out, unwinding it.  I like to cut it into 4-6' lengths and put it on my steel rack.  That way you can take down a piece and cut off however much you need.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

I do that on a smaller scale to unwind garage door spring, I don't have enough room to uncoil a whole one, nor can I run fast enough.  Pulling 3-4 turns on these coils provides 10-12' of 7/32" good quality spring stock. The rest of the spring is easier to store than a bunch of lengths, I'd need a specialized spring steel rack.

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty, Yes, the curve came in the quench. It was desired, and expected.  What was kind of expected, but hoped to not happen, was the warpage.   I immediately clamped it (had the clamping apparatus ready), And let it finish cooling, then left it clamped while in the temper.   Still slightly warped.

I'd already posted my comment before I saw your other post explaining the warp. Sometimes my server has odd lags coming and going. 

I look forward to seeing what and how you deal with it. 

Would I be jinxing it if I cross my fingers?

Frosty The Lucky.

Finally got a chance to get out to the forge today after being busy with football practice and work for the past week but got some good progress on my pattern welded steel billet. Started to flatten it out after last week’s twists and fold! Only bad thing is my arms and shoulders are dead sore after swinging the big sledge for a couple hours, but hey what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger . All in all it was a great day!
One things for sure though… down here in Texas

 

it is hot

We hit 92F today so we aint freezin in Ohio either. 

I feel like this summer has been mostly nice but just recently started to heat up to really hot temperatures, like yesterday we got up to 107, and with the forge going I figured out the hard way just how easy it is to get heat stroke

We have been lucky enough to get rain just about everyday. I like to step out of my shop and stand in the rain sometimes. 

I will also soak my hat in the slack tank that seems to help. I tried one of those cooling towel things once, that lasted about 15 minutes before it was just getting in my way. 

I like to put a gatorade in the freezer till it gets slushy. 

Heat will take you out before you even realize it. Stay hydrated and take plenty of breaks. 

JSR: Is your billet a sword preform or were you going to fold and weld it again, maybe cut it into project pieces, or? 

Frosty The Lucky.

Gatorade slushy? That sounds delicious, and Frosty right now it is 26 layers so my current plan is to draw it down to about 35x1.5x.25 inches and get a couple good workable pieces definitely going to make at least 2 knives and some jewelry… what do you think would look neat made out of it?

 

I'm no good at predicting patterns, I've never had a mokume gane pattern come out even close to what I thought it would. From what I see of the extreme hammer patterning it should be interesting once ground and etched. 

I was going to suggest zircon encrusted tweezers but didn't want to date myself. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I think so too I am very excited to see how it looks and for the extreme hammering pattern, I hand forged it to this point

I got the nickname “power hammer” for a reason 

plus zircon encrusted tweezers would be crazy cool  

Heck, I'm still trying to catch up on disagreeing over octopodes. I'm not so pedantic as to think it's the only right way, but not so far to the other side as to think that it's use is nonsense. It's more about how you feel about it coming from English by way of Greek and hanging out in Latin for awhile and what you want to do about it. Etymology is a wonderful rabbit hole - I've been going through a book on Middle English called The Wordhord, and I would recommend Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words as a good time to anybody, although maybe not when you've been drinking heavily. Remember, always interpret grammar responsibly.

 

Acknowledging nod to the Zappa reference...