I may have made a mistake

[Jason L]

The other day I ordered some steel with the intent to work on my forge welding some. I figured with some 1095 and 15n20 when I was done with it, I might have a small billet of Damascus to show for it. I've done it before a few times but I figured since I have more time now I could go at a more easy pace and make a billet with a few more layers in it. Well, the day after I ordered it, I went out to try and make a set of box jaw tongs out of a scrap of 3/4" square stock. My mistake came when I let our little dog out. Our other dog passed away recently and since her little friend is gone we've overcompensated a tad. She's a Jack Russel so she has more energy than I ever had and she loves to chase a tennis ball. I started heating the metal, banging out tong halves and while the metal was heating (hand crank blower so no fear of overheating)I would throw the ball and she would chase it. It was a great day. 

At some point, I went to grab the ball, I had to be quick or she would grab it and run away, and I started feeling sick. I got nauseous, light headed and generally felt terrible all over. I went and sat down until I felt a little better but I felt rough the rest of the day. The worst part is, I have steel on the way that I know is labor intensive and now I'm afraid I wasted my time ordering it. I can still use it for something even if I don't make a billet out of it but still. I'm glad I didn't order as much as I started to now. It looks like I'm going to have to be more careful around the forge and take it easy till I know where my limit is. On the plus side, I did make the jaws, boss and cut off for the reigns, but they are only flat jaws at the moment. I did try welding some reigns on but I was shaking and a little foggy in the brain so I couldn't get the pieces together properly. I kept getting them misaligned, couldn't get to the anvil before the heat dropped too much, dropped one or both of the halves, etc. I wasn't very steady so I gave it a pass for the day. I think I'll just wait till it's colder to keep from overheating myself. Lesson learned. 

[M3F]

It's tough when we realize we have limitations that maybe we didn't use to have. I myself know how you feel.  I've had quite a few things pop up in the last year that I'm dealing with. It's good you quit when you did. Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate.

[JHCC]

Mistake? You stopped working before you hurt yourself or someone else and before you caused catastrophic damage to your workpiece or workshop. Sounds like you LEARNED.

[Jason L]

My mistake was not realizing my limitations earlier. Normally I'm not bothered by such things and accept them as just part of life. This one was a painful blow though. Even up until last year I worked out in the heat for 10 1/2 hours a day 6 days a week and have done it for 20 years. Heat never bothered me until the last few years or so. The cold is what killed me. Now it's the other way around. The cold doesn't bother me too much but the heat will take me out. But you are right JHCC, I did learn that it is getting exponentially worse year by year. Let it be a lesson to all those young 'uns who still think they are bulletproof. There will come a day when you're not eve BB proof. Prolong it as much as you can by taking care of your body now. 

[George N. M.]

Jason, have you ever gone down from a heat injury/heat stroke?  My experience is that people who have had the injury are subsequently much more sensitive to heat.  I knew folk in the military who would had been previous heat casulties  who be incapacitated by heat while everyone else was just starting to feel slightly uncomfortably warm.

GNM

[BillyBones]

I road marched 20+ miles in the Army, i used to hike and backpack through the woods, me and my cousins would race, and i mean flat out sprint, to the top of a mountain when i lived in KY. Today i have to sit and rest between taking the garbage cans to the road for pick up. All of 50 feet. My problem is ankles and knees. 

The trick is to make getting old fun. Try and guess tonight what will hurt in the morning that you did not even know you have today. 

As i have gotten older i have also noticed that somebody keeps lowering the floor. 

[Frosty]

Issues sometime grow from past just no problems, not recognizing them till the rear their heads is hardly a mistake. Determining what caused the problem and learning to mitigate or avoid the problem is just smart or in some cases a survival trait.

There are a number of ways heat can get you but it starts with making you more susceptible to other hazards like exhaust fumes from a coal fire you're standing next to. CO poisoning can have similar symptoms as common heat prostration. 

Even having grown up in S. Cal. high and the desert I hate hot days now, I tend to start sweating around 65f if I'm doing much physical. I'm better with cold, always have been. It's much easier to get warm than stay cool, you can always add a layer but you can only take so many off. 

Happily I got the plow hung and working a couple days ago so last nights snow won't be an issue. We got nailed last year, 37" (here) for the first snow and hanging the plow on the pickup was a nightmare. Topology effects rain and snow considerably, there can be literally 6" difference in show fall within a 1/4 mile and it's kind of neat the way rain will fall in a 300' stripe between bone dry pavement on the road we live on. Drive up the road and it'll be dry dusty and then a curtain of heavy rain for 20 seconds and dry again. Snow tends to hit everywhere but there's still a LOT of variation.

And then there is extreme cold, we live about 13 miles from Cook Inlet and it moderates temps considerably so it rarely gets much colder than -30f and that's colder than usual. 

Still, I'll take winter over 100f any day!

You got that right Billy, the floor keeps getting lower and gravity is getting stronger! I sure wish they'd stop turning the volume down!

