Knives aside, what are your other hobbies??

[ceiw]

Guns, horses, guns, fishing, guns, and camping. And oh...did I mention guns!

 

[ddd]

Here's the last of the photo's. Hard to believe this was 38 years ago..........
.....Believe this was the last picture taken from my 3 month old camera. I was released from the hospital in the morning and found myself a few hours later back in the field. Less than 3 weeks left in the army and they send me back out for another week before I come back to the rear and get ready to leave Nam.

Raymond, your pictures are heavy with emotion and vivid memories.
I am sure you re-live every moment again and again, which may not
be an easy thing at all.

There is no boubt that this documentation that you shared with us
touches something in everyone who sees the pictures....

Thanks.

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

 

[Erik Fritz]

other than knives i really enjoy blackpowder rifles mostly of the cartridge type. currently i have two winchester hiwalls and one sharps. i have two flintlocks and 4 percussion rifles i shoot. I used to do allot of horsehair hitching and rawhide braiding. i will check tommorow to see if i have any digital images of some of my hair work.

 

[ddd]

other than knives i really enjoy blackpowder rifles mostly of the cartridge type. currently i have two winchester hiwalls and one sharps. i have two flintlocks and 4 percussion rifles i shoot. I used to do allot of horsehair hitching and rawhide braiding. i will check tommorow to see if i have any digital images of some of my hair work.

Erik,

Have you seen the pictures of Edmund Davidson's blackpowder
shooting (see post #16 on this Thread) or of Tim Hancock's
collaboration knives with Richard Goff a raw hide braiding artist?

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

 

[Erik Fritz]

yes i have. i have talked a t length with tim about combineing the two arts for some of my JS test knives. edmunds flintlock intriques me. my crown jewel of my collection is a .40 southern mountain rifle made by Joe Corley.

 

[Will Leavitt]

Oh I know first round out sets the base plate.... talking about digging a "real" pit I mean that ground looks very soft.

I can only imagine what a pile of leftover chow must smell like in those weather conditions. Ray, you think you'll ever forget the smell of burning shit? Believe it or not we still had to do that in Desert Storm. I've found smells are the biggest triggers for memories for me.

 

[Raymond Richard]

Oh I know first round out sets the base plate.... talking about digging a "real" pit I mean that ground looks very soft.

I can only imagine what a pile of leftover chow must smell like in those weather conditions. Ray, you think you'll ever forget the smell of burning shit? Believe it or not we still had to do that in Desert Storm. I've found smells are the biggest triggers for memories for me.

Will, It happened to be the dry season when we were on that LZ. When it was the wet season finding the base plate after a night time fire mission became pretty interesting even with several longs underneath the base plate and they only helped so much. I can remember the base plate going as deep as 18". Burning shit! I think it was the army's way to help conserve food. You'd smell that and lose you appetite. Fortunately that was the only place I got to experience that smell. Placement of some of the shitters really made you a sitting target. Most the time if we were only at a position for little more than a week a deep hole would work.

David, Fortunately we didn't run into to many bad guys the year I was there so that was a plus. Still got the memories. I would sure like to see some of the fellows I served with.

 

[ddd]

............. I would sure like to see some of the fellows I served with.

Raymond, I can well understand this.

Your problem is mainly the fact that the USA is so big there is a small
chance that your comrades at arms live near by.
In Israel every boy and girl (at the age of 18), have several years of
obligatory army service which is hard and intense as we at at war
with the hundreds of millions of "bad guys" surrounding us....

Israel is very small and bonds that are created during this harsh
service remain as life long friendships, usually even beyond that,
especially as most have many days of reserves service every year
for many years meeting again and again every year......

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

 

[Don Halter]

What a cool thread. It's always interesting to see what else knifemakers do. We're a diverse bunch, that's for sure!

My main side hobby was making armour for the various medieval groups. Unfortunately, this got to be too much like work to be much fun and I haven't done much in a long time!

