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"I am thankful every day that I live in the middle of nowhere and no one can tell me what I can or can't Put on my property." Me too, Until some city folk moved in across the road and opened an impromtu moto cross park on their 3 acres. We literally could not hear the TV in our own living room and we were a half mile away. However, a little known ordinance concerning dust and "non agricultural noise" got them shut down.

Last year I purchased an older RBI Hawk 214. It is much easier to use than the Skil I already had, but recently, the RBI hawk was causing circuit breakers to flip when ever the cord was bumped. I inspected the cord and connections carefully and could find nothing wrong. Then with a continuity tester started checking things and found the cord was somehow shorting out. The exterior black coating was still soft and pliable. So I cut the cord length wise at one spot. The plastic coating on the interior wires was hard and brittle and was crumbling to pieces letting the hot, neutral and ground wires contact. Checked at two more spots, inside the outer black covering the plastic coating on the individual wires had disintegrated into a gritty powder. I already lost one house and shop to fire. Don't want another fire. I replaced the cord with a new shop cord this afternoon.

About fifteen years ago, there were three mom and pop hardware stores within ten miles of my home. My favorite of these was three miles from the farm and not only saved many a day of work with a needed nut, bolt or other part, it was open Sundays, starting early, with the Sunday paper, milk, bread, and ice cream. Traditionally most stores were still closed on Sundays, but this hardware store seemed busier on Sundays than other days of the week. When the owner retired, it was purchased by a husband and wife who closed Sundays. No more convenience to get a paper Sundays, or on warm Sundays to promise the kids a trip for popsicles or soda. In a few years, I noticed the stock on the shelves was not being replenished and one day, I went for a plumbing fitting and the husband just stayed behind the counter, and did not even assist me in finding it. He was going through employment classified. When i went to pay for the fitting, he told me the store would be closing and thanked me for my patronage. He lamented the lack of DIY'rs and the inability of many homeowners to do simple repairs like replace and electrical switch. We talked a bit about the difference between the 1950's, when nearly every father had a small work shop and did repairs to save the household budget from going for unnecessary expense of replacing lamps etc. Nearly everyone knew how to replace a wire or socket on a table lamp. Some father's built furniture, or made other useful household items. The owner blamed out replacement society of planned obsolescence and throw away culture, instead of making repairs. I almost told him, it was a major mistake to close Sundays, and that chased business away, but I bit my tongue. The guy was obviously depressed over his failing hardware enterprise. He and his wife made no effort to give discounts to contractors to bring in their business., They had no classes on how to do simple repairs and did not even have a way to rent or borrow the special tools to make some simple repairs. Fifteen years later, that store has been closed for years and the property sports a for lease sign that is old and faded. Things have become even more throw away, and people do fewer repairs themselves. Heck new technology of cnc controls has dramatically changed the types of wood work that many do. Laser and cnc routers carve out duplicate materials in a few minutes, that once took people months to complete. CNC lathes can copy dozens of little turnings in a few minutes. The population in general has lost much respect for the ability to repair or craft a piece. There was a similar lament in a thread here about a bad weekend at a craft show. I see intricate fretwork that obviously took hours to do, and can't justify the price even though it is a steal when considering the effort involved. Part of that Colonial fortitude that made America strong was the fierce self reliance that the people possessed. We largely lost that self reliance. Can't fix it have to replace it. It is too difficult to fix, I might electrocute myself, I got no idea how to fix it. A new one is dirt cheap and less than the materials to fix the thing. Their simply is little if any self reliance. But gee, I am seeing a resurgence in personal crafting. regardless of whether it is my wifes renewed interest in quilting, or my renewed interest in wood turning or scrolling. Big Stores are now having classes on doing repairs, and even doing some remodeling. I recently heard of a nearby scrolling group that meets at a woodcraft store, that I may check out. I was raised to do for myself, unless it was above my capacity. I have done brake jobs, rebuilt carburetors, installed radiant heating, learned to replace plumbing and wiring in an old farmhouse. This dumb city boy bought a baler and tractor and filled a barn with hay. I have learned to give innoculations to the livestock, Bought a back hoe and learned to dig tranches to install irrigation. Stitched up wire cuts on animals, Stitched up a cut on my leg because I needed to get a job done before a storm set in. Even watched a couple internet articles and butchered a pig by myself. Made scrapple and bacon. I built a muzzle loader from a maple plank and parts. I needed a colonial outfit to go with the muzzle loader, and bought a thrift shop sewing machine and made my own uniform from some patterns. (Thanks to my mother in law for the 15 minute sewing machine lesson to get started.) I learned to bake from scratch from my uncle, a professional baker. . When my hay bine frame broke, I learned to weld and put it back together. I can install a new circuit in the box and run the wire and install the switches, receptacles, etc. On Monday morning when somebody asks what I thought of "the game", I didn't watch it, was busy doing x all weekend, what did they do, Watched Tv and went drinking, etc. . Seems I have a hobby collecting things. Not so much tangible things you can hold, but collecting the knowledge and skills to do a vast variety of tasks for myself. Guess many of you are rare birds like me. not enough people are like us.