Glad you're okay Jason, keep watch for the early signs and take care. Frequent breaks are a good idea. Deb got me a scarf that you wet and wring and wearing it around your neck really helps keep me cool. Way better than a cotton scarf or dew rag.

Be well Brother.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[George N. M.]

As an old geologist I can testify to several geophysical changes that I have observed as I have gotten older, the gravity has significantly increased, the ground has gotten harder, the hills steeper, and the rocks harder and heavier.

GNM

[Frosty]

Things have gotten sharper and pointier and bathrooms farther apart.

My truck has gotten taller and the SUV door lower and smaller.

So long as my coffee cup and fork doesn't get too heavy I'm good.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

So, i am not the only one that turns on subtitles so i can hear the TV? 

Frosty, when you are talking 3' of snow in one snowfall, i do not think 6" is much of a difference. Then again i live in a place where we are lucky to get 2' total all winter. 

I have had that rain stripe right over my house. One side of my porch getting wet and soaked the other side dry. 

Time seems to have changed as well. I get up and look at the clock, a few minutes later look again and 6 months has went by. 

[gewoon ik]

Subtitels has more to do with the soundediting than with your hearing.

On youtube you can find smarter people than me explaining it nice.

[Jason L]

I've never had problems with the heat before but in the south it's always a possibility. I also keep subtitles on, it seems there are certain frequencies that I have trouble hearing and they make the music so loud and the voices so low that I simply can't understand what they are saying.

After careful consideration, I've decided the best thing for me to do is not play with the dog while I'm forging. I never had a problem till I threw that tennis ball so that must be it. I'll just have to concentrate on forging more and throwing tennis balls to the dog less. It breaks my heart but I have to do the responsible thing. I've got to have priorities. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

On 11/8/2023 at 9:23 PM, Jason L said:

At some point, I went to grab the ball, I had to be quick or she would grab it and run away, and I started feeling sick. I got nauseous, light headed and generally felt terrible all over. I went and sat down until I felt a little better but I felt rough the rest of the day.

Those are classic symptoms of dehydration and heat exhaustion/stroke.

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

 

[Jason L]

Irondragon, the funny thing is it wasn't even that hot. I wore a jacket when I went out but took it off shortly after. It's all good now though. Being in the south I'm used to much higher temps. I don't like them, but I'm used to them. 

[Frosty]

Thinking it has to be hot to suffer dehydration issues is a common trap. Dehydration is a common cause of cold weather exposure deaths. It doesn't need to be all that cold to suffer from cold exposure, 60f is or was the statistically most dangerous temp. A person dehydrates faster in cold than hot because you don't feel thirsty, every breath is refreshing so you really don't notice when you're thirsty. Being dehydrated makes you more susceptible to exposure issues of any type.

I don't do subtitles except watching online videos people tend to have stupid loud and pointless background music or a NA forge drowning out and dialogue. I've always thought the volume of the instruments drowned out the vocals to no good purpose. Instruments are supposed to back the singers, not star. If you watch videos, even from the 1930s the microphone tends to be inches from the guitar, violin, saxophone, whatever and the mouth of the singer above and behind. 

Oh yeah, take it from an old California boy who's lived in snow country for a bit more than 50 years. There is a significant difference between 3" and 6" of snow. With decent snow tires and little basic skill a person can drive a 2x in 3" of snow without much trouble 6" will pretty much immobilize most 2x vehicles even front wheel drives and it begins to be iffy for 4x rigs. 

We may still get a little snow today but the storm has blown over, we bot 12"+ here in the Wasilla area, Anchorage's official snowfall was 17.4" over 5 days but that's where they measure it officially. In mid town to the east side they got between 20 - 25" and the hill side 27-30". Drive down Turnagain arm a ways to say Girdwood about 35 miles south and they got 36.5" in town, I haven't heard what they got on the ski slopes. Prevailing wind blows the warm humid water off Turnagain arm up the valley against the mountains where it dumps the water as snow in the cold air. There's a reason virtually all the mountains backing the Cook Inlet have ice fields and glaciers. 

I about beat myself into bed plowing all that wet heavy snow yesterday and I didn't really try to clean it up I just punched good driving space and my snw dumps. I planned for room to dump snow when I cleared the land, my snow dumps are straight down hill pushes with plenty of room so long as I don't stop short. Where ever you stop the first push is where your snow piles start that season and they build back toward the drives.

Once you push snow it WILL set up hard, just let it sit and it'll harden up but it wont be compressed hard. Wet heavy snow turns to solid ice and requires heavy equipment with ice breakers to  move once it sets up. Sooo I didn't have much choice yesterday if I hadn't punched things out we would have had to live with minimal drivable room. 

Hopefully the temp will stay above freezing, it'll rain buckets and what I couldn't get will just melt away. I didn't actually say that someone actually hacked my fingers. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Jason L]

I'm familiar with dehydration Frosty. I used to stay dehydrated when I worked outside. My urine normally looked like Folgers then. Since I've gotten out of the outdoors game, I don't have that problem much anymore. The other day I hadn't been outside but maybe half an hour or so. I had just finished my coffee. It's become a habit for me to take my coffee out with me but that day I finished it before I went out so I kept reaching for it out of habit. I was sad that it was gone.

