You should start a thread espousing the virtues of PM101 and his knife designs. I swear nothing gets Dex riled up and posting faster than one of those [emoji6]
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Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
A Midsummer Night's Snark
- Thread starter Guyon
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You should start a thread espousing the virtues of PM101 and his knife designs. I swear nothing gets Dex riled up and posting faster than one of those [emoji6]
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Alright guys, I'm home alone while my parents are shopping. All I gotta do is be sure not to burn anything down or let livestock in the road. What kind of stupid junk should I do while I have a chance?
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Burn the livestock down in the road?
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Suff my parents won't find out about.
Burn the livestock down on a back road.
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Won't help, they'll still notice the sheep are gone.
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Don't do anything. Just sit real still and touch nothing. When they come back, just smile politely and assure them everything is just fine. No problems at all. None. Not a one. And keep smiling.
They'll spend the rest of the day trying to guess what you were up to while they were gone.
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I like the way you think.
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Blame aliens, feign ignorance, then produce magic beans and explain how you got a really good deal from a mysterious salesman.
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Is it already too late to prove to your parents that you can be trusted?
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If you have to ask...
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Who knows, its your story! Run wild with it! I usually just stayed in trouble when I was younger, but staying out of trouble has its benefits. lol
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I exchanged emails with Dex last week about a parkerizing job. (need to figure out what I really want to do). He's busy working, plus he had a temp night job come available, so if he wasn't working at home, he's working at work or he was sleeping and not chatting away with the rest of us reprobates.
KingMC
The Pun-isher
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Had a strange incident when commuting to work from school this morning, there was a brush fire along the side of I-5 for about 300ft with firefighters working to put it out as I drove past. I didn't see a source until I saw a flaming tire sitting in the middle of the burnt patch, which was weird considering it was just a tire with nothing else. Then, 200ft past the fire there was an RV with a boat trailer sans wheel sitting on the shoulder, which means either the wheel fell off the trailer and caught the grass on fire (dunno how, but maybe) or the trailer sans wheel sparked the fire when the RV pulled over to the shoulder dragging the wheel-less trailer behind.
Made me wonder is all.
Made me wonder is all.
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She's a big girl. A 50 year old, 20' female Great White shark, believed to be the largest ever filmed:
[video=youtube;7SZSoLaW_q0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SZSoLaW_q0[/video]
[video=youtube;7SZSoLaW_q0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SZSoLaW_q0[/video]
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OK, since my name was spoken in "mead" earlierI'll throw my Confederate 2¢ worth in....
MOST, but not all commercial meads draw a near perfect vacuum. To me, one of Chaucers' major problems is that they use almond honey most of the time. This is honey that was made primarily from honey made by bees during the almond pollination period out in California. I like almonds, almond milk and almond flour, but the almond honey seems to have an astringent flavor.
Another major problem, and this is the primary reason so many commercial meads suck, is that they are "new meads". They have not been aged properly. They ferment the basic mixture, rack it 2 or 3 or 4 times, bottle it up and apparently ship it out. And then wonder why people say "such and such sucks". Some people like the commercial stuff, or at least they say they do because of some hang-up of not wanting to show that they don't know what the hell they are talking about with meads. Many a "good wine snob" denigrate mead because all they have ever had is the "new" or relatively new "junk".
When I made my first batch of mead (after learning on 2 batches of mustang grape wine), and was attempting to "follow the recommended procedures", I "taste-tested" some of my brew when I racked it the first time. It tasted like bad dog doo with sweetish overtones. I thought "Oh this is gonna end real well. Not." Racked it again 33 (supposed to be 30) days later and tried it again. Still tasted bad, but maybe, just maybe, it was a "little less bad". Ditto for rackings 3 and 4 (30-ish day intervals). A little better each time, but nothing to really write home about.
Everything I had read by real home wine makers said "Ya gotta let mead age at least a year. Longer is better", so after the 4th racking, nearly 6 months after dumping the yeast in, I bottled it up, labeled it and put it away in a dark closet and forgot about it. And already had wine batch 3 and mead batch 2 fermenting.
A year and a day after I bottled "Mead Batch 1", I popped a cork. That stuff was like night and day, compared to the crap I tasted a year before. I have worked my way through 15 of those first 25 bottles, about 1 per month or so. Each bottle has been very tasty. I've also worked on batch 2 and 3, as well as mustang 1,2,3,4. Blackberry melomels 1 and 2, along with mustang 5, are peacefully "mass aging" in gallon jugs in a dark closet. (melomel is mead made with some kind of fruit juice substituting for some of the water.)
One of the local small commercial (75 hives) beekeepers started having seizures for some reason and had to give up all alcohol-based beverages due to negative reactions with his anti-seizure meds, so to eliminate temptation, he gave away all his home-made wines and meads (around 400 bottles). That 18 y.o. wildflower mead was smoother than a babies butt and sweet as honey.
Some wines, like mustang grape, can be drunk "new" or right out of the carboy and taste pretty good. Let it age a year and you will never drink "new" MG wine again. The problem is the waiting. MG keeps getting better for 5 to 7 years, then it starts to break down and get worse. Mead, on the other hand, apparently keeps getting better, at least through 18 years.
Mead is simple. Not exactly easy, cause you have the racking and bottling and waiting to get through, but really simple. A sweet mead recipe (most of mine are sweets) is 1.5 gallons of honey, 3.5 gallons of distilled water and 1 package of champagne yeast. 18 months later, you have 20+ bottles of really smooth nectar. OK, I skipped the fermenting, racking and bottling steps, but you get the idea. Every mead batch is different because every batch of honey is different. The various nectar flavors in honey will vary from year to year, even by the same hive because every year has a different nectar source ratio. BUT even un-aromatic commercial off the shelf bulk honey from who knows where bought at Sam's makes good mead. Eventually.
good info. i've had too many a young mead. bleah.
had some, well, more than some "Viking Blød" not bad stuff. stronger than you'd think. so i've "woden up in the m0rning" feeling like i was hit my Thor's hammer a few times.
good times!
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oh man, i sprained my banning finger on that one.
sorry, was busying laying pipe. fun hobby!
also moving 20 tons of concrete by hand, because i'm building a ramp, so i can get the tractor down to were the concrete is, oh wait
also, it's ropedart. that's my other hobby.
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Hard work sure does help make the blues go away. Worked on my little pram this evening, removing 50 years worth of oxidation. I used one of those scrub pads. Not done yet, but looks a lot better.
Before:
After:
You can see how bad it is. I know it looks like dirt, but it isn't. Lots of scrubbing to get that off:
"Aluminium oxide is responsible for the resistance of metallic aluminium to weathering. Metallic aluminium is very reactive with atmospheric oxygen, and a thin passivation layer of aluminium oxide (4 nm thickness) forms on any exposed aluminium surface.[7] This layer protects the metal from further oxidation. The thickness and properties of this oxide layer can be enhanced using a process called anodising."
So, now you've stripped it. How ya gonna force a new patina?
Oh, and Guyon, midsummer nowadays commonly means "days in the middle of summer" - so late July/early August should qualify just fine.
But back in Shakespeare's day, it meant Summer Solstice. In fact, if I recall correctly (I was having trouble staying awake) when I saw the play they actually made reference to it taking place on the Solstice.
In on 4???
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I'm not. Thanks.
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