I wasn't sure how many years constitutes "historical".

My aunt texted me some pictures from a friend at her church. His grandfather did ironworks and made these two light scones for a school in the 1930's. 

His assessment is: If a brick is 3 5/8 tall, then these are between 4 1/2 and 5 feet tall.

 

Wow, they're really cute. And not badly done if they're still around and looking this nice after nearly a century, right?

Although I'm guessing there's something wrong with the math on the size...? I'm counting 13 1/2 bricks in the height. 3 5/8" seems to me to be closer to a depth measurement than a height measurement for bricks? 2 1/4 seems closer. I googled a bit and it seems that 8" for 3 courses seems typical in the US.

36 inches is still three feet (or ~90cm), so they're still quite huge  They must weigh a bit too...

Right you are, a standard red brick is 7 5/8" long x 2 1/4" high x 3 5/8" thick. However counting bricks won't give you the length of the lamp sconces. You've forgotten to account for the mortar. Length, height and depth are measured as laid in a wall, not how a person would look at a brick in hand. 

A brick mortared in a wall is 8 1/4" long x 2 3/4" high, thickness remains unchanged. making the sconces roughly 37 1/8" high when you account for mortar. 

To be historical something has to be recorded. To be properly pre-historic means it predates written records. There is of course arguments about various forms, eg. Are petroglyphs recorded language or representative art? Do we count Mesolithic tally sticks as written records, they fit the letter of one definition.

For example some considered Mesopotamia a prehistoric society, complex and sophisticated but without written language, prehistoric. 

It was finally deciphered as the result of a contest to end the endless squabbling between the is - IS NOT factions. So in the view of many in the day Mesopotamia and other civilizations didn't become civilized till the 1850s. That pushed "history" back about 3,000 years.

People are still arguing about the definition of pre-historic.

It's a great rabbit hole if you ever want to kill a couple few weeks. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

My house was built in 1890. It was moved from about 2 miles away to its current location in the 1920/30's. A whole town was moved back then, it is pretty cool to see the old pics of houses being moved by horse drawn wagons. The town i live in is called Fairborn becuase the town of Fairfield was here, then the town of Osborn was moved here and in the 1950's they combined the names. Anyway, my house is in the Osborn historic distract and even though it is one of the houses moved here it is not historic becuase it is not registered. The ones that are have little brass plaques next to the front door. 

It is a PITA to have one as well. You have to keep it in original condition, even down to what color the house can be. 

My house has had very few changes though. One of the reasons i bought it. All hard wood floors and trim, maple doors, spun bronze door knobs and i have 10 interior doors just on the ground floor. Push button light switches, knob and tube wiring in part of the basement, still have the old coal chute and i switched to a coal forge becuase there was 3/4 of a ton of coal that came with the house. 

knob and tube wiring?

Frosty The Lucky. 

Frosty, i assume you are not asking what is knob and tube but why it is still there. Knob and tube wiring in homes is still up to code here where i live. You can not install it new but of it is already in the house it does not have to be replaced. 

No, I was asking what it is. I was being lazy and should've done a search. My bad. I'll do it now.

Okay, nope I've never seen knob and tube wiring. The oldest house we lived in after I got old enough to sneak up into the attic had insulated wiring that was held by nail down porcelain insulators of a more complex shape. 

I wonder if the tubes would make good wind chimes?

Frosty The Lucky. 

10 hours ago, BillyBones said:

My house was built in 1890. It was moved from about 2 miles away to its current location in the 1920/30's

I once visited a fellow in Portsmouth, NH who lived in a 17th century house that had been moved to its current location in the 18th century. The difference was that the house had originally been built on an island in Portsmouth harbor! Not sure how they managed that one; maybe they disassembled the timber frame and reassembled it at the new location.

20 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I wonder if the tubes would make good wind chimes?

Possibly, but potentially friable!

Frosty, you of all people here i would have thought knew what that was. Not sure about the wind chime thing. They are made of ceramic but they are rough and not high quality ceramic. You see a lot more knobs than tubes but IIRC the tubes were also pretty thin. 

JHCC, I would not be the least but surprised if the whole thing was not just loaded on a barge and floated across the river. 

Wouldn't be surprised. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you've got enough barges, rollers, and muscle -- just look at the Pyramids!