My uncle retired from being a commercial artist to do the type of art he loved. While he lived several states away, he did an outdoor juried art show near my parent's home in a strange Chatauqua community. The event drew hundreds of artists and thousands of applicants. He had a theory about the jury there, and often remarked about how some artists he considered better than himself were not invited back. After 20 years, he was asked to be on the jury. They chose based on crowd appeal, personality, type of art, how "fine" of an art the product was, and what they percieved sales generated to be. Their purpose was to maintain the draw of the public to the show. Too many of one type of art, or too many novel types of art were bad for the show. Sometimes a new method or media was exciting and the next year it was "ho hum" He complained that there were also politics involved, but sales taxes was something they did care about, but only to the extent that they demanded each vendor to have the permit, and charge sales tax, because they didn't want publicity that vendors were cheating, however, they knew most vendors probably did cheat. He did once complain about the fact that the jury had somebody taking pictures of each booth and being caught selling the same exact same items as the year before counted against the vendor with the jury. (My uncle sold the heck out of signed lithographs, and one in particular became very popular, there was a series of 500 numbered prints and he was afraid to prominently feature that print the next year, even though he was down to 4 or 5 remaining. During his last 10 years or so, it was the only show he would do. It wasn't until after he died and I helped my cousin administer his estate, that I found out what he made at that 4 day show and most years it was far into five figures.. .The show organizer went to his funeral and afterward asked my cousin to set up one last time to sell any remaining works. Seems he was considered one of their major "anchors" to draw the money folks to the show.

heating a wood shop in northern climates is a problem. I have an outside wood boiler that is currently not hooked up to anything and though about using it to heat the shop I am going to build. I'd put radiant heat in the walls and fill the thing with antifreeze, so I would not need to worry about the fire going out during days away from the shop.

Never scrolled in the house. Built a long rifle on a card table in the living room one winter. Used only hand tools and vacuumed religiously. Still left a mess.

What thickness do you use. I am going to have some poplar sawn up this fall., or do you need kiln dried?

as some mentioned, change the color of the design, or dab a little white out on the saw blade. It will immediately wear off the sides and teeth, but stick between the teeth. Did it with a band saw blade years ago when cutting some dark designs. (had to dab every few inches on the band saw blade.) But then cut a scrap piece to wear off the excess before cutting the good design.

I am in the planning stages for a shop and trying to figure out just what I may need. for some things, I just roll the equipment out side and let the breeze take the dust away. I know that will not work on bad weather days. I have no experience with actual dust collectors, just shop vacs. Are the dust collectors that much better?

