Henry's Latest Photographic Output

Henry is prolific with his camera, here are some typical works, with his captions.

"This one is called Lego Bridge but I wasn't done with it. I have to take more pictures of it if someone wants to buy it when I die."

"I call it Lego Bricks"

"Wormy worm, he's my friend and his name is name is squonky donky pepito and that's his last name."

"Fidel"

"His tail."

"Max's toy that I don't use anymore."

"Baggy Bear, he's my friend and he wakes me up in the morning."
"My knocked over trains from Max. I don't very remember."

"Your lamp."

"You, dad."

Friday Garage Sale Toolblogging

Rather than work all day, we started the morning by going to two garage sales.

Henry shows off the #2 Arbor press I bought for $5.00

A $20.00 Baldor bench grinder. I love Baldor grinders and already have two that I bought new. This one looks a bit rough but runs smooth as silk and just needs a little TLC.

We bought several boxes of model train stuff. This is a whole box full of G scale LGB train track. $5.00!

A few tools, clockwise from left bottom: Lufkin automatic center punch (missing point, but I had a spare, don't you have spare auto center punch points?), blacksmith tongs, Metalmitre die set, wire stripper and tiny crescent wrench.


The die set. What is it for, how do you use it?

Oh, look at that, I remembered I had a metalmitre tool with a 90 deg. die...you knew I was a degenerate tool addict, didn't you?

And this new one fits...

It makes a neat little notch. No information about what this notch is used for, but hey, at least I can make one now...

Links:
A 3D Milk Scanner
An Australian Ornamental Woodturning Forum
Old (and priced for collectors!) Children's Books. I met these nice people at a potluck on Sunday night and we had a nice chat about the joys of making a living online.

Lazy Sunday Morning

Just some random blogging today.


Look at all the countries I have had visitors from over the last year!


Steve the Locksmith was trying to peddle two surplus tonometers he procured as payment for a locksmithing job. I resisted the impulse to take up the assessment of intraocular pressure.

Neat gadgets, and it was hard to turn them down...Greg resisted as well.

Chris and Shelley and Aleah are doing hard labor on our land. Their goats and llama have eaten the last bit of their land bare, so they are going to put them in our woods.

Ahh, the excitement of extreme fencepost pounding.

Ready for another one, only 50 more to go. Seriously, what excellent neighbors. They do all the work and the goats eat all the brambles. We get a cleared out woods, which means we can once again walk through and look at our trees. I guess I'll have to take some pics of the trees as well for next time.

We had a great morning on Etsy, this is one of my favorite new customers.

Some links I've saved up:
Hirst Arts Fantasy Architecture Inc. "Cast Your Own Blocks - Build Your Own Castles" is an excellent site if you like to make, um, miniature castles...

A great site on modding and restoring Hot Wheels. I repaired one of Henry's Hot Wheels but forgot to take pics of the process, so this will have to do.

Here's another step by step Hot Wheels restoration.

Pipedia, a pipe Wiki.

I accidentally (surfed to CMT at channel 165 instead of CCTV at 265) found out about Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings son. I enjoy this type of music...watch the videos if you like Southern Rock...

Have a great Labor day!

Wandering Around Town With Henry

While Felice went to the gym, Henry and I wandered around Corvallis. We used to put Henry in the same free childcare they provided Max, but he finds it boring so would rather trapse around with me.

At the OSU Folk Club Thrift Shop we bought a Bugs Bunny hat for Henry


Henry doffs his hat outside the Benton County library


Henry checks the time on my pocket watch. Not only was the library catalog offline, but the automatic book checkout wasn't working. So it took a while to check out our books. I took out The Penland Book of Jewelry: Master Classes in Jewelry Techniques and Henry took out Gizmo


We stopped off at the local coin shop. I didn't take any pictures inside the store, but here are the foreign coins (and a casino token) that Henry bought.


Then we went and bought whole bean coffee at Sivetz Coffee as we were out and had resorted to drinking coffee made from the "emergency" beans that have lived in our freezer for years. Henry had a chocolate chip cookie.