I did an "image" search and looked at a couple different sites. None of the tubes looked thin, nor were they very long, maybe 2 1/2" +/-. If the chime material isn't strong, say thin glass tubing you hang them where they're sheltered from strong breezes. Being soft fired and unglazed they probably don't resonate anyway. It was just an unexplored thought suggested by the voices. 

The length of the chime is more important for good tone. You tune them by cutting them long and grinding to the note / tone you want. There's a whole list of ratios to use if a person wanted to get scientific about it. Material, resonant frequency, shape of the chime, thickness vs. length, hangers, etc. Everything effects the final sound. 

Years ago we had a truly annoying neighbor who complained about everything, especially our livestock guardian dog barking to her dog and ofhers around the area. Dogs talk to each other. She'd stand at the property line and shout at us, call and complain and only made ONE official report of animal neglect to animal control. That one got her a $500 fine for filing a false report and another $500 fine for maliciously filing a report with the police. The call that cost her her job with corrections was the threatening message she left on our answering machine, claiming to be "law enforcement." Her husband is or was a State Trooper and a darned good guy to meet at the coffee shop and talk with over coffee. 

Back on topic, I was sorely tempted to make a set of wind chimes from RR rail just for neighbor Lynn but it would probably wake people up for a couple miles around. Just ignoring her was the greater revenge. 

I'd planned on making the RR chimes striker as a whirligig. A single hammer bar on a wind cup like an anemometer. I'd even pulled an old centrifugal clutch special to use as a rev limiter. We get winds in excess of 100mph. on occasion and that would've been much too annoying!

There is an old friend who's wife used to make wind instruments in S. Cal. That played tuned chords as the breezes and wind blew over them, like blowing a note on a soda bottle. She'd developed them so different wind direction played different chords. The breeze was disrupted by the long tubes and they needed to be arranged to get the desired chord so she tuned and placed them to account. 

Her health hasn't allowed her to make one in years and I don't know if any are still up and singing in the wind. 

There are so many things out there I'd LOVE a chance to play around with I'll never get the chance. <sigh>

Ever hear of rain chains? They can play chords or a series of notes like a music box depending on how hard it's raining. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

Yes i have heard of rain chains. I tossed around the idea of making some but just to tedious i think. You can buy them now at the local box store but they are kind of pricey, i think it may be that they have grown in popularity. Supply and demand i guess. 

My mom bought me a set of tuned wind chimes a few years back for my birthday. They had a very lovely sound. 

I made a bell awhile back ago from the cone off a CV shaft, the end that goes into the trans with the female splines. They make quite loud bells. 

We have a local drag strip here that i think is on the historic sites list now. When it was built it was a pretty fair piece out of town. Well over time town expanded and now there are homes within a rocks throwing distance to it. Some of the new home owners there wanted to get the track shut down becuase of noise on Tuesdays and Thursdays (test and tune) Fridays (round track night) and Saturdays (racing day). I never understood why people do that. Move into a place they know is next to a dragstrip, airstrip, etc. and then complain about the noise. I think it being a historic landmark the owners, town, and racers from all over the area was able to tell them to pound sand. 

That drag strip has had some the most famous racers in history run there. 

3 hours ago, JHCC said:

just look at the Pyramids!

So it was aliens that moved the house. Could have been giants too i guess. They could have just picked it up and waded through the river. Provably managed by the lizard people from the center of the earth as well. 

1 hour ago, BillyBones said:

Move into a place they know is next to a dragstrip, airstrip, etc. and then complain about the noise.

Or move into a farming area and complain about the manure.

If you want loud but small try cutting the base off an oxygen cylinder and hanging it from a tree or stand. Wear GOOD hearing protection, they're dangerously loud at a light tap hitting one with a hammer will make your whole body ring. Probably get you lynched by the neighbors too.

Reminds me of the San Fernando Drag Strip. It used to be a military landing air field during WWII, got civilianized into a local airport, but the runway next to the wash was too close and down wind and got converted to a drag strip. I used to work there Sundays till a real job got in my way somewhere around 1968. It was the local tune up strip by time I got involved but had lost it's appeal as a big time strip. Something to do with the sand traps being on the far side of a Concrete highway overpass. 