Now, my new passion is blackpowder artillery! I was teaching armouring to a guy who ran an artillery unit with a Civil War group. he brought over the mountain rifle in the pics below and i was hooked! I started small...50 cal, then 69 cal, then moved up to 1" and am now finishing up the 6" cal standing mortar. Of course, we just moved from the country to a subdivision, so my shooting time has been hampered a bit. I'm sure new year's eve will see a few blanks fired off out of the 6".

Night shot of the 2" cal mountain Confederate mountain rifle. This is the one that got me hooked!

Here's a mix of several of my small caliber ones. These are .50 - 1.1" cal tiller gonnes based on late 15th century designs.

I really liked the way this one came out. the stock was some post-Katrina downed oak off our property. 22" x .50cal barrel. Made for my brother-in-law.

Fun with the 6" cal mortar tube. We're shooting 6" x 6" concrete cylinders at about 100 yards onto a bingo layout. I have video of the shooting on youtube/kragaxe.

This is what the mortar tube will eventually be used on. A model 1848 British-Sikh type 94 standing mortar. (standing, meaning it's carraige-mounted).

Here's the current progress. I have part of the axle done and have aquired the hub ironwork. I'm now starting the wheels and hubs. You can see a closeup of the breech section behind the dgaurd knife. It was made from 6" x 8" cylinder of 1050 steel and has a 2" x 2" with a 1"long chamfer out to 3" dia on top of that for the powder chamber.


My other hobby is collecting radioactive stuff. Vaseline glass, antique red and ivory Fiestaware, various other commercial products from the past and minerals from all over the globe. I have uraninite from the shinkelobwe mine (where we got the ore for the WWII bombs), natural yellow-cake from Colorado, and about another 100 or so from across the globe. I recently spent some time in the DR-Congo and got some neat crystal uranium minerals from the Musenoi mine and KOV pit as well. This summer will hopefully be Zambia as well as the Congo and maybe Pakistan and Tajikistan in the not too distant future. The pic below is a mix of copper and uranium minerals. the yellow band, when looked at under a magnifying lens, shows little flower-like crystals. This is the uranium crystals. And no, these aren't hazardouse levels, and yes, we have the proper mining-mineral export/import permits and licenses. My full-time job is a consulting environmental health physicist.

The first pic is in the musenoi pit. These were a bit "zippy" to ship back, so they got left where they were. The second pic just has the thin mineral band. The black is low grade uraninite. The last pic was my shadow and friend while I was out in the boonies.

I grow and hybridize chili peppers also. I have about 20 lbs of assorted peppers frozen. I keep meaning to make some hot suace and bottle it up! My favorite is the bulgarian carrot pepper crossed with the long red cayenne! I used to have some pics of my tobasco "tree", but can't find it. It never got cold enough to kill off the plants one year and they got about 7' tall with 1" dia woody "trunks". Tobascos are fun to grow. The upper most chilis will always have the ends eaten off by the birds...but they never take more than one peck! hah!

 

[ddd]

One finds excitement in so many different things.

What a rare combination of interests, Don, blackpowder artillery,
radioactive minerals from all over the globe and hybridizing chili
peppers....

I love it!

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

 

[jdm61]

I grow and hybridize chili peppers also. I have about 20 lbs of assorted peppers frozen. I keep meaning to make some hot suace and bottle it up! My favorite is the bulgarian carrot pepper crossed with the long red cayenne! I used to have some pics of my tobasco "tree", but can't find it. It never got cold enough to kill off the plants one year and they got about 7' tall with 1" dia woody "trunks". Tobascos are fun to grow. The upper most chilis will always have the ends eaten off by the birds...but they never take more than one peck! hah!

Cool pics, Don. Actually, capsascium only burns mammals. It is an evolved defense mechanism to keep mammals from eating the seeds because they get destroyed by their digestive system. A bird's digestive system, on the other hand, runs stuff though much more quickly so the seeds come out intact. This is how most chile seeds are spread. This concludes Mr. Know-It-All's Fun Factoid for the day.

 

[So-Lo]

OK time for me to fess up and let my dork out Mind you our three kids take up 100% of my time now, but before kids...