We met Felice and Max and walked down the street to American Dream pizza.


This scruffy guy works at the pizza place and had spent his break hour drawing an anime girl on the tablecloth. They provide crayons for kids and hipsters to doodle with while you wait for your pizza.


Henry makes some sort of observation.

Not a bad day...

A Rare Visit

Our friend Philippe and his friend (now our friend) Jeff came by for a rare visit the other week. We had interesting conversations, went down to the Mary's river, made pesto, and allowed the children to torture entertain them. They encamped in our front yard for the night, which delighted Henry to no end.

This and the following four pictures are hilarious if you know Philippe. We were amazed at how restrained his cynicism has become in his old age.

Henry moves in for the attack. I always tell him to go for the eyes.

Revenge!

Calm

Philippe has a snack, Jeff and Max are troubled.

Max, serious

Max, exuberant

Henry, bored but sitting on the "Cars" fabric his grandmother June sent, Max is being quiet.

Now, some links I have been saving for you:
Odd Swiss-American music
A review of Chess, the game.
Lovely pre-built models on Ebay
Some pictures of my Braker Mill Leadscrew conversion

I really enjoy watching CCTV, especially Culture Express, Nature and Science, New Frontiers and Travelogue. Philippe was just in the Uighur area of China and said CCTV was the only thing on TV to watch in English.

At the Steam-Up

We made our annual pilgrammage to the Brooks Steam-Up yesterday. Don't worry, you can also go next weekend if you forgot about it this week.

Hijinks on the electric trolley.

The huge railway steam crane.

Some neat junk-art at the flea market.

A Stirling fan.

Henry hands our trolley tickets to the conductor.

Max is enjoying himself at the fire apparatus display.

Another year, another picture in front of the huge Caterpillar.

A lovely lathe of some sort.

In the suburbs, teenage girls hang out at the mall. In rural America they drive small locomotives.

Hanging out at the roundhouse.

Drinking and Driving

I'd write more, but am completely exhausted from the experience...

Carter, Gough & Company

My great, great grandfather Aaron Carter had a jewelry company (under a variety of names as partners changed over time, by 1915 it was Carter, Gough and Co.) that was at one point reportedly one of the largest jewelry companies in the world. His was also the first to use a steam engine, in the 1850's. He died in 1902, but the firm was continued by his son, William Tuttle Carter (who would be my great, great uncle)
After trying for some time I was finally able to buy an affordable piece that Carter & Gough had made through Ebay. $39.00 including shipping, which is a "snip". I certainly couldn't make one for that!

About 2-3/8" long, the head is about 1/2" diameter.

4 small pearls, lovely blue guilloche enamel work. There is a small fracture that you can only see if you look very close with a loupe.

It is marked on the stick, "14K" followed by the Carter, Gough & Company mark, a "C" inside an arrowhead. It is also engraved with a date on the back – "7 . 6 . 14" and the name, "M’S. Obw."

I would love to find some earlier pieces from the period when Aaron ran the company, and I keep hunting for bargains. I am also saving any pictures from auctions that I have not won, in hopes of documenting what pieces the company produced.

Short and Sweet Toolblogging

Henry, Max and I went to an estate sale and the Habitat for Humanity thrift store today.

At the estate sale I bought:

12" Utica Tools combination wrench, rusty but it works, 75 cents
die stock, 35 cents
S-K 1/4" socket extension, 50 cents
Bausch and Lomb pliers, $1.00
ball head for camera, $1.00
weird dental bur chuck for a polishing lathe, 50 cents

(not a tool, but...)
Lamborghini model car kit, still shrinkwrapped, $3.50

At the Habitat for Humanity store I bought a good condition Jacobs 31BA 3/8" drill chuck for $2.00. This is one of the precision chucks, not the cheap ones they make nowadays.

We also got Rockem Sockem Robots at Goodwill. It's the old Marx produced one, but was missing one of the ring posts. Works well though. Henry and Max now beat each other up in the same style as the robots.


Felice reading Henry a book in the playhouse Aunt Betsy sent. Notice Max snoozing on the couch in the background...