Southwest Rules

All airlines should be this cool. comfy chairs with their own ac & usb power supplies.  makes waiting for a plane enjoyable

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what he said...

Figured out how to get photos from the phone to the blog...Couldn't resist this one as an inaugural photo (Not that I feel this way about my typical Blog readers). :-)

Happy Monday!

Refurbishing Old Tools

I bought an old Stanley #80 cabinet scraper off E-Bay a few weeks back. These tools are really great for fine-tuning and preparing surfaces for finish. The one I bought wasn't in great shape, but it was cheap ($20) and with a little work can be back in fine working order. Here's a photo of the one I bought.

The photo isn't a really great one, but you can see the surface rust and lack of japanning (paint). Most of the rust was on the underside (out of view in photo). It will work as-is, provided it has a good burr on the blade, but thought it would be fun to try to bring it back as far as I can. This link shows one in mint condition (go to the middle of the page). I'm not planning to go crazy with the restoration, but it should look good when done.

Step 1 is rust removal. I've been reading about electrolysis for some time and finally had a project to try it out on. After picking up a few supplies at the hardware & grocery stores, it only took me ~30 minutes to get my rig up & running. Here's what it looked like.

The bucket had dissolved washing soda in it and the leads from the battery charger were hooked up like the instructions said. It only took ~30 seconds to see bubbles rising from the electrodes. Very cool indeed. The first photo below is what it looked like after 30 minutes. BTW, the scraper is hanging from a wire in the center of the bucket (attached to the negative (black) lead).

And overnight...
And here's the intermediate results after some brief cleanup with a wire brush on a dremel tool. All of the deep pitted rust is gone and the cast iron has a bit of a sheen again. It could use a bit more work before I attempt to apply paint, but it should be finished in no time. I'm looking forward to the Stormville Flea Market again on Memorial Day weekend. I'm no longer afraid of buying ugly, abused, rust covered tools.

Bloggin from the phone

finally got mobile blogger set up
for on the phone. can't seem to post cameraphone photos yet, but will soon hopefully.

Beth & i have the day off, so we're out and about. here's to everyone else who doesn't have to work today. and to those who do!!

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless Samsung SCH-U740 device.

Makin' Baloney...

Trust me, I reacted the same way to these words as you probably just did. I was invited up to Sullivan County (only a few miles from the location of the original Woodstock - actually Bethel, NY) to spend the weekend 'making baloney' with my friend Matt & his family. Seems that these friends refer to all smoked sausage as baloney, regardless of the type, in much the same way people refer to all cotton swabs as Q-tips, I guess. Once I got past the odd name for what was actually going on, the whole thing seemed a bit more normal.

This weekend festival has been a family tradition for these folks for many years now, and I now have first-hand experience to the festivities. Nearly all of these guys are hunters, and they use a lot of the venison from the previous year's take in the sausage. It also has some pork in the recipe, but that's about all I can say. I've been sworn to secrecy... We made 3 different varieties on Saturday; a normal smoked sausage, a summer sausage, and their version of a slim-jim. All of it was made from scratch and smoked in their little shack behind the garage.

This is what the first recipe looked like when it was placed in the smoker. They call this variety 'Ring Baloney'. Bet you can't guess why...

While the first batch was in the smoker, we worked on the other two batches. The photo below is just a sample of how much was made. In all, we ground and stuffed about 400 lbs of sausages. Seeing the assembly line in action was quite amazing. Let me tell ya, all of it tastes awesome. These guys have the whole process down to a science.

After a full day's worth of sausage-making, we sat around the garage and basically got drunk. That too is part of the tradition, or so I was told. Once everyone woke up the next day, we took a quick trip up the mountain to the place where Matt's Uncle owned a large farm. It's now where they all hunt, as it's ~300 acres of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. I set the camera on black & white as it seemed to fit the surroundings. Here's a few of the best shots I got.

We headed back to Montgomery about noon, totally exhausted and smelling like a couple of guys from a meat-packing plant. I was never more happy to take a shower and get a nap.