Noise complaints became an issue when as noted above people bought inexpensive land and build close by to a drag strip that'd been in operation since WWII. Of course the same people complained and sued the city, county, state and fed gvt. because of the flooding. Just because they built in a wash with tributary washes extending to the San Gabriel Mountains?

Below is a link to a "remember the dragstrip" type history sort of of the strip. The latest pics were from before I worked there. I sat the hot pit gate and only worked the snack bar for a couple days. At least I could watch some of the races from the pit gate, don't you know.

Frosty The Lucky. 

https://www.nhra.com/news/2008/they-left-their-hearts-san-fernando

Kil-Kare is the track here. Been running for over 70 years. 

I love drag racing. Next to baseball it is my favorite sport and with the rule changes in baseball, computers calling balls and strikes now, i am starting to not like that . but i digress, i grew up at that drag strip. My dad raced when i was a kid up until i could drive. I ran some but i was more interested in being in the pits making the car run. My fastest run was 8 flat at 180MPH. National Trail raceway in an 86' Olds Cutlass 418 SB, blown, running nitro methane. Tires broke loose on the launch or i would have provably ran closer to a 7.8 or so. 

I never made a run, not even a street race. Diced a little at stop lights but everybody did it was S. Cal. after all. 

I have good memories of San Fernando drag strip. The hot pit gate was prime spot, I not only got to watch most of the race track but got to talk to the racers as they made a run to the restrooms, snack bar or the parking lot for stuff . Tony Nancy was a nice guy but really busy, Tex Colins was friendly but loud and proud Texas all the way. His wife was pretty cool and finally convinced Tex to build her a racer though he refused to build her one of an Allison V12 aircraft engine. She had to make do with an A fueler black mustang funny. Tex stood at the fence by the hot pit gate, his spot in the pit was against the fence away from the track. 

Anyway, she got off the line well, not much smoke and hooked up well but as she passed us at 1/2 way Tex started chanting "shift shift shift" and within another 50' you could hear the engine go over but she kept her foot in it and lunched the mill, blew almost the whole body off the car, hit the wall spun but didn't roll and no fire. Once her car came to a stop without a fire Tex almost laughed til he puked. She came storming at him fire in her eye as the crew was picking up the pieces of her car and Tex said, "Now you're a drag racer Baby!"

Good times at the Pond. Except the one fatal crash I witnessed, a rail's chute didn't open and he hit the sand traps at a good 160, buried the front end and he went over the top. Right in front of the San Fernando road overpass. It was a really bad day at the drags.

Frosty The Lucky.

It is a dangerous sport. Their have been a couple fatalities here, one the car came completely off the track, over the barrier and ended up in the creek next to track. Fortunately it had passed the stands or that would have been really bad. 

My neighbor across the street had a Road Runner he raced. He went to stop and both feet went through the floor board. He lost one at the ankle and the other at the knee. 

Worst thing that ever happen to us is we had the body panels fly off the car starting at about the 1/8 mile point. 

On the 4th of July they have the "Night of Fire". They bring in jet trucks to run. That is fun, Peterbilt's and Mac trucks with jet engines strapped to the back of them. 

I just now realized after all these years there is no "U" in Peterbilt.   

Ahhh, the jet cars. Art Arfons (sp?) started the craze? Darn, too long ago. I remember the Green Monster making test runs at San Fernando strip and torching 4 racers waiting to stage.  The track owner, Harry Hibler had to stop allowing the jets to run though, by then the guys running the jets were bringing their own cars to act as "back blast screens". Do a "flame out" and burn them to cracklins for the show. I think the neighbors and FD might have had something to do with the ban too but I was no longer attending races.

Rod, my drag race crazed neighbor and good friend, and I used to go camping at El Mirage dry lakes for race weekends. We always wanted to make Bonneville but we had jobs and local drags. Fastest surface vehicle I ever saw run averaged around 450mph over a 1 mile course (I had to look that up). That would've been around 69-70. Lakers are a whole different world than dragsters even though it's the same principle. . . sort of. LSR (Land Speed Record) runs are averages of two passes over a 1 measured mile in opposite directions within 1 hour. This allows wind speed to cancel out. 

Anybody remember Turbonique Turbo (Drag) Axle race cars?

Frosty The Lucky.