I did a lot of ball point pen drawing (cars trucks.. Rat Fink style stuff)

I was really into close up magic (real close up, one on one type under your nose with no sleeves, borrowed money, rubber bands, soda cans, a couple card ripping stuff, and tons of other crazy stuffs)

Nitro RC monster trucks (about 50mph when second gear kicks in )

RC Airplanes

Online PS2/PS3 gaming

I'm a dork I know I still do Magic for my Wine buyers here and there, and still get to play the PS3 after the kids knock out for the night.

I mean really who does not like a good quick magic trick? It breaks up the day and let's you get out of reality for a few seconds. Really fun stuff, lately I have been getting back into it.

Great thread :thumbup:

 

[Don Halter]

Cool pics, Don. Actually, capsascium only burns mammals. It is an evolved defense mechanism to keep mammals from eating the seeds because they get destroyed by their digestive system. A bird's digestive system, on the other hand, runs stuff though much more quickly so the seeds come out intact. This is how most chile seeds are spread. This concludes Mr. Know-It-All's Fun Factoid for the day.

Interesting. I guess that explains why we used to have chickens that loved red chilies and it never seemed to bother them. The mockingbirds and bluejays kept eating the very tip off all the tobascos. if it didn't burn them, I gues they just thought they tasted like crap! They never finished any, and never even tried any of the others.

 

[jdm61]

Interesting. I guess that explains why we used to have chickens that loved red chilies and it never seemed to bother them. The mockingbirds and bluejays kept eating the very tip off all the tobascos. if it didn't burn them, I gues they just thought they tasted like crap! They never finished any, and never even tried any of the others.

Or that may be the tasty part to them, like feral hogs chomping the sweet bottom six inches of a sugar cane plant and leaving the rest to rot. Also remember that Tabasco peppers are different from other common edible peppers in that they have that watery liquid in the center.

 

[ddd]

.......I did a lot of ball point pen drawing (cars trucks.. Rat Fink style stuff)

I was really into close up magic (real close up, one on one type under your nose with no sleeves, borrowed money, rubber bands, soda cans, a couple card ripping stuff, and tons of other crazy stuffs)

Nitro RC monster trucks (about 50mph when second gear kicks in )

RC Airplanes.......... Great thread :thumbup:

So-Lo,

Many of your interests would look nice in pictures... How about it?
Ball point pen drawing? Some samples of you work!?

If your kids are now your full time "job/hobby", show us!

All the best,
David Darom (ddd)

 

[RogerP]

Those pics are awesome, Ray.

Roger

 

[peterinct]

Ray - quite a diverse set of hobbies you have. In my younger days I loved to make things that involved explosives. Great pictures.

Peter

 

[Raymond Richard]

Ray - quite a diverse set of hobbies you have. In my younger days I loved to make things that involved explosives. Great pictures.

Peter

Peter, I think I was in country maybe a month. Got moved to another location and found myself on a tree clearing detail to create a fire zone. Must have been at least half dozen of us each with 2 pounds of C4, a 1 minute fuse, and one lit cigarette. The plan was to lite the fuse and place the C4 at the base of the tree and then haul ass. Sometimes the fuses didn't lite very easy so you had to be aware of the other fellows running for cover. If that happened you just dropped what you were doing and caught it on the next go round. This was all "on the job training".

 

[Will Leavitt]

Peter, I think I was in country maybe a month. Got moved to another location and found myself on a tree clearing detail to create a fire zone. Must have been at least half dozen of us each with 2 pounds of C4, a 1 minute fuse, and one lit cigarette. The plan was to lite the fuse and place the C4 at the base of the tree and then haul ass. Sometimes the fuses didn't lite very easy so you had to be aware of the other fellows running for cover. If that happened you just dropped what you were doing and caught it on the next go round. This was all "on the job training".

Sounds like whoever taught you didn't know much themselves.... but if you still got all your fingers after that you're just as qualified as anyone as a demo expert

 

[Raymond Richard]

Sounds like whoever taught you didn't know much themselves.... but if you still got all your fingers after that you're just as qualified as anyone as a demo expert

Will, I'm sure the fellow that taught us was an expert. Heck, I was an expert after that........