E-gad. When i was in college, I got a subscription to "Der Stern" a German magazine much like Look, or Life magazines. It was a gift from my grandmother. Well some of the photos were definitely not safe for work back then. Guys with whole walls of playboy centerfolds could not believe some of the pictures. Such photos appeared only every five or six issues. And this magazine was considered a family magazine back in Germany. An Iranian student on our hall, told me that back home any publication with pictures showing legs above the ankle or arms above the elbow, or showing the neck, was considered obscene and the person possessing such material was punished with a whipping and prison. There was a huge black market for Playboy magazines and getting caught was good for a couple years in a very nasty prison. In the old south, plantation houses had two stairways down from the front. Men used one and women used the other. Men were not supposed to see ankles. A man took a few pictures of his infant daughter taking her first steps: The daughter was naked and although their were no frontal shots., A very prudish photo lab employee called police and demanded the man be prosecuted for child porn. A huge flap over two or three rather innocent pictures. Remember the 1969 or 1970 movie, Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zifferelli. There was a ten second boob shot of then 15 yr old Olivia Hussy as Juliet. Under the child porn laws of most states, any one who possesses that movie or distributes it may be guilty of a felony. The determining factor is whether the depiction if for the purpose of purient interest. And that is a matter for the jury which can be horribly prudish or progressive depending on the locale. Indeed one man's art can get you registered as a sex offender elsewhere. Years ago, a news report about a champion US snowboarder indicated that the guy grew up so far back in the woods, that during summer no one in the family wore clothes..There are scattered tribes of such people in tropical areas. They do not see parts of the body with the same "sexual" overtones that others do. I am not a prude. But I am shocked by some of what goes on in public sometimes. Years ago, I took my kids to a lake in western maryland. It was hot even though it was mid October. We were at the swimming beach and swimming when a group of families showed up and they all just stripped down to under pants and went in the water swimming. women and girls topless, and some of the underpants were quite transparent when wet. Not that there was anything good looking in the crowd. I gathered my kids and got in the car to leave. Just as were were backing up a couple Maryland DNR cars pulled. in and arrested the adults. At a lake/park in Lancaster county, PA there is a small cove with a grassy beach at a remote end of the lake. It is a gathering place for folks who sunbathe and swim nude. I don't go there, but recently heard a story of a group of girl scouts on a nature hike who happened upon the place. I figure if it is something I would not want my young grandkids to see, I would not post it here. .

LP's (331/3) are vinyl and might tend to warp and melt from heat. Certainly less brittle than 78's.

some early 78's are brittle as can be and some titles are worth a bundle to record collectors. I had some early ones from the 1920's and early 1930's that were about 3/32 inch thick. Later ones were still brittle to an extent and were about 1/16 in thick. I bought a box of them at a yard sale and got over $100.00 for just two of them. (One was Bing's first recording of White Christmas, Apparently the original press die was accidentally destroyed and he had to re-record it, making the first one so valuable to collectors.) Now LP's were a dime a dozen and unless in mint condition with the slip cover and card cover aren't worth much. (then again, I came across an LP of Robert Frost reading his own poems. That brought $200.00 with no dust jacket or cover) It is strange what finds value in this world.

I recently was looking for some accessory for my wood lathe. Don't recall what anymore. I noticed that the web site for one company had no address or local phone number. Just an 800 number. Maybe it was a mistake by their webmaster, But I was leery of purchasing from a company that did not at least have a local number and address. In one of my hobbies, there is a supplier that makes everything himself by hand. He is superb at what he does and has a thirty year history of great product. But, he has no web site and never answers the phone. It has become common knowledge that you send him the piece you want fixed with a check. He cashes the check and 3 or 4 months later, you get you repaired piece back in the mail with his check for the change owed back to the customer. If you did not send enough, you get a postcard saying the job is done, send the balance owed. The guy is a bit of a kook. He sometimes has a years work lined up and says if you don't like it, don't send him business. I have had him do three jobs in the last 35 years. One took him almost 10 months. For what he does, his prices are very reasonable. Any one files any kind of complaint, he sends the unworked piece and money back and you go on a list of people he will never do work for. When i worked for a DC law firm, the senior lawyer said a law firm is a lot like a restaurant. If the service is good, people will trickle back, if the food is good folks will trickle back. If neither is good, customers will tell everyone under the sun. if both service and food are good, folks will stand in line to come back and no advertising necessary. So many businesses lose track of customer service. A few months back I ordered a cheap drive spur on line. A whopping $3.00 including shipping. I got an email thanking me for the order. I got an email a day later with a tracking number and a thank you for my order. Two weeks later, I got an email asking if I liked it and offering a 10% discount on future orders. I ignored the last email and got a phone call a month after the order asking if I was satisfied with the piece. How can you not like a business like that? (Even if it is in China)