Down here we only get snow about once a year and it usually doesn't stick. On the rare occasion that we have accumulation, I had to walk to work because I couldn't get my truck out of the driveway. If I could get it on the road it wouldn't have been a problem but my driveway is sloped down into my yard and it iced up. Usually when it snows here it melts, then turns to ice or, more often muddy sludge mixed with ice. Either way it's not fun to drive in. Our biggest problem is black ice. That stuff will put you in a ditch before you know what happened. 

[bluerooster]

Yes, I'd much rather have snow that doesn't melt, than the usual ice we get here.    We might get snow once every couple of years, but we get freezing rain all winter, so we get to drive on ice regularly.   Good thing it doesn't last very long, mabe a week at the most between storms.

[BillyBones]

I was changing cloths the other day when i looked over and about shot the old, fat, naked guy in my house... then i realized i was looking at the mirror over the dresser. 

When i lived in LA, just east of Baton Rouge in Denham Springs, woke up one morning to about 3" of snow. Got in the truck and drove to work. The other 2 guys i work with show and we get the shop fired up and ready for the day. That was when our boss called and said he decided to shut down for the day and for us to go home becuase the roads were so bad... after we had already drove there. 

[Goods]

How long ago was that snow you were talking about in Baton Rouge? My wife has a story of driving with almost a hallucination fever from the measles in LA when she was growing up there. It’s the only time she ever drove in snow until she came up here for college and I derailed here life plan…

Keep it fun,

David

[Frosty]

That's pretty much the norm here too Jason. Lots of outside developers plan subdivisions with too steep driveways and black ice is bad anywhere. I used to drive sander belly blades for AK dot in Anchorage and dealt with ice all winter. "Black" ice isn't black, it's almost invisible so the road look like it's clear and dry when it's not. Doesn't matter what it's called, it can get the best ice drivers let alone the asleep at the wheel, texting excuses for being late while driving in heavy traffic drivers. 

I couldn't count how many times I've watched someone get out of their vehicle, slip and slide under it or out into a parking lot. I've been under my rig a few times so I'm laughing with the newest victim. Worse was the time a couple of us stopped to help someone unstick their car. Normally we'd get a serious chewing out for it but this vehicle was blocking traffic and we needed to get out soooo. Anyway, the other driver slipped and slid under and all across to the other side of his truck and almost into the ditch. 

I was wearing crepe soled boots that aren't as slippery on ice and carefully stepped down laughing until I slammed the truck door a bit too hard and my 70,000lb. Belly blade sander slid sideways into the ditch at about 1 1/2' / second. Boy did we both hear about that one for some time. Both of us were driving trucks designed to spread salted sand and neither of us made a slow pass to spread a little before we did our ice clown act.

We don't see the number of first ice/snow ditch divers on the morning commute like we used to, modern tires, anti skid brakes and traction control systems are a HUGE improvement over the old days!

It looks like this snow will be with us for a while, the forecast says today's low of 17f with lows going down till next Saturday when lows are supposed to drop below zero F. Guess it's time to drag our parkas out of the basement. At least we have some snow on the ground before it starts getting COLD. It's good to have some insulation so the frost isn't driven so deep, it makes for much nicer thaw if the water can drain instead of make mud.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

Goods, that would have been sometime around 2008 or so. I think the same year that hurricane Gustov hit. 

Frosty, my daughter has 2 plates and 17 screws in her ankle from that black ice. That happened a few years back but i still joke about wasting my time teaching her to walk when she was a kid. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Ice cleats, never go anywhere without them, in the winter around here with no level ground, it's like Mr Toads wild ride.

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

 

[mcostello]

Wife drove through a level 2 snow emergency 20 miles to work. Was 20 minutes late. Got wrote up for it. Those who did not try got the day off scott free.

[Frosty]

Gotta love mid level management. So much for loyalty to the job eh? 

Give your daughter a little teasing for me please Billy. Maybe she'll have a good comeback for the guy who's earned a few plates and screws himself.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Jason L]

It's funny about black ice, I can see it fine when driving but I can't see it at all when I'm walking. I used to ride back roads a lot looking for snakes, lizards, spiders, anything I could bring home and add to the collection and maybe breed and sell, so I guess I trained my eyes to look for the out of the ordinary on roads. Funny story, when I was in Texas visiting family, I was driving my truck with my mom when I spotted the tip of a Trans-Pecos rat snake's tail sliding into the grass. I jumped out of the truck while it was still moving and caught it right as it was going under a barbed wire fence. My mom didn't freak out or anything, she just slid over and took over, turning around and coming back for me. I was only going about 5 miles an hour or so since I was hunting at the time so it wasn't a dramatic thing, but funny nonetheless. That being said, I guess there's a difference in texture or maybe shading in black ice that makes it stand out to me. Not sure what it is but being color blind I learned a long time ago that I see the world differently than most people so I don't think much about it.