10 hours ago, Frosty said:

Please post pics of things you've applied ECSTATICALLY pleasing paint jobs on!

Well I definitely felt ecstatic when after years of procrastination, finally got the garage and shop fixed up and painted. Along with moving and organizing the resource pile.

Before...

After... if that isn't ecstatically pleasing, I give up.

Seems like I was able to snag an 8 foot fence post, I should ve able to cut that into a nice stand, pretty sure it's a 4x6 too

I'll buy that, I remember when we got the house painted, that morning it was T1 11 color and a few hours later it was light gray. I was giddy it looked so good. 

Our house is the same color as your shop as far as the pic on the screen shows. I'm thinking light gray is an ecstatically giddy color. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Y'all have nailed THAT!

What not stygian black with flames of hades trim?  There is a house right down the street painted bright lime green with purple trim; I guess they are upset with their neighbors.

When I was working on the sheep farm way back when, my boss told me about how he and his first wife had bought one of the late 18th/early 19th century houses in the village (as quaint and stereotypical a Vermont hamlet as one might ever hope to find) and painted the whole thing gloss black.

Fortunately, after they divorced and had to sell the house, the next owner went back to basic white.

They may just be major Hulk fans

The "white houses of New England" are a fairly recent thing as I recall.  Became a fad after the Columbian Exposition aka "The White City"  in 1893.

True.

Doubtless you remember it well, like Casanova Frankenstein remembers his "Disco Room"...

Finally saw the dentist and am on heavy antibiotics until next week when he will pull 3 infected teeth the day before my birthday.  Pain is an odd way to manipulate your mind; much like using plaster of paris and sand to line a forge...

There is a house over in Clifty that is painted Pepto Bismol pink.

Not unknown color for houses down in this region.  The famed "Pink Store in Palomas MX is painted that color---on the outside.  When I lived in OKC there was a fellow whose neighbors complained about him not painting his house.  Well he found a 55 gallon drum of naval surplus "Battleship Grey" paint and proceeded to paint the entire place except for roof and windows Battleship Grey.  Also when I lived there; *my* next door neighbor got ahold of a barrel of tint base for yellow lines on the roads and used it to paint his house---it *glowed* like a radioactive pumpkin!  I rather liked it...

White was often the go to color in the 19th century because white wash and white paint were available and cheap.  Also, in warmer climates it was a way of passive cooling for a house.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Paints based on common earth derived colors were also in vogue---hence the "Barn Red".  Carbon black and linseed oil gave black.  White wash uses slaked lime or chalk.  White paint used white lead which was a bit more expensive and now has been replaced with Titanium Dioxide due to issues with Lead's Toxicity.  In US Colonial times Blue was a very expensive color to show off with in small amounts.

First forge: check!

First Anvil: Check!

First project?: a set of Tongs!

Also, is it too cold to go outside? Is there no snow to justify how cold it is? Tired of your kids getting soaked and cold? Nothing 2000 cotton balls and some imagination can't solve!

Looking good so far. You may find in use of your forge that it could help to notch out the wood and dirt on two sides to act as a pass through to heat further in on longer stock so you can get it in the sweet spot in the fire. 

Love the cotton ball snow idea. The kids will two.

Good idea. Shouldn't be too hard to cut a notch or 2

Mr. Powers is correct

The. color blue was very expensive. Some used the mineral/gemstone lapis lazuli.

 that is why paintings of long ago, depicted the blessed virgin Mary in blue garments.

Woad was used in England in the sixteenth century and probably much earlier. The plant mass had to be subjected to a complex series of fermentations.  Read costly dye/pigment for blue.

Indigo dyes were expensive too.

I remember viewing an eighteenth century country mansion. The wealthy owner's workmen used hundreds of pounds of blueberries to get the dye for the manor's walls. And they hadn't faded that much in 300 years!

Regards to all,

SLAG.

 

Woad was used as a cloth dye by the ancient Egyptians. Julius Caesar’s “Commentary on the Gallic Wars” includes descriptions of the Britanni painting themselves with woad (although this was NOT done by medieval Scots, “Braveheart” notwithstanding).