Fiebings water based leather stains from Tandy Leather works well for plain woods. For somethings, different colors of India Ink. Years ago I refinished a small pine table. Painted the whole thin g with two coats of India ink and then when that dried, a coat of formby's tung oil. Difficult to tell it wasn't ebony. For deeper solid bright color stains the powdered Russian and Greek Easter egg dyes are incredibly intense in color. Some dyes require an additional chemical as a "mordant" to set the dye. For instance the Greek egg dyes require a little vinegar. , I take part in some historical re-enactments and many folks are big time into making their own dyes for clothes. there have been several articles in Muzzleloader magazine and a few other reenactment periodicals about such dyes. Walnut hulls for dark brown, I forget what common roots for yellow. A trick with poke berries. Pick a half gallon of the berries in a stainless steel container, mash the berries, add a cup of sugar and a pack of yeast and let it work for several days. Cloth then heated in the strained juice takes on a very deep bright pink which is said to be colorfast. The example I saw a lady do, the wool shawl came out about as day glow pink as anything I have seen. To get the dark brown from walnut hulls, add a spoon of iron filings the day before to help the color set. Colonial gun smiths made stocks from beautiful pieces of curly maple, but that rich brown or dark brown actually came from treating the wood with acid and then holding the wood over heat. The color change is about a 32nd of an inch deep and just suddenly flashes across the piece when the heat reaches the right temperature. Then after the color is uniform, the stock is washed with baking soda water to neutralize the acid. The archaic name for the acid is Aqua fortis. (Nitric acid as I recall. requires care, eye protection, keep out of reach of children, etc.) The nice part about this last treatment is it chemically changes the natural color of the wood, instead of just spreading bits of pigment over the wood that may gather in the grain. I recently attended a wood turning meeting and a member had turned a really fancy box from hard curly maple and he used the acid treatment and the wood was a very rich golden brown that made the curl stand out like stain just can't do. .It has been years since I did a few gun stocks with the acid method. I think the process is used only on maple. .

copies of a certain piece of test equipment for use within the company and the patent owner could never collect from them, because they never sold the equipment. ???? Of course he could sue. He was out the royalty he would have earned if the company purchased the ones made under his patent. Things get so convoluted. Remember the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" The movie copyright expired without being renewed, so tv stations were showing it 20 times a week during the holidays. However, the script copyright had been renewed and the script owner sued and collected. The result is that the movie is in the public domain, but the script is not and royalties still need to be paid every time the movie is shown. It is truly a mad mad world. When I took the law school class many years ago, Stiffel lamp company was filing copyrights on it's finished lamps, claiming the design was not only trademarked, but copyrighted. That was a new twist on the law in the 1970.s and I don't know if their attempts to protect their designs held up or not. It went way beyond the normal thoughts about both trademark and copyright. Then we have people who make up alternative lyrics for popular copyrighted songs. The song is copyrighted, but it may be a fair use of the song, but then the alternative lyrics may be copyrighted in their own right. Incredibly complicated. A country group recently released their version of Joy to the World to a very different tune. I immediately recognized it as an old tune Elvis had a hit with. The old country song, You're the reason God Made Oklahoma was a pirated arrangement of the Blue Grass tune Rocky Top. The Beatles song My Sweet Lord was a tune copied from the 50's He's so fine. There is a pop song right now that the tune was copied from a 1050's hit and I just can't remember the name right now. The tune The Lion sleeps tonight, was copied from the Weaver's early 1950's Wimoweh song, which was copied from a 1939 Zulu folk song called Mbube, by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds. An alternative copy of that Zulu Folk song appeared in the first Boy scout manual as a marching song.

You can use a trademark or copyright under some circumstances and not other.l There is something called "fair use" and even specialized copyright attorney's argue about what it means. If you are doing something that holds the brand or trademark up to a joke or ridicule, that is one type of fair use. For instance those bummper stickers that talk about" Ford country, on a quiet night you can hear a chevy rust." Or "Fix Or Repair Daily" Or "DOGdge" are fair use. There are some other types of fair use, but I can't explain them. I took one copyright class in Law school and decided the field was so intentionally obsfucated, that I wanted nothing to do with it. It is sort of like zoning law. The words are all in English, but the special technical meanings and the combinations of words into zoning phrase jargon require a language translator to figure out. And I thoroughly believe that zoning officers intentionally do this so they can be so condescending to everyone else. The same is true of copyright rules. There is a cut off year in the past that anything older is supposed to be in the public domain. Except that even 150 years ago, certain trademarks are still protected. So If you were to do a fret work of a 1876 Winchester Ad for their then new lever action rifle, copied from an old period magazine, the Winchester Trademark might still be protected. I have a collection of old catalogs and magazines that I use for some inspiration and copying. For instance American Field Magazine from the beginning about 1870 until 1920 is available on a DVD, for a reasonable cost, as is Woods and Stream magazine. Both are ripe with old advertising for sporting goods, and many of the companies are long defunct, so copy away. There were thousands of old classic magazines that have folded many decades ago and the covers are truly great stuff for art and inspiration. No one would care if you made a fret work Stanley Steamer, Cord, Nash, Auburn, LaSalle or a Hudson.

