End of Summer...

[latzanimal]

Jammer = Instigator

[Rasper]

TOOL BUILDERS! Give it up. Come to your senses before it's too late. Building tools is a dangerous obsession. Worse than women and strong drink. I have to confess, I am a reformed tool-making junkie. Old age has helped. When you face the almost-empty top half of the hourglass, you start to ration your time.

I have a big furnace with a #30 crucible that I am now hesitant to use. Handling 85 pounds of 2000 degree bronze at eighty years old has to be considered carefully. My small furnace with a #8 crucible has had so many melts I can't count that high. Thank God for Mizzou and Isuzu diesels. (After the nuclear holocaust, all that will remain on earth will be cockroaches, Isuzu diesels, and Mizzou.)

I once had the most wonderful sculpture studio in the world. Four rooms: a dirty room for sand-blasting, buffing machines, and grinders. An office. A darkroom with a 4 x 5 Bessler enlarger. And the metal-working room. What a blessing to have had such a space. I made tools. I made a sand blasting cabinet, buffing machines, a band-saw, and more. But I did find time to produce some work as well. Here is something I made twenty years ago. It was formed from six pieces of .050 1100 aluminum. It was my first metal shaping project, my first gas welding of aluminum sheet metal, and my first spray painting job. That I pulled it off still amazes me.

[latzanimal]

Does that ring fit your finger?

Nice job...

[Jammer]

Very nice Richard. You and I are a lot alike. I don't really want to wright a novel but I used to enjoy writing short stories and some dark poems for school. I would come up with the goofiest stuff I could think of and the English teacher would think it was great and always embarrass me and read it out loud. Probably the only way I got a decent grade. I also had a darkroom set up at home and had a Bessler 23-C I think it was, 4X5. Pictures for school paper, yearbooks, chasing sirens to sell pictures to a newspaper and hour after the disaster, accident or whatever. Digital has spoiled all that, everyone (except me) has a camera 24/7. UFO's and Bigfoot should have been proven by now.

Anyway... Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I thankful for the friends I've made on here. Wish we could all get together but Miles, Time and Money!! Sure miss David Allen's input.

[Jammer]

Latz, if you had Richard build you a drum, it wouldn't fit on stage.

[cae2100]

I was looking at that pic last night and thought it looked like a giant class ring also, lol.

As for tool making, I usually look at it this way, if I can get away from not having something or if it will only get used once or twice, Ill skip it, but if I do need it, I can either spend a few hours making it, or buy one and spend a week or two waiting for it to show up, so effective use of time, I think just making the tool is the better option and then I have it to use it then, lol. The worst thing is having to stop to wait on a tool to come in when you can just spend a few mins extra making it, then you know the quality isnt complete crap and it wont break on you the first or second time you use it, lol.

Edit: also, most of my tools I really want/need only exists by design in my own mind, so hard to buy that anyhow, so making it is the only option, lol.

Latz, if you had Richard build you a drum, it wouldn't fit on stage.

Bronze outside for a swimming pool?

[Rasper]

Does that ring fit your finger?

It was made to fit a finger about 22 inches in diameter. Sometimes when I am trying to screw tiny nuts onto tiny bolts I think mine are that size.

Richard

[latzanimal]

Latz, if you had Richard build you a drum, it wouldn't fit on stage.