Quote

Grown in Europe since the Stone Age it has a long association with East Anglia, notably with Boudicca and the Iceni tribe who used woad to colour their faces before going into battle. Further north the Picts also gained notoriety for their body painting with the blue woad dye. The Romans referred to these Ancient Britons as 'Picts' as it is Celtic for "painted".

A little history on woad for those who have never heard of it.

http://www.woad-inc.co.uk/history.html

The Woad song, aka The National Anthem of the Ancient Britons (sung to the tune of Men of Harlech) :

1.

What's the good of wearing braces,

Vests and pants and boots with laces,

Spats or hats you buy in places

Down in Brompton Road?

What's the use of shirts of cotton,

Studs that always get forgotten?

These affairs are simply rotten:

Better far is woad.

Woad's the stuff to show, men.

Woad to scare your foemen:

Boil it to a brilliant hue

And rub it on your back and your abdomen.

Ancient Briton ne'er did hit on

Anything as good as woad to fit on

Neck, or knees, or where you sit on.

Tailors, you be blowed.

2.

Romans came across the Channel

All wrapped up in tin and flannel:

Half a pint of woad per man'll

Dress us more than these.

Saxons, you can waste your stitches

Building beds for bugs in britches:

We have woad to clothe us, which is

Not a nest for fleas.

Romans keep your armours;

Saxons your pyjamas:

Hairy coats were meant for goats,

Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs and llamas.

Tramp up Snowdon with our woad on:

Never mind if we get rained or blowed on.

Never want a button sewed on.

Go it, Ancient Bs.^[4]

 

Or listen to a version at (song starts at 1:10): 

Well, that was an experience. 

Mr. Dragon,

Thank you very much for your woad reference. It was very informative and good reading.

SLAG.

Woad and indigo---same chemical dye; just that indigo plants have about double per pound as woad does; is a weird dye.  Most dyes chemically bond to the fibers, woad is a mechanical bond.  You start by reducing it to a small molecule that gets into any spaces in the fibers, you then expose it to air and it oxidizes into a larger molecule that gets mechanically trapped in the fibers.  So when you dye with it, your items start out a nasty yellowish green colour and as you hang it in the air it turns a beautiful blue.

Remember how blue jeans used to fade for ever?  That was the dye working it's way out of the fibers.

My wife did a traditional indigo dye vat once.  She started with 5 gallons of stale urine in a large stoneware crock to ferment/reduce the dyestuff in. (Guess who got to do the filling and moving? Yup you're right---it wasn't my wife!)  It was a cold summer so I got to; first move the crock to a sunnier location and second build a "greenhouse for it and put a lightbulb in it to keep the heat up!   Luckily only my arms and legs got sloshed on for that Pictish look.  Did a beautiful job dying wool for a sheep to shawl demo and I used the exhaust bath for quenching ala Theophilus---it has such an amusing smell when red hot steel plunges into it!  

It's interesting to note, however, that while woad (Isatis tinctoria) and true indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) both contain indican, the chemical precursor of indigo (itself a derivative of the amino acid tryptophan, which is what makes you sleepy after you've eaten too much turkey at Thanksgiving), they're actually not closely related otherwise. They're both in the Rosid clade (which has about 70,000 different species of flowering plants), but woad is in the Brassicaceae family (cabbages and mustards) of the Brassicales order, while indigo is in the Fabaceae family (legumes) of the Fabales order. 

Indigo is also found in some varieties of the murex sea snail, which also contain a compound called "dibromoindigo" that produces a red tint. When the murex is processed without exposure to light, the indigo blue and the dibromoindigo red combine to produce the classic Tyrian purple, the color associated with royalty since ancient times. If the mixture is exposed to light during the dying process, the dibromoindigo converts to indigo, producing the royal blue color referred to in the Old Testament as "tekhelet", which was used in the robes of the High Priest and the hangings in the Tabernacle.

41 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

My wife did a traditional indigo dye vat once.

Now I'm thinking about seeing if I can make some indigo dye for Lisa from the false indigo (Baptisia australis) at the end of our driveway....