Mrs. and I bought an 1860's farmhouse and spent years trying to fix it up. Every little modernization turned into major headaches. Rip out the crumbling horse hair plaster and lathing, insulate the walls, fir out the crooked studs to put up dry wall. But first replace the live knob and tube wiring with charred insulation that was found behind two walls. Replace the 50 yr old leaking copper pipes with modern pex tubing, only to have the faucets leak from the now full pressure. Tear off the shingles to replace the roof and find some idiot nailed shingles on top of slate on top of cedar shingles on a quarter of the roof. Have to run purlins and sheath the roof. Pull up old ragged plywood in half the kitchen, to find missing floor boards under neath. Random width tongue and groove pine floor boards no longer made. Rip out all floor boards and find out a floor joist is all dust from years of powder post beetles. Also discover, part of kitchen was originally a porch that was enclosed. Idiot that expanded kichen into porch just sawed off vertical studs that went up the wall from first floor to roof, so bathroom floor above starts sagging along exterior wall. And the fool that installed plumbing, put the 2nd floor cast iron soil pipe over the electric panel and then outside and down the exterior of the wall, where it freezes up every time the temps drop below zero for two days. Oh and even stranger, were the corked bottles of peculiar strange creamy yellow liquid found behind some boards in a closet. under the basement steps. .Behind the bottles was a kids shoe with wooden pegs holding the heel fast. Also a part of a halter with USA stamped brass pieces where the dried out leather straps crossed. When I pulled up the attic floor boards to insulate, there were numerous pairs of old ladies bloomers under the floor boards,. Really huge. A couple of pieces of mouse chewed lye soap and some old red glass lenses from some kind of lantern and a report card dated 1946. (I would have hidden it too based on the grades.)

Just for an update. I donated about 12 turned snowmen and as many turned Christmas trees to our local Lion's club Christmas decorating sale. The stuff I donated brought over $350.00 for projects like training guide dogs, eye glasses for poor folk, etc.

Babelfish and some translators are terrible at some technical translations. I had six years of German in High School and muddle through. There are several free word book -dictionaries available for smart phones. I have used one in German and one in Italian for a few years now. I correspond with a guy at an Italian muzzle loader club occasionally by email and we can figure things out with each of us using such a translator. I also post threads on a German muzzle loader forum. It is more technical and some words are not found in the smart phone app. but it helps enough so that I can get by. An English-German dictionary is relatively easy to use. Type in the German word and it gives the English equivalent.

I have a collection of magazines and catelogs from 1870 to 1930. Pretty much any of the illustrations are fair game. Still have to watch out for trade marks.

Look up the copyright pertaining to Its A Wonderful life. While the film might have passed to the public, the script/music and other parts still belong to others. So royalties must still be paid to some owners.

To the extent you copied the original, it still belongs to the artist. To the extent that you added your original changes, it belongs to you. So, the new combination, belongs to both. The old part to the artist, your additional changes to you.

Last December, I went to the Christkindl Markt in Mifflinberg PA. A guy there was turning little Christmas trees about 6 inches high. There was a line of folks waiting to buy them as he made them paying $10 a piece for the trees and it was taking him about 6 minutes each. He was using what I believe was Birch or Bass and the type of tree required no finish. I was there for a few hours annd he never took a break. Last Tuesday, I saw something very disheartening over at Thadeus Stevens College in Lancaster PA. The Instructor fed a 4 pictures into a computer, applied a program and a computer operated laser machine cut out a plywood panels that when assembled created a 3d copy of the house that he photographed. It set up like those little plasticville houses for Lionel trains sets. The detail was amazing right down to the bricks in the wall and the curtains in the windows. Another instructor demonstrated how he put pewter rings into lathe turned wooden bowls. Positively gorgeous work. So I have been turning some little Christmas trees and snowmen all donated to a charity decorations sale the end of November. I am getting better with each one.

He suffers from a rare medical condition.....dis-upsiedaisyia

I bought some 10 led battery operated string lights for a dollar per at my local Dollar Tree Store. They also have flickering led tea lights 2 for a dollar and includes batteries. Great for lighting those little